We weren't upset this morning when we heard that Julian Assange has been arrested.  He should be arrested - he stands accused of a crime, and he should be given a fair trial to determine if he's guilty or innocent of the charges, and if found guilty, a judge and jury should decide what - if any - degree of punishment he should receive.

It doesn't matter what the prevailing public opinion is on this matter, or what the press has to say.  If Wikileaks has redeeming social value that justifies the crimes Mr. Assange stands accused of, the judge and jury should take that into consideration.  He could be found innocent.  He could be found guilty but given no or a very light sentence.  He could be found guilty and have the book thrown at him and never see the outside of a prison cell again.  But it's up to the judicial process to decide all that - not Op Ed writers, not the Gallup poll, not the word on the street. His treatment should be decided by a jury of his peers, by the governmental democratic justice system.

Meanwhile, our rare endorsement of the government is tempered by the bureaucratic frustration we experienced today.  It's that time in our life when we have to apply for Medicare.  We went on line today to enroll, guided by a professional insurance consultant to help us with our decisions.  We entered our data to enroll - name, Social Security number, and address - selected a screen name and a password, and then were asked some personal questions to verify our identity.  How much is our mortgage payment?  What company holds that mortgage? And so on.  But then came the gotcha question:  "Which of the following is a former telephone number of yours?"

We've had the same cell phone number for at least the last 20 years, probably longer.  We haven't had a landline since at least 2004, and don't remember what that number might have been.  What's more, back in the days of dial-up modems, we had telephone numbers dedicated solely to our vintage computers, numbers assigned to us that were never even connected to a telephone.  And we don't remember the number of any of them.  The online form for Medicare enrollment listed three numbers, none of which rang a bell, and a fourth option, "None of the Above." Since we didn't recognize any of the numbers, we went with "None of the Above."

We immediately got booted out of the system, with a warning message saying that our account was locked down because we were unable to verify our identity.  

The insurance consultant, our counselor, told us that we would have to enroll by mail, and that he would email us a form that we would have to submit by good old U.S. Mail.  But then he called back a few minutes later and said that there was in fact no form for our situation, and that we would have to either enroll by phone ("be prepared to be on hold for long periods") or we'd have to go to the Social Security Administration office building and enroll in person ("best to set aside a whole day for the process").  

Neither option sounds very appealing.  What's frustrating is that we're going to have to go through the slow-boat bureaucratic process simply because we don't recognize an unused telephone number from 20 years ago or because the website designer didn't think of giving the user the option of saying "Don't know - ask another question."

But here's the thing - how come the government knows our telephone number from 20 years ago? And our mortgage payment?  And our mortgage holder?  Okay, they could get the mortgage holder from our income tax returns, but we never reported the actual monthly mortgage payments, just the annual interest paid.  How do they know all that, and much more do they know about us?  Our favorite of the "and so on" questions mentioned above (at this point, I think they were just showing off how much they knew about us) was, "Our records show that you paid off your current car in 2013.  Which of the following companies had financed the loan?"  Does the government know how many miles are on the car?  Do they know about our blow-out flat tire from earlier this year?  Do they know our cats names?  The time of our last bowel movement?

Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Wikileaks, et al have a point - we do in fact live in a surveillance state.  And the government doesn't always use that surveillance data discretely - today, they used it to deny us enrollment in Medicare.

Free Julian Assange!