Doug Clark: This gives ‘naked eye’ new meaning

I want to fight terrorism as much as anyone.

I want the streets of Spokane to be safe from crime. I want our luxury hotel guests and affluent downtown condo dwellers to feel secure as they look down upon the rest of us.

But until we can be assured that Big Brother isn’t peeping at them in their underwear, I say it’s time to turn those high-tech spy cameras OFF!

I’m feeling really creeped out after reading the state’s voyeurism case against Darin Earl Wanlust.

Oops. That’s “Wanless.” Looks like I made one a them Freudian watchacallits there.

Which is understandable. The 32-year-old Cheney man was canned from his guard job last June for allegedly using the security cameras perched atop the U.S. Courthouse compound to peer into the bedrooms of a downtown condominium and Davenport Hotel.

Let me explain what we’re dealing with here.

This isn’t about some run-of-the-mill perv snapping shots with a cell phone.

Oh, no. These are sophisticated surveillance cameras bought with Department of Homeland Security funds.

They are so powerful that, “if conditions were right,” as a government official noted in a news story, “you’d be able to count the ice cubes in a tumbler.”

This is the space-age technology Wanless had at his disposal when, according to documents, he at one point was overheard exclaiming …

“We’ve got boobies.”

No wonder we can’t catch bin Laden.

But this raises an even bigger question:

Why must our civic scandals always be so freakishly weird?

This reported utterance sounds like that infectious old TV commercial for Sea Galley restaurants:

“We’ve got crab legs.”

The last thing this city needs is for everyone in the nation to immediately start singing “We’ve got boob-eeez” whenever the name Spokane comes up in a conversation.

I’m not anti-technology. Technology has given humankind many wonders, like iPods and microwave popcorn.

But the dark side of technology is beginning to outweigh the positives.

Jessica Simpson’s less-talented sister lip-syncing on “Saturday Night Live,” for example.

And how about the most recent abomination of science that took place Tuesday night in San Francisco?

Barroid Bonds hit home run No. 756, thanks to BBTC.

(Better batting through chemistry.)

Like most people my age, I grew up infatuated with James Bond and “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” and all of their gadgetry. But that’s mere entertainment. These intrusive spy cameras are all too real, and they’re everywhere.

Tiny cameras are even scattered all about The Spokesman-Review. They’re in the lunchroom and the hallways and the elevators. …

It’s getting so a guy can’t pick or scratch without worrying that the embarrassing footage will show up on YouTube.

More and more I find myself writing my column from home where I don’t have to worry about security cameras or having to wear pants.

I still love the secret agent flicks, though.

Last week my lovely wife, Sherry, and I went to see Matt Damon’s latest Bourne movie. There was this exciting part where the bad guys used London’s prolific public security cameras to track and then rub out a nosy journalist.

That’s a bad precedent.

Maybe some day Damon will come to Spokane and film the Darin Earl Wanless story. If he does, I know what it will be called.

“The Porn Identity.”