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Recognize that sound? It's the theme from 60 Minutes.

Recently, 60 Minutes did a segment on my man, Bruce Springsteen. I was busy when it was one, so thanks to the power of modern technological inventions like DVR, I got to watch it last night.

Before the Boss segment, there was a report on Interpol. Familiar with Interpol? If not, it's a network of national polices from all around the world. You'd think that would be a ginormous entity, right? With thousands of Interpol cops running around solving world criminal issues. Negative. It's a very small operation, actually-one which the U.S. funds only $5 mill per year. Freaking $5 mill on federal funds-that's like a Senator's allowance for office carpeting. Not really, but you get my point.

Anyway, Interpol has an American director, but agents and ddetectivees from all around the world who utilize the org to catch bad guys. One who was interviewed was an Irish detective. Not an American Irish detective like you'd find on the streets of Boston, but a real, honest-to-God Irishman. And he was darned interesting.

Said Irish cop's current project was tracking down sex offenders using the internet. Ah, the net. Great for keeping me in touch with you, but the dark underbelly of society use it for less decent things. Like posting child sex videos, etc.

The Irishman's simple position was, "The internet is nothing more than a reflection of greater society. That's all it is."

That, faithful reader, is frightening. Why? Read Tom Friedman's books and he'll show you why. In one of Friedman's works, he discussed going to google's headquarters. At any one time, a visitor can see what the top item on google searches is, all around the world. #1 at the time Friedman was touring was, of course, sex. Two was job searches andsomewhere in the top five was, believe it or not, professional wrestling. God bless the net.

Irish cop is so right. The net allows me to be anything I want to be. I choose to be myself, but if I were some weirdo, I could easily dig up all sorta whacko porn, I could learn to make bombs, I could learn to cook meth, whatever I want...and no one would be the wiser-except maybe Interpol and Google.

Scary when you think of it, isn't it?