A couple of disparate things sort of collided to provide the fodder for this column. The collision of these things seems merely coincidental rather than genuinely remarkable, but I needed an introduction and this very paragraph seems to have done the trick.

The two things: a trip home to Cleveland, Ohio, where I grew up and a (probably) paranoid book called “Little Brother,” which I happened to be reading during said trip. “Little Brother” is a young adult book, but also a best seller nominated for a slew of awards and which somehow became the latest pick of a book club I belong to. In any case, while the book is young adult in its writing style, its themes aren’t young adult at all.

The plot: A terrorist attack on the scale of a 9/11 is pulled off in San Francisco, Calif. The target doesn’t matter, though, no, it’s not the Golden Gate Bridge. What follows is seemingly all too realistic. While the dust is still settling from the bombs, the teenage narrator and three friends get nabbed off the street by nameless thugs who turn out to be… Terrorists? Gangbangers? Kidnappers? Nah. They are card-carrying agents of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The friends are held in separate cells, chained, often with hoods over their heads. Hurt in a riot after the bombing, one character simply disappears. For the others, their imprisonment comes complete with some seriously ugly questioning.

Think it couldn’t happen? The obvious retort is to suggest you Google, for starters, “Guantanamo Bay” or “waterboarding,” of which there is a nice description toward the end of “Little Brother.”

By the way, one could argue that Guantanamo — and almost certainly a few other similar garden spots about which the public knows nothing — are good things. And, then again, maybe they aren’t. That’s just one of the many questions posed by “Little Brother,” which turns out to be a fairly sophisticated treatment of the pros and cons of Big Brother government possibly overreacting, distorting questionable “facts” and spying into our so-called private lives, all to catch a few terrorists who might or might not even be out there to catch.

In the book’s San Francisco, the motto of the police and the DHS quickly becomes that if you have nothing to hide, then you shouldn’t be worried about the surveillance cameras. Or the check points. Or the government monitoring the use of your mass-transit pass. Or the sensors that read the electronic chips that let you cross a bridge without stopping to pay a toll.

Is it an invasion of privacy for the government to track how many times you cross a bridge? (Say, just where were you headed at 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Mr. Smith?) What other kinds of devices can read those toll cards and where can those devices be placed? Who rightly has access to the data? Why not law enforcement? Maybe they could catch some drug dealers or deadbeat dads. Obviously, a few things to think about when tolling starts on State Route 520.

During my recent trip, I never had to go through the infamous airport X-ray machines at all, though the wife did and it took all of about three or four seconds. We’ve all heard the jokes about the X-ray scans. Have you seen the “Miss TSA Calendar?” It’s a collection of X-ray images in girlie magazine poses. The obvious question is, are the X-rays and such needed? Have our efforts caught any real terrorists?

Keep in mind that before the X-ray machines were in place, no one caught the so-called “Underwear Bomber” until after he allegedly tried to ignite his jockey shorts in mid-flight. And it was the DHS or the feds who caught the guy who reportedly wanted to blow up a Christmas celebration in Portland, Ore., just a short time ago, yes? So why all the whining about airport X-rays and so on? Has the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed lawsuits yet?

There are no answers here. The questions might seem routine even and, if so, I would argue that’s a good thing. It seems as if said questions need to be asked by as many people as possible, as often as possible.

It says here that another 9/11-level attack is almost inevitable. If you think the DHS or TSA (Transportation Security Administration) is a pain now, just wait. We need to be prepared ahead of time, to have some responses to the knee-jerk reactionaries who will want to toss out privacy very quickly and very sharply.

Maybe the knee-jerkers will have it right and maybe they won’t. But maybe this a debate we need to have now, while nothing domestic has gone boom recently.

While I haven’t exactly researched the subject, maybe the best thing I’ve read about all these questions shouldn’t have been in a young adult science fiction book.