Chain link fences and cement barricades surrounded the stadium at Tampa. Metal detectors stood ready at the gates. It was the Super Bowl! Missing were the familiar radios held by fans in the stands. Why? Because some terrorist might have stuffed his or her radio with a bomb.

There is an analog to this rush for security caused by the Persian Gulf war - the clamor to restrict information caused by unfortunate uses of the information. All it takes is one lunatic, or even the threat of one, to result in barriers for us all.

The murder of 21-year-old actress Rebecca Schaeffer, costar of the television series "My Sister Sam," is a case in point. She lost her life in Los Angeles on July 18, 1989, when she answered a knock at her apartment door. She opened her security door, and a deranged, jealous admirer, 19-year-old Robert Bardo, shot her in the chest. Bardo, who lived in Tucson, Arizona, had paid $250 to a Tucson private investigating firm, Anthony Agency, to get Schaeffer's address.

Schaeffer was an old friend, Bardo had told the firm, and he wanted her current address. He carried a picture of Schaeffer which bore her signature and a personal, handwritten message.

The firm got her address from driver's license records in California public records available at the time to anyone virtually on demand. The requestor did have to fill out a form that asked the reason for the request, but only addresses of judges and peace officers were automatically restricted.

A furor followed Schaeffer's death.

The clampdown on records held by the California Department of Motor Vehicles became almost as inevitable as war in the Persian Gulf.

The Los Angeles Times quoted California legislator Mike Roos as saying, "Tragically, government records have become the personal research archives of thieves, kooks and killers. The fact is we are all sitting ducks for any criminal or kook who wants to track us down."

"Kooks and killers" - and most sane persons, for that matter - can no longer use California driver's license records to learn residential addresses. On October 1, 1989, California's governor approved legislation sponsored by Roos. The law says, in part:

In order for individuals to be able to exercise their right to privacy, they must be able to choose when to release personal information, and to whom, and reasonable laws requiring the individual to surrender control should be enacted only when it is deemed absolutely necessary for society's welfare.

The personal privacy and security of one's home is fundamental to this right of privacy. Now California law says that residential addresses maintained by Department of Motor Vehicle records are "confidential and shall not be disclosed to any person," with basically four exceptions: (1) a court; (2) a law enforcement agency; (3) a financial institution licensed by California or the federal government to do business in California and which has a written waiver signed by the person whose address the institution requests; and (4) an insurance company with a California license which is seeking the address of a motorist involved in an accident with someone insured by the company.

Note that journalists have no right to gain residential addresses through California's Department of Motor Vehicles. Anyone who smuggles the information to a journalist (or any other unauthorized person) faces a fine of up to $5,000, imprisonment in a county jail for up to a year, or both.

Unfortunately, the California law is placing a roadblock in the path of a journalist who would like to do a story, say, on school bus safety. If the journalist can get traffic violation records through the Department of Motor Vehicles but has no residential addresses, the journalist may well have difficulty trying to determine if the "Bob Smith" with 20 violations is the same Bob Smith in whose hands school children's lives are placed.

Surely "society's welfare" is improved by aiding journalists in writing such stories, not in placing a roadblock with no exceptions in their way.

And so the erosion continues, chipping away here and there at what we can do as society creates a padded cell for us all - because some are "kooks and killers."