Phil&rsquo;s compound wouldn&rsquo;t have remained a secret in the neighborhood of my youth. </p><p>An assortment of haphazard sheds, tents and tarps, shielded from prying eyes by a tall fence? No better invitation to investigate could have been extended to the kids of our block. We&rsquo;d have been all over it, scaling the fence, peering through any crack we could find or create. More important, I&rsquo;m sure we would have yapped about it enough that someone&rsquo;s mom or dad would have marched over and eventually led to the discovery of the real horror, a kidnapped girl held there as the sex slave of a convicted offender. </p><p> No smarmy sex addict inviting such scrutiny would have escaped our curiosity. It was our neighborhood. We felt entitled to swarm its every nook and cranny &mdash; yes, even if that meant trespassing. </p><p> So what led to the capture of convicted kidnapper-rapist Phillip Garrido and the liberation of his captives, Jaycee Lee Dugard and her two children? Old-fashioned snooping. Curiosity about another person&rsquo;s life. An acted-on sense that something was amiss. Two women, both employees of the University of California-Berkeley police department, reportedly noted the robotic behavior of the two girls now known to have been fathered by Garrido. They focused on the possibility that something was wrong, even at the risk of being wrong themselves. Bravo. </p><p> This isn&rsquo;t a rant about how things were better back in my youth. The world in many ways is far more interconnected than ever before. The Internet has not only made it easier and faster to communicate with greater numbers of people; it has also made it easier to collect and share information on others &mdash; to snoop. Note it was a background check, no doubt done on a networked database, that told the Berkeley officers that Garrido was a convicted sex offender, thus setting off even more alarm bells and the follow-ups with police that led to Dugard&rsquo;s revealing her real identity. </p><p> But the story also points out the limits of the &ldquo;systems&rdquo; put in place to keep us safe, including offender databases and the parole system. </p><p> Tragically missing for Dugard were people who noted her situation, suspected something and had the inclination and wherewithal to do something about it. </p><p> Obviously, the parole officers assigned to Garrido through the years failed greatly and repeatedly. As did the officer who was assigned to follow up on a tip more than two years ago that Garrido was keeping kids his back yard. </p><p> But countless others crossed paths with the Garridos through the years, too. Some did feel something was wrong. But somehow their instincts never resulted in saving Dugard or her children. </p><p> It&rsquo;s also worth noting that, now that the case is in the news, people are using the Internet to indulge their more prurient interests. What do they want to see? The faces of the youngest victims, that&rsquo;s what. The request for photos of the two girls, aged 11 and 15, became the top search as measured by Google Trends. Sick. </p><p> Every elementary-school child in the nation is taught to scream and fight off a possible abductor. Dugard followed those instructions as an 11-year-old. She yelled as she was snatched that June day on her way to the bus stop. </p><p> But after she stopped crying out, once she had fallen prey to the wishes of her attacker, who was aware enough to note to the subtler clues? Clearly, not enough people heard her and acted and not nearly soon enough.