Hey NSA! I’m Over Here!

Judging by the hit count on this blog, even the NSA doesn’t much care about my opinions. Or maybe they actually read this stuff and that explains why we frequently see photos of people in Washington DC sleeping at their desks.

Anyway, I guess the whole brouhaha about the NSA snooping on phones and internet communications is about over. Why? Well, look at it this way – a secret spying operation only works when it’s secret, right? Once the spyee realizes there is a spyor (yes, I make up words) then there is no benefit from spying. Quite the contrary since now the spyee can use the system to implant false messages.

So the spooks might as well pack their bags and sneak off to develop other ways to track what everybody in the country is talking, writing and, gulp, blogging about.

To me, the most amazing thing is that the NSA and Friends have the technology, the sheer computational capability to track the bazillions of communications that go on every day and then, after capturing the communications, to process the material to extract meaningful clues, patterns and other data.

I cannot help but think of the potential good that all that computer power could accomplish if targeted at something other than indiscriminately spying on citizens. Like figuring out the best combinations for the Warrior’s football pool.

Here’s a little bit of theme music for today’s post: Rockwells’ “Somebody’s Watching Me.”