Secrets

I’m a little bit perplexed by Senator Rand Paul, the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and the general right wing point of view on the privacy brouhaha surrounding monitoring and data mining of phone calls, emails, and personal data.  If Barrack Obama wanted to steal a few of my credit card numbers to pay for Obamacare, it would be one thing…but really folks?  We’re worried about the government knowing who we email, or call on the phone, or tweet about in this post-911 world we live in? Really?

If you do any of the following things, you would probably care a lot as you are probably at risk of getting (justifiably) arrested – in which case, our government listening in to your phone calls, or keeping tabs on your posts, tweets, or favorite chat rooms is a very good thing for the rest of us.  In no particular order...

1.       Laundering money through the Cayman Islands

2.       Supporting the development of explosive devices by Neo-Nazis in Montana

3.       Supporting the development of explosive devices by Al Qaeda or a branch of same

4.       Plotting to poison the D.C. water system (or that of any city)

5.       Planning to knock off your spouse, boss, girlfriend, buddy, neighbor, etc., etc.

6.      Trolling on the web for children – in which case, the NSA and other agencies are not doing nearly enough snooping to find you and should seriously do more

7.       Planning an elaborate jewelry heist at Cannes

8.       Rigging Libor interest rates…and….

9.       Any other bad stuff to intentionally do harm to, steal from or generally disrupt the well-being of fellow citizens and the social order.

This is a short but nasty list that someone would likely want to keep secret so that they could, you know, do them.  But for the rest of us, monitoring our calls really shouldn’t be an issue as it helps to keep us safe and our society at peace by stopping bad guys from doing bad stuff (and bad women too, because there are a few and I don’t want to be sexist about this).  And that’s the whole point of homeland security, isn’t it?

If the government wants to read my Twitter autobiography, I’m really ok with it.  I would also encourage them to read my blog from time to time, as they might enjoy a little laugh at my expense on a bad day.

Regarding this unbelievably narcissistic man-child former Booz Allen Consultant who thinks he’s saving us from Big Brother and the holding company… err, I mean the NSA/CIA/DOJ, and other government agencies I’ve forgotten to mention …he’s going to win the prison lottery:   25-30 years minimum. 

Hope he likes to make pottery and do laundry.