In a statement released earlier today, officials from the NSA responded to public outrage over data mining leaks, arguing that surveillance is justified by the wholly uninteresting nature of the private information being handled.
“If we’ve discovered anything from this surveillance program, it’s that the large majority of conversations that take place over text or online are incredibly banal and pointless” says one NSA official, who ironically requested to remain anonymous in our conversation.
“Frankly, Americans have pretty large egos to assume that we care about their vacuous chatter which comprises 97% of internet communication.”
The same official urged Americans to look through their conversation history to see that the content of their messages are usually just links to Top 10 lists or rants about how much work they have to do today. Another official, who also asked to remain anonymous, gave reporters a inside look at how ultimately useless the information they are mining is:
“Let me give you an example. I will pick a text from an American at random. Let’s see…. here we go, Samantha Horton from Tuskagee, Alabama just texted her boyfriend: ‘Can you pick up pickles while you’re at the supermarket?’ What could we possibly do with that information? Let’s try a Facebook message….oh, wait actually this one is pretty scandalous. I have to forward it to my friend Mike, he’ll get a kick out of this!”
But does this constitute legal grounds for spying on Americans’ private conversations? In a statement released earlier today, a former CIA employee argues that the program is consistent with America’s proud history of passing laws that permit government agencies to do whatever they feel like so long as it isn’t controversial or someone gets wind of it. He cites measures like the Patriot Act as established grounds for capitalizing on the ignorance of people who are affected by such measures.
“This is not a new type of policy by any means. The only difference between this one and many actions of the CIA, FBI, and NSA in the past is that the public found out about it. If they knew about the kind of potentially illegal things we’ve done in the past for convenience’s sake, well, actually I should probably just stop talking.”
But whether based on legal grounds or not, the NSA is confident based on extensive research that modern Americans simply lack the attention span to follow through on any type of backlash against their organization. To quell current concerns, the NSA released a video segment today on their website featuring images of kittens falling asleep in silly poses.