Showing posts with label NSA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NSA. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Five new anti-terrorism espionage targets for the NSA


Could this dog, caught with a hidden camera,
be part of a terrorist enemy plot?
Don't answer until you read the entire story, below.


To the National Security Agency analyst writing a briefing to his superiors, the situation was clear: their current surveillance efforts were lacking something. The agency's impressive arsenal of cable taps and sophisticated hacking attacks was not enough. What it really needed was a horde of undercover Orcs. 
That vision of spycraft sparked a concerted drive by the NSA and its UK sister agency GCHQ to infiltrate the massive communities playing online games, according to secret documents disclosed by whistleblower Edward Snowden.           -From a story by James Ball in The Guardian, Dec. 9, 2013

So listen guys, I know that all those gamers are harboring Al Qaeda fanatics who are actually using fantasy characters to dream up Plots To Destroy America. But why stop at spying on gamers? If you can think it up, or if I can think it up, Al Qaeda can think it up, too. So here’s what to bug next (if  you aren’t already doing it.)

Nut and potato chip factories. Thanks to fear of terrorism, before we can board an airplane we have to take off our shoes, take off our belts, take the change and phones and keys out of our pockets, get patted down, and even take our computers out of our carry-on bags. But while the TSA is patting down our private parts, who’s checking all those snack packs the airlines are selling on board – like the tasteless sandwich, sour apple, and bag of potato chips I paid $7.50 for on my last flight? Do you know how much explosive you can pack into a tiny bag with a picture of potato chips or nuts on it? Do I have to explain the rest? Kaboom!

Dentists offices, especially those in Washington, D.C. This plot is so completely obvious, I’m amazed it hasn’t been acted upon already. A Congressman goes to his dentist with a terrible toothache. The dentist says it’s a cavity and pretends to fill it. Actually, he fills it with a tiny high powered explosive that can be triggered either mechanically by pressure, or chemically with alcohol. The Congressman goes to a cocktail party and grabs a martini off a tray. Then he takes the olive out of the glass and pops it in his mouth. Kaboom! He blows off his own head and those of six lobbyists pushing to extend the embargo on Iran. And we're just looking for uranium enrichment plants there?

Offices of gynecologists, proctologists and urologists. I mean, do I have to explain this? You can probably guess how it works. The doctor uses some high tech instrument to peer up there. (Or is it down there or in there? Well, nevermind.) During the examination, the doc, a terrorist operative, inserts an IED into the willing or unwilling suicide bomber. Later, the bomber goes to the men’s room, say in Grand Central Station. Kaboom! Which means the death of 40 men standing at urinals, plus massive delays at rush hour for trains going out of, or coming into, Grand Central.

Hearing aids and eyeglasses. See, they look like ordinary specs, maybe the kind with hearing aids built into the earpieces, but actually they’re…oh wait! Google’s already on that one.

Dog Poo. No, I’m not suggesting Al Qaeda would put explosives in dog poo. Let’s not start getting silly. However with the NSA surveilling everything from cell phones to Orc Assault games, what’s a poor terrorist to do when he wants to communicate with his co-terrorists? Why not secrete tiny rolled up paper messages in dog poop? Here’s how it would work:

A terrorist buys a dog. Then he scratches a tiny message in waterproof ink on a fortune-cookie fortune-sized ribbon of paper. Then he walks his dog on a pre-arranged route, back and forth until the dog does his business. Next, the terrorist quickly inserts his rolled-up message into the poop and hurries away.

Everyone passing by will tch-tch that dog owners aren’t picking up, and how awful that is, but of course, nobody else wants to touch some strange dog’s droppings. So the stuff just sits there until the terrorist message recipient walks down the block looking for the poop. When he sees it, he pretends to be a public-spirited citizen, whips out a plastic bag, scoops the stuff up and carries it off. Back in a filthy rented room above an electronic games store, he dissects his treasure, reads the note, learns where to plant an IED, calls the right proctologist, and finally washes his hands.

Fortunately, dog poo secret messaging will be defeated when the NSA goes to America’s dog food makers and forces them to revamp their factories so that a tiny RFID tracking chip can be inserted in every last piece of kibble made in America. (Dog food imports will have to be prohibited as a national security measure.) Next, the NSA releases thousands of drones around America’s cities, disguised as Amazon package delivery vehicles. When an RFID chip in a pile of dog poo is detected, the airplane swoops down and scoops it up, for analysis at NSA headquarters.

Hey, I know all this is terribly expensive. But you can’t be too careful. Or too safe. 

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Here's something for gun owners to hate about NSA evesdropping. But hey, hey! Listen up! Don’t feel too smug if you’re a liberal.


They may just be looking for terrorists with bombs, but they can’t help but sweep up nuts with guns. Or just plain gun owners everywhere.

I’m talking about the National Security Agency's electronic vacuum cleaner, the one that reaches deep into the crevices of the Internet and the telephone companies and sweeps up anything lying there, sleeping there, crawling through, or flying around like a crazed bat.

Are they making a list
and checking it twice?

If you paid your dues to a gun club over the Internet, or by check, or by credit or debit card, they’ve got you, Dude.

If you receive notifications via e-mail of when the gun club meets, or when it holds it competitive matches, they’ve got you, Dude. Ditto if you just go to the club’s website and check things out there.

If you’ve been corresponding with other gun owners, they know about it, Dude.

If you went window shopping on the Internet for a really mean mother of an automatic rifle, woo hoo! They see you!

If you phoned your buddy to come out at night with you and go shoot homeless people from the car for sport because deer aren’t in season, they know about it, Dude. And they're coming for you real soon.

Left six, right 12,
left past 12 to 23

Yeah, I’m talking to you, with the gun safe and the six shotguns locked in the closet. They know when you are sleeping. They know when you’re awake. They probably also know exactly where your gun safe is. And what the combination is.

If you correspond with a dude who corresponds with other dudes about guns, they know you correspond with him. And that he corresponds with them.

If you sent someone an e-mail saying, “They may have tanks and missiles, but I’m going to take a few of them out with my AR15 and my 100 round clip if they come for my guns,” they know about it.

And when they come for your guns they’ll have you by the short hairs of your cell phone, your computer, your I-Phone, and for that matter, your pet poodle. (Remember when you bought a GPS tracking device for your dog, so that if he ever got lost or ran away, you could find him? Now they can find him, too.)

If you like to save money by reloading ammo, they know about you, and where you bought the gunpowder, and how much you bought, and what you paid for it. Not to mention that truckload of nitrate-based fertilizer you’re thinking of buying. Yup, they can probably hear you thinking, too.

Your second amendment’s useless
Without my fourth ammendment

See, you gun fanatics were so crazed about defending the Second Amendment against all interpretations except the most absolutist one possible, you forgot to do the same for the Fourth Amendment, which states:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized…”

Now, the Fourth was written before people wrote and stored records on computers and tablets instead writing things on “papers.” By the definition of the founders, your computer and tablet and cell phone are “papers” and They have no right to access this stuff not even from cyberspace.

Besides, electronic devices are “effects,” which are also presumably protected. Meanwhile, the government is crawling through your computer, tablet and cell phone like maggots on rotten meat without any “oath of affirmation” that describes the place to be searched and the persons and things to be seized.

When you lose the Fourth, you also lose the Second, dude. Big Brother is watching you. And he doesn’t need to see any gun registrations to find you and your piece and your ammo. He doesn’t even need to send in a drone to shoot pictures through your window. Big Brother analyzes the patterns of your purchases and associations, and he knows.

Wipe that smug smile off
your supercilious puss

P.S. Everybody else needn’t feel particularly smug, either. If you’re playing with yourself while watching porn on the Internet, they know about it. And they know whether you prefer girls, boys, groups, little kids, or nasty ladies wearing vinyl bustiers and snapping rawhide whips.

If you gamble, they’ve got your winnings and losses. If you’re planning to demonstrate with One-Legged Grandmas for Peace, they know preciselty where to meet you with tear gas and high pressure fire hoses. If you’re having an affair, both of you should know that Big Brother really is watching, listening and analyzing for “patterns.”

But the clearest pattern that emerges is the pattern of an eroding Bill of Rights.