Chatter

Let’s play a quick game of tic tac toe. 

Manning (X)

Snowden (X)

A sudden “high alert” in response to specific “intelligence” (gathered through illegal but somehow secretly legal privacy-violating techniques) about a nonspecific terrorist attack by unspecified perpetrators on an unspecified target at some unspecified date in the near or medium-near or otherwise not too far-off future (X) 

Seems like there should be a couple Os in there someplace.

Most “citizens” of USAcorp are too stupefied by consumer spectacle to care about the government periscope being rammed up their ass. But those few who are a bit more sensitive to privacy issues were starting to make noise about the NSA probing their private bits (and bytes and phone records and music preferences and internet searches for deals on pressure cookers). Can’t have that. Can’t have people suggesting that their right to privacy trumps USAcorp’s need for total access.

Nothing like a little manufactured, media-magnified fear mongering to get people to bend over and beg for it. Remember the post 9/11 anthrax threat? The plastic and duct tape on the windows? 

Be afraid, be very afraid, unspecified intelligence sources engaged in unspecified surveillance have picked up…chatter!  Chatter? Holy shit! Look out! The Al Qaeda are out there and they are planning something big and nasty. We don’t know what or when or where or how or who. Thank god the NSA was there doing what it does, or we would really be in a world of hurt. 

If there is a terrorist attack someplace, anyplace, sometime in the next few weeks (months?), then that is direct and irrefutable proof that the NSA needs to do what it does to warn us ahead of time. If there is not a terrorist attack someplace, anyplace, sometime in the next few weeks (months?), then that is irrefutable proof that the NSA needs to do what it does in order to prevent terrorist attacks.

Up periscope!