The Zong

Remember all the way back in 2004, when the New York Times suppressed a story about the NSA eavesdropping on Americans’ phones before the presidential election? That was really fucking cheeky of them, don’t you think? Well, they finally let that particular flea-bitten, smelly cat out of the bag in December, and then some fun political posturing started, and the Republican-led congress decided they weren’t going to have hearings and such because well, constitution-be-damned, we’ve got to be listening for them there terrorists, goddamit! For the time being, it didn’t seem to matter that the president had broken the fucking law. Now we know that the program was so fucking sketchy that John Ashcroft wouldn’t even sign off on it. When John Ashcroft worries about the privacy of the American citizen, I start to tremble like a closeted gay man at a Justin Timberlake concert.

Well, when the Democrats took over this year, I was pretty sure we might see some changes around here, especially considering all the hand-wringing and posturing and what have you when they were in the minority. Changes were indeed afoot before congress left on their “Fuck Our Armed Forces” style vacation; those fightin’ dems got their shit in line and basically legalized the program. What a twist!

“This more or less legalizes the N.S.A. program,” said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington, who has studied the new legislation.

Previously, the government needed search warrants approved by a special intelligence court to eavesdrop on telephone conversations, e-mail messages and other electronic communications between individuals inside the United States and people overseas, if the government conducted the surveillance inside the United States.

Today, most international telephone conversations to and from the United States are conducted over fiber-optic cables, and the most efficient way for the government to eavesdrop on them is to latch on to giant telecommunications switches located in the United States.

By changing the legal definition of what is considered “electronic surveillance,” the new law allows the government to eavesdrop on those conversations without warrants — latching on to those giant switches — as long as the target of the government’s surveillance is “reasonably believed” to be overseas.

I love this solution: Rather than fuck around by actually trying to hold anyone accountable for all the laws (and constitutional fucking amendments!) that the administration broke, let’s just sell our constituents’ civil liberties up the river and make all that shit legal so we can go pretend we have a happy marriage for a month! Genius! Have a great vacation, you spineless fucking knuckle-walking fuckups!

I hope that all the emails I send to the Syrian government every day are being read by the NSA. Every one of them contains a dirty limerick about a different member of the Bush Administration. I’m having a hell of a time finding something that rhymes with Zalmay Khalilzad.

- M.G.