I keep trying to find a best pull quote from this article, but I’m spoiled for choice. So just read it.

A Modest Proposal: Don’t Worry About Government Surveillance at All, Ever

Curtis Olson July 15, 2013 14:56

People say that if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.  But that needs to be amended.  If you aren’t doing anything wrong, and if the gov’t doesn’t make any mistakes, and if no one inside the gov’t acts out of self interest, petty revenge, politics, etc., and if you do run into some problem or disagreement, if your situation isn’t politicized beyond the scope of the legal system into the political realm, or if you have good connections to the current administration, or if you live on another planet and carefully avoid broadcasting any RF into space, then you have nothing to worry about … for now anyway.  (Disclaimer: I have not carefully parenthesized my boolean logic, this statement may need some real world incremental testing.) :-)

Cristian Gafton July 15, 2013 15:33

Come on, we’re all playing for the same team, we’re all good guys here, right? Nothing to worry about…

http://memerial.net/6839-obama-hes-not-your-dad

Curtis Olson July 15, 2013 15:54

Here’s my solution that I believe would cure all the countries ills.

(1) Cut the budget for every federal dept. by 10% every year no questions asked until the federal budget shrinks to some % of GDP, and then pass an amendment saying it can never grow bigger than some small percentage of GDP … how about 10% since most people are very religious about their politics. :-)  Once we are down to 10% of the GDP going to the federal gov’t we can start reallocating the proportion of that between the different departments.  This will bring competition and efficiency back to gov’t… there is no other way to do that.

(2) Require that all federal legislation be hand-written.  That will force our senators and representatives to be concise and to the point.  In addition, whenever the words “obamacare”, “prism”, “environment”, or “guantanomo” are encountered, the scribe must pause and go through a ceremonial cleansing process before writing the word and continuing.

(3) We [sometimes] hold our corporate leaders legally accountable for mismanagement or fraud.  Why exempt our political leaders who control more of the economy than the business leaders to?

(4) Politicians from both sides of the aisle should be required to wear patches on their clothing (nascar style) in size proportion to all the organizations that have contributed to their campaign or that they have traded special deals with in office.

Michael K Johnson July 15, 2013 18:26

+Jeffrey Uphoff kindly pointed out this Onion article from another one of their sadly frequent departures from satire into straight news reporting: http://www.theonion.com/articles/freedoms-curtailed-in-defense-of-liberty,213/

Curtis Olson July 15, 2013 18:39

I used to work with a guy originally from the Ukraine from time to time and he says there’s a russian saying that losely translated goes: “In every joke there is a small amount of humor.”

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