Why We Should Have Seen the NSA Scandal Coming Since ’96

For those of you shocked to learn that the government was accessing our personal cell phone information, here’s another shocker:

Fire is fucking hot. 

If you are too young to remember when cell phones first came out, get laid a lot now-- because that shit starts to sag. But I digress.

When cell phones first came out, there was a big concern about privacy. Conversations were just floating through the air; this was new; could ham radio operators intercept these and use our personal information to gain popularity?  Could anything make ham radio operators popular? A lot of this was people being suspicious of a new technology, but it turns out... they were on to something.

I’ve had a cell phone since about ’96, and I’ve always assumed some government official or law enforcement agency could listen in at any time. It turns out, I was kind of right.

A little bit.

Sort of.

(That’s why I still use code words and can’t get into phone sex.)

This administration insists that listening in to our conversations is not what this whole thing is about. In a way, I wish it were. If we had a bi-partisan committee listen in to random phone conversations of American citizens, I believe there would be a great push to increase spending on education.

Of course, the government insists they’re only listening in on calls of non-Americans.  Does that mean there’s a bunch of Canadian officials listening in on us and laughing?  The biggest irony I see here is that some of the people who are most enraged about this subject are the very people who talk the loudest into their phones at restaurants.

Ed Furman is a Second City alumni and a co-founder of the Annoyance Theater. He is a playwright and co-authored the hits Co-ed Prison Slutsand Rod Blagojevich: Superstar.