Big Brother– Snooping—
Last night I had this really nutsy dream that I just gotta tell you about. I know this is exceedingly difficult to imagine, but in my dream the digital world did not exist. Nuts, huh?
Anyway, there was this Federal Security Bureau, aka the FSB. A shadowy Bureau that was able to police your thoughts by reading your words. The FSB’s motto was “Words Are Thoughts And Thoughts Are Intentions!”
Crazy, I know. But it still seems so real.
And it works this way. When you mail your letter at the local Post Office it is whisked through high-pressure tubes to each State Capitol’s Central Monitoring Station. Each station has an Automaton Mail Dissection Unit Mechanism. This is a huge apparatus controlled by a tabulator punch card data processor programmer, with an internal complicated system of robotistic fingers that are as precise and delicate in their autonomous opening of each envelope, as any hospital’s surgical procedure.
Got the picture?
Okay, next, dispassionate electronic eyes check the writer’s intentions by quickly examining each revealed letter; a cunning feat accomplished by scanning for pre-programmed Red Flags. When these words and phrases are flagged in a writer’s letter, the FSB orders a tap on the writer’s telephone, and commands the writer’s library to reveal the books the writer reads. Librarians alerting targeted writers are arrested and prosecuted. Far out, right?
You bet. Now bear with me as I try to remember examples of the most risk-laden words. I mean words that might excite the electric eyes into a near-human-emotional frenzy, and trigger its auto-photo-retention appliance, which gathers in these intentions along with names and addresses, by storing it all on punch cards.
Anyway, I think they were words and phrases like: dissent, right to work, military-industrial, democracy, Wall Street, political immorality, freedom, 1st amendment, protest, national interest, occupy, 4th amendment, lobbyists, one percent, American Revolution, media mergers, Bill Of Rights, the good old days, defense contracts, habeas corpus, whistleblowers.
Words like that, I think.
Really crazy, right? And once, in my dream, twenty of those words, including democracy and the good old days, were packed into a single letter and created a near-seismic event that caused an Automaton Mail Dissection Unit Mechanism to erupt and burst into flame. What a friggin’ dream, huh?
Anyway, tons of thought-stored-data punch cards are shipped weekly to this place called Camp Need, Maryland, where they have this whopping storage unit holding billions of cards. And they’ve got 8000 bug-eyed gnomic people examining every punch card for alarming thoughts. You know, words that will trigger directives for swat team invasions of the homes of dangerous thinkers. Also, this unit is the size of ten football fields and is affectionately known by its keepers as the “Thoughts Palace.”
What a dream! Must’ve been something I ate. Too Rube Goldberg, I know. Who could believe this scary crap? Too crazy. Sorry. But it was so wild I just had to tell it.
So back to reality where it’s safer. Right?
Bye.