Welcome, NSA Spies!

Mrs Vache Folle and one of her conspecifics at the office wrote the US “government” and asked for documents related to its surveillance of them. The co-worker got a letter from the feds claiming that he was not being spied upon, but Mrs VF got no such letter. She also didn’t get any documents. She is possibly being spied upon for reasons that we cannot fathom. Last week, we had intermittent and inexplicable connectivity problems with our cable modem and voice over internet communication device. This problem resolved spontaneously last weekend, and I suspect that the feds were messing with our home computer.

What will they learn about us? If they read our e-mails, they will learn that we are eligible for home equity loans from a variety of sources and that I have access to relatively inexpensive Viagra. We get Democratic Party messages, messages from Impeach Bush, solicitations from Zogby, messages from Louise Slaughter, pictures of dogs and babies, a daily report from Monster. The feds will know my choir rehearsal schedule and that the weather in southern Poland is turning nice.

What will they find out by tracking our use of the internets? They will find out that we checked on movie times, got driving directions, and that I spent an inordinate amount of time on ancestry.com enjoying my genealogy hobby. They just added the 1841 census for England and Wales, and I am keen to track some of Mrs VF’s Shropshire connections.

What about our phone calls? The feds will find out that we don’t make many calls, that we call our parents much too infrequently, and that we don’t answer the phone when telemarketers call (we have caller ID). I don’t remember having any political discussions over the phone, but I probably told some Bush jokes. The one where Bush replaces Monica Lewinsky in hell has gotten lots of mileage.

Our mail is not instructive. Bills and junk are all we get. Both the Democrats and the GOP send solicitations for money all the time. We never get any letters from Al Qaeda. We get the New Yorker, Atlantic, Real Simple, Scientific American. We send away to the book clubs once and a while.

What if they followed us? That would be easy. We are almost always at home, at work, or commuting. The only other places we go often are church, the market, the hardware store, and the nursery.

Perhaps our TV viewing habits are of interest? Comedy Central, E!, SciFi, HGTV, Science Channel, National Geographic Channel, the Simpsons, A&E’s “sell This House”, House, Lost, SpongeBob.

I guess if you put it all together, the geniuses at the NSA can discern a pattern of subversion. We bear watching, that’s for sure, especially Mrs VF. She reads too much.