NSA Strikes a Nerve and the Optics Are Obscene

It’s no wonder Gretchen and I had to work this weekend.  With the situation in Ukraine quickly degenerating into a vast porcine fornication that will surely overshadow even Syria’s current world-class performance, folks here in DC are defecating bricks from Langley to the Pentagon to the White House to Foggy Bottom, and it appears my advice has never been more sought after or valuable than now.  We came in early to make sure everybody got their consultation while there was still time for them to take meaningful and effective action, but by noon, the Federation Council had asked Putin to recall the Russian ambassador to the United States and invade Ukraine immediately.  After that, all hell broke loose, every line in the office jammed with desperate bureaucrats, spooks, military officers, diplomats, lobbyists, trade representatives and political appointees, each demanding a policy solution to their own specific predicament.  It was so unrelenting and hectic, I told Gretchen to order us delivered deli sandwiches so she could eat lunch with one hand while leaving the other free to type e-mails or answer the phone.  It was grueling, but on the other hand, don’t think I’ve ever made more money in one day, and I bet neither has Gretchen – I pay her double time for weekends anyway, but for coping with today’s circus, I threw in a huge bonus for good measure.
It wasn’t until about nine o’clock at night that the dust began to settle and the smoke cleared.  I swear, I don’t think Crimea has received so much attention since the Earl of Aberdeen was Prime Minister of England.  So imagine my surprise when, about a quarter of ten, I received the only call I got today that wasn’t about the Ukraine.  It was from my old friend Morton, who used to work for Microsoft, and who was first mentioned in only the second post to this Web log, way back in December of 2006. 


Morton: Hello, Tom?
Tom: Yes, this is Tom Collins.  Who’s this?
Morton: It’s me!  What’s the matter, don’t you recognize my voice, good buddy?
Tom: Oh, oh, yeah, Morton!  How you doing?
Morton: Not too bad, considering.  I’m with Yahoo now.
Tom: Yahoo?  How charmingly retro of you.  What do you listen to at work – Spice Girls?  Puff Daddy?  Toni Braxton?  Backstreet Boys?  Notorious B.I.G.?
Morton: Hey, come on, dude, it’s a living, okay?
Tom: If you can call working for Yahoo living, that is.
Morton: Tell me about it.  Look – I know it’s late, but I tried calling you at home in Great Falls a couple of times this afternoon, and I left messages, too, but I got no response.  So I thought maybe I’d call your office in Washington and leave a message there, in case you pick up your office voice mail even if you don’t pick up your home voice mail, you know, and well, what do you know?  Here you are, live and in person!
Tom: Yeah, I’ve been here since six-thirty this morning.  It’s been totally non-stop the whole time.  Haven’t even had five minutes to check my home voice mail.
Morton: Damn, you must be busy as a one-armed paper hanger, guy.  All your Saturdays usually like that?
Tom: Nah, not really.  It’s this Ukraine thing that did it today.
Morton: Oh, yeah, that.  Big deal in Washington, huh?
Tom: It’s big deal in about two dozen world capitals at the moment, actually.  But you’re not calling about me about it, are you?
Morton: Nope.  Can I get your advice about something else, though?
Tom: Well, this might sound strange, but at this point, I’d be happy as a clam at high tide to talk to anybody about anything other than the Ukraine.  I’m Ukrained-up, Ukrained-off, Ukrained-out, totally Ukrainized, completely Ukrainated, utterly Ukraine-o-rama-ed, unbearably…
Morton: Okay, okay, I get it.  Believe me, dude, this has got absolutely nothing to do with… um… that place.  My problem is Operation Optic Nerve.
Tom: What, the NSA surveillance program that taps Internet data traffic on undersea optical cables?
Morton: Yeah, that one.  It turns out that the NSA and the British GCHQ were spying on Yahoo webcam chat videos and saving off still images.
Tom: Any indication how extensive the penetration was?
Morton: At least one point eight million accounts.  Probably more, though.  Yahoo upper executive management is livid.
Tom: Well, you know, Morton, the idea with Operation Optic Nerve is to capture images off the Internet, log where they came from, then sift through them using specialized software to recognize the faces of known terrorists and identify instances where pictorial information concerning their potential targets, intended tactics and ongoing plans is being transmitted to…
Morton: Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard that spiel a hundred times in the last five days.  The problem is, instead of capturing a bunch of stuff like that, what they got was mostly pictures of innocent Yahoo users! 
Tom: Innocent?
Morton: Okay, sometimes maybe not so innocent, which is even worse.  Can you imagine how some of our lady Yahoo users must feel, now that they know those pictures of them dancing Gangnam Style naked with a bottle of tequila were seen by a bunch of gross, icky, nerdy, pimply computer geeks like Edward Snowden, and not just by their… uh…  significant others?
Tom: My take on that would be, if you don’t want gross, icky, nerdy, pimply computer geeks like Edward Snowden at the NSA and GCHQ spanking their monkey while they look at a picture of you dancing Gangnam Style naked with a bottle of tequila, then don’t make digital videos of yourself dancing Gangnam Style naked with a bottle of tequila on Yahoo and then squirt them through the Internet halfway around the frigging planet.
Morton: But those naked women dancing Gangnam Style with their bottles of tequila have a constitutional right to privacy, don’t they?
Tom: Actually, the word “privacy” doesn’t appear anywhere in the United States Constitution, although penumbras of it have been found there.
Morton: Penumbras?
Tom: Yeah, you know, like the penumbra of an eclipse.
Morton: Actually, I don’t, but if you say so.
Tom: On the other hand, on the other side of the pond, in Britain, there’s not even a constitution in which to look for penumbras of privacy rights.  And besides, a naked lady’s video of her dancing Gangnam Style with a bottle of tequila is like her garbage.
Morton: Her garbage?  How’s that?
Tom: I am not a lawyer, Morton, but even I know that in America or Britain, once she puts her garbage out on the curb, anybody can peek inside and see, for example, how many tequila bottles are in there.  And if that information ends up on the front page of the Washington Times or the Daily Mail, she will have no legal recourse on the grounds of personal privacy in either country.  So all those naked dancing ladies with their liquor bottles or other… paraphernalia or kinky props are best advised not to transmit videos of their performances outside the confines of their personal domiciles, because if they do, their privacy protections on such… intellectual property… will be slim to none.
Morton: But Tom, for every picture of a terrorist’s face, a potential terrorist target or map of Al Qaeda franchise affiliate hideouts, there have got to be thousands of pictures of naked ladies dancing around with liquor bottles!
Tom: Based on my experience with terrorists, the Internet, covert surveillance, bottles of liquor and naked ladies, I’d say it’s probably more like millions.
Morton: Well there you have it then!
Tom: Actually, the NSA and a GCHQ have it – provided that, by “it,” you mean the world’s largest collection of still picture snaps taken from drunken naked dancing lady Internet videos.
Morton: Covertly and without their permission!
Tom: Yes, but don’t forget – the NSA and GCHQ were doing all that in order to discover useful information.
Morton: Useful information?  You know what they discovered?  Look, Tom, I’ll read it to you, what they discovered!  I’ve got it right here in this report from the GCHQ: “Unfortunately, it would appear that a surprising number of people use webcam conversations to show intimate parts of their body to the other person.”  That’s what they discovered, Tom – that Yahoo users are a bunch of… of… exhibitionists!
Tom: Well, technically, maybe not exhibitionists, since an exhibitionist, by definition, would be dancing around naked with a liquor bottle in front of strangers, and we don’t know for sure that most, or even any of the naked dancing ladies in the NSA and GCHQ’s Yahoo image collection were doing that, now do we?
Morton: Well, all right, they’re perverts, then.
Tom: Only if you think dancing around naked with a liquor bottle is perverted.
Morton: What, so you think it isn’t?
Tom: I certainly don’t think it’s perverted when I do it.  And if Marissa Mayer were to take off all her clothes and dance around Gangnam Style with a bottle of tequila, I wouldn’t call that perverted, either.  But if she used Yahoo webcam chat to send a video of it across optical fibers strung along the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean to somebody in England, I would definitely characterize such an act as mighty damn stupid.
Morton: Shhhh!  Tom, I’m calling you from my office!  Are you nuts?   Don’t talk that way about… about… Just don’t, okay?
Tom: Oh, all right, I won’t.  Anyway, how many of the Yahoo users “show intimate parts of their body?”
Morton: The report says up to eleven percent of the images contained “undesirable nudity!”
Tom: I see.  So what has Yahoo done about this so far?
Morton: We’ve publicly stated that, “This report, if true, represents a whole new level of violation of our users’ privacy that is completely unacceptable and we strongly call on the world’s governments to reform surveillance law.”
Tom: Okay.  That’s a very nice statement you have there, Morton.  So what’s the problem?
Morton: Tom, Yahoo has invested heavily in the mobile sector, and we’ve got our numbers up to over four hundred million unique users with that approach.  But we’re having a hard time monetizing the gains.  The last thing we need is for this Optic Nerve thing to affect our stock price, or worse yet, cause us lose users.  How is Yahoo going to keep all those naked dancing ladies after they hear about the Optic Nerve surveillance program?
Tom: Don’t worry about it.
Morton: Are you kidding me?  Why not?
Tom: Look, Morton, in the Year of Our Lord 2014, ninety-eight percent of Yahoo users fall into one of seven categories – Old; Clueless; Stupid; Old and Stupid; Old and Clueless; Clueless and Stupid; and, Old, Clueless and Stupid.  None of them are even going to be aware of the fact that Optic Nerve exists, much less worry about whether it compromises their privacy.
Morton: Really?
Tom: Serious as a heart attack, dude.  Bottom line, because of Optic Nerve, in a worst-case scenario, you’re looking at losing eleven percent of two percent of your users – twenty-two out of every one hundred thousand.
Morton: So what should I do, you know, here at Yahoo, about Optic Nerve?
Tom: Act like nothing happened.
Morton: Okay, yeah, I guess I could, except that my boss is having a fit about it.  What do I tell her?
Tom: How about what I just told you?
Morton: Get real, dude!  I can’t tell her that everything’s going to be hunky-dory with the Optic Nerve thing because ninety-eight percent of Yahoo’s user base is either old, clueless, stupid or some combination of the three!  Even if it’s true, just saying something like that around here will get you fired in a New York minute!
Tom: Okay, in that case, just tell her you talked to me and I told you everything’s going to be hunky-dory with the Optic Nerve thing, and that’s one hell of a lot better than I can say for the godforsaken Ukraine.  And if she has any questions, give her my number and I’ll explain it to her in terms a female executive can understand.
Morton: You’d do that for me?
Tom: Sure.  What are friends for, after all?
Morton: Damn it, Tom Collins, you’re the best buddy a guy ever had!
Tom: Gee, thanks.  Look, I’m really, really tired, so…
Morton: Yeah, yeah, sure, no problem.  Thanks again!  Goodbye!
Tom: And good night!