A nation of cup-pissing cheese eaters

And don't even think about e-mail.

Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink. [link]

So the US government is wasting precious time, money, and manpower battling terrorism by aggregating the phone records of every single American who has exercised his digits over the past few years. Including your 5-year-old nephew and his T-ball coach, your teenage son getting the movie times for MI3, and my Mr. Nearing ordering a pizza with the works from Domino's.

Wow. The inefficiency of this is just staggering. And as to the illegality and abuse of privacy?

What the hell. Early polls seem to show that a majority of Americans don't mind that much. All for the cause.

I have to keep reminding myself that so many generations have passed since school kids first had to piss in cups just so they can sing in the school chorus or join the Future Outsourced Employees of America club (specimens are required in my town's school district) that pretty much no one but cranky oldsters has any expectation of privacy.

Everything flows from that first demand for body fluids.

We have become a nation of cup-pissing cheese eaters.

UPDATE Go read Billmon's most excellent column on this.

[O]ne possible explanation for why popular opinion remains so blasé about the NSA’s Orwellian strip tease act – even though at some point soon it could reveal some really naughty bits… [is that] millions of Americans, like yours truly, who work in the corporate or public sector white collar world have already grown accustomed to a loss of personal privacy and a degree of social control that make Pentagon data mining look like an ACLU fundraising dinner.