We Must Support Our Government's Snooping Effort!

Citizens of the United States: It's now time for
us to step up to the plate.

The government needs us to support our country's efforts
to uncover 'terrorism' in all of its many forms...

However, that does not preclude having fun
at the same time...

If Uncle Sam is taking the time to read our mail, I for one believe that it is our civic and patriotic obligation as loyal citizens to at least provide him with some interesting reading material.

As an old hand at obfuscation and related skullduggery, I must confess that this can also be a lot of fun ie. testing wits with the perverse and the insane, the McCarthy faction of our government that is looking for what was then the equivalent of “pinkos” and “commies” under every rock…

But if the government in its self-imposed bubble feels there is merit in it, whom am I to argue. To get the ball rolling, there are a number of ruses we can use depending how sophisticated we want to get. I mean we could play hard-ball right out of the gate by using “microdots” or disappearing inks but we run the risk of losing these boys before we have them sucked in and that would seem rather pointless from the perspective of this exercise. Our initial premise should then take into consideration the level of sophistication of the snoop.

If the snoop is entry level, which we would have to assume it is, we have to be careful to lay a trail and not to give away too much in our first encounter. We should avoid, however, being too obvious by speaking in say Pashtoon or mentioning the Hindu Kish in our first encounter…

Although I wouldn’t be disinclined to send my letter to some mucky-muck in Afghanistan showing myself garbed in some guerilla outfit dressed up with all kinds of medals. And sign it saying “long live the revolution” or something like that….

I think we might begin with a non-sequiter added as a PS. That’s always a good place to begin…

My favorite was “Coffee is a dime at the Concord cafeteria” which I used to drop in adroitly into some innocuous dialogue that was going nowhere to fuel some interesting asides. This usually worked in bringing all conversation to a decided halt. In letters, such stylized obfuscation can help attract the attention of some erstwhile government flunky trying to earn some recognition and attention in his little cubicle buried in the innards of some amorphous government edifice. Think the movie Brazil and you will get the point.

You might make his day and give him or her the feeling that they have actually accomplished something. You might then endeavor to put some needle marks or tiny dots arranged in an even pattern across the bottom of the letter. Then once you've gotten their attention, using a solution of lemon juice might be used to write something that might reinforce the PS, like "the smoking lamps are lit..." which is another one of my favorites.

Do you know how happy you would make that agent? You would make them delirious!

An agent who goes through mostly boring letters that are typically badly written in poor syntax? You can’t imagine the drudgery of his or her job. . He or She must be so frustrated with this boring job that they go home and beat up their mates.

Here, you will have given them an opportunity to shine; a chance to show their superiors that they have what it takes; never mind that it means nothing. That isn't the point; the point is to make them feel as if they have accomplished something of worth for their country; so that they can take pride once more in their jobs and feel justified that at some time in the future, their social security will be well-earned..

I would certainly volunteer to do more of this sort of letter writing to help out my country at this time of need. I suppose there would need to be a level of commitment on my part. I would have to buy some books on cryptography and study up. I wouldn’t want to be too obvious, which would take all the fun away. And that would depress the bevy of agents now assigned to analyze our plethora of messages that are flooding our assigned sector at the very core of our government’s governmental bureaucracy..

Of course, we would have to play for keeps in this high stakes game. Probably, the best way would be to invent a plot of some kind that you could participate in; even turn it into a parlor game—have all your friends come over and attempt to invent plots and then have your guests invent the appropriate clues which you could then introduce into your letter writing in increasingly more inventive ways… Points would be given for the most clever of the methods…

At the very least we would be building morale and helping to improve the analytical skills of those who work at this sort of thing helping them to become the best they can be, helping them to face the mirror in the morning..

At some point, one might suspect that our team might become eligible for awards and we could always skip town and assume another identity like all my Mexican friends. In the meantime, these great sleuths would receive the recognition they desire, while writing misinformed books analyzing Graham Green or the author of Sherlock Homes and receive honorariums about how they foiled the great peacetime plot that was detected by one alert Investigator working alone in some darkened attic.

We would all have to applaud that.

Les Aaron