N.S.A. Compensates for Loss of Surveillance Powers by Logging on to Facebook.
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The
National Security Agency is compensating for the expiration of its
power to collect the American people’s personal information by logging
on to Facebook, the agency confirmed on Monday.
The
director of the N.S.A., Admiral Michael S. Rogers, said that when parts
of the Patriot Act expired at midnight on Sunday, intelligence analysts
immediately stopped collecting mountains of phone metadata and started
reading billions of Facebook updates instead.
“From a surveillance point of view, the transition has been seamless,” Rogers said.
While
the N.S.A. has monitored Facebook in the past, it is now spending
twenty-four hours a day sifting through billions of baby pictures, pet
videos, and photographs of recently enjoyed food to detect possible
threats to the United States.
“Those status updates contain everything we want to know,” Rogers said. “In many cases, a good deal more than we want to know.”
Citing one
possible downside of the new surveillance regime, Rogers said that some
N.S.A. analysts who now do nothing but monitor Facebook all day report
feelings of worthlessness and despair. “I remind them that they’re doing
this for America,” he said.
The N.S.A.’s new strategy drew a sharp rebuke from Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), who told reporters, “I just blocked them.”
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