Is it any surprise?

For those of us who have been living under a rock, apparently the US government really wants to get to know you on a personal level. Of course, a government cannot simply invite themselves over for tea without the appropriate introductions. And so, as any desperate unloved individual would, they go through our garbage, break into our houses and rummage through our personal effects. That's the logical thing to do, isn't it? Right?

I cannot blame them. As international government bodies go, they're like the crazed and brash individual you might meet at an open house party who blurts out to anyone within earshot that they're morally grounded while aiming their gun at slow-moving children. Maybe I'm being a little harsh but their modern revisions to international policy have left a lot to be desired. Where was I? Oh, yes. And so, I come to the shock-horror moment: it was leaked that the NSA has been extracting and parsing personal information from Google, Facebook, Yahoo (and even Bing) for the past few years. This is, of course, all under the pretense of protecting you from all those evil-doers and members who make up the coalition of the unwilling.

I really hope this did not come as a shock to you. In the world of all-encompassing connectedness, the diminutive impact of our activities on the 'net have all been categorised as "pertinent" to the various organisations wishing to glean whether we're, like, into Justin Bieber or into into Justin Bieber. For the record, I'm very not into the Biebster, Mr Shambling Corporate Presence. I guess this is also the only way that they can truly know whether the Teletubbies have finally reached the point where only I am exercising my right to momentarily halt their movement over the cliff of irrelevance; or even whether the latest in breaded lolcat imagery is fully reaching its potential target audience. Consider for a moment that the government's super computers are trawling through pages dedicated to breaded cats. It makes me smile for a moment ... even if they also have access to highly sensitive information that no one should have ever witnessed in the first place. I am, of course, talking about those awkward hobbledehoy images which chronicled your teenage years. I've always posted under the expectation that some organisation would be reading this. I guess I should feel privileged that I made the cut ... and you should too. Now, I think it best if we all sit in a circle, rocking slowly in a foetal position, as we embrace the death of our privacy.