Some of you have read some of my friend Tilly's eyewitness reports....the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A.
She is working in Afghanistan with an international aid organization. We correspond by email. It's a good bet that the N.S.A. has a dossier on both of us. We fit the profile perfectly--a known radical in this country communicating with a person in Afghanistan.
I don't like it. I don't like the idea of some greasy little bureaucrat (or anybody, for that matter) reading and tabulating my private mail. I'm really going to be pissed if one day some guys in suits and shiny black shoes arrive at my house in an unmarked Plymouth with a whip antennae and invite me to a rendering party in Iraq or Egypt or Texas or some other place where torture is condoned.
Oh, I could tell myself that it's OK if they read my mail because I have nothing to hide. My conversations with Afghanistan were only about work and family and daily life, but I still feel violated when I think of bespectacled little analysts in cubicles at the N.S.A. reading about my new cat or what I got for Christmas.
How do you feel about them reading your mail?
