Friday, June 7, 2013

More secret than PRISM: Project YAWN

The surveillance program PRISM is old news today.

It already has a Wikipedia page, complete with a screenshot of one of the PowerPoint slides. We'll see how long that screenshot lasts.

PRISM, obviously, is one of those programs that the K-Landnews puts into the category of "Viagra of Surveillance".

It gives some people a jolly good roger to just think about it.

Like the real thing, it comes with a warning, albeit one that is classified Top Secret/Signal Intelligence/No Bloody Foreigners Please. The warning, which we can divulge for the very first time, says: Can cause "long-lasting and irreversible harm". If surveillance program lasts for more than 4 years, see a civil rights lawyer immediately.

The other possible side effects* of PRISM are identical to those of the blue pill:
Dizziness*
Headaches*
Death (in rare but severe cases)*

Like for all good Americans, the confirmation of PRISM is not very exciting to us. Show me any American who denies the government can, if they want, spy on you at will, and I will show you a desperate politician or a self-important Whatachmacallit.

Foreign media reception of the PRISM has been enlightening.  Over here in the K-land, they mostly pick up on Microsoft, Google, and Facebook and babble about "back doors" when the front door is wide open and the chilled champagne is at reception.

Damage control is in full swing and has caused a collateral disruption at the K-Landnews: an outburst of uncontrolled laughter in the newsroom delayed this post by several hours.

What all the liberal and illiberal media have missed and only true conspiracy folks know is that PRISM, as well as all the other data sucking initiatives are mere components in a wider, even more secret effort.

This is Project YAWN.

YAWN is an acronym based on the principles described in our post "Welcome to a world of CRAP".

YAWN stands for Yet Another Wiretap Newsflash and is the umbrella program, the program of programs, so secret that neither the president nor DiFi know about it.

Only the presidential dog Bo knows but he calls it YAP or YELP (to confuse our enemies).

YAWN is, in the words of Nobody (that's a real name, just search the internet for the time when Nobody ran for president of the U.S.), a surveillance attrition program aimed to make the U.S. population and all those damn foreigners yawn when someone reports yet another spy program.

It's a surveillance version of "hiding in plain sight", says Nobody. We, in the community realize that keeping each and every spy program secret is kind of unachievable, so we use the inevitable leak not just to our advantage but to get everybody to a point where they will simply yawn, turn around and go about their little lives.

Nobody continues: "Of course, we put up a fight, the media lick it up, we send a big shot out to claim a leak causes long-lasting and irreversible harm. It makes us look serious, it allows us to prosecute our idealistic or disgruntled people, and - even better - it shows we can make speeches using multisyllable words. It's a win-win-win."

One more thing: In unrelated news, no American blogger was run over by a bus in Brazil, nor was an American blogger killed in a botched robbery.

* Not evaluated or approved by the FDA or the NSA.

[Update] European governments either kept mum or released long statements easily summarized:  "We are not sure how to define America, but what happens in America stays in America."


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