Dreaming of surveillance

Wow, that one was interesting, a dream about surveillance after celebrating new Year's Eve at friends.

The back story was this: we came home, checked on the cats after the noisy German fireworks and picked up the phone to call a dear friend in the U.S. and wish him all the best for the new year.

In the conversation about life, the universe and everything, mention was made of some of the big events of the past year. Which, of course, included the surveillance thing, Mr. Snowden, and light hearted banter about what the future might hold in this regard.

The conversation turned to the curious fact that the phone number displayed as the caller's number when we call the U.S. from Germany never is our number but either an instate provider or "unknown".

What is this number? the friend asked.

In line with the light heartedness of the night, our response was "hm, probably the NSA switchboard". The ensuing belly laugh caused a brief pause in the conversation until everybody had caught their breath.

Do you hear a beep on the line? asked the friend.

No, I hear nothing.

Every fifteen or so seconds?

No, nothing.

The chat continued for a good long while, and we went to bed. The dream, or at least the part I remembered after waking up, went like this.

In the dream, the U.S. government had decided not to stop the wholesale recording of "foreign" telephone calls but had conceded to introduce a protection for U.S. persons (people physically present in the United States). When a U.S. person was on the phone to someone outside of the country and the line was "bugged", a beep every 15 seconds, audible only to the U.S. person would inform that person that the line was potentially monitored.  It was very clear in the dream that the government used the term "potentially", very much like a call to any customer service "may be recorded to improve customer service".
Thus, any call between a U.S. person and a foreign person was "potentially" recorded for the very same purpose: to improve customer service.

This dream is, without doubt, the most hilarious dream of 2014. I know, it is a gratuitous claim on the morning of 1 January 2014.

So funny.

The rest of 2014 dreams will likely be the usual, about food, flying, cats, and all the other things the brain decides to play during the night.