The known terrierist “Banzai” Buddy Boo, captured from my iPhone. (Actually, he’s more of a spanielista.)
C’mon — you don’t think they put a camera in that phone of yours so you could take cutesy pix of puppies and kitties for teh Innertubes, didja? Wave hi to your Uncle Sammy.
I guess I’m with Kevin Drum here. I just assumed that once the surveillance genie was out of its bottle, the ratfink stool-pigeon bastard would never get stuffed back in, no matter which crypto-Mooslim Kenyan socialist tyrant happened to be occupying the Black House. And thus whenever I plot the smashing of the State I make certain that I’m out in the open, safe among The People, far away from that snitching corporate stooge, my iPhone.
I do have one question, though. As a nominal journalist and underemployed rumormonger, I consider myself to be in the entertainment business. And everything I do — from writing columns to drawing cartoons to making prank calls to the Queen warning that the Irish Republican Navy plans to dispatch an armada up the Thames — is part of the Work. Shit, I spend more time and effort editing my emails than some people devote to entire magazines. I’m saying I take my comedy seriously, is what.
So my question is this: By data mining my phone is Uncle Sammy violating my copyright, and if so, can I sic’ the FBI on him? Seems to me I can’t watch a goddamn “Game of Thrones” DVD without enduring a multilingual series of dire threats regarding the high crime of piracy from the Feebs, Interpol, the Sûreté, MI6, the Mossad, SHIELD, the Illuminati and Captain Video.
I think the sonofabitch should at least be picking up part of my AT&T tab.
• Late update: More on this revoltin’ development from The Old Gray Lady.
• Ever later update: More here, praising the leaker, from The Atlantic.
• Very latest update: And of course, Charles P. Pierce has a few light-hearted observations to make.
