Big Brother

When something goes wrong on the internet, 

that place you know and love,

who will be there to defend you?

Our protectors, from above.

They sift through emails, posts, and sites,

and watch you every day,

to break up those "irl" fights,

your Big Brother, the NSA.

When bombs went off in early years

and fights broke out across the land,

some of us were left in tears;

but your Big Brother took a stand.

He took a job both long and endless;

to read and watch and catch and act -

to sift through email and message relentless,

and sort good deed from evil attack.

Day and night, watching, reading,

your emails, his, mine and theirs

collecting facts, plucking, weeding,

and mopping up those bad affairs.

So when you notice nothing is amiss

and you have a quiet day,

send your Big Brother a silent kiss

and thank your gods for NSA.

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I think this is what a children's book would look like if we were trying to explain/advocate the NSA - I'm targeting around age 8, I suppose; although it is young, kids are starting to use all the features of the internet younger and younger, so maybe at some point this will be relevant.  The general goal is to try to get them to be more ok with the NSA then we are now – for us, it will feel like our freedom is being taken away because we know what it’s like to have privacy; for them, though, the next generation, privacy might mean something different. Kids today share their passwords, make all their information public on social networking sites, and, in general, experience almost no repercussions. 

When I was my brother’s age, I knew it was “bad” to have all your information out on the web. The only time I gave my email out was to people I’d met in public, so it was very rare that any site or online person knew anything about me. My brother, now 14, has had a facebook account with all his information on it for several years – when I was that age I was convinced that myspace was an evil website out to steal your information. It might be just me – but personally I feel a change in the definition of privacy for the next generation. With this change will likely come an opportunity for acceptance of the NSA’s monitoring. While it’s being rejected very heavily now, maybe the next generation won’t see their actions as an invasion of privacy at all. They might end up being less careful than we are, but at the same time, they might allow the NSA to take over the security for them.

It’s unlikely that we’ll reach the “ideal” situation – where everyone has their desired privacy and the NSA catches all the bad guys. One compromise to that might just be lowering the standards of what privacy means; maybe the next generation’s figured it out already.