Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is being hailed in the media after sharing details of a call he made to the president of the United States on Wednesday to complain about NSA data collection:
I’ve called President Obama to express my frustration over the damage the government is creating for all of our future.
Never mind that Zuckerberg seems motivated more by spite because Edward Snowden’s latest document dump revealed an aspect of NSA data collection that even he had never thought of than by any concern about our future.
You are probably aware that President Obama appointed a commission to recommend cosmetic changes to the NSA programs. But he only did so to avoid having to point out how stupid the American people are for buying into Snowden’s self-righteous and misguided outrage. After all, the NSA collects metadata for the sole purpose of trying to keep them safe.
By contrast, these outraged nincompoops are showing nary a concern about tech companies tracking every move they make online for the sole purpose of trying to sell them stuff, to say nothing of peddling their personal data to third parties for indeterminate uses. Which makes the open letter Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and AOL sent to Obama last week complaining about NSA surveillance a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.
(“Judge Ruling on NSA Spying Amounts to Judicial Selfie,” The iPINIONS Journal, December 18, 2013)
Not that there’s anything wrong with being called black … right? As a Black man, I need to stop perpetuating this self-denigrating idiom to convey inherent hypocrisy. How about: the skunk calling the pig stink. I digress.
Even though Zuckerberg would be loath to share this, here’s how I suspect his phone call with Obama actually went:
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