National Union of Friendly Americans (NUFA) espionage school instructors always make sure that the espionage we are involved in is done in good faith, is not hidden from view and is discussed in explicit detail with both spy and those being spied upon before any public notice is sent to the local papers for publication in the espionage/legal section.

We are told that next to the Sheriff’s Report and the Court Minutes it is the most widely read section of the newspaper.

There are no whistleblowers at NUFA because everything is done above board and all espionage is done in full view at the bar where personal bartenders also keep tabs on all conversations to make sure nothing is done under the table. We believe the best espionage is the espionage that all people involved can trust as accurate, is well meaning and for the good of all.

Since no technology developed after 1971 is allowed at NUFA Camp Shack headquarters you can rest assured that all espionage is done on foot and written by hand. No wiretapping is allowed, even though our calls may be monitored for quality assurance purposes by corporate types who own the phone and satellite lines and seem free as birds to mine your data at will.

There is nothing we can do about that. Nor is there anything we can do about the surveillance cameras sitting on poles above our heads that watch our every move.

We have never condoned destruction of private or government property but on occasion a kid with a .22 can be pretty handy in the ongoing efforts to restore privacy back to the good old days when the neighbor lady would be the one to call your mother and tell her you were smoking or siphoning gas out of the cop car that was parked in the alley, not some live streaming camera on a pole above your head.

For some odd reason data mining by corporate types does not seem to be an invasion of privacy. The odd reason may just be that much of society has already given up on privacy of their own doing, throwing their personal lives out into the cloud as if they need to verify their own existence in this great big world by making friends who are hidden from view but at the very same instant are as close as a tap on the keyboard or a finger slide across the iPhone.

NUFA does offer assistance for those folks who are trying to find their way out of the technology trap, trying to find their way through the maze of near schizophrenic and immediate contact with others without an actual conversation taking place.

This latest effort is being headed up by the NUFA Dept. of Weights and Measures after a recent episode in which a search of GoogleEarth revealed snooping on a monumental scale. There we were, having a NUFA gathering at Camp Shack when the boys spilled out of the shack to take a leak. Well, wouldn’t you know, just as everybody was relieving themselves, the Google satellite must have passed directly overhead and took a very clear image of the motley bunch. True to form, the Exalted Shack Master was waving his free hand to the sky as he always does when he marches outside like Napolean and claims the skies and heavens to be his and only his and that all the rest of us chumps had him to thank for the air we breathe and the rum we drink.

Yes, yes, we all agree with him, it’s just easier that way, and he leads the parade around the outskirts of the shack and toots the ceremonial trumpet and then stuffs his oversized ego back into the shack and resumes his position at the bar.

Well, that Google thing really got to him. He thundered that no one, no one, not since his dear old mother, Mrs. Exalted Shack Master, had changed his diapers as a baby those decades and decades ago, no one had intruded on his privacy like that.

“I will take this all the way to the Supreme Court!”

Which he did. He made his way to Washington, D.C. where he slept in the bushes next to the Supreme Court Building, emerging from his sleep early in the morning to take a leak, right on the steps, in full view of every surveillance camera sitting on a pole above his head. Just for good measure he turned north, south, east and west to emphasize his point. He stood there in full regalia, the sash and cummerbund, the epaulets on his shoulders, the deerskin slippers, and shook his fist at the highest court in the land.

“You are all blind as bats, letting freedom slip away at the hands of the highest bidder,” he shouted.
There was little movement at the court that early in the morning. The police where elsewhere, likely rousting the homeless men from their sleep on the steam grates in front of the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building as the sun began to light the tippy-top of the Capitol rotunda. Somewhere deep in a building a security camera watched and a technician was sipping coffee and may or may not have witnessed the act. It didn’t matter. The point was made and the data would be mined at some point, his image frozen on a screen to determine if this was trouble or not.

By the time the image was analyzed the Exalted Shack Master had made his way back to far northern Minnesota to vanish into the wilds where NUFA headquarters on a GoogleEarth image once appeared as a roof and several outbuildings on a trail miles from the nearest road with a bunch of drunks taking a leak, fighting for the privacy of all Americans.