Both the US and Canadian governments have proposed legislation that allows the ‘authorities’ to read your e-mail.  For ‘security reasons’, of course.  Many people in both countries replied to an internet call-to-protest with an emphatic ‘hands off!’.

We just don’t trust the bastards.

But bear in mind, they don’t trust us, either.  And, if you think the lack of legislation has kept them from reading your e-mails, you are gullible beyond words.  “But, Dave, they can’t read all the e-mails and 99.99999% of them are boring anyway!”

That is true.  Most aren’t worth reading, I am sure.  But they don’t have to read them in the sense that you think of reading.  They data mine them instead.  They have search engines that look for key words, word associations and other weird math-based technigues to ‘flag’ your perhaps-suspicious e-mail for continued follow-up.

Whenever I write ‘Allahu Akbar’ as a suggested exclamation of frustration when encountering delays at the airport (it is a joke), I am being ‘read’ by a machine that sends the e-mail to another level for analysis.  Presumably, after however many security levels it takes, I am deemed just another idiot who thinks he has a sense of humour and I am pulled off the Guantanamo list.

“What’s your point?”

“Be patient.  I’ll get there.  Just hafta ‘set the scene’ a bit more”.

So, the RCMP and the FBI (respectively) cannot legally read all our e-mails, right?  Wrong!  They can if they get a warrant.  And, over the past few years the warrants have been ‘fast-tracked’ so that they can read hundreds of thousands of them and they do.  As I write this, e-mails are read all the time.

“Do I care?  I am just asking dearheart to pick up a loaf of bread.  We aren’t plotting anything!”

I’ll get back to that.  But, in the meantime, consider this: the CIA is allowed to do virtually anything it wants outside the US.  Presumably so can CSIS (Canadian equivalent) do what it wants outside of Canada.  So CSIS can read US e-mails and the CIA can read Canadian ones.  And they do.  All the time.

“Geez, think they compare notes?”

When we were in El Salvador, Sal and I sent at least a dozen e-mails over the week we there.  Likely more.  Not one of them reached their destination.

“So, Dave, you just had a bad internet connection.  Don’t be paranoid!”

Well, firstly, my blog posts all went through.  So the connection was fine.  But, more to the point, El salvador is virtually owned and operated by the US.  They may not be able to easily data mine everything in their own country but they can sweep all of El Salvador with impunity. And they do.

“But why would they?”

Drogs, senor.  Central America is a conduit for drogs.  And we fit the ‘profile’.  If you were going to use an algorythm for ferreting out suspicious characters, we don’t fit such profile perfectly (too old, I think) but we at least fit it enough to be ‘vetted’.  And I think we were.

We also stayed at a ‘cheap, low-profile’ guesthouse that was frequented by eastern European males of a sketchy nature.  They wouldn’t respond to greetings, they wouldn’t look you in the eye and they were in and out in a couple of days. Quite unlike the ‘usual’ travelers one encounters in hostels and pensiones.  They just looked like drug dealers to me.

We fit the profile and we may have also been guilty by association.

And that is why I don’t trust the bastards.  I should not be guilty by association. Guilty by a crime?  OK.  But just by being in the same hotel?  Absolutely not!

“But, Dave, you just made up the story by circumstantial observations.  None of it may be true.  The sketchy guys may have just been shy missionaires.  And, anyway, you were pooping your brains out.  Maybe you were just a smidge ‘mental’ at that time?”

Yeah.  You are probably right.  I can’t imagine the US interfering with the rights of a Central American country before they could legally interfere with the rights of their own citizens.  What was I thinking?