Friday, July 19, 2013

The intersection of "Smart Diplomacy facepalm" and "NSA facepalm"

It's a twofer!
Normally, Daniel Bangert's Facebook posts tend to be of the serious variety. The 28-year-old includes news items and other bits of interest he encounters throughout the day. "I rarely post funny pictures," he says.

Recently, though, he decided to liven up his page with something a bit more amusing -- and decided to focus on the scandal surrounding the vast Internet surveillance perpetrated by the US intelligence service NSA. He invited his friends on an excursion to the top secret US facility known as the Dagger Complex in Griesheim, where Bangert is from.

...
Bangert's doorbell rang at almost the exact same time. The police on the telephone told him to talk with the officers outside of his door. Bangert quickly put on a T-shirt -- which had a picture of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on it along with the words "Team Edward" -- and answered the door. His neighbor was outside too so as not to miss the fun.

The police wanted to know more about what exactly Bangert had in mind. "I couldn't believe it. I thought: What? They are coming for such nonsense?"

"Team Edward" FTW!  And I guess we now know where the room temperature IQ Stasi guards are working these days:
The officers, says Bangert, were unimpressed and called him a "smart aleck," before hinting strongly that he should obtain a demonstration permit before he embarked on his outing. They then told Bangert not to post anything about their visit on the web.
Good idea there, Fritz.  Seems foolproof.  Oh, wait ...

There's so much fail in this that I fail in my attempt to describe it, other than this:


As we used to joke Back In The Day at Three Letter Agency, "In God we trust; all others we monitor."  OK, can we stop now?

And can I just say that nothing good can possibly come out of the intersection of NSA and the German Authorities.  Srlsy.  Just don't go there.

Bootnote: This right here is my most favoritist part of the whole article:
The police spokeswoman sought to play down the incident.
Because playing it up would be bad, mkay?  No wonder they lost The War.

1 comment:

kahr40 said...

The face palm picture 'bout made me fall out of my chair laughing. Just what I needed. Thanks.