NSA-Proof Your Email! Consider your Man Card Re-Issued. Never be Afraid Again.

In these fearful times of mass surveillance and chaos in the streets, it is important that we protect ourselves. But how?

He said he was in “investments”. He seemed nice enough; part of the financial apparatus that plunged the global economy off a cliff in 2008, but a friendly fellow. He said he was worried about the future.

We were sitting at the marina, deep in cottage country, in a shaded waiting area filled with picnic tables, protected by umbrellas but sweltering nonetheless. My hosts had wandered off in search of something called a ‘zero gravity’ chair, which sounds like a contraption for the space age but turns out to be a better way of reclining. Good reclining is crucial in cottage country.

He was waiting for his boat to be cleaned, I couldn’t get a data connection worth a damn, and that was enough to get us talking. Grey hair, matching green polo shirt and shorts. Retired. Summers in cottage country, winters in Florida. For now, he said.

For now?

“If the Democrats take the lower house, I’m getting out.”

Why?

“I know a lot of Canadians love Obama, but I’m not one of them. It’s too much like 1932.”

The conversation went quiet. This was a delicate situation, etiquette-wise. I didn’t know his politics, and the fashion of the day is to follow statements comparing Obama to Hitler with questions about his parentage, intimations of crypto-Muslim conspiracies, rants about the IRS, and laments for the fall of Liberty and Truth. I braced myself for a storm of bad noise met with forced smiles. We mustn’t upset our neighbours. Least of all here, where the air is so still and the soft lapping of water plays counterpoint to the distant roar of the freeway.

“It’s becoming a security state,” he said.

Relief washed over me. Here, we could agree. Whatever the particulars of the analogy with 1932, you’d be hard-pressed to argue that there was any daylight between the security apparatus set up in the fearful wake of 9/11 and the sprawling network of spies, drones, secret courts, and black site detention centres in operation today. I did not have the heart to ask him how he thought a Republican Congress would make things any better and so our conversation proceeded amicably. Domestic harmony was maintained; harmony is important in cottage country.

Our session of vigorous agreement was interrupted by an interloper, a pale fellow in cargo shorts and a black t-shirt with a fedora to shade his eyes from the sun.

“I don’t mean to snoop,” he said as he heaved himself off the nearby bench and ambled over, “But I heard what you were speaking about, and I think I can help.”