Communications technology is the fastest expanding product and service arena today. Every month we get a couple new wireless phones and the systems that make them work. There are so many messages, voice, text and other forms, that the organization in the US Federal government that monitors it all has almost been overhwelmed.

Believe it or not, your emails, texts, even voice messages are monitored and in some cases copied by the outfit. I won't spell it here because that would flag this blog post but the organization is three letters long, beginning with N (stands for "National") with a middle letter "S" and a final letter that stands for "Agency." It is the largest non-military funded agency in the Federal Budget. It has so many employees that the true number is known to only a few in government. It operates the most sophisticated computer network in the world.



Their computers monitor and catalog messages of all types and from all over the world. They own and operate several satellites to assist in that work. Their efforts are how we find out what the bad guys in the mountains of Pakistan are telling their troops and spies.

If you use certain words in a text, an email, or in a blog post, the organization of which I write catches them and logs your message, word-for-word, in a computer file. It is flagged for human reading. The human intelligence people will then read what you wrote and either delete it as non-threatening, or they may send it up for more careful analysis.

If they send it "up," you may get closer scrutiny, or even a visit by the men in black suits and sunglasses.



But in this day of rapid tech development, they know that they must keep up with Silicon Valley. Think about it... any teenager in a turban in Pakistan could write an "App" for their iPhones (and they have iPhones!) that would encrypt messages so that the bad guys over there could easily use their phones and encrypting apps to send out orders. They probably already have done it.



So our own "agency" (and it is not the CIA) is going full-speed to try to keep up.

I feel sorry for them! I can't keep up, so how can they?

But remember when you text or send emails to not piss them off! They are reading what you write.