You ever heard of East German singer/writer Wolfgang Biermann’s “Stasi Ballad” (1979)?
English translation ([by Scott Horton of Harpers][1]):
"I feel a common humanity
With the poor Stasi dogs,
Required to sit through snow and downpours of rain
Tediously listening to me through the
Microphone they have installed
Which catches every sound,
Songs, jokes and soft curses
Sitting on the toilet and in the kitchen
Brothers from state security – you alone
Know all my troubles.
You alone can attest,
How my whole human effort
Is committed with passionate tenderness
And zest to Our Great Cause.
Words which otherwise would be lost,
Are captured firmly on your tapes,
And – I’m sure of it – now and again
You sing my songs in bed.
I sing my gratitude to you,
Stasi is my Ecker,
Stasi is my Ecker,
Stasi is my Eckermann."
(Eckermann was Goethe’s private secretary)
P.S.
After the fall of the Wall, Biermann would find back this songtext in his Stasi records 
P.P.S.
By the way, he is Nina Hagen’s dad.
[1]: http://harpers.org/blog/2007/05/die-stasi-ist-mein-eckermann/
This guy did exactly what I want to do in lots of situations; take the illegal facts of the situation and treat them as though they are a given service that we could take advantage of in a helpful manner.
I think this is amusing, but it’s trolling the little people in the organisation, which is ineffective. … At least he’s not doing it with the TSA at an airport and getting himself strip-searched.
Well, that’s still a distinct possibility. Probably WITHOUT badgering the NSA…
+1 internets for trolling some poor operator at the N.S.A.
Better Headline:
**Moron harasses woman at work **
Non-Story but hey… Spin it as ya wish.
"epic troll "
Bwaaaaaahhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
Bob the Angry Flower: first and funnier.
“Calling it your job don’t make it right, Boss” - Luke
Roy Zimmerman knocks it out of the park
Aww. We should feel badly for the poor, imaginary factotum who’s not being insulted, and who is breaking the law. Nice one.
Get back under your bridge.
Harassing someone who has absolutely no power what so ever is as stupid as it gets.
How may I direct your call sir?
I’m calling to try and be a douche bag for my 15 minutes of youtube fame!
How may I help you?
I’m a Giant douche!
Can I help you sir?
Douche, Douche, Douche, Douche, Blah blah blah
Prey tell… what law is that operator breaking?
The pain must be staggering.
Your care for those who chose to work for the NSA is touching. Misplaced and sad, but touching.
Lets not be pedantic. The NSA is committing grave constitutional crimes. The entire organization needs to go. Just because the operator is not in charge doesn’t mean they aren’t enabling the mission of the organization.
Awwwwwww. Poor poor operator at the spy agency. What did she ever do but get up and go to work every day at a machine that grinds apart human souls and puts in place the infrastructure for a turnkey tyranny. If the worst she has to suffer in a day is being used for 3 minutes to make a hilarious point, I think she earned her pay.
People make choices. If you pick a job supporting an organization doing horrible things, people have a right to judge you and give you shit.
Hahaha! “NSA, you are fighting freedom over here, so we don’t have to fight it over there.”
Part of the problem here is that the government will attempt to make everything the NSA is doing legal (which doesn’t make it right) by ruling it legal. The government’s also waging a PR campaign, saying that what the NSA is doing is already legal. Whether the Supreme Court would rule it constitutional or not – who knows? At this rate it’ll never get there. The government’s kept the NSA’s activities out of the courts by shrouding them in complete secrecy. National security, you know. Nothing’s allowed to undergo a public judicial examination in the first place. And there’s plenty of congressional approval for it.
Add to that the war on whistleblowers, the campaign for federal workers to turn in co-workers who seem suspicious, and even the prosecution of people who teach others how to beat the pseudoscience of polygraph tests, and you’ve got to conclude that the expansion of the Security State is out of control. And all this happening under a president who’s nominally a Democrat.
Quite a bit to be pessimistic about these days, in the home of the free and the land of the brave.
It is okay to have a script to refer to when you are on the phone.
No, he clearly hit the right target. The target was BoingBoing and places like it, and oh look, here it is. The point wasn’t to make the operator feel bad about working for a massive military spy agency. The operator was just a prop in a skit. She read her lines perfectly.
Ohhhhhh I get it now!
He was driving trollies BoingBoing,other place’s like it and those site’s submitters!
Again… This is no news story nor is it funny.
It’s a sad attempt to trolley some switchboard operator/attention whoring.
But, if you think it has some other higher meaning, well by all means have at it.
[quote=“Rindan, post:19, topic:8776”] The operator was just a prop in a skit.
[/quote]
You couldn’t have made the dehumanization more obvious if you were doing that on purpose.
And, choice? Seriously? In a country with no proper social services? Even in places where it’s provided, it’s still quite a lot to demand.
