Titled "Perfect Memory" or PerMem the website offers customers convenient, easy to use MP3s (or iPod MP4s) of any phone conversation or other audio surveillance conducted by the agency on their person over the past five years. "Throw out your tape recorders," the website proclaims. "Burn your notes, lose your notepads. Don't worry about forgetting anything ever again. Welcome to the 21st Century."The service, which is billed per download at an average of $0.75 per MP3, is part of the inter-agency profitability initiative required by the "Sustainable Government Act." The Act mandates that every government agency or department show an annual 20% profit (or better) each fiscal year or risk elimination. The bill was signed into law by President Bush January 7th this year.
"The amount of data we have, frankly, is beyond our ability to process anyway," said NSA spokesman Chip "Skip" Masterson. "Faced with deleting or disclosing, we chose to disclose, and disclose in a way that allows us to meet our profit objectives." How much the program is expected to net, however, is classified.
"This is responsive, open government at its best," said newly appointed White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. "We're providing a valuable service to the nation, eliminating millions of wasted work hours spent remembering or more importantly mis-remembering key and important details of business or private conversations. We expect not only a profitable program, but a net productivity gain by the nation as people truly start to see the payoff to years of unfettered warrant-less domestic eavesdropping."
Yet some on Capitol Hill were slightly less enthusiastic about the program. "This is just one more issue with which we can fail to distinguish ourselves," said outspoken House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi. "That being said, I must confess that I agree with the overall objective of responsive government, which is at the heart of the NSA's new program, but strongly disagree with the specifics, but by going into detail I will completely fail to attract the attention of the mainstream press which..." and then sort of trailed off.
Not to be outdone, within two hours the FBI released that it too has a new online venture coming soon called "fBay," that will offer Americans the chance to bid on "collateral items" seized or confiscated during "no-knock" or warrant-less searches conducted by the bureau since 2001. "Frankly we don't know who owns this stuff anymore," said FBI spokesman John J. Jameson. "So we thought what better way to match up chattel to chucklehead than via a massive online, electronic marketplace? It works for eBay, why not us?"
Wall Street reacted with convulsive burping and nearly uncontrollable flatulence, shooting shares of the NSA (NYSE: UBFL) to a record high of $1.50 and FBI (AMEX: BBKING) to $7.90, but dropping George W. Bush (AMEX: HUH) almost 15 full points to a record low of $0.75 for no obvious reason.
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