Category: default || By jt3y

A good friend of mine works for a Fortune 500 publicly traded company in Western Pennsylvania. (Having made the decision to actually stay in engineering school instead of deciding to become a newspaper reporter, he also actually makes money, which he uses to buy goods and services, but that's irrelevant.)

Anyway, as we've done on an almost daily basis since high school, we constantly send stupid information and pranks back and forth. Nowadays, however, instead of passing notes, sending vulgar postcards, or leaving snotty messages on each others' answering machines, we send emails.

They usually include really useful stuff, like this webpage where the "Froggy" radio stations are asking people to guess the make, model, year and color of a car that's been crushed into a cube.

But like I said, he works for a Fortune 500 company (I shall call it "Megacorp"), and when he sends this stuff, it comes with the following disclaimer attached:

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

This message, together with any attachments, may be legally privileged and is confidential information intended only for the use of the individual or entity to which it is addressed. It is exempt from disclosure under applicable law including court orders. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution or copy of this message, or any attachment, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please notify the original sender and delete this message, along with any attachments, from your computer.

I suppose I'm breaking all kinds of laws by even quoting the disclaimer, right?

I'm sure this is something that Megacorp's servers attach to all outgoing email, so Megacorp doesn't know whether the email is a letter to a federal regulatory agency, a bid on a multi-million dollar contract, or a link to the website of the "Bumper Dumper" portable outdoor toilet.

Anyway, I've started replying to my friend's emails with confidentiality notices of my own, like this one:

CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE

This message, together with any bulls--t disclaimers, is completely insane, and may be confidential information intended for people who own Members Only jackets. Also, if the lawyers at Megacorp think that their stupid disclaimer exempts them from a court order, then they're dumber than a bagful of hammers, and the management should fire the entire f--king legal department. If you have received this message in error, then I feel very sorry for you, so please notify the original sender and delete this message, along with any attachments, then delete your hard drive.

Or this one:

This message, together with any artichokes, contains tiny electrons, neutrons and protons, and zips through the Interweb at the speed of light. It may also contain not more than five percent mouse turds by volume. It is exempt from court orders, the laws of physics, Newton's third law of thermodynamics, and the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. I'm really glad I'm not a f--king lawyer, because if I had to sit around and write stupid s--t like this all day, I'd get a rope, find a tree, and end it.

I'll admit that these are not subtle examples of wit in the class of Dorothy Parker and E.B. White, but they're the best I can do on short notice.

And now, if you'll excuse me, there are several attorneys from Megacorp here. It seems they want to remove those emails from my memory, using hypnosis, ancient meditation techniques, and a baseball bat.

...

On a somewhat related topic, at the same time the Bush administration was giving its official "okey-dokey" to the transfer of several American transoceanic ports to the United Arab Emirates, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (motto: "We do so know what we're doing") was conducting an anti-terrorism drill on its computers.

And what, pray tell, is one of the gravest terrorist threats to this great nation, according to our sworn upholders of law and justice?

Bloggers, says The Associated Press:

The government concluded its "Cyber Storm" wargame Friday, its biggest-ever exercise to test how it would respond to devastating attacks over the Internet from anti-globalization activists, underground hackers and bloggers.

Bloggers?

Participants confirmed parts of the worldwide simulation challenged government officials and industry executives to respond to deliberate misinformation campaigns and activist calls by Internet bloggers, online diarists whose "Web logs" include political rantings and musings about current events.

Just so we're clear: The official position of the United States is that we face no danger if we turn over control of six important ports to a country which has been described as the financial hub of Osama bin Laden's terrorism network.

But it does face a serious threat from a 19-year-old girl in North Versailles who's ranting about the President, her cat, her job at Starbucks and last night's episode of "Smallville" on her LiveJournal.

Georgie, you're doin' a heckuva job.