Everything the NSA Needs to Know About My Indian Mother (But Was Afraid to Ask)

By Sandip Roy, New America Media

News that President Bush signed an order allowing the National Security Agency to spy on international phone calls and e-mails makes one Indian immigrant think of his weekly, gossipy phone calls home -- and the intensifying gaze of the state upon immigrant America.

SAN FRANCISCO-Dec 16, 2005-The National Security Agency is listening in on international calls without warrants, says the New York Times. Just in case their eavesdropper's Bengali is a little rusty, here is what I talked about with my mother last week. I am putting this down to save them the money needed for translation and transcription, and also because when it comes to my filial calls to India, my mother and I pretty much have the same conversation every weekend.

My mother is doing OK after her recent cataract operation. She is needing drops less frequently in her eyes. If the NSA likes, they could send her a get-well card. She would love that, and would tell all the neighbors.

Another cousin just got married. A major part of the conversation listed the biryani, fried and curried fish, three kinds of sweets and every other item on the menu at the sit-down dinner for 500 of their closest friends and families. Yet another cousin is going to get married at the end of December. Forecast: more menu details, what-to-wear dilemmas and what-to-give predicaments coming up.

My nephew has done very well in his school finals. My niece has her exams coming up. I wish the NSA fortitude and patience as they listen to a fond grandmother gushing about her grandchildren's endless achievements. Did you know the little boy once played a snowflake in a dramatic rendition of Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant" at school? That might have been before the spying order went into effect, but it's a useful backgrounder for the NSA.

The idea that the NSA is reading e-mails and listening to phone calls is not that surprising, really. Big Brother, we knew, was always watching, though this latest revelation conjures up more of an image of King Kong in a Tower of Babel. And my guess is most Americans after an initial double-take will, in fact, feel that it's OK, especially if the policy can thwart terrorist plots like the one to blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. After all, the NSA is monitoring only international communications. This comes on the heels of a Gallup-USA Today-CNN poll that says 52 percent of Americans think even legal immigrants hurt the U.S. economy and 56 percent think the federal government should focus on stopping the flow of illegal immigration.

It was clear after 9/11 that many Americans accepted giving up some of their civil liberties (or preferably the civil liberties of Arab and South Asian immigrants) in order to feel safer. Many thought that if that's what needed to be done, racial profiling was permissible. The growing climate of suspicion around immigrants, whether it's Mexicans coming across that border we want to fence, Chinese in the holds of cargo ships or Arabs coming any which way doesn't need to be reiterated.

Some would say this is the price we immigrants must pay for living in America. As people who are part of global societies, as Americans whose roots (and phone calls) extend across the world, it is now our job to reassure America and the NSA that we are indeed harmless, that our conversations about food, film and sinuses are not code for anything more sinister.

We could, if someone actually asked us instead of just monitoring us in secret.

We have entered the age of the giant Neighborhood Watch. Whether it's with no-fly lists, address change forms or surveillance of our phone conversations, we are being crunched into data and categorized and labeled by a nervous secret service. Most of us might not care because we really have nothing to hide. But if they ever misconstrue anything we say, where do we go to protest our innocence? Who do we protest to? No, Mr. NSA, when I wrote WMD in that e-mail to my sister I really meant the latest Bollywood blockbuster "Woh Mera Dil."

But there is a definite silver lining. Just the other day my mother insisted she had told me all about a conversation with someone. My mother is the type of person who keeps a running list of things she needs to tell me whenever I call, so she doesn't forget anything in the heat of the moment. But I had no recollection of this conversation. Had I spaced out, I wondered? Or did she just think she had told me this? It was a classic "he-said she-said" deadlock. But now I know what to do. I can just ask the NSA.

President Bush, I don't care about that court warrant that the Senate is so worried about. But could you give us a customer-friendly 1-800 number I could call to get my transcripts?

Sandip Roy is a PNS editor and hosts "UpFront," New America Media's radio program on KALW 91.7-FM in San Francisco.