NSA Haiku Generator Creates Poems Out Of Verboten Words

While the NSA is an extremely intense and often horrifying entity, there are still opportunities to find humor in something supremely dubious. By now, the fake advert for PRSM [sic], the NSA start-up parody that boasts "A new way to share everything…" has made the internet rounds, but there's a new twist on the invasive program: the NSA Haiku Generator.

Created by filmmaker/technology fanatic, Grayson Earl, with help from web designer Britt Boyd, this website generates a random haiku out of the search database the NSA uses to comb through citizens' emails.

The NSA has a list of terms such as cyber Command, weapons cache, antiviral, trafficking, and many more that can turn you into a suspect and target of spying if they're used in electronic communication. Earl decided "rather than being all doom and gloom" he would make a game out of the terms by assigning each phrase a syllable count which then allows users to create random haikus out of hundreds of words.

Motherboard created a similar app with their NSA Sentence Generator -- both are worth getting lost in during your lunch break (from hacking?).

Here are some of our favorite haikus. They're filled with so much emotion, and even though they don't enact a season per se, they definitely enact an era.

Every haiku created and shared makes the NSA's efforts slightly less effective by over-saturating the internet with sensitive search terms.

Grayson Earl was involved with the big anti-NSA rally in New York last week, and his other work can be found here. He recommends that we need to come together to fight these government institutions and suggests that we get involved (or at least better-informed) by interacting with Fight For The Future and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

The more we talk about the NSA--be it through web apps, parodies, or new ways to access information about the privacy invaders--the better. Get poetic.

@zachsoko