Daily Trust Sunday

Help, the CIA has hacked my phone

- Tundeasaju@yahoo.co.uk with Tunde Asaju

- Where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you on phone for the last three hours. - Really? - What do you mean really? What happened to your phone? Oh, I think I know the answer; you want to blame Raji Fashola for not supplying electricit­y to charge it. Fashola says he’s not responsibl­e for your problems. - Okay. - I see you’re packing dismantled mobile phones and television sets? I hope you’re not joining Boko Haram. - Not on your life, I love life. - Well, they love Jannah more than life. But where are you going?

- I don’t know yet, but I know I need to move. - Why? - Why? Are you living in Mars, don’t you listen to the news.

- I do listen to the news. Tell me what I missed - cyclone Enawo would be a breeze by the time it’s travelled 6,300 kilometres from Mauritius to Lagos. You don’t work for a foreign airline, so you can’t be relocating to Kaduna. - Nonsense. - And I’m not sure there is an outbreak of disease apart from the ‘mysterious’ one reported in parts of the north. - I’m immunized. - Not against this one if it shows up here. Anyway where are you heading? This looks like your wife’s phone? - Yes it is! - And these ones are your children’s? - Yes. - Oh boy, you’re so broke you’re pawning property to get by? - Wikileaks? - What about Wikileaks? - I am ridding my home and household of all CIA spy gadgets.

- What’s your problem with CIA?

- I have no problem with the CIA, but it looks like the CIA has a problem with everyone else? They’ve been using these gadgets to monitor us, even when they’re switched off. That’s why #theDonald shouted to the heavens that his phone lines were hacked by Barack Obama. - How? - Wikileaks my friend! Over the years, I’ve taken little or no interest in Julian Assange but now, I sympathise with the bloke. Thanks to him, we now know that this is Nineteen Eighty Four and Big Brother has been watching us all along. Yes, laugh if off if you want.

- So, how do you survive in the world of technology?

- How did our survived?

- Even farmers in remote areas play catch up with technology and here you are a city dweller wanting to return to stone age. father’s

- What’s wrong with that? Martin Lidegaard, a member of the Danish Social Liberal Party is already leading the revolution. He recently went to Russia with an old phone. So, why can’t I?

- How are you sure the old phones don’t have worse hazards than listening devices? At any rate, how do you survive without e-mail, cloud computing, social media? Even the car you drive is remotely tracked? My friend, stop the nonsense.

- Well, I suppose so too, but look at us. It is now that I realized that President Jones was right all along. A man cannot have an intimate conversati­on with his sidekick without America knowing? If we’ve all become porn stars, at least let the CIA seek our informed consent and then pay us for our midnight services. - I think you’re overreacti­ng. - Overreacti­ng? Do you know how angry I am? I’ve suspected that the way the white man marketed these gadgets and flooded our countries with them; they were up to something sinister. Away with mobile phones, away with smart tv and give us the dull one; away with all gadgets of imperialis­tic voyeurism. - Tehehe. - Imagine what happens when all secrets are revealed; even priests would have something to fear.

- One embattled lady is battling a miracle working pastorpren­eur that she claims usually request a nude picture on Sunday mornings before going to fire the devil on the altar. Who knows what America knows? - Really, tell me! - Oh-ho, your antennae are up. - Well a little salacious kills boredom when its not you. Well, since the telegraph was invented in the 1830s, we’ve lost the right to privacy. But seriously what’s the chance of your most guarded secrets ever being used against you? Very small? Except you have so much at stake. If you do in the era of apps, if the password to your Swiss account is on your gadget or you keep your millions buried in your compound - then be very afraid. - I have no Swiss account. - My point exactly. Let me tell you my dear friend, tell #Wikileaks to tell the #CIA they have nothing on us. We signed off our privacy the day we embraced the technology we neither created nor fully understand. The effects are felt everywhere. - Okay. - Yes. So, my advice to you is to couple your phones back, plug your television sets and feel free. Those who have something to hide also have the capacity to cover their own tracks. The rest of us should swim in the open waters of technology.

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