A Christmas message from Edward Snowden?

If the President and the Queen can send a Christmas message, why not Edward Snowden – the man who outed the NSA’s online snooping operation.

“Hi and Merry Christmas. I’m honored to have a chance to speak with you and your family this year,” said Snowden.

And to fill you with Yuletide cheer, he reminds us that we’re being watched.

“We learned that our governments have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance,” he said.

And it’s way worse than anything George Orwell warned us about.

“We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. A child born today will never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves – an unrecorded, un-analyzed thought.”

Well that sounds pretty bad. Except, children have been dealing with that notion for years. It’s drummed into their heads every December …

He sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness sake.

I grew up assuming I was being watched. Of course knowing that the government is doing it is a little unnerving because they can haul you off to Gitmo.

Although that mostly seems to happen to people who spend their vacations at overseas terrorist training camps so most people don’t seem too worried.

Not that Americans aren’t concerned about their personal information. But do they care about government surveillance of phone calls? Government snooping into their e-mails?

Nope.

Here’s what they care about: Millions of shoppers’ financial information was stolen because of a security breech at Target.

And as if to prove that the Internet has a sense of humor, after Snowden warned my about the gadgets in my pockets, an ad instantly popped up saying, “you can manage your business expenses instantly with a game-changing app.” It was an ad for a credit card, showing happy business people paying their bills online using a smart phone.