Dear Colleagues, Friends and Valued Customers,
Over the last few months, we’ve all read and heard stories about the National Security Association prying into the privacy of Americans through e-mails and phone calls, vacuuming up massive amounts of communications as well as utilizing certain keywords for searches.
We have wondered, beginning even back in 2001, if our e-mails and various writings would run afoul of these efforts due to the words that repeatedly appear in the titles of mysteries and crime novels, as well as the plot synopsis of the books. We no longer have to wonder.
We have been notified that we need to stop using certain of these key words or our e-mails will be heavily censored by the various govermental agencies, and/or our e-mail accounts and websites will be shut down. Writing about the books will become very difficult as how can we adequately describe plots if we can’t use the words such as murder, assassin, kill, bomb, guns or terrorist? Not evenlk;n;j;;kjbn;on!
In addition to these, other words forbidden are lknl;knkn, kkkhhh, ppihoihoin poj;pionjoin, and, if you can belive it, even jjl. While we think this is taking national security too far, we have no choice in the matter if we wish to continue selling .,mlkkn books. And lord only knows how they'll deal with electronic books. Don't be surprised if your kindles start to sound rather hollow from all the redactions.
In the past, we’ve reached out to you, our supporters, to write to someone to protest these actions, but we’re hesitant to ask you to put yourselves in the bullseye of the NSA, Homeland Security, the FBI, or the Justice Department. (And those are only the few departments that have contacted us.) Who knows how many other super-secret, alphabetically-named section is watching what we do. Our fear is that we’ve dragged you into this already, simply by receiving our lkijoihj or by you having sent us j;lkj;opijh or visited our ;lokn;oiiooknoin.
In fact, ;oin[oih[oin oiioion uhhy and oipo wlkn oin[oin[oinpoinpoinopinoinopinio should make us all oinpoin. How these people have the gall to tell us “l;kn;oi oo opioub or we’ll oioiboibuiobju.” That really made our brains exlode. [ouibpi oubpiobju;puiobp iobjupioubipbju piubjpijubpiu bjpiubjp; ju bpiubpiubipubpiu b0000000000000 000000000 00000 00000000000000000000 000000000 00000 000000
0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000is beyond us.
In fact, according to what our lawyer has told us, " kno;nopinoininoinor oinhhhdthereby does stink, but in legal terms, its a clear matter of the powers granted to these agencies by hhdhdhdehoinaoinonki ooooooooooooooooooooo ooooooooo oooooo oooo oooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo". Can you believe it? It is astonishing to us that in this day and age, the kkn thinks they can get away with this. What’s going on? Are we living in Crimea? Frankly, we’re outraged by lkn;obn;o hhh opiho0 iiuopiubavd njojk h;oihpouib ahuiob; oauibouibp iouuuuuuuuuuuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuu uuu uuuuuuuu uuuuu uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu but how can you buck city hall? We won when it came to the sandwich boards but the alphabet soup in DC is out of our league.
So, for the foreseeable future, you may be a bit confused by how we describe upcoming books and how we alter the titles to not be objectionable to the authorities. It will take some time for us all to get used to this. We’re looking upon this as our contribution to the security that we all want, that we won’t be befouling the government’s overloaded search for villains with our simple works, and that these self-censoring efforts will be to the common good. Really, it’d be foolish to view it in any other light.
Thanks for your understanding,
~ the Crew
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