How Your Dick Fights Terrorism

John Oliver went to Moscow to ask Edward Snowden why the NSA keeps photographs of people’s genitals. That should tell you everything about the state we’re in.

Men send unsolicited dick pics constantly—to women they know, women they don’t, people they’ve never met. It’s everywhere. Casual, thoughtless, usually unwanted. The photos end up on phones, in messages, in clouds. And because nothing stays private anymore, the NSA has them too. Folders full of anonymous erections. Organized. Indexed. Sitting in a database somewhere alongside intercepted emails and phone records, all supposedly in service of fighting terrorism.

That’s the claim. Your dick pic is national security. I know how it sounds.

The only response that makes sense is to send a funny man to Moscow to ask the whistleblower the stupid question directly. Why are you storing all these photos? What does it actually accomplish? Snowden answers it straight: they’re not targeting people for sending nudes, they’re just collecting everything. The crude surveillance machinery runs in the background and you’re caught in it just because you exist and have a phone.

It’s absurd and serious at the same time. The government collecting intimate images under the banner of security. Individual people sending nudes because they’re bored or horny. Nobody wins. You end up in this reality where your worst impulses are archived and justified as counterterrorism. The only adequate response is to ask the stupid question directly.