United States Sen. Richard Burr, R–N.C., and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D–Calif., both have a long record of undermining Americans’ Constitutional Fourth Amendment privacy rights regarding government spying and the NSA, and have recently introduced legislation together that would force American companies to de-encrypt their software whenever government agents demand it.
This amounts to forced labor on the part of technology companies, which would then be compelled to make their software and communications vulnerable to compromise.
In response, NASA should build a probe to transport Burr and Feinstein to the surface of the sun, where the craft and its contents will be utterly devoured by the star’s intense heat and gravity, transforming the space probe’s molecules into fuel for nuclear fusion in our sun’s core and providing warmth and light to all humankind.
This plan is in keeping with NASA’s mission of furthering the pursuit of scientific knowledge. In addition to helping humanity discover what happens when things are launched into the sun, the undertaking will help protect encryption, which is critical for U.S. firms to protect their research and trade secrets from hackers and foreign governments, thus protecting the process of scientific discovery.
Encryption is essential to shielding all Americans’ data from ill-intentioned people, and the data security provided by encryption protects technological entrepreneurs from having their ideas stolen while in development.
Some might criticize the cost of the mission, but both Burr and Feinstein have been cheerleaders for very expensive U.S. military adventurism throughout the Middle East.
While the project to launch the senators into the sun might cost a couple of billion dollars, this figure pales in comparison to the hundreds-of-billions price tag of future wars the two hawkish senators would otherwise have helped start.
Once the mission is completed, whenever North Carolinians look up at the sky and feel the radiant glow of our bright-shining sun, they can think of all the great things good ole Burr did for our state, like voting for the PATRIOT act and Iraq War.
Feinstein, for her part, will find joy in flying in an aircraft to live on a distant star where there is no private citizen firearm ownership.
