The "thing"

An old Arab lived close to *New York* City for more than 40 years. One day he decided that he would love to plant potatoes and herbs in his garden, but he knew he was alone and too old and weak. His son was in college in Paris, so the old man sent him an e-mail explaining the problem: "Beloved son, I am very sad, because I can't plant potatoes in my garden. I am sure, if only you were here, that you would help me and dig up the garden for me. I love you, your father." The following day, the old man received a response e-mail from his son: "Beloved father, please don't touch the garden. That is where I have hidden 'the *THING*.' I love you, too, Ahmed." At 4pm the FBI and the Rangers visited the house of the old man and took the whole garden apart, searching every inch. But they couldn't find anything. Disappointed, they left the house. The next day, the old man received another e-mail from his son: "Beloved father, I hope the garden is dug up by now and you can plant your potatoes, that is all I could do for you from here; Your loving son Ahmed. Shamelessly stolen from The Big Pharaoh

It is good when you have the whole joke pop into your head while reading the first line. You start giggling, only to laugh out loud by the end anyway.
You can't defend against Aunt Lil's birthday. This joke illustrates the trouble with listening in on communications. If the dangerous people already know what to do when they get here, you are pretty much screwed. If they use innocuous sounding communication to give some details then you have a very hard time unless you know who to look for and that they are up to something. No one is going to say "hey, I'm the bad guy. Over here! I'm planning a bad thing and here is who I need to contact to achieve my end." To catch the bad guy, you have to put things together. You have to figure out who to watch. Think about the content of the last ten emails you sent. Now multiply that by about 200,000,000 people on the internet. (I'm pulling that number out of my ass.) Now, there are all kinds of illegal things going on out there, but the VAST majority of those emails are just plane boring bullshit that only matters to the person who sent it and maybe the person who receives it. This does not count the SPAM juggernaut.
Please give our officials a break. They try very hard to sift through the mess and make some sense. They really are after the bad guys. I'm not a bad guy. My cat, however, worries me.