Here’s an ingenious billboard intervention from the California Department of Corrections, a confusingly-named art group out of the Golden State. The piece flips the Pacific Rim tagline, “To fight monsters, we created monsters,” on its head, emblazoning each of the film’s giant robots with the names of a U.S. security agency–NSA, CIA, FBI, and ICE–and placing the phrase “the national security state” below.
The CDC gives its tongue-firmly-in-cheek explanation for the intervention below:
In the midst of this public attention, the CDC initiated its billboard campaign to call for additional support for the NSA. Limited by current levels of funding, the NSA has only been able to collect data on all cell phone calls, all emails and every piece of domestic mail. The agency has also been operating drones for domestic surveillance, searching homes without the knowledge of occupants and acquiring private records from government agencies and financial institutions without obtaining a warrant. With America’s continued support, the NSA will be able to expand and improve these surveillance techniques, enabling the agency to record every conversation that occurs inside the U.S., operate drones over every inch of domestic airspace, search every personal residence and collect every document related to the private lives of U.S. citizens.
