Spamming the NSA

I just read David Gerwitz' amusing contribution to ZDNet about how much spam must be overloading the NSA as a result of all the electronic mail they are consuming. In the interest of trying to make lemonade out of what many of us feel is an enormous pile of lemonade, Gerwitz suggests that NSA set up a crack team to develop a more effective spam filter, which they could then share with everyone else in the country. He sees this as an opportunity to raise its social capital in the eyes of those of us who worry about little things like civil liberties. For my part, I would not be surprised if his article has been read with interest at the NSA. I would expect that he might be receiving electronic mail saying something like the following:

Thank you for your productive suggestion. Unfortunately, our current budget is under a bit of a strain right now. The good news is that we expect to add about $50 million to our working capital as a result of reading a very interesting proposal we encountered in some mail we intercepted from Nigeria.