Now that we’ve learned that the NSA is routinely mining data from Verizon and other huge communication corporations under the rationale of stopping terrorism, how about some more user-friendly applications?

For instance, I’ve got a stack of Verizon call details I need to analyze to see which of the hundreds of numbers we call should go into our “Frequently Called Numbers” list of ten freebies. Are my short but numerous calls to a local number burning up more minutes than my long monthly chat with my brother in Massachusetts? Who, by the way, is my daughter calling in Albuquerque? And is he treating her right?

It would save me a lot of time, money, and anxiety if the NSA could just take a minute from their Al-Queda-hunting number-crunching and run my numbers. God knows an assist from the NSA would be a lot faster than waiting for our daughters to respond to my request for the numbers they call most often, or to tell us about anyone significant in their lives. On a slow day, maybe the NSA could even order a little domestic drone surveillance on the girls’ young gentlemen callers.

It’s a clear win-win: the Administration quells a PR nightmare by helping families across America save money on their phone bills and get clued in to their children’s lives. Who cares about a little erosion of civil liberties in exchange for better household management?