Spy vs Spy

A paradise for contractors.

An estimated 500,000 people accessing top secret information; what could go wrong?

Here is a useful timeline of mass surveillance after 1978, and especially, escalating after 2001.

Reliable as ever, "Rightbloggers Find NSA Spying on Americans--And This Time They're Against It!"

Despite the book sales boom, this is outsourcing, not government
à la 1984.

The wealth of an entrenched corporate constituency is an overwhelming factor. Ironically though, some companies contracted under secret laws are worried about their branding, especially internationally, and now want more transparency.

Sam Seder and others have noted how the establishment is circling the wagons, as in the squawks of Thomas Friedman and David Brooks. Sam's paraphrase of Friedman's argument: "We must close down our society to protect the open society we don't have." And Sam on Brooks' "Snowden betrayed honesty" routine:

..."debate" has always been closed. The director of national intelligence lied to a senator—who knew he lied, and could do nothing about it—and Snowden betrayed open government, says Brooks... So, if you talk back to that bully, he may hit you harder next time.

As Sam (and others) have noted, Brooks' horror that someone questioned institutions comprises the contradiction of: "everybody knew this... but it's horrible he betrayed."

"Everybody knew"; there is quite a bit on record.

This ACLU fusion center report is from 2007.

This episode.

"U.S. Agencies Said to Swap Data With Thousands of Firms."

This surveillance of protestors.

In discussing revelations, a focus of Sam's is Insiders vs. the rest of us; Establishment mutuality vs.lack of access by the general public.

The media's attack on the messenger is predictable, but striking. This is of a different order than any valid questions about the messenger, a Ron Paul fan who fled for freedom to... China. While there also are the gaps in Snowden's education and the position he held, as a Majority Report IM-er suggested, it may be as simple an explanation that Booz Allen had a contract and needed bodies in jobs pronto; ergo, a scenario of "the security guard knows computers."

The secrecy of the intelligence-gathering is what's been a legal Catch-22, preventing victims from having "standing" in courts.

That, and the fact that any real effort against terrorism requires police work, not vacuuming up data, regardless of how effective it is to access virtually anything.

As always, one can only speculate about Obama's role, and the degree to the usual effort for a Democrat to disprove softness is at work, versus the usual eagerness to expand executive power.

I do know that a week ago I first read "Obama appoints Rice" as his having named Condi.