Today’s editorial on the NSA in the LATimes is an example of why I no longer waste any time on the newspaper (Food Section excepted, of course). The drones at the LAT wrote the following: The secretive NSA (an abbreviation, Washington wags say, for “No Such Agency”) has overseen a domestic surveillance program whose existence is known only because of media reports and whose exact contours remain a mystery even to most members of Congress.
Apparently the fellas at the LAT have never read the best-selling The Puzzle Palace (copyright 1983! and all about the NSA) or heard of the Echelon program, which has been running through several adminstrations. All this “Ohmygod, whatistheNSAdoing?” nonsense is so much propagandistic crap. Anyone paying the slightest attention has known for years what the NSA’s brief was. What are all those satellites supposed to be for,anyway? The level of hypocrisy in all this is staggering. If you don’t want an NSA, say so. But the obvious question is – where have you been for the last several decades?
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21 Comments
1. Barry Dauphin:Gee, and all the had to do was visit the CNN website. For example:
I wonder how they found out that useful information? Hmmmm….
This was about a 4 minute search and post. That leaves plenty of time for restaurant reviews.
May 18, 2006 - 10:52 am 2. Eric Akawie:Well, the NSA doesn’t control “all those satellites.” That’s the job of the National Reconnaisance Office (NRO) but only the serious paranoids know about them.
Luckily I used to be one.
May 18, 2006 - 10:54 am 3. chuck:So,
It is all a mystery to the fellas at the LAT. No mystery there, I am afraid. It’s not like they gained their position because they, you know, like *knew* stuff or did research or somethin’.
May 18, 2006 - 10:59 am 4. Skookumchuk:Yeah, so secret that the NRO even has this informative website.
May 18, 2006 - 11:03 am 5. Old Dad:God forbid that an intelligence agency be “secretive.”
You really can’t make this stuff up.
The “number crunching” OMB.
The “warlike” DOD.
The asinine LAT.
May 18, 2006 - 11:03 am 6. In Vino Veritas:What are all those satellites supposed to be for, anyway?
Not for spying on Americans.
“”Those who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security.” – Ben Franklin
May 18, 2006 - 11:55 am 7. stumbley:IVV:
What essential liberty have you foregone? Do you still check out books from the library? Do you still make phone calls? How has your life changed?
It seems to me the people who complain most about the “loss of liberty” and the “abuse of power” would be the first to utilize things like the Patriot act to their advantage. I don’t recall the present administration using the FBI to spy on White House travel office personnel….
May 18, 2006 - 1:13 pm 8. stumbley:“would be the first to utilize things like the Patriot act to their advantage were THEY in power”
that’s what I meant to say…
May 18, 2006 - 1:14 pm 9. Bostonian:IVV:
Even assuming your implied snark were true, how does that make the LAT *not* a bunch of liars?
May 18, 2006 - 1:54 pm 10. jedrury:The hypocrisy lies in the political class as well. We have seen Harmon, Rockefeller and Feinstein and others decry this NSA program only to realize that they have known all along.
Of course, they’ve been briefed but they say they “never know the extent of it.” I heard Harmon say that she did not have her aide at
the briefing and thus did not understand all
this technical stuff. At no time did Jim Lehrer challenge her and ask “why are you on the intelligence panel” or “isn’t there a bit of hypcrisy here, Jane?”
One truth here: the press is complicit in the attempt to destroy the president and they wholly underestimate the savvy of the American people in this tempest in a tea pot.
What are the poll numbers? 65%+ of the American people approve.
May 18, 2006 - 2:50 pm 11. Yeshooroon:I’ll keep the NSA! But can we give up Germany?
Pleeeeaaaaaasssssssse?
http://www.neandernews.com/?p=332
German car company DaimlerChrysler advertises a smart car on a billboard in South Africa with the slogan: German engineering, Swiss Innovation, American nothing…
Just how much longer will our troops be there? And someone please explain to me again how allowing the sell of Chryler has benefited our country.
Here’s a new slogan for DaimHitlerChrysler:
German created holocaust, Swiss financed, American lives!!!
Grrrr!
May 18, 2006 - 4:29 pm 12. Ray Zacek:It’s like my Uncle Frank, who was at Bastogne, used to say: “Ah, screw those krauts.”
May 18, 2006 - 6:17 pm 13. David Thomson:ìNot for spying on Americans.î
The Constitution was never designed to be a suicide pact. No, the reality is that you donít really believe we are engaged in a legitimate war on terror. This is supposedly a con game by the Bush administration to justify a power grab. Worldwide Islamic terrorism is essentially a figment of the paranoid rightís imagination. Sadly, you speak for the Democratic Party ìmainstream.î
May 18, 2006 - 6:45 pm 14. Erik:Dont they ever go to the movies? This movie, featuring NSA, was released in 1998:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120660/
And about the Franklin quote.
I’m far from an expert on US history, but my understanding was that Franklin meant that appeasement is not going to work. (That is, assuming it’s a genuine Franklin quote, there’s debate about that too.)
Franklins comment, as I understand it, was directed against those who argued that the US shouldn’t declare independence, because it was temporarily more secure to be under Brittish rule, without the essential liberty of selfrule.
His comment was not meant as “we better not check which way the Brittish troops are moving, because we might happen to see a few americans while we’re doing so.”
If anyone has any context to the quote that prove my understanding wrong, I would very much like to know it.
May 19, 2006 - 12:29 am 15. dclydew:I think, for me, the biggest problem with large scale information gathering appears to be the human element. I work with secure/sensitive information on a daily basis, I see the people that process, manage and review sensitive information. In some cases, these folks are great people, in some cases, they’re a**holes. I’m not worried about a secret government conspiracy, the administration (like all administrations) appears far too incompetent to pull anything like that off. However, I am concerned that some people who might be processing all that information… might well go beyond what they’ve been permitted to ’spy’ on.
I recall a great (unscientific) experiment by Penn and Teller on their show “Bulls*it”. In it they hired multiple people to work for Homeland Security. They placed them in a van with survailence gear and told them that they had a secret warrant to watch 1 house. The car in front of the house, they told the subject, belonged to a terrorist. They left the subject for several hours of boring survailence. Hours later, a buxom woman on a cell phone and wearing not much in the way of clothing, walks through the survailence area. Its obvious from the conversation that she is having an affair with a married man, who lives in the house next door. Eventually, it also becomes obvious that there will probably be sex happening in the house next door.
In almost every instance, the subjects moved the cameras to watch the house next door, one not covered by the “warrant”. In fact, according to Penn and Teller, the only person who didn’t disregard their fellow citizens privacy was an immigrant.
Now, as I said… twas an unscientific experiment. However, I find that this seems quite in line with my experiences over the past decade or so, with people who’ve been granted access to ’sensitive’ information. I don’t trust the government, but that’s usually because I don’t trust any beuraucracy, because they all seem to breed incompetence. However, I really don’t trust people, particularly people that get access to what they percieve as “secrets”. Most folks simply don’t seem to have the psychological/clinical view to remain neutral and focused.
May 19, 2006 - 7:42 am 16. Ray Zacek:“Unscientific” is an understatement. Sounds like a damn stunt. I can’t imagine these people P&T “hired” were vetted or trained. I retain a healthy skepticism about bureaucracy too but some goofy “experiment” on cable TV is not going to add or subtract from that skepticism.
May 19, 2006 - 9:10 am 17. dclydew:Ray,
As I said… it was unscientific. And no, I’m sure those folks weren’t vetted. But, having worked with people who have been vetted and trained I can tell you that human nature, does seem to be human nature, and it appears damn hard to cull.
May 19, 2006 - 11:42 am 18. Larry J:What “Armageddon” was to space science (it would be easier to list the things they got right in that movie than the things they got wrong), “Enemy of the State” was to the NSA, spy satellites, and the intelligence community. Honestly, can’t Hollywood writers buy a clue before they release such drivel? Even the otherwise enjoyable “24″ gets virtually every detail about satellites wrong. Come on, orbital mechanics and sensor technology isn’t that hard to understand. Nor, for that matter, are the concepts behind pattern analysis of telephone calling patterns, surveillance of calls between suspected terrorists, verses “wiretapping”.
Also, it was a Democratically controlled Congress that passed legislation in 1994 (signed into law by Bubba himself) that mandated the phone companies turn over information to law enforcement agencies. Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act.
May 19, 2006 - 3:14 pm 19. dclydew:Also, it was a Democratically controlled Congress that passed legislation in 1994 (signed into law by Bubba himself) that mandated the phone companies turn over information to law enforcement agencies.
Yep, both parties are responsible for this. I often think that neither Liberal, nor Conservative politics win in Washington, but only Authoritarian ones.
May 22, 2006 - 12:44 pm 20. Steven Mitchell:Eric, try Franklin’s autobiography. You will not qet the direct quote, but you’ll get enough to know that the quote would fit him.
Too bad the leftists memebots don’t spend more time reading such books instead of posting 3rd and 4th hand observatons cribbed from Bartlets. If they did, they would quit offending Franklin’s memory with such blatant out of context hackery.
Heck, it’s not even a difficult read. We aren’t asking for essays on the Federalists Papers (though passing acquaintance with Fed #10 would be nice). Of course, it might be hazardous to ones mental health to learn that one’s statists assumptions were not supported by any of the Founders.
May 22, 2006 - 2:04 pm 21. dclydew:Steven Mitchell,
it might be hazardous to ones mental health to learn that one’s statists assumptions were not supported by any of the Founders.
So true… I can’t imagine that many of our founding fathers would be caught dead in either party at this point. (Unless of course, the Dems are counting the voting dead again
)
May 23, 2006 - 7:08 am