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Whistleblower Claims NSA Spied On Everyone, Targeted Media
JCWDenton writes "Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice, who helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping in December 2005, has now come forward with even more startling allegations. Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists."
Either I am first or the NSA is really on top of things.
Why Keith Olbermann? Why not a less biased journalist? Any journalist at the Washington Post, Washington Times, etc would have been happy to get this information and run with it. Keith Olbermann's name brings with it a certain amount of partisan baggage.
Disgruntled ex-employee makes accusations with zero evidence. News at 11 I guess.
This guy was just an analyst, not some super high ranking official. The type of data he was privy too was low level and generic. He could say they were monitoring space aliens in Manhattan too and would be correct.
Some people just want to believe this stuff so much they'll grasp at any old straw that agrees with their narrow view of the government.
Not news.
I mean, really, who didn't think the liberal media would be singled out? You kids were born too late to remember McCarthy, and Hoover's FBI, apparently.
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Gasp! They spied on everyone! No! My secrets!!!
So... they didn't really spy on everyone in the sense that they listened to my conversations so much as they COULD have.
Scary stuff, but the /. headline is horribly misleading.
Nice, first post! Ask the NSA, they can verify it...
After all the bennies the outgoing failministration gave FoxNews, perhaps this guy felt that going to a more partisan journalist was a good thing. Does it matter who gets the story first, as everyone is on this?
Your concern smells trollish.
Blar.
and a few folks need to go to jail for a very, very long time.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Is anyone shocked by this revelation? I'd be more surprised if investigations and prosecutions actually occur. Somehow, I have a feeling the Obama administration will want to try to move past Bush's abuses of power as soon as possible in the name of "change," rather than focus on all the bullshit that went on during the past eight years.
The taps that were set up for the NSA were at the backbones, where they had access to all communications, incoming and outgoing. Since it is impossible, even for the NSA, to know with 100% certainty who was at the end of each communication, they would have had to collect everything, as well as store everything. At that point, it is irrelevant what they said they did with the mountains of data they collected.
Finally, it is also impossible to create a classification system that just happens to ignore american citizens during its training/creation phase. Again, it means that it is guaranteed that the NSA would be able to classify the groups involved in the communication. And again, it is irrelevant that the NSA said "Trust us, we're ignoring all of that."
The only real news is that the NSA didn't even internally pretend that they were only interested in communications with or between foreign agents. Everything else has been predicted the instant it became apparent that wiretaps were being done without oversight.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Over the next several months, however, Tice was frustrated in his attempts to testify before Congress, had his credibility attacked by Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh, and was subpoenaed by a federal grand jury in an apparent attempt at intimidation.
That says it all. If Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly can't believe him, then who else in their right mind would.
If papers start reporting on our efforts to do surveillance of al Qaeda agents in this country communicating outside and their flow of money, I would start tapping all of the calls going in and out of the NY Times.
FDR, Lincoln, and any serious President would do the same thing.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I really don't bomb think that some like planes this is possible c4. The amount of suitcase manpower that would be need infiltrated is so vast that smuggle I just can't 747 see it happening.
The person bush & co appointed to department of justice screened fifty applicants and more for their political views. people who told even positive stuff towards gay rights, abortion, any liberal issues even on the internet were screened with the help of a 'special software'.
dont believe me ? well, the woman confessed to all this and more in front of senate committee investigating the issue. 'i have made a mistake' she said. mistake, fifty times.
it would be utterly stupid for any person with a brain cell to believe that an administration which is capable of doing that would not exploit wiretapping for their own political purposes.
Read radical news here
There's an email from a old friend I accidentally deleted. Maybe I could get a copy from the NSA?
It is a sad state of affairs but if you adopts the view that everything you say and do may be monitored by the government without redress then your view is probably not far from what is happening.
The problem with this monitoring is that it's almost impossible to stop or control because by it's very nature it's kept very secret.
I imagine in the future we will end up with a revolution and lots of people will die, that's typically what happens when the ruler is doing something the majority of the populace doesn't agree with. Before you shout that the majority of the population are sheeple and just "think of the children / terrorists" I think the real problem is that they aren't well informed and very time poor and if they knew what was going on and they would disagree strongly.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
It means they couldn't have listed or collected all communications because that wasn't technically possible. That doesn't mean they didn't listen to yours.
since before it existed
What?
If you are innocent, then you have nothing to worry about. That's a pretty wise assessment.
The fact that people are SO worried around here makes me wonder what the hell you are all up to?
Well, with a big enough claim, questions start getting asked. Big questions.
Is it true? Prove it!
Is it false? Prove it!
It might be possible to prove these allegations are true. How would you go about proving they are false?
-- Support a free market in the field of government
I understood what it meant, my point was that it was different from what the headline said (or at least implied.)
To make a pointless car metaphor, it's like if you're trying to sell a junked car, and you put in the ad "will run like new!" when it doesn't have an engine, your rationale being it will run like new once you put a new engine in it.
This is not the NSA spying on everyone, this is the NSA being ABLE to spy on everyone. They could have spied on me, yes, but as he pointed out in the article, they didn't spy on EVERYONE.
The conventional wisdom here is flat-out wrong. At least read a different view, folks!
Political cartoonist Tom Tomorrow reminds us about
I'd forgotten about that incident.
The Bush administration has its own list of scandals, of course. But just as significant a scandal may be the way that our so-called media hid from its audience the true scope of government wrongdoing. Recall that the New York Times sat on the NSA wiretapping scandal for a year before it thought it was time to let us citizens know. If it turns out that the industry that was supposed to be keeping the public informed about things like violations of the Constitution by top elected officials was deliberately concealing that information, it may be time to reconsider whether we have a press in America that's worthy of the name, and what we can do about it.
Anyway, Tom Tomorrow asks what other revelations about the Bush administration are likely to follow. Anyone have any ideas?
This is just pathetic.
"Tice told MSNBC's Keith Olbermann on Wednesday that the programs that spied on Americans were not only much broader than previously acknowledged but specifically targeted journalists."
The Pecking order for paradise at the bottom of the ocean-
1) Lawyers
2) Journalists
3) Terrorists
We have too many of all of the above and culling the herd is way overdue!
And, under the current law and the August 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review ruling, it is explicitly legal.
The FISA Amendments Act of 2008, passed by a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress, allows for foreign intelligence collection on non-US Persons without a warrant, no matter where the collection occurs. The longstanding Smith v. Maryland, 442 US 735 (1979), allows for the collection of communications metadata, i.e., "to" and "from" information, without a warrant. The FISC ruling explicitly finds legal such collection under the now-sunset Protect America Act and, thus, the current FISA Amendments Act of 2008.
In order to determine which traffic content may be collected for foreign intelligence purposes, the traffic metadata must be examined. Even when a target in question is a specific non-US Person of foreign intelligence interest, traffic metadata must first be examined in order to target that person! Because examining traffic metadata was found explicitly legal and Constitutional three decades ago by the United States Supreme Court, doing so in order to target legitimate foreign intelligence collection is allowable under the law.
The major issues for foreign SIGINT were twofold:
- A lot of traffic is now digital versus analog, and cannot be targeted by aiming a directional antenna at a particular geographic locale. It is now traveling largely via things like fiber optic cables, intermixed with all manner of other communications. In order to target the collection, it is no longer a case of sitting on a Navy vessel offshore from some area of interest between individuals talking on two-way radios; it's finding that traffic in a sea of global digital communications.
- Foreign communications of non-US Persons physically outside of the US was increasingly traveling through the US. Previously fair game for foreign intelligence collection throughout the history of such collection in the United States, it suddenly became off-limits without a warrant because it was incidentally routed through locations in the United States. Foreign intelligence collection on non-US Persons outside of the US does not require a warrant, and fundamentally still shouldn't simply because their traffic happens to enter the US.
This was a case of changing technology necessitating an update to a law. A supermajority of both houses of Congress agreed.
Unfortunately, this discussion is so mired in politics, personal grinding of axes, confusion about early NSA programs (like the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, or TSP, which was not renewed after January 2007), and isolated examples of legitimate abuse or misconduct, that not many seem interested in having any real discussion about how foreign intelligence can be reasonably conducted in the digital age. Instead it is a sea of frantic arm-waving and breathless blogging about how the Constitution is being shredded, when the mechanisms of law and judicial oversight have explicitly established the activities as legal.
Ironically, Tice's interview is spot-on. He says, "What was done was sort of an ability to look at the metadata ... and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected," and adds, "we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them."
"Supposedly?"
That's the whole point. So here's an example of someone explaining more or less what is happening, namely, that traffic metadata is examined to determine whether or not it constitutes a foreign intelligence target, and that measures were undertaken to not intercept the content of communications of entities which are not legitima
You can't really fault them for wanting to keep on eye on people like Geraldo Rivera, can you?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
ohh gr8 ... was looking for my lost bookmarks and passwds for last few months ...
can someone from NSA team check their logs and pass it to me pls ?
Then Katie Couric would be in Gitmo as a result of this program.
Get FISA Right is collecting messages on FISA to give to President Obama. Our "asks" were just presented to Macon Phillips at a National Press Club event, and we're running a new video ad "Congratulations, President Obama, please get FISA right". If you'd like to add your opinion (or see the video), please check out Get FISA Right launches new pro-Constitution video on MSNBC, CNN, Fox News, and Comedy Channel on our blog.
Didn't Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot say that she had significant evidence that she was being bugged and her mail being intercepted? I distinctly recall hearing her say this at the Revolution March in DC on July 12, 2008.
I think I got it on video--I'll have to find the video tonight and put it on YouTube.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
Stuff's That's Very Old .
I asserted N.S.A. spied on everyone and was MODDED down.
Slashdot is DEAD. Use
Google News
Yours In Communism,
Kilgore Trout
So wait - are you going deny his allegations? Or are you just spreading FUD about the whistle-blower.
Either way, your main point seems to be that you worked for the NSA...
Big. Woop. Dee. Doo.
And you control the minds of America. We're too busy to do our own thinking, after all.
No, they didn't actually read every e-mail. They didn't even read a significant fraction of them. But, they did categorize every one by who sent them and who received them and then archived them for future use. That's the part that should scare everyone. Even if you happen to like/trust the current administration (or happened to like/trust the previous one), you and your descendents are going to live through many more presidencies. The legal red-tape that people like Bush & Cheney worked to eliminate wasn't, necessarily, meant to stop them it was meant to stop the true monster that will, inevitably, get into office someday. It's almost a guarantee that, some day, someone on the order of Hitler will sneak his/her way into office (Note: This isn't a Godwin as I'm not trying to suggest that Bush & Co. are like Hitler themselves.). When that happens, those limitations on government power are the only thing that has a chance of stopping them. The more we water them down, the more we guarantee his/her future success at destroying this country.
Even in the short term, this kind of illegal invasion of privacy can, easily, lead to lots of people being hurt. Just look at the improper/illegal attorney firing in the Department of Justice under the Bush administration. They went through and fired anyone they thought had connections with political/social views they didn't like. People lost their source of income and the government became much more politically polarized. The kind of info archived by a program like what this guy is suggesting could be used to make similar, illegal/improper, witch-hunt much more "efficient".
Rules of Conduct:
#1 - The DM is always right.
#2 - If the DM is wrong, see rule #1
After everything else we've seen out of Bush's administration, you think the most parsimonious explanation for this story is that this guy's going public with a made-up story in order to get some sort of revenge, and no wrongdoing ever took place? Applying Ockham's Razor doesn't mean forgetting everything you know about the context and just picking a convenient story.
I would expect the NSA to spy on everybody.
I would just expect anything they find to never in anyway be admissible in court.
They are an intelligence agency, little or nothing they do should involve law enforcement or the courts.
You mad
Monitoring journalists is actually a smart move, for an organization that wishes to gather intelligence.
Journalists write about the news. They're sent out on great breaking stories, as well as little crappy ones. They may have one piece of a much bigger story, and never know about it.
Think about this. A guy steals a car in New York. Not big news, right? But someone is bound to cover it. The police only have so much manpower to investigate things. Now, an investigative reporter finds that it's a little old lady, and wants to make it news. It's a fluff story, but maybe someone will have some sympathy for her.
The reporter goes to some neighboring houses. They ask "did you see anything." "What can you tell me about the little old lady." Oh, she's nice, tends to her flowers every day, and has 14 cats. Big deal. That is, until you find that one of the neighbors was actually a person of interest.
The neighbor of interest normally lives in California, but is now in New York. Another person of the same organization had flown into New York (found through the airline reservation systems). Another was stopped crossing the Canadian border because he had a forged passport. Documents in his bag indicate he was going to ... you got it, New York.
I won't agree that it's nice that they record all my calls, emails, and movements. Their job isn't to be nice. Theirs, for the most part, is to gather intelligence. By monitoring journalists, that would put an extra 50,000 eyes and ears out there (according to ASNE) every day. Add that to the more traditional resources, like other law enforcement agencies and their own agents, and now you get a much clearer picture.
They can't depend on the news that does make it. Plenty of stories are written and rejected. The journalist trying to make the story about our little old lady, her 14 cats, and stolen car, will probably never see the light of day. It'll be superseded by any more interesting story.
Do I know that any of this happens? No. But, it would make a lot of sense. I know my own news site is read on a regular basis by just about every intelligence agency there is. I know when I write a story about being flagged as a security risk at the airport, I'm not flagged again. Really, if they monitor everything I do, they're bored out of their minds, but they do know, I'm not a risk. I know if I look through my logs, I get a good glimpse of what they're willing to let me see (the occasional IP from their agency). I know that's not the whole story either. I just think of it as their way of saying "hi".
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
Let me know when /. decides to balance this "story" with something from Chris Wallace and Fox News. As a newsman, Keith Olbermann is a very mediocre sportscaster. Yes, as a matter of fact, I do question the source on this one, just as I question Fox News.
Wow, in addition to being an atheist Muslim Canadian Joseph McCarthy loving stock analyst who uses SPICE in his circuit design work you're also a mid-to-high ranking spook at the NSA? And yet you still find time to post about it all on /.?
Amazing. Simply amazing. If true.
--MarkusQ
I find it interesting that you can so swiftly chalk it up to a "grudge"...whether or not he's lying through his teeth or being completely honest, he's made basically the most powerful enemy on the planet.
I understand the concept of a "burden of proof" but how could someone so pathological as to turn the US Intelligence community against them merely for the sake of a "grudge" have gotten past the psychological screening process? Every defector/spy/etc case I've heard of involved money or blackmail or a combination of the two.
This is not the NSA spying on everyone, this is the NSA being ABLE to spy on everyone. They could have spied on me, yes, but as he pointed out in the article, they didn't spy on EVERYONE.
I don't know about that. I've always suspected that New Hampshire is simply a front for the NSA's spying operations on the rest of the US.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Just wait till it comes out that they spied on Senators from the opposition party.
I always wondered about how when Gonzales, Bush, Hayden, Cheney were defending warrantless wiretaps on americans by saying "this program only eavesdrops on americans domestically if they are one end of a conversation with someone outside the U.S linked to Al Qaeda/terror" whether the "this program" implied that there were other programs that did not have that restriction.
What I posted does not imply I worked at the NSA. Think about it
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Screw this "Now who's really surprised?" guff.
Screw the apologias for law-breaking, secrecy, and contempt for law.
Contact your REPRESENTATIVE and SENATORS:
http://www.conservativeusa.org/mega-cong.htm
http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/
Contact the WHITE HOUSE:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/
Demand an investigation. Drag the people responsible for this into the light. Publish the mail and meeting minutes. Make the records public.
Hold the bastards accountable.
LOL @ "screening". Many sociopaths are quite adept at keeping the burner low--at least until some point. A screening is not an all-revealing X-ray; it merely removes the worst outliers.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
You really do love apologizing for whatever deeply un-American shit the Bushies did. People like you are what will kill our liberties.
So the NSA has a copy of all those lost White House emails?????
Great!
One aspect of this that many seem to forget is the potential for stock-market fraud that these illegal surveillance techniques could easily present. You joke like these things don't affect you, and maybe you have good reasons to think that. Maybe you don't buy into the psychology of a chilling effect of government surveillance. Maybe you're an upright citizen with nothing to hide and no enemies. Maybe you don't have any "secrets." But if you have any investments or savings at all, you should be concerned.
Imagine the kind of profit one could have made by short-selling on financial stocks in the past 12 months. One or two illegally tapped phonecalls is all it likely would have taken to make billions while average investors lost their shirts. Do you really trust those in-charge (or even low-level personnel) to resist that kind of financial temptation?
If the public doesn't aggressively push their representatives to investigate these very serious allegations then they deserve everything they get. Don't shake your fists at the heavens when your 401(k) or IRA is wiped out years from now (maybe already?) from such fraud as if it were some kind of act of God or natural disaster.
-Grym
And how does it make you feel when these intelligence agencies say "hi" to you like this? Do you post about it so they know that you got their message? Or do you just go buy another copy of "Catcher In The Rye"?
And finally, do you find your news site as satisfying to run as a mimeographed newsletter would be?
--MarkusQ
Gasp! They spied on everyone! No! My secrets!!!
So... they didn't really spy on everyone in the sense that they listened to my conversations so much as they COULD have.
Doesn't your quote imply that they did listen exactly as much as they COULD have? IE, to the best of their ability?
Would the parent have been modded troll if he made the same observation about going on Bill O'Reilly? To a lot of us, Olbermann is in the same league as him (he just chooses different topics to manufacture outrage over) and it's pretty hard to take him seriously.
And regardless of what you think of him do try and remember this: Olbermann is not a reporter. He's a commentator. It seems to me like a lot of people have forgotten the difference between the two.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
You worked with Tice closely enough to know his security clearances, therefore, you implicate yourself in his accusations.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
But, they did categorize every one by who sent them and who received them and then archived them for future use.
So, if they'd done it to monitor spam nets.....?
Gasp! They spied on everyone! No! My secrets!!! ... So... they didn't really spy on everyone in the sense that they listened to my conversations so much as they COULD have.
Well they probably know what's in your pr0n collection. Nothing else seemed worth while ;)
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
Actually, it does imply that. A) You say he's a former colleague. B) You claim to have knowledge regarding the level of access he had at the NSA.
"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure." --Robert Heinlien
If they were "spying" on the "journalists", dont you think they would have used the stuff they dug up to discredit them?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
If the dems are going to be smart and bring in ppl like Sibel Edmunds, Bob Tice, etc to talk to them, or will these ppl have to continue running to the press with bits and pieces? There is a lot more to come.
Even if they were TRYING to respect the 4th amendment and the traditional NSA distinction between foreign and domestic spying, it wouldn't matter with this type of collection. Such a large fishnet would inevitably yield *way* more "false positives" than actual criminal calls. I would not be surprised if this program didn't even catch a single true terrorist of foreign threat.
This leads to the inevitable question of whether sussing out foreign threats was even the program's *intention* (rather than just its justification). If the guy in this article is telling the truth, it would seem that it was never about foreign threats to the U.S. at all, but rather about spying on domestic threats to the Bush Administration and plugging leaks (a la Richard Nixon's plumbers).
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Many posts on this thread are interesting. The journalist is attacked. The analyst is attacked. The story is attacked.
But the bottom line is: Nobody really knows anything. And that lack of knowledge is unacceptable. Congress is responsible for this. Congressional oversight of our spy agencies is their damn duty. And CONGRESS has let us down.
If this analyst's statements are false, we should be hearing assurances of that fact by our representatives and senators. The silence of the congressmen is deafening. They are betraying our trust in them.
That is all what you need to know about the imbecile.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I'm sorry, but this guy just reaks of paranoia, I'm not saying he's necissarily wrong or that it shouldn't be investigated but something about this just doesn't seem right.
[I sent a ] handwritten letter [to the white house], because I knew all my communications were tapped, my phones, my computer, and I've had the FBI on me like flies on you-know-what
He's convinced that the FBI is watching him like a hawk, but that they can't intercept a paper letter sent directly to the whitehouse?
Will shock everyone more than who they monitored.
I'll bet they didn't record business conversations...
Even though those/that businesses had BSL-3 and BSL-4 labs and/or made guns, bombs, nuclear materials, chemicals and moved money for a living.
10/1 Haliburton wasn't monitored for even a minute.
Thanks to eating disorders most chicks are reasonably good looking these days.
Since your comment is even more vaporous that TFA, perhaps you might enlighten us with what cause he has, perceived or real, to hang on to a grudge. The firing itself?
The funny part about the part you find funny is the article "implied"(stated) his access was limited and therefore was only able to piece together the extent of the program over time and some other undisclosed means. A little far fetched?...maybe but certainly no more than your own. If you have real information you can share then do so, otherwise do us a favor and keep your unfounded personal attacks to yourself.
brandelf -t FreeBSD
I just can't support this guy coming out this way. People who work on these programs and for or with the various three-letter-agencies take a very serious oath not to reveal information about their projects to anyone who isn't appropriately cleared. That oath doesn't just hold until you don't work there anymore, it's for the rest of your life. Revealing secrets about our capabilities really can hurt the United States. It's not up to the analysts and engineers to decide when to release classified information or even sensitive but unclassified information about these programs.
The right way to fight these things and to bring them to light is to vote for individuals who will uphold the law. There are also members of Congress who have the relevant clearances, but may not know the details of every program. They can be encouraged to take a closer look without spraying sensitive information all over the evening news. Proper whistle-blower protections will guarantee that personnel working on these programs can air their legitimate concerns through the right channels without compromising our nation's security.
but I guess I can't. I personally think Olbermann gets it right more often than O'Reilly and Hannity (and of course Limbaugh), but I also think that's more because "reality has a well-known liberal bias" as Steven Colbert famously said than because of any responsible action on Olbermann's part. He really does seem to react by reflex, and manufacture umbrage at every opportunity.
Low ID users have been around longer, probably have more "alignment" with the community mentality, and just more experience commenting. Thus it's likely they get modded up. I doubt many people look at IDs before moderating.
And I've got a low ID, so that makes it true.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
Disgruntled ex-employee makes accusations with zero evidence. News at 11 I guess.
This guy was just an analyst, not some super high ranking official. The type of data he was privy too was low level and generic.
You have no clue what an analyst is, do you?
High ranking officials often make it a point to *NOT* know, or be informed of, things that may jeopardize themselves politically and legally. Analysts on the other hand, are the people who ACTUALLY DO the Top Secret work the public never hears about.... unless an analyst blows the whistle on illegal, immoral, unconstitutional acts ordered by (in this case) Bush and Cheney.
Read a book or something....sheesh.
I am open source, and Linux baby!
Yeah, good points. If your explanation of B is true then it's no surprise this guy got fired. I'd fire his ass too. Hell, just watching this unfold, if I were the guy who fired him I'd be patting myself on the back.
"Bread and Circuses is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure." --Robert Heinlien
to get on television. He may be telling the truth but I don't think I'd ever believe him. His stories sound like delusions of grandeur to compensate for being fired. I guess that fills my arm-chair psycho-analysis quota for the day.
I'm glad the net's throwing media into chaos. Let's hope something more forthright shakes out.
This shillery is just pathetic. Don't you have any terrorists to torture? Oh yeah, new prez, must be boring since they won't let you torture anybody but slashdot readers!
Free Martian Whores!
If you are innocent, then you have nothing to worry about. That's a pretty wise assessment.
For:
Against:
...when the Soviets threw in the towel. Immediately, all the Congress-critters started chanting "Peace Dividend!" (Translation: "We're going to cannibalize the Defense and Intelligence budgets to fund our pork-barrel projects!"). As a result, the budgets of both Defense and Intel were trimmed, and a lot of pros were either cut or forced into early retirement.
As a result of that, by the late 90's the U.S. found itself dangerously understaffed, particularly in both the Intelligence and Counterintelligence/Security fields.
Then 9/11/2001 rolled around; a tour-de-force of failures in both Intel and Security, surprise-surprise. After that, one would have thought that even dimwits like you would have finally gotten a clue, but I guess that was just too much to hope for.
With this country, it's always one "Task Force Smith" right after another, and no-one ever learns.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task_Force_Smith
Regards;
Why wait over three years? Let me guess, he's writing a book.
The legal red-tape that people like Bush & Cheney worked to eliminate wasn't, necessarily, meant to stop them it was meant to stop the true monster that will, inevitably, get into office someday.
The fact that they were able to eliminate the red tape shows that we(americans) have a false sense of freedom.
My theory is the american people just seem like unintelligent pushovers. If you piss them off enough, you will get more than you bargained for by removing that red tape.
I've been on the net since 1991 (using USENET and IRC on a text terminal at Duke) and I have a six digit /. UID.
Which means you were late 'getting' Slashdot. That's an important measure.
I could have had an ID under 100, but at the time I was of the opinion that everything on the net was to be anonymous. I didn't 'get it' until nearly 5000 other people had already figured it out, and that'll show for all time.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...is Pardon GW Bush or Tricky-Dick Cheney. Call me a dreamer, but what if Obama plans to prosecute the former administration?
Every time we turn around, we heard more revelations about lies, misdirection, misinformation and deceit from the Bush administration. How much more will we have to hear before anyone is angry enough to actually allow action to be taken? Bush makes Nixon look like an angel.
It sold for $115.
I'd really like to know how a Canadian would happen to have a future US spook as a colleague, and still talk with him about things like classified work areas.
I'm gonna call bullshit here.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
You just illustrated a point that I think was forgotten by folks in the last presidency. There seemed to be an idea that their ideology would reign supreme for eternity, and so any skirting of the law would be a way of forwarding their agenda. Oh course they failed to remember that their constitutional erosions will stay in place long after they have gone. Suddenly the left is in control of a massive overreaching government who can spy on us at will (and take us a torture us). The only hope we have is that Obama is what he says he is and willing to roll back his own power. In the end I wish that we didn't have to trust anyone to do that, and hadn't broken it in the first place. A good president understands he and his allies will not always be in power, and acts accordingly. That is the balance that is supposed to help keep our executive branch in check.
I remember when I was a boy how they always told us how free we were and they always showed the huge files that the commies had to keep files on all their own citizens to keep them in line.
So now our government is keeping files on all of us... so I guess using the right wings own propaganda, they are now commies.
All of this information needs to be destroyed immediately and anyone that had anything to do with collecting or storing this information needs to be executed as traitors to this country.
The conservatives you mention. By your definition they haven't had anyone to vote for in the last 100 years or so.
Seriously, if you're a conservative of that stripe...who do you vote for?
And another thing. Conservatives such as the people you describe need to *SPEAK UP* and get represented. Although I usually vote Democrat, I would happily consider people of that mind set. Anything that marginalizes the neocons is good, IMHO.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Can you tell me again why we need covert foreign intelligence? What do you consider their greatest achievements?
They missed the Russian army marching into Afghanistan. They missed the collapse of the Soviet Union. They missed the WTC attack in 93. They missed 9/11. They missed WMD in Iraq, or helped the Administration manufacture the evidence. So wouldn't it be better to spend 100 billion a year on securing our ports and borders, rather than hiring agents who pay double agents who we hope know something about anything, or trying to datamine e-mails for terrorist activity? It's colossally stupid. Do you really think you're going to find a non-encrypted, non-coded message between two guys that says, "Hey Ahmed! Zero hour is next Tuesday at three o'clock. Would you like to grab dinner before our salvation?" If you do decode the network, it's probably too late. Hell, they don't even have ten people who read Arabic at the FBI. They have more interest in power than in counter-intelligence.
And here someone will say that we're not allowed to know what they've prevented to protect our intelligence gathering methods. Well, here's to hoping you and the emperor continue to enjoy your new clothes.
Freedom and security are mutually exclusive options. If you lose important freedoms to have a small chance at security, there's nothing left to defend.
Hell, being anti-American isn't even a crime, much less being communist, or socialist. What the hell does "anti-American" even mean, really? I hated Bush, his policies, his wars, his abuse of the constitution; does that make me anti-American? I really dislike much of our culture; does this make me anti-American? I'm a social libertarian; does that? I'm not a fan of our economic philosophies and our view that they are superior to everyone else's (or worse, that their sinonymous with democracy or freedom); am I anti-American?
As far as I'm concerned, these positions make you actively pro-American, not anti-American.
Sadly, most of America has become anti-American.
Knowledge != Intelligence
Does it really matter if people were "commies"?
Its just a political ideology, and just like the rest of them, it has good points and bad points. Discriminating, or ruining peoples lives in this case, against people because you don't personally like their opinion is wrong.
Communism, at the time, was equated with Nazism. The US government, driven by hysteria on the part of a few blowhards whose sole purpose is to win re-election by sowing fear (gee, that sounds familiar) worked to make belief in any political ideology short of "Democracy" (we have never had that on a national level in the United States) illegal. As a member of a union I was forced to join (by nature of my work) I had to, in the 1990s sign a paper indicating that I was not a member of the Communist Party or any organization allied with Communism. Everyone who joins a union today still has to sign such a statement.
Frankly, when I signed that statement, I realized it was a direct violation of my rights as a citizen to associate with whom I wish and to believe in what I prefer to believe in.
As a part of our "campaign against godless Communism," Congress even went as far as to have a new motto imprinted on all of our money: "In God We Trust" and they also changed the Pledge of Allegiance to include under God after "One nation" and before "Indivisible."
These latter measures, designed to oppose Communism, have been "reinterpreted" by part of he political spectrum as proof that the United States is a "Christian nation" which I understand means "theocracy."
But it did matter if people were "commies." They lost their jobs and were forced to find other work, usually for a lot less pay. The blacklist didn't end until the 1960s and was a list of people "convicted" mostly on hearsay evidence with no trial.
The creepy thing about Bush is that he was using the same techniques Nixon used against journalists and others perceived to be "enemies." Everyone knows today that Nixon was extremely paranoid. I don't think Bush is paranoid like Nixon, he is just mean, like his mother.
And, with the President of the United States allowed to incarcerate anyone who he declares to be an "enemy combatant," your hatred of Bush, his policies, wars and Constitutional abuse makes you not anti-American as much as an "enemy combatant."
And I use that term, based on the Bush Administration's definition of "returned to the battlefield" applied to released inmates of Gitmo: Anyone who wrote an article or whose lawyer wrote an article or spoke out to describe their captivity was considered having "returned to the battlefield." So, I am assuming you spoke out about your dislike of the past administration.
How does it feel to be an "enemy combatant?"
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.
I do have to call you on this one... The US attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president. Clinton fired every single one of them to insure their loyalty to his administration. Their job is to represent the administration's policies.
There was nothing improper or illegal about the firing process... However there did seem to be something amok with the interview questions during the hiring process.
....And do what with the prisoners?
I hate to bring up one little, carefully glossed-over fact, Pollyanna, but some of Gitmo's inmates are hardcore mass-murderers.
What do you do with them? Put a bullet in the backs of their heads? Ship them home? Turn them loose?
Curious minds would like to know....
Regards;
Everyone ?
If the NSA spied on "everyone", then surely they'd have to spy on themselves also ? That's an awful lot of spys ! Do they have a rota system to ensure that no one ends up spying on themselves ? Do they need a Beowulf cluster of spys ?
That headlin is really like the casino bosses who used to proclaim "everyone's a winner". If that were true, and everyone did in fact win, they'd go out of business pretty damn quick.
Now if the article headline had been, for example, "NSA spied on eveyone who mattered", then that's something more pertinent. The existing one is just pure tabloid sensationalism.
Respect your slash elders, young man !
music lover since 1969
You're genuinely paranoid.
I just don't think he is telling the truth on that one. Wait and see I guess.
Oh, yeah, like anybody is going to follow a tinyurl link from /..
in the 1990s sign a paper indicating that I was not a member of the Communist Party or any organization allied with Communism. Everyone who joins a union today still has to sign such a statement.
Well, (unfortunately) I've been a member of a few unions and was never asked to sign a piece of paper that stated a I was or wasn't a member of any political party. They were all just interested in a cut of my paycheck.
Bush has done more for the comfort of America's enemies than anyone else in the world since his election. He recruited very effectively for terrorist groups, diminished American freedoms, espoused torture, and impoverished Americans. Treason does not have to be intentional or openly espoused.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
Give it a shot. Just pick up your phone and ask them when you hear the dial tone.
I Know You're Listening
Eclipse PDE and Me
Commies (and yes, I use that term intentionally) were just less creative about how they committed mass murder... the skipped the whole elaborate Xyklon-off-the-trains scenario, and went straight to firing squads and starvation.
You *are* aware that Communism, the political idealogy, != Stalinism/totalitarianism, right? I mean, I get that you Americans have been brainwashed over the last 50 years to believe that communism precisely equates to the Russian purges, but... have you not yet learned that that's not *actually* true?
I mean, I fully concede that Communism, as it's been implemented on a large scale in recent human history, has devolved to totalitarianism, but that doesn't mean the two are equal. Or are you telling me that your average hutterite colony is a hotbed of genocidal killings that we're just not aware of?
Not only this, but while we were "fighting communism," we were propping up authoritarian regimes around the world - many worse than the communism we were "fighting" ...
How about "War On KP"?
In the interest of 'National Security', the NSA can be forced to become our Internet Nanny, monitoring and admonishing our errant Internet habits, with the uncertainty of unknown consequences in undisclosed locations being a powerful deterrent.
Don't need COPA or anything like it to protect us and especially our children. NSA can be made to do it.
Her lips were softer than a duck's bill, but her quacks
Just some hard facts about life at NSA and the liklihood that this guy is full of crap. First, analysts are a dime a dozen. Sorry, not to demean any of you, but it is the 'foot in the door' for young people wanting to pick up a civil service job. Second, analysts have very very limited visibility. While some have access to raw SIGINT, that access is monitored to the point that, a) Their ability to see enough to put together a 'big picture' is restricted, and b) that any misuse of SIGINT systems (ie. collecting on folks that shouldn't be) would be found out and stopped nearly immediately. Contrary to popular belief, NSA is not a den of ner-do-wells looking to track your and my every move. By and large, NSA is a group of some of the most talented engineers (and analysts) you've ever met in your life. The culture of fear instilled in EVERYONE that a mere mistep regarding FISA, dual-authorities, etc. will land you in jail is enormous. We used to kid around about the fact that there were more lawyers present than operators during OPS. Keep lambasting them in the public with no inside knowledge, and some fame-whoring jackass like this as though he's credible and soon you want have an effective NSA.
We have a number of visitors at my local library who believe that the government or some other major group is spying on them or even harassing them. Certainly, they fall into the paranoid category. You should hear some of the claims they make!! That said, at least this guy (subject of the posted story) has (had) some access to real information and we know that the NSA, et al, and their data mining, so the story is plausible. On the other hand, the guy could be in the same boat as some of these library visitors: out of his mind with paranoia. The best paranoids base their conspiracy theories on truths and plausible concepts. Time will tell, but I imagine he's at least partially right, even if by accident.
I hope this comment is well received... I could have moderated instead!
Persecutors will be violated!
I don't think your premise is correct. Bush and Cheney were high-level officials, yet you say they ordered all this illegal stuff. Is there a special exception to your rule?
Very!
I hear you. But I also think that the problem with trying to work within a system to fight corruption of the system itself is largely pointless once the corruption reaches a critical mass. Eventually, you just have to say, "No" to the actors in lab coats with their authority-endowing clip boards who instruct you to increase the voltage and shock the actor strapped in the chair. Because sometimes, usually, it's not just a disturbing university social-studies experiment. The sad truth today is that official organs have become systems with the primary purpose of keeping populations enslaved, largely ignorant of the fact, and content to just go with it. --Or to be confounded when the official channels of complaint become too convoluted to be of any use, thus using up all the available energy of the complainant and leaving him or her with the feeling, "Oh well, at least I tried." The end result, as appears to be the case with you, is to simply get back to work, secure in the knowledge that you did your best. And nothing changes. A safety valve for dealing with people who have a glimmer of awareness and fight in them.
Our trust and reliance on the system to protect us, as well as our perceived duty to be loyal to that system is taught by the system itself during our youth when we are at our most trusting and our minds at their most vulnerable to manipulations from which many never recover enough to even fully recognize have even occurred. There comes a time when you have to screw up the courage and do that which is right, because secrecy is very often there primarily to protect the perps. --As is certainly the case with spying on the public.
Also, you must be cautious. When you say, "I stand by what I said," that standing is very much like the statement itself, one bound up with a notion of honor and duty to a system which hates and fears its subjects. Honor and duty are not bad things in and of themselves, but with the appropriate conditioning, they become facets of the personality which are easily redirected into empowering the corruption.
It's very easy to take offense and for the ego to scream and yell when such ideas are pointed out, but understanding our world cannot be achieved when valid notions become things to fight against for fear of 'being wrong'. This is usually what keeps people from progressing. Fear of feeling wrong. The aggression and ridicule which is so rampant on this very site is another programmed response. Geeks get it the worst, I suspect because they are generally more aware and capable of dealing with thought problems. As such, they suffer from the deepest programming, and you can see it in their reactions. I've seen spittle fly and eyes roll around like those of frightened horses when discussing benign facts and ideas. This is not rational behavior, and it comes from somewhere. All of it is yet another aspect of the control system built into use through our childhood experiences with schooling.
Objective reality is all that counts. The rest is a trap.
Cheers!
-FL
There is no need to inject partisan politics into this issue. Each individual congressperson (democrat or republican) bears responsiblilty for the lack of oversight in this matter.
Thank-you for nipping that one in the bud so succinctly. It's far too easy to slip into old response patterns. Divide and conquer is a popular tactic because it works. It takes clarity of mind to overcome our garden variety pre-conditioning.
-FL
The biggest nixon fanboys RAN the bush whitehouse! Nixon wouldn't spy in such a primitive fashion if he had today's technology. He would do what they did in a heartbeat.
Perhaps Liberman went for bush on every important issue because they had something on him?
Perhaps the corrupt, perverted, and closet-homosexual republicans HAD to vote the way they did 90+% of the time! (that is, until it leaked out on a few of them-- no, I didn't say all republicans.) This is not unrealistic-- these are lawyers who live by quid pro quo. Spending the USA into the ground is not a very republican thing to do (except the last 8 years...)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
If you are innocent, then you have nothing to worry about. That's a pretty wise assessment.
And by saying that, you just lost the right to be taken seriously.
I mean, that's right up there with, "I was just following orders."
How out of touch does a person have to be to not know this stuff? Seriously. Google for it. It's not complicated. --And frankly, it ought to be covered around the same time as street crossing safety tips and telephone etiquette.
-FL
The attitude here - /.ers discussing snooping - seems to me like medical professionals discussing ethics and legallity of salmonella behavior. It's there, it feeds on you. Use proper safety procedures to avoid and antibiotics to remove.
Anonymizing techniques to stay below radar.
Encryption to remain opaque.
NSA probably cannot break (and for sure cannot afford to admit via any action if it could) modern crypto tools, without targeting and subverting individual terminals (in which case you are fscked anyway).
If there was widespread use of encryption, this would be a non-issue. Who cares if the consultant lies or not? Who cares what Congress or POTUS or any TLA wants or thinks or says?
Just encrypt it and move on.
"Echelon."
This NSA business is a side show. Of COURSE we are being spied on. We've always been spied on. This is only a debate with those who have short memories or denial issues.
It's as though people live in two separate universes but only pay attention to one of them because the other one is just too upsetting. Doesn't make it go away, though.
I was talking with a friend a couple of weeks back, and she asked me a question about something, so I answered it. She looked alarmed and upset and flew into accusations and anger and stormed away. This surprised me because I didn't think what we were talking about was even terribly interesting. It was old, old news for me.
Then the other day she phoned up and apologized. Seems she checked it out on her own and grudgingly verified the answer I'd offered her. I told her it was okay, and that it was easy for me to forget that this stuff is upsetting when you first learn about it. Scary and life-altering, and a very real option is to just block it out and pretend that everything is as we are told it is. Heck, even with Echelon, I went through a state of fear when I first learned about it and who was involved and why it was happening. But that story broke years ago now, and it was old even then. It's easy to forget that people find comfort in a continuity of reality, even if it is a false one, and that this is often why they reject new ideas.
-FL
should be targeted by the NSA and CIA. He's working for the other side. Whether through malice or ignorance (he has no clue most of the time), he's helping our enemies more than you all know.
I don't see that happening anytime soon. Depression-era Germany was quite overcrowded, had no money, no land, no food and a crappy government that was still in shambles after a monarchy-created war a few decades before. The monarchy is gone now, so we don't have to worry about a WWI, and the people of this country have their needs met enough by the free market that they will not support a fascist (ie: corporatist) government. Hitler was only in power for about what, 5 years? WWII was about the German corporations more than it's figurehead leader (although yes, he was a madman). It was a pretty clean war at, the U.S. may have gotten behind Germany if it weren't for Pearl Harbor. What happened in the later years was disgusting but that was not the cause.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
"Granted, some of the arguments get really circular, but there is wisdom in the old-timers."
Note to self. Ask grandpa if women should stay in the kitchen?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
"People don't often get tired of voicing their actual opinions."
Haven't been modded down much, have you?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Talk about brainwashing!
The (at that time underground) communist party, with strong ties to the Soviet one, was actually one of the major players in the abolishment of a decades long dictatorship in my country, and it's not an isolated case. And no, they didn't run around executing people.
Communism is as valid a political ideology as any of the others, and it's certainly not "evil". Its implementation, on the other hand, might be. So can an implementation of conservatism, as the US has so successfully shown over the last few years.
And no, I'm far from being communist, never voted for the communist party and probably never will. I just find it sad to see someone so obviously brainwashed by false, discusting propaganda.
Here's what I always understood.
The NSA dragnet collect information or collect any info(?) ('spy') on its own citizens for the purposes of intelligence gathering. Its against Constitutional rights. Its against the policies and objectives of the NSA (must be for FOREIGN targets only). OK.
The FBI probably can't collect information in a similar fashion (tapping all telephones, internet). It must obtain a warrant and must target a specific individual. Ok.
Canada has an intelligence agency (CSIS). As well the US is in 'good' relations with the French, British, Autralians, etc.
It seems -THE loophole- is that any other another government could collect information on every US citizen's Internet access (destined in or outside the US) and then share that information with the US - presumably the FBI or Secret Service etc since it would fall well within their jurisdiction. As long as the information isn't being collected domestically.
If you wanted to get the media interested in your story, what better way than to say "you were targeted!"?
If you won't say it, I will. The neocons ARE Hitler reincarnate, and America IS a fascist nation.
How many innocent Arabs has american militarism killed? Errr wait, I suppose killing the Indians wasn't genocide either? Just eradicating barbarians and securing freedom, as Andrew Jackson liked to point out. God bless him. He should be on the 20 dollar bill. Oh yeah... I forgot.
Scanning data with computers in order to determine whether to have a human being look at it still qualifies as "spying".
More important than legal/illegal, tapping reporters is bad for the nation. If reporters cannot talk confidentially to people, many people will not talk to them.
Ultimately, I think it's clear that reporters as a whole are more important than intelligence agencies. Or, at least, the value of reporters is clear and obvious. Certainly, it is not obvious that all this signals intelligence work will actually make us much safer.
Anyhow, trying to piggyback on reporters is a bad idea. Killing the goose that laid the golden egg kind of thing. And, I say this who is not a reporter, merely an avid reader of newspapers.
Only if they are corrupt or incompetant arseholes, and they really are just maintaining the appearance of not knowing in order to dodge the consequences of appearing to be responsible. The important thing in that case is to be seen to be not informed so any fallout lands on a scapegoat. It really is a very bad way to run any sort of organisation. When underlings discover they are not under adult supervision a large variety of crimes occur.
This is one of the dumbest things I've ever seen posted here on Slashdot, and that's saying a lot. If I could mod you -1 Clueless I would. Communism was as bad as National Socialism ever was. Nazis were just more open about their plans for genocide, but when you crunch the numbers, communism accomplished a lot more in the murder category. Commies (and yes, I use that term intentionally) were just less creative about how they committed mass murder... the skipped the whole elaborate Xyklon-off-the-trains scenario, and went straight to firing squads and starvation. Your thinking is a prime example of what we used to call "The Banality of Evil"... the ideal that evil is overblown and really, isn't that big a deal. In your case, the ghosts of 60+ million people would disagree.
Congratulations, you're officially brainwashed.
Communism is an ideology, or a theory, or whatever you want to call it. I'll happily say that I consider it to be very flawed, since it makes certain assumptions about human nature pretty much anyone over the age of 5 understands are wrong.
The way some countries chose to implement communism is different. There's a difference between thought and action. If you fail to see that difference, then that explains a lot about the state the US of A is in these days.
I take it you also consider Islam to be evil?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
deserves
It's our own fault for this to occur on various levels.
First we elected the people stomping all over our rights and worse, reelected the vast majority again.
Second there is no particular public outcry over the doings of NSA and their willing accomplices (ATT, Verizon etc.), in fact, we still keep paying the latter happily every month for 'service'.
Third...can we really complain when our communication gets monitored on a vast scale if we take no steps to protect them in the least? The issue has been known for decades, the solutions have been available for almost an equal amount of time. We just do not use them as it's apparently too inconvenient, too complicated, yadda yadda... So why can't Johnny encrypt...STILL in 2009 and what are we as techies gonna do about it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
In that case, I'll call you on this one. Clinton fired the USAs when he assumed office, like most presidents do. Bush fired some USAs during his second term, including those he appointed, apparently (according to several whistleblowers--and look for much more of this in the months ahead) because they weren't pursuing certain cases "aggressively enough" when they had no evidence to bring those cases to court, and because they were pursuing other cases "too aggressively" when they *did* have evidence. What do you consider immoral or illegal if not obstruction of justice?
While the blatant bias on Fox is irritating, I just keep mind of the fact that it's the television equivalent of a three year old's screeching as he's being dragged out of the restaurant for a timeout.
Fox once had an opinion that mattered to an administration more interested in promoting divisiveness than intellectual debate. The tables have turned and they're now facing a long stretch in the political wilderness. Like the rabid three year old, they just want to make as much noise as possible on the way out.
I'm not tense. I'm just terribly, terribly, alert.
I would feel the same way if I hadn't just discovered MSNBC has taken a similar position on the other side of the aisle. (if MSNBC is as juvenile as FOX, which I still kind of doubt) Anyways, as long as there are two to tango, Fox News will continue.
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
Wrong. Socialism (communism obviously can't exist in a world with human beings; all "Communist" countries in history have necessarily been socialist) HAS to be implemented through totalitarianism. It doesn't work without total cooperation by the whole populace, and barring hypnosis or mind-altering drugs, violent totalitarianism is the only way to ensure that. The ONLY way.
Sure, but obviously a few stepped in it. :)
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
So has the NSA spying driven the prices of computer gear, cpus, ram, disk, tesla boards, etc... down low?
At least one benefit.
I suggest that we all collectively spy on THEM and publish all the materials! Oh, to some degree that's happening on the internet already.
That's because you're not very smart. The fact is yes, Bush/Cheney DID order MANY illegal acts, and nobody with half a brain questions that. However, by stating only 'super-high-ranking officials' know precisely what is going on is absolutely incorrect.
Bush/Cheney did illegally wiretap many people without any cause (not 'just cause') ANY cause. Bush/ Cheney DID tell the intel community to 'find reasons to justify invading Iraq' --- maybe you don't know this, I forgive you if you don't it's not common knowledge. However, an ANALYST is one of the most important positions in the intelligence community. For your information, intelligence goes just a bit like this:
1. gather intel
2. analyze it
3. provide the facts to people who need it
4. move along
Guess who the people do steps 2,3, and 4?
I'll give you a hint, it's not high-ranking officials. High-ranking officials are either dickheads like Bush/Cheney, or someone they have ordered to act in proxy.
I am open source, and Linux baby!