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Letter to "Extended Family" Assures That NSA Will "Weather This Storm"
An anonymous reader writes "The National Security Agency sent a letter to its employees, affiliates and contractors to reassure them that the NSA is not really an abusive and unchecked spying agency engaged in illegal activity." Whatever you think of the commentary, you can read the original, attached to the linked story.
"In the coming weeks and months more stories will appear"
In other words there's shit storm that's about to rain down on the NSA that will shake the organization to it's knees. And they know it.
Weather this storm indeed.
People have plenty of attention span, the media on the otherhand has none. Heard much of anything about the majority of the democrats walking out of the Benghazi hearings because they refused to listen to witness testimony?
Om, nomnomnom...
Seriously, though, just because you say it doesn't make it true.
The simple fact that they felt it necessary, despite how self-incriminating it appears, for them to send out such a letter to their own people in essence, says many volumes about how much trust one should put in the NSA's "assurances".
The NSA is going to have to engage heavily in blackmailing politicians, because nearly everyone...(D), (R), conservatives, liberals, politicians, journalists, progressives, capitalists, socialists, and communists...have realized that the NSA doesn't make any distinctions whatsoever concerning whose data they slurp up and whether or not it might be used for blackmail or for setting them up for a lengthy prison sentence if it becomes expedient for the government to make someone "go away", short of outright State-ordered murder.
Pay no attention to anything the NSA or the politicians say. Watch what they do, instead.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
They also don't have the intelligence to realise that the NSA is just the tech guy. They do the hacking but they are not the ones issuing the instructions for what to go for or the ones doing the data storage and consolidation. They do not call it the 'Central' intelligence agency for nothing. Right now in the foreground exposed for what is was doing is the NSA but make no mistake this is all the CIA's doing and they were the ones doing the nasty with all the private data they go from the NSA, the tech guy.
Still not one political demand to uncover where the data went and what was done with it. The CIA has had deep control of the US government for decades and has been deeply political both within the US and overseas. Want to look at why the NSA went so far off the rails, look no further than the CIA.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Bear in mind that there are two different things NSA does/did, with very different implications.
1) They weakened cryptographic standards. This deserves all the criticism you're dishing out.
2) They researched how to break crypto. This is completely within their (and anyone else's) right to do. The alternative viewpoint - that merely trying to break crypto should be illegal - is exactly what the MPAA and RIAA have been trying to foist upon us with the draconian provisions in the DMCA prohibiting breaking DRM.
I have no idea if what you suggest is true, that NSA is just the go-to bunch of nerds for CIA. Actually more likely there would be several puppet masters. Some military intelligence outfits, certainly. And FBI and DEA came up recently as well. Big US Corporations? It would seem so.
But regardless, I don't agree, if that is even what you were implying, that we should therefore not criticize said nerds for facilitating so willingly. Some of whom surely frequent /. ... Not cool, guys.
Of course every bit of understanding about who really calls the shots is welcome. But don't underestimate the extent to which a colossal bureaucracies can go off the rails by their own self sustained momentum.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)