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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.
Seriously, though, just because you say it doesn't make it true.
I guess that makes them Big Brother in law.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Not surprised. Not surprised at all.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Acknowledging the problem doesn't exist, it most certainly does.
>>> It was intended to reassure them that the NSA is not really the abusive and unchecked spying agency engaged in illegal activity that someone reading former NSA contractor Edward Snowdenâ(TM)s disclosures might think...
Uhh what? Snowden just released existing documents, he didn't create them.
It stands to reason that the NSA should be judged exactly by their actions, i.e. the content of the documents they themselves created.
Of course they're not "engaged in illegal activity". They control the law.
I am sure that the NSA sees itself as the good guy, and I am sure it does serve some useful, protective services. However, if those services come at the expense of civil liberties then the price is too high. And if it comes at a small cost to civil liberty, then it won't be too much longer until the bureaucracy feeds on itself until the small infractions become large ones.
Of course the NSA will weather it, will continue to exist and will continue to spy. For them it's a (short) embarrassing time after which the news media will forget them and all will be the same for them again.
The ones who pay for this are the US IT companies which will be distrusted world wide and the US government (politicians, diplomats, secretary of state, etc) who will be distrusted even by their closest allies. US companies will notice it in the long term bottom line e.g. when big foreign companies won't outsource to a US company. The public will forget the scandal soon like they forgot Echelon, the big companies who have actual trade secrets however won't, and if they do they will probably regret it soon when their secrets aren't secret anymore and their US competitors magically know everything they do. These losses are however far in the future: more than a quarter away so they will be denied, at least publically and especially by the ones responsible: the politicians.
The politicians will have a lot less trust and goodwill from their foreign counterparts, even and especially from allied countries.
To paraphrase the letter:
We're family, we love you, so you should love us. Everything said in the media (except for a few pundits who we are paying off) is lies, the leaks didn't really say what they said. Everything we do is legal because we have the power to define the meaning of legal as anything we do.
Easy.
The NSA have got files on everyone.
Which politician is going to take them on and see all their dirty laundry thrown to the media?
The mass surveillance apparatus which is unquestionably a violation of 4th amendment protections requires just a few more than 1 in 10,000 agents to carry out. There may very well be a large group of perfectly honest and upstanding agents in the NSA, but the corruption goes much deeper than a few rogue individuals. It goes to the very top, with the head of the NSA perjuring himself to Congress only very shortly before Snowden's documents started trickling out in the news.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
In 6 months we wont remember who the NSA is or what happened.
Humans today have the attention span of a turnip.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The NSA denied the spying flat out, until they were caught.
The government claimed the court oversight was adequate, until FOI releases proved they're not.
They said they were only using the surveillance data to catch terrorists, until it was revealed that the DEA was getting a feed.
Why should anyone, even an NSA employee, believe anything these idiots have to say any more?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
As a contractor with them I'd have more trust in their words if the letter hadn't been waiting for me on my favorite table at the coffee shop I frequent on my days off...
Looks like Muhammad Saeed al-Sahhaf (the Iraqi Information Minister during the second Gulf War) has snagged himself a new contract. WE ARE NOT SPYING ON ANY AMERICANS, AND THERE IS NO FAILURE OF OVERSIGHT.
stays together. Now let's all gather around the fireplace and take turns throwing copies of the Bill of Rights into the fire to stay warm.
Blackmail only works on criminals and sleazebags. If you're doing shit so bad that you're willing to sell out your entire country to keep it quiet you deserve to be strung up by an angry mob.
Ordinary people do stupid and embarrassing stuff, but most people don't have histories that they couldn't come clean about if forced to. Only sociopathic assholes whose lives are entirely built on deception (eg politicians) are susceptible to this sort of treatment.
Blackmail is like Danegeld. Only an idiot would choose to play that game and only a criminal would need to.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.