Wednesday, August 21, 2013

Slimy Spies & Criminals

The Surveillance State has been hacked.

Assume the nefarious have access. Security was shit.
Leave guns lying around -- of course criminals pick them up...
Bush, Blair & Obama truly tried building Skynet.
Can you help Sarah Connor?

Comments on the extent of spying by the American secret police include much foolish "reporting"...

One example is an article (link) claiming the NSA & FBI have provided bad data (mathematically erroneous by a factor of ten). In other words, the spying is ten times larger than admitted.

Of course, after years of lies, denial and no comment, anything grudgingly admitted by the US government should be considered very skeptically.

Many people look at these reports and reflect on the threat to their personal privacy. Maybe a good motivator toward action, and a needed counterbalance. Otherwise we get even greater spying & espionage.

We who live outside America are reportedly fair game for surveillance. I don't like it, but can't do much.  Well, I can complain & also post my displeasure in articles like this -- which won't curtail NSA spying. 

To shutdown monitoring is more problematic. There certainly are enemies to be tracked.

In my view we've three main problems:

3) low trust
There is little reason to trust government officials who serve militarism.

2) lack of oversight, due process & accountability
We've no idea what is going on, which in a democracy is terrible. Spying is tip of the iceberg. The US government claims the right to murder designated individuals (and family & associates as collateral damage) without oversight or proper judicial review; these assassinations are wholly wrong. To "detain" people for years as at Guantanamo is also wholly wrong.

1) technical irresponsibility
The pervasive data collection system described by The Guardian through revelations of Edward Snowden is criminal and horrible because it's unworkable. The NSA has without doubt provided data feeds to the heart of its own people that darker powers now use malignantly. Can we imagine with subcontractors, low-level military, and ambitious yuppies that all access is always secure? I'm less concerned NSA or Pentagon analysts might read my mail, than that they've made so much data (including mine) accessible to scuzzy operators worldwide: criminals, foreign governments, competitor companies, etc.

Snowden & Manning make the last point crystal clear; and their whistleblowing needed data to be noticed. The dirt undermines superior officers & decisionmakers, but we're all better off.  Again, we've far worse & better organized enemies than the dipshit shoebomber. Our pervasive surveillance State is hacked - it's inherently dangerous & explosive.