Wednesday, March 5, 2014

Emperor Alexander Channels His Inner Putin

He moaned recently that there has to be some way of "stopping journalism".

No doubt that he's kind of wistful that the NSA can't do an Anna Politkovskaya on Snowden and Greenwald.

The Emperor's whining about the damage done to the NSA is sort of like a criminal bemoaning getting caught. The NSA has done all sorts of damage to this country because they thought that they would never be found out. But secrets do have a way of escaping their confines, especially when someone is in the loop who thinks that the Constitution isn't just a "goddamned piece of paper" or "quaint and outdated".

I think it's worth restating this point: That the NSA's claims that its wiretapping and vacuuming up of our electronic communications have prevented terror attacks have proven to be a tissue of lies, a fantasy spun by delusional power-mad maniacs.

As much as I will be pleased to see Emperor Alexander joining the senior pundit circuit like his predecessor, I have no illusions that his successor will be any different from either Alexander or Hayden. Nowhere have I seen any evidence that, when presented with some shiny new surveillance tool, anyone at the NSA asks "should we be doing this."

1 comment:

  1. Three rules the CIA (and most people in politics, and government, and business, and probably everything else) never seem to remember:

    1. Never lie. The truth is the only reliable guide to keeping your story straight.

    2. Never cover up. Sooner or later the covers blow off, melt off, dissolve off, or shred off and everybody'll see what you have under there.

    3. No security system is idiot-proof. The idiots are too damn clever.

    Very crankily yours,
    The New York Crank

    ReplyDelete

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