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I was expecting to see the NSA spying on the Senate, not the CIA. Maybe this is one of the "shell games" where CIA agents are using NSA equipment and data, and

I was expecting to see the NSA spying on the Senate, not the CIA. Maybe this is one of the "shell games" where CIA agents are using NSA equipment and data, and so it's a CIA investigation not an NSA one? At the risk of sounding too cynical, I'm beginning to expect that every classified document is classified merely to cover up mistakes, bad choices, and other events that would make the person in power look poorly to others. Do we really benefit - as a nation, or as a society - by classifying documents?

danso 11y ago
It's not an "either the NSA, or the CIA" situation. In this case, the CIA went after the Senate because the Senate was pursuing an investigation into allegations of torture against the CIA. That said, Sen. Feinstein spoke at Stanford a few months ago, and she aggressively defended the NSA. It was, in my opinion, a very bad speech, with her trust and justification for NSA surveillance was as vague and cartoonish as anything President George W. Bush said during the war on terror. And then at the end of her talk, she went off on a rant about how you can see her house on Google Maps. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/may/feinstein-security-talk-052915.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/may/feinstein-security-ta... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j57OuqbtD9Q&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j57OuqbtD9Q&feature=youtu.be
bediger4000 11y ago
I doubt very strongly that we as a nation, or as a society get any benefits from classifying anything. "Statistically, real threats are rare, but ambition and corruption are common. Overwhelmingly, the purpose of censorship is not the protection of national security, but the protection of individual careers. That's not ideology, but mathematics. Because there are very, very, few true national secrets, but a huge amounts of information that someone would like to bury for one reason or another." I got this from a Seth Finkelstein interview, http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/03/12/16/0526234.shtml http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/03/12/16/0526234.shtml As far as "oh, we can't reveal sources or methods! Spies will be killed!" - really!?!! Do you really think that the Russians or the Iranians or whoever haven't thought of some method of spying or other, and we have? Doubt it. Spying is all about craftsmanship, workmanship and tenacity, it would seem. As Goethe once wrote, "Everything has been thought of once, the problem is to think of it again."

danso 11y ago

It's not an "either the NSA, or the CIA" situation. In this case, the CIA went after the Senate because the Senate was pursuing an investigation into allegations of torture against the CIA. That said, Sen. Feinstein spoke at Stanford a few months ago, and she aggressively defended the NSA. It was, in my opinion, a very bad speech, with her trust and justification for NSA surveillance was as vague and cartoonish as anything President George W. Bush said during the war on terror. And then at the end of her talk, she went off on a rant about how you can see her house on Google Maps. http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/may/feinstein-security-talk-052915.html http://news.stanford.edu/news/2015/may/feinstein-security-ta... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j57OuqbtD9Q&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j57OuqbtD9Q&feature=youtu.be

bediger4000 11y ago

I doubt very strongly that we as a nation, or as a society get any benefits from classifying anything. "Statistically, real threats are rare, but ambition and corruption are common. Overwhelmingly, the purpose of censorship is not the protection of national security, but the protection of individual careers. That's not ideology, but mathematics. Because there are very, very, few true national secrets, but a huge amounts of information that someone would like to bury for one reason or another." I got this from a Seth Finkelstein interview, http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/03/12/16/0526234.shtml http://grep.law.harvard.edu/articles/03/12/16/0526234.shtml As far as "oh, we can't reveal sources or methods! Spies will be killed!" - really!?!! Do you really think that the Russians or the Iranians or whoever haven't thought of some method of spying or other, and we have? Doubt it. Spying is all about craftsmanship, workmanship and tenacity, it would seem. As Goethe once wrote, "Everything has been thought of once, the problem is to think of it again."