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The other open secret is that intelligence services in most countries have no where near the number of people they need to listen to all the taps they have, let
by 3pt14159 8y ago
The other open secret is that intelligence services in most countries have no where near the number of people they need to listen to all the taps they have, let alone comprehend it all. And because the people they're surveilling almost certainly know that they're being surveilled all the information has to be treated as potentially suspect because it could be manipulated.
Plus, the people being spied upon have their own misconceptions, agendas, and potentially warped ideologies that confound everything. Wrap this all in a bureaucratic malaise with much-too-small-to-compete salary caps and intelligence is way less effectually than people think.
- arminiusreturns 8y agoThis is largely the truth and the scary part about it all. Incompetence abounds more than we would ever want to know, but often it's not just incompetence. I often think of William Binney's thinthread program, designed to protect Americans privacy while still performing the core node taps at a handful of millions cost. It was scrapped for a program that cost billions, didn't protect Americans privacy, and lost the real intel in the increased haystack size... That's not incompetence. That's kickback cruft to good old boys literally weakening national security for more money. There is a reason certain counties in Virginia have the largest growth of millionaires in America since 9/11.