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There was an article on the BBC site recently about a spy program during WW2 that consisted of pampering high-ranking German POW's in a mansion while British ag
by gnosis 13y ago
There was an article on the BBC site recently about a spy program during WW2 that consisted of pampering high-ranking German POW's in a mansion while British agents listened in through bugging devices.
Apparently, the program worked wonderfully, and they got a lot of useful intelligence out of it. However, word somehow got out that German prisoners there were being treated like royalty while the British public starved. There was outrage in Parliament, and Churchill ordered the program shut down.
British intelligence pretended to follow Churchill's orders, but actually continued the program in secret. The information they were getting was just too useful. They just stopped telling Churchill about it.
I expect something similar might happen here. To the public's knowledge, to most of Congress, and maybe even to Obama, the program might appear to be shut down. But it'll either continue wholesale or morph in to something else that's effectively the same (or even worse).
Unfortunately, there really is no way to verify the words of these spy agencies. Virtually no one has the clearance to go inside their datacenters and check. Now they'll probably just be a lot more careful about keeping what they do secret.
Remember that the NSA is far from the only secret agency in the US. For a long time its very existence was denied. The running joke in Washington was that "NSA" stood for "No Such Agency". Eventually, its existence was confirmed. But there are probably dozens if not hundreds of other secret agencies that operate under the so-called "black budget" that Congress authorizes. Who knows what they do? Something like PRISM could easily migrate to one or more of them.
- grovulent 13y agoVery good point - but at least it won't be as easy for them to do it. These NSA activities require the co-operation and silence of a lot of different entities - and that would be much harder to obtain if they don't have legal standing. Plus - if you get caught going against the executive and the congress - you'll eventually lose your funding. Having said that - I tend to agree with the comments above suggesting that the executive will just rename it all and try and make the story go away while actually ramping up the program.
- gnosis 13y agoAs far as funding goes, I heard an interesting program[1] recently on History Counts[2] which claimed that the CIA was covertly funding its own operations in Southeast Asia through drug trafficking.[3][4] In comparison, the wholesale spy program that's been in the news recently has far more potential for profit through economic espionage, blackmail, and various types of political manipulation. It could easily be self-financing if the information gathered through it was exploited. This program is a proverbial goose laying golden eggs for the government. I really can not imagine them closing it down over a bit of bad press (which will probably die down and blow over as soon as the next big scandal hits). [1] - http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/30027 http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/30027 [2] - http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/History+Counts http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/series/History+Counts [3] - A small excerpt: Q: "Through the drug profits, were these operations essentially self-financing?" A: "Everything in the Far East was self-financing" Q: "And they were off the books, so there was no public record or accounting?" A: "Of course I'm speculating here, because no one has done me the favor of showing me the CIA's books, but I think when we get to the scale of a 35,000 man army in Laos in the 1960's -- Congress found out about that and held hearings in to it and were complaining they've never been told about it, so I assume all of that was financed by the drug traffic than it was -- whatever input there was from the CIA's legitimate budget was minimal compared to what was happening... that was built up continuously from the 1950's" [4] - I'm not saying I believe in this particular conspiracy theory. I've really not looked in to this subject beyond this one History Counts show. But I could see something like it happening, and the current mood is one where such conspiracy theories are starting to look more probable than usual.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoExactly. With the access to information that the NSA has they could easily feed themselves, and may already do so to some extent. PS WRT CIA funding things in Southeast Asia, there was a movie Air America about that. I have no idea how close to the truth any of it was, but I liked the movie.
- malandrew 13y agoForget drug trafficking. That's peanuts and far more risky that the other alternatives they have. They could easily fund themselves with the information they are gathering by just maintaining a large investment fund that trades on any investments vehicles that are unlikely to result in insider trading finger pointing, such as commodities and currency. Equity and debt markets would be hard to work with at scale and not get caught, but commodities and currency leave more than enough room to accumulate a sizeable operating budget if your information is very good. Were I an institutional investor, I'd be very concerned about participating in the markets given this possibility.
- genwin 13y agoGood story. It'll be easy to see if the NSA's survelliance programs continue, just check if the parking lot is full at their Utah data center: http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/ http://nsa.gov1.info/utah-data-center/
- alex_doom 13y agoJust like how they closed Guantanamo! Oh wait.
- reeses 13y agoTotal Information Awareness becomes Prism becomes Blackadder.
- yuhong 13y agoThis reminds me that I don't think Larry, Sergey, Eric, or Marissa have security clearances, do they? Let's trace the problem.