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Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people th
by spodek 13y ago
Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with someone whose resume they didn't have.
Not that anyone in D.C. is holding the accountable, but if someone hypothetically did want to hold them accountable, how high would their threshold for failure have to be for outcomes like this?
> Mr. Snowden’s disclosures set off a national debate about the expansion of the N.S.A.’s powers to spy both at home and abroad, and have left the Obama administration trying frantically to mend relations with allies after his revelations about American eavesdropping on foreign leaders.
Mending relations is probably hard to do while continuing the programs and their secrecy. It probably wouldn't be that hard to mend them if they shut down the program.
It would save money and stop breaking the Constitution too.
- iwwr 13y ago>Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with someone whose resume they didn't have. Would you rather these agencies be truly competent and efficient that their activities would never come to light?
- fidotron 13y agoOne of the greatest arguments against the invasions of privacy they're engaged in is such competence by government departments is absolutely impossible, and the only way around this is to not collect the information in the first place. If you create a department that knows everything about everyone then it creates such a big single point of failure that it will be attacked continuously. This is on top of the general human error leading to data dumps being left on public transport etc. A honest and competent version of the NSA would acknowledge that leaks would be going to occur (malicious or accidental) and that it would need to be very careful about what it collects in case it could be used against it when it leaks. Once more government secrecy is actually just a way of hiding incompetence.
- sigkill 13y ago>Not very intelligent for an intelligence agency I am also wondering, is it smart for an intelligence agency to tell the truth when they say "We don't know how much was leaked"? Or is this a large lie in order to lower, I don't know, someone's guard. I mean, it doesn't make sense to me.
- espeed 13y agoNot very intelligent for an intelligence agency, missing something so close to home -- literally within their own walls. If they can't figure out what people they vetted and hired, why would anyone expect them to do better with someone whose resume they didn't have. And the NSA wasn't the only intelligence agency that vetted and hired him.