Posted on 07/26/2013 7:28:22 AM PDT by Dysart
They’ve been helping the government spy on people for a very long time. The cozy relationships go back decades.
BREAK
In an interview with National Journal, former NSA Director Michael Hayden indirectly confirmed Microsoft’s involvement. “This is a home game for us,” Hayden says. “Are we not going to take advantage that so much of it goes through Redmond, Washington? Why would we not turn the most powerful telecommunications and computing management structure on the planet to our use?” Most of this co-opting of the private sector has happened with the full-throated support of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, again behind closed doors. Today, Hayden says, the agency itself is all but indistinguishable from the private sector it has exploited. Its best technology is designed by the private sector—“There isn’t a phone or computer at Fort Meade that the government owns,” he says—and its surveillance systems are virtually interwoven with their products. The huge controversy over Snowden’s employment by one of these private contractors, Booz Allen Hamilton, was just the barest tip of the iceberg, according to intelligence and industry officials. One by one...the NSA contracted with companies to “make them part of our team,” as he puts it.
BREAK
Some intelligence experts believe one of the biggest problems about the extent of the government-industry surveillance program is that both government and industry have tried to keep it all secret for too long, rather than just being frank with the public about America’s national security needs. “It might have been better if they’d shown a little ankle,” says a former senior CIA official. Adds Harman, “I think the FISA opinions should be declassified to the extent they don’t compromise sources and methods, and Congress should have a robust debate about whether the law and the way it works is too broad.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
That is all true but still the issue, as I see it, isn’t about designers but of active, ongoing participants, and their aims. I am open to the prospect those aims are debatable, while highly skeptical given, as you note, the current political climate.
Given Obama’s hatered of America, you can count on him using all available tools to execute our destruction.
Oh, I’m crystal clear on Obama’s objectives— but I cannot say confidently every agency or govt employee engaged in this business shares his vision. Let’s hope not. No doubt he followed political protocol and stacked key posts with those who do, though.
Their products are the work of genius, regardless. Considerable amounts of intelligence and hard work went into products like google search and even Facebook (try managing databases containing billions of items, modified rapidly, and have the whole system still stay stable. How many FR crashes in the last few months, again?). Even Edison would've been a nobody but for the giants before him. Down to the guy who invented the wheel, and before that, the people who invented language.
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