Ineptitude – Page 68 – Public Intelligence Blog

2013/12/13

Chuck Spinney: ACLU Video Spoof of NSA as Santa Rocks the Internet — We Do Not Make This Stuff Up (Someone Else Does)

Civil Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Ethics, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, Military, Offbeat Fun, Officers Call

Watch and weep

Dear Alison,

When you think about it, Santa Claus and the NSA have a lot in common—both can tell when you’ve been sleeping and know when you’re awake…

So our civil liberties elves here at the ACLU decided to make an NSA version of that classic holiday tune, “Santa Claus is Coming to Town,” taking a cue from Santa’s own secret surveillance program. And as one of the more than 35,000 supporters who signed our petition to Congress to rein in the NSA, we want you to have the first peek at the hysterical new music video!

This new video is the perfect way to show your friends that while Santa’s spying operation may be magical, the NSA’s is very real—and why we should all care.

Check out the hilarious music video for “The NSA is Coming to Town” before anyone else, and be the first one to share it with your friends.

The NSA has used every excuse from here to the North Pole to justify their unlawful spying operations, but we’re not buying it. And after all their deception, we’re not trusting them with a program so open to abuse of power.

There’s already good legislation pending in the House and Senate—we just need to get as many people as possible to stand with us and push Congress to pass it now.

Enjoy the video, and most importantly, make sure you share it with your friends and family so they can join in the fun and stand with us to make unlawful NSA surveillance a thing of the past (just like those old holiday jingles).

Thank you for your all your support this year,
Anthony for the ACLU Action team

2013/12/112013/12/11

Mini-Me: Cognitive Dissonance at NSA + NSA High Crimes RECAP + Integrity Remediation

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Government, Idiocy, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Military

Huh?

Do You Trust the Washington Post‘s Sources on Morale at the NSA?

Former officials insist that employees are upset because President Obama hasn't visited to show his support.

Conor Friedersdorf

Reuters via The Atlantic, Dec 10 2013, 8:20 AM ET

A strange Washington Post story gives readers the impression that morale is low at the NSA because President Obama hasn't visited to signal his support for the intelligence agency, even as Edward Snowden's leaks are causing many to criticize it.

The headline: “NSA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, former U.S. officials say.”

The lead:

Morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency’s surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support.

What these “dismayed” sources told the newspaper:

Supporters of the NSA say staffers are not feeling the love.

“The agency, from top to bottom, leadership to rank and file, feels that it is had no support from the White House even though it’s been carrying out publicly approved intelligence missions,” said Joel Brenner, NSA inspector general from 2002 to 2006. “They feel they’ve been hung out to dry, and they’re right.”

A former U.S. official—who like several other former officials interviewed for this story requested anonymity because he still has dealings with the agency—said: “The president has multiple constituencies—I get it. But he must agree that the signals intelligence NSA is providing is one of the most important sources of intelligence today. So if that’s the case, why isn’t the president taking care of one of the most important elements of the national security apparatus?”

Is this just an attempt to exert pressure on the president and stave off even the mildest criticism of the NSA? The sourcing here seems awfully shoddy. Is a former NSA inspector general who hasn't worked for the agency in seven years really qualified to pronounce upon the current feelings of every employee? Is the proposition that NSA staffers are all of one mind about recent controversies something we'd credit even if a current NSA employee said it? Did the anonymous “former U.S. official” ever work for the NSA? What “dealings” does he or she presently have with the agency, and how remunerative are those dealings?

After reading what these former officials had to say, Marcy Wheeler points out that NSA employees have a reason for low morale that has nothing to do with Obama's support:

Most of the NSA’s employees have not been read into many of these programs … That raises the distinct possibility that NSA morale is low not because the President hasn’t given them a pep talk, but because they’re uncomfortable working for an Agency that violates its own claimed rules so often. Most of the men and women at NSA have been led to believe they don’t spy on their fellow citizens. Those claims are crumbling, now matter how often the NSA repeats the word “target.” [PBI: Emphasis added.]

Continue reading “Mini-Me: Cognitive Dissonance at NSA + NSA High Crimes RECAP + Integrity Remediation”

2013/12/11

Rick Falkvinge: 2013 List Of Stone Dead Industries

Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Ineptitude, IO Impotency, Media

Rick Falkvinge’s 2013 List Of Stone Dead Industries

Infopolicy: There is a number of industries today that are already obsolete, kept alive by sheer inertia or by political subsidies. Many politicians, in an attempt to “save jobs”, are foolishly taking resources from new, viable industries and giving to these obsolete ones. “Saving jobs” in this context means that politicians are rejecting ways of producing the same level of output with a much more competitive and cost-efficient method, and is not to be applauded at all.

Roses-on-coffin-by-blmurch-at-flickr-CCBY The first and most obvious victim industry of the internet was the postal industry, the kind that delivered physical letters. When people want to communicate today, they don’t put ink to paper. Out of sheer inertia, bills and governmental correspondence are still being delivered using this method, but everybody else has moved on. Parcel couriers that ship physical objects live on for the time being, but are threatened by 3D printing.

Continue reading “Rick Falkvinge: 2013 List Of Stone Dead Industries”

2013/12/10

David Isenberg: Private Military Contractors — Foxes in the Henhouse

09 Justice, 10 Security, Corruption, Government, Ineptitude, Military, Officers Call

The PMSC fox in the government henhouse

Although he may not have intended it as such, all the publicity surrounding the recent published book by Erik Prince, founder of the private security firm once known as Blackwater, has actually served a useful public policy purpose; namely, highlighting the near ubiquitous presence of private military and security contractors (PMSC), as well as other types of private contractors, and the cost and benefits of using them.

When it comes to the costs of outsourcing formerly inherently governmental functions there are many different ways to calculate them but one relatively under-examined way is to consider the dangers of allowing what in almost any other industry would be considered a conflict of interest. Or. To put it more colorfully, does it really serve the public interest to allow a PMSC fox guard the government hen house?

Specifically, does anyone really think it is reasonable to assume that placing personal services contractors (Note: “personal services” is the umbrella category that all PMSC contracts fall under) in government procurement offices will produce dispassionate, objective assessments of the pros and cons of using PMSC?

Does anyone think that is a good idea; anyone, anyone at all? Hmmm, your silence is deafening.

Well, if you think this is an absurd idea rest assured you are not alone. William Charles Moorhouse is in the house. Major Moorhouse serves in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps and is currently the Chief of Contract and Fiscal Law for the U.S. Army Expeditionary Contracting Command.

Read full article with additional quotes.

2013/12/082013/12/08

Berto Jongman: David Ignatius Pimps “Fresh Approach” by Second String Prefects

Corruption, Government, Ineptitude

A fresh approach to looking at foreign threats

By David Ignatius,

Washington Post, December 6, 2013

The chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees stated last weekend that the world was getting more unsafe. A few days later, the Pew Research Center reported that 52 percent of Americans think the U.S. should “mind its own business internationally,” the highest such total in the nearly 50-year history of that query. Taken together, these two items symbolize a serious emerging national problem. The crackup ahead lies in the mismatch between the challenges facing America and the public’s willingness to support activist foreign policy to deal with them. Simply put: There is a splintering of the traditional consensus for global engagement at the very time that some big new problems are emerging

. . . . . . . .

A modest proposal is that Obama should convene a younger group of American leaders: strategists, technologists, professors. It would be a learning exercise — to understand how the country should deal with the problems of the next 10 years without making the mistakes of the past 10. What has America learned from its struggles with Islamic extremism? What lessons do we take from our painful expeditionary wars? How can Americans too young to remember the Iranian revolution of 1979 engage that country, but also set clear limits on its behavior?

Happily, a new generation of thinkers could form the bipartisan group I’m imagining. If you don’t know their names yet, you should: Marc Lynch of George Washington University, known to his online fans as “Abu Aardvark”; David Kilcullen, one of the architects of counterinsurgency success in Iraq and author of “Out of the Mountains,” an iconoclastic new book on future urban conflicts; Michèle Flournoy, a clear-eyed former undersecretary of defense; and Jared Cohen and Alec Ross, two technological wizards who advised the State Department under Hillary Clinton and are now with Google and Johns Hopkins University, respectively. I’d add the administration’s own Salman Ahmed , Tony Blinken , Ben Rhodes , Wendy Sherman and Jake Sullivan .

What encourages me is that the same American public that wants the United States to mind its own business internationally also registers a two-thirds majority in favor of greater U.S. involvement in the global economy, according to the Pew poll. Young respondents were even more internationalist on this issue than their elders.

Read full opinion.

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: David Ignatius Pimps “Fresh Approach” by Second String Prefects”

2013/12/06