I read this thought-provoking post over at Popehat this
morning. I perused this portion:
<i>the agency has circumvented or cracked much of the
encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking
systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and
automatically secures e-mails, web searches, internet chats, and phones
calls…</i>
…and it got me to thinking:
The Coca-Cola recipe, for example, is a trade secret that
has been jealously (and successfully) guarded for over a century now. Does the NSA know the secret Coca-Cola
formula? What would Pepsi pay for that
information? Is every single person
working for the NSA who is privy to this information capable of resisting
overtures to the tune of millions of dollars for access to that information? Remember, folks, these aren’t super-humans
working at the NSA. They’re just
people. Edward Snowden decided to defy
company policy and let out sensitive information out of a sense of
patriotism. How many who currently work
for the NSA would decide to defy company policy for a couple million
bucks?
They have the ability to access your bank accounts
(really? You’ve never done any online
banking at all?). They know your account
balances. They know your medical
records. They say you have nothing to fear from the NSA, itself, because they
aren’t after you, but what about individual NSA employees?
What about the NSA guy who is checking out some rich dude,
gets his bank account information, and steals from the rich dude? What about the NSA guy who just steals a
little bit from thousands of people? Or
the NSA guy who finds some medical dirt on a personal enemy and uses it to ruin
him (why would a married guy be getting treatment for a new STD?) Or the NSA guy who is a party hack and is
helping the other party (most likely the one in power at any given time,
because it only makes sense, right?) dig up dirt on the opposition? That’s Watergate, folks. That’s enough to start articles of
Impeachment on any sitting President, and yet we’d have no way of discovering
that this is happening, because this is all top secret stuff, bad enough to
throw anyone contrary to it into a deep, dark hole for the rest of their
natural life.
How will an incumbent ever be unseated with access to this
information? This information
aggregation is a direct threat to the very fundamentals for the operation of
our republic, and we are supposed to just “trust” that the NSA has adequate
oversight on the folks privy to it all.
Just like they had adequate oversight on Edward
Snowden. Right?
Open your mouth and shut your eyes. Trust us.
It will be just fine.
I don’t think they’re after me. I don’t live under any paranoid delusion that
I’ll ever be interesting to the Federal Government in any way – I’m too
boring. I’m perfectly safe from the
prying eyes of the NSA, as an agency (this isn’t written as an approval of what
they’re doing, just as a truth). No
black helicopters or SWAT teams in the night for Goober, because I’m not really
doing anything wrong.
But who saves me from the individual NSA employee that gets
a little too cavalier with this information?
The Edward Snowden that isn’t a patriot, but a self-serving imbecile
consumed by greed? The NSA does not have
enough oversight over a program like this for the information to be safe. Proof of that fact is in living embodiment in
Mr. Snowden – thank goodness his intentions appear to be honorable, at least on
their face. The NSA never will be able
to secure this information, because they can’t.
This information is too valuable.
Bad people will find ways to get their hands on it, one way or the
other. As long as this database exists,
we are all at risk from it.
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