If there’s an underground cable transmitting data, the NSA wants it bugged. If there’s a computer shipped out from Dell, the NSA wants the package intercepted, the system carefully opened, bugged, and sent onward.
The NSA has grown by leaps and bounds since 9/11, on the pretext of terrorism, and opens new buildings, new fronts in a global surveillance war with new targets so often it’s impossible to know how big it is.
A Sony chip fabrication plant in San Antonio closed, and within a few short years became home to thousands of NSA employees. Leased from a holding company, the NSA’s announcement of its intent to take the site was public, but once it moved in the whole program became surrounded in secrecy.
That’s because despite the “terrorism” excuse, the NSA’s targets are overwhelmingly close allies, with the San Antonio site hitting Latin America, and particularly Mexico.
Much of the NSA’s interest seems to be centered around financial rivals, nations like Mexico, Brazil and Germany, and its largest sites reflect those interests. That doesn’t mean they’re not targeting anyone and everyone else, however.
Growth is never a problem for the NSA, or at least it wasn’t until it became public knowledge. Since the dotcom bubble burst, the NSA has been scooping up math and comp sci majors en masse, and putting them in secret programs to collect ever more data from ever more targets.
With a secret budget and a classified employee list, getting the NSA under control looks to be a major task for Congress, particularly with several of the top leaders in both the House and Senate totally ambivalent about the issue. Still, with the NSA’s actions now public knowledge, it will be hard for them to keep everything in the dark.
"…it will be hard for them to keep everything in the dark."
Rather optimistic, I think.
Here's my fear: For the next couple of years there'll be more disclosures by those journalists who are holding the Snowden docs, under increasingly pernicious pressure from the governments (US, UK, Ger) and though some of the disclosures might expose some severely egregious behavior by the NSA and associated government agencies nothing will actually be done to circumscribe or curtail the programs. And so, with realization by the general public that nothing is going to get done to protect their rights the news outlets will find something else to bray against. And they will successfully though probably illegally and in typical jack-boot style discredit or eliminate those journalists who hold and use the Snowden docs.
The governments will repeat often and loudly that those who release this information are dangerous to our safety and eventually the masses will believe them (e.g. the meme that our governments/military "heroes" are "fighting for our freedoms") and the governments will once again control the message.
As long as the same people responsible for the expansion of the surveillance state remain on the board the underlying problems are not going to change. The change has to begin at the ballot box.
The slow release of information is very clearly NOT causing enough people to be angry. Instead, it's just boiling the frog by degree, as has been the case for many, many years. When will journalists realize that this?
Oh, they understand completely. There are a couple who speak truth. The others who understand are just cowards. Cowards because the people they work for have agendas that preclude telling the truth to the American people. They've taken well to their task of keeping the American people dumb and lazy. So these "journalists" – using the term loosely, of course – salute the boss, and the job contract is renewed. Perhaps they drink heavily to assuage their consciences, if they have any left, or maybe they do an extra line or pill, or maybe they abuse their partners or friends, if they have any. Perhaps they drink the koolade and are in agreement with the Archons and what they are doing to us. Perhaps. They scare me the most because they've admitted that they will do anything to further their ambitions, regardless of their ethics.
So, they know. I continue to search out those who have the stones to tell the truth – and then I cringe when the execution is done in the main square.
From now on I'll be checking my bedroom for hidden cameras. The NSA is totally out of control.