http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/01/world/senate-intelligence-commitee-cia-interrogation-report.html?_r=1
Let me just summarize it nicely like this: The Senate is really, really, REALLY pissed because the CIA has admitted that its officers it hacked into the Senate Intelligence Committee’s computers. That is, the Committee charged with overseeing the CIA had its computers hacked by the CIA.
Now, let me add a disclaimer: I know a lot of CIA ops officers. A lot. Several are among my best friends. Many are members of the CrossFit community and I’ve worked with military special ops folks from all services, along with both covert and overt “OGA” employees. Generally these are great, patriotic, selfless Americans, doing thankless work with incalculable risk and small margins for error.
That said, this is a fuck up of galactic proportions. Heads should role. Specific people involved should be fired.
Now, I hate Congress as much as the next guy, but let me also take a moment to just point out the HUGE bit of irony playing out here.
Congress is IRATE (justifiably so) at spies reading their emails and hacking their computers…
Hmmmm…. but this is the same Congress that has been authorizing, and continues to authorize, the NSA to read my fucking emails, text messages, g-chats, selfies, etc.? Wow, no shit Congress, it sucks to have some spies with no probable cause to be sifting through your personal or professional shit, hunh?? Go fucking figure.
But we’re supposed to just “trust you” when you tell us that it’s all okay that the NSA is vacuuming up vast quantities of my personal information because it’s “all for my own good,” right?
Well, here’s a newsflash for you: I never gave you the right to do that. I don’t want you “protecting me” from alleged terrorists by looking through my emails and cell phone calls. I’ll go you one further: I’ve got a gun, as soon as I can I’ll get a LTC, and I’ll take care of my own personal security, and my family’s, thank you very much. In fact, for what it’s worth, you trained me and I’ve been doing it for over 27 years for everyone else. I’m all good. Thank you for the completely useless security theater at the airports, too, which is pointless for reasons obvious to anyone with anything beyond an eighth grade education.* Generally, you – Government – can’t be trusted with these kinds of powers.
So, Mister and Missus Senators, while you’re getting all hot and bothered about YOUR emails being hacked by some spies, try not to choke on the irony of your righteous indignation. Try for just a moment to think a little more widely of the vast nameless schlubs, your constituents and the people you allegedly represent, who are having this same warrantless intrusion into their email accounts and every other aspect of their lives simply because this President, and his predecessor, got their hands on a technology that can invade our most private thoughts and missives to our loved ones wantonly.
Try to act, you know, statesman-like for a fucking change. It might do us all a lot of good.
*Because I’m sure someone will question this, let me point out that the whole “X-ray everything in order to prevent a bomb on a plane” is asinine. Here’s why. A plane, at most, carries a couple of hundred passengers, maybe 300 on full domestic flights, and perhaps a little more on international flights. Assuming a bomb got onto a plane, it would kill one cohort of perhaps 400 people, on one flight. I fly a lot, more than 200,000 air miles a year every year for the last 5. The line to get TO the X-Ray on a Monday morning is comprised of at least double, triple, or maybe even quadruple that number of people with no security before that point. A bomb (or suicide bomber) in the congested line that winds back and forth would get close to as many people as a bomb on the plane would. Maybe more. Even more importantly, it would shut down the ENTIRE FUCKING AIRPORT, vice one flight, or airline. Don’t believe me? read the news reports about what happened when a single guy with a gun shot some TSA agents at LAX. Forget the death numbers: look at how it stopped/delayed/fucked up all air traffic in the entire US. I know because I was flying that day from the east coast to the west. So please, TSA, give it a fucking rest. You’re fooling only the stupid. 9-11 didn’t come off because of the lack of TSA, it came off because they hacked our SOPs for dealing with “hijackers” who, until then, usually wanted to fly somewhere and get some political prisoners released. We fell for it, but that won’t happen again. Passengers are now beating the tar out of anyone who even hints that they want to get near the cockpit or blow themselves up. We’ve solved this one without the need for a trillion dollar bureaucracy of fat-asses who make little old ladies get out of wheelchairs and mothers remove sleeping babies from car-seats and dump formula because it could be some liquid bomb in a bottle. Dolts.