Larger than Pentagon in square footage, and growing by 50% within a decade, and that is only Ft. Meade, MD.
Its civilian/military workforce has increased by 1/3 to to 33,000 employees, since that fateful day when everything changed. For the worse. Privacy-wise.
Its budget has doubled. It depends on triple the number of private companies as before from 150 to 500 by Washington Post's count.
"We track 'em you whack 'em"
The article describes how a SEAL call to track a phone with urgency and without the usual controls set in motion a a practice that expanded to operations in Iraq.
* 2007 ground breaking for $ 1 billion facility Ft. Gordon 4,000 employees. (They do not say, but Ft. Gordon is in Augusta Georgia.
* Outgrew 250,000 sq.ft, #358 million addition to existing facilities, Wahiawa, is where Snowdon worked
* Added facilities in San Antonio, Texas, Lackland AFB,
* Colorado, Buckley AFB in Aurora.
* NSA station at RAF Menwith Hill Yourkshire grows by 1/3 to 2,500 employees.
* Pine Gap Australia added hundreds of new employees.
NSA adds to its statement to the Post, "The notion of constant, unchecked, or senseless growth is a myth."
It is not notion, it is observation. The growth is constant and unchecked, senseless and menacing, controlled and managed by us, we have proven untrustworthy. It is not fear, it is observation of facts. The objective is power. The power resists checks. There is no balance. Trust is eroded. Trust is destroyed.
Washington Post
20 comments:
The Pentagon was built for WWII.
What excuse does the NSA have?
"414. That’s an error.
The requested URL /search... is too large to process. That’s all we know."
But look - you can cut Google off at the pass... that's all they know... and they know nothing. Mwahahaha.
That's a lot of headsets.
Those facilities are going to have to be destroyed at some point. [Hi NSA! Kisses!] It seems to that we are probably living on borrowed time in terms of when that apparatus will be used against Americans.
^ it strikes me that that was a remarkably clumsily worded comment. Moar coffee!
We should just stop using and producing data. Then the NSA will be just sitting there, tapping on its headphones saying hello hello is this thing on??
"The notion of constant, unchecked, or senseless growth is a myth."
Tell that to Captain Decker.
Obscure TOS reference altert
It seems to that we are probably living on borrowed time in terms of when that apparatus will be used against Americans
Borrowing terminated. IMO, it is already in use against Americans...not sure "against" is the right word however. The government surveils people to protect them from themselves, you see. The government loves, and I mean deeply passionately loves, with succulency, "key word searches and alerts."
If you can acquire a list of those key words, or just figure out a few of them, then you can clog the system by using the word repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly repeatedly...in your text and audio exchanges.
It's like back in the old LGF days where one commenter was obsessed with who referred to him, and his wife monitored other blogs for his name...so of course, a few of us made it a point to cite his name in every comment we wrote, anywhere and everywhere, even if just at the bottom, even in tiny font, repeatedly....meltdown ensued.
As far as the *size* of NSA is concerned, be aware that due to the information technological nature of its work, most of its work is a "commerical activity" under OMB Circ. A-76 rules.
This designation means that the personnel growth will be predominantly civilian via lowest bidding contractors [exceptions for those run by a former government executive on hiatus], who then seeks low bids for subcontractors, who in turn must get security clearances processed by another lowest bid contractor's subcontractors.
Your security is assured, even from yourself, and your government will be perpetuated.
Be aware that what Aridog is talking about here is the wonderful world of Government contracts, where hardly anything ever is what it says it is.
Karen of Texas said...
What excuse...
They'll claim Al Qaeda and all things terrorist... People will buy it.
No, some people may, but Choom's cratering approval shows it may be a lot less than we think.
rcocean said...
"The notion of constant, unchecked, or senseless growth is a myth."
Tell that to Captain Decker.
thanks for the qualification, I wasn't sure if you meant Col Decker of the A-Team or Colonel Flagg of MASH.
While at present, they may be somewhat limited in storage capacity, I do think that a lot of conversations is stored for a few days at least, and longer for conversations with one origin in an area "of interest."
Someone, maybe even Hayden or Alexander, stated on TV that they had the capacity for calls originating abroad, to go back and listen to the conversations from a phone number, if they later, I think he said within 6 months, found that that number belonged to a "person of interest."
I think they are looking for the capacity to do that for any calls, regardless of origin, and the Rosen case shows that the limits imposed by Congress don't mean squat to them.
Historically, Americans have been terrible at human-asset spying, and have tried to make up for that fundamental cultural incompetence through "technical assets". NSA is the ur-technical asset agency. Every time the CIA, FBI, DIA, or other alphabet-soup intelligence agency trips over its collective dick, another dollop of funding makes its way into the ever-expanding NSA pocket.
Ed,
Should be Commodore Decker. I think Kirk knew him at the Academy, like all his other cadet friends who turned out crazy, incompetent, power-mad, or corrupt.
They really needed to revisit the Star Fleet Academy curriculum.
So where exactly do I find this strip club with the topless sheep? Do they do lap dances too?
It's shear fun.
There's a concept in cybernetics that is abbreviated as POSIWID, which stands for "the purpose of a system is what it does." This system tracks everyone's "digital footprint" - it spies on everyone. That is its purpose, to spy on everyone.
But ya know the government would never do ANYTHING bad with all that information, and no one in power would ever use it for their own personal gain.
I went to AIT at Ft. Gordon. I remember Augusta, GA, was the pits.
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