ProPublica is an investigative journalism cooperative that is picking up the slack as traditional media outlets cut back on expensive investigative reporting and increasingly replacing it with faux journalism that recycles press releases, official leaks, and gossip. ProPublica is proving itself to be ever more valuable.
It lists five important things that we still do not know about the massive surveillance program by the NSA, even after the recent revelations. Interestingly, it is not clear whether this snooping has prevented even a single terrorist attack, the ostensible purpose for which it was created.
ProPublica has also released an informative timeline of the growth of the massive surveillance state, along with a list of the past best news stories on it.
I don’t usually post music links, but this one is too appropriate to pass up. The lyrics are pretty much complete in the first two minutes or so.http://youtu.be/V76d6_04LLE
I found it first at the blog Skepticlawyer.
Great article, and it supports my continuing theme here: The #1 problem here is the lack of transparency. There very well may be some pretty good controls in place for how this information is used, and some other sources I have found seem to corroborate that contention. But how the fuck are we supposed to know that if everything is classified??? And furthermore, if the checks and controls are secret, then what’s to stop them from being changed to be totally insufficient in the future?
I don’t think it’s possibly in the 21st century to stop massive untargetted government data mining. But we can at least bring it into the daylight and get it properly regulated.
But how the fuck are we supposed to know that if everything is classified???
That answers your question: it’s classified because the truth would bother you.