Sums things up pretty well.
OpEdNews Op Eds 1/1/2014 at 08:56:03
A History of 'Fear'
By Joe Lauria
Despite the deep embarrassment and outrage caused by continuing revelations of the National Security Agency's abuse of power, meaningful reform is unlikely because at heart the Edward Snowden story is about money - and political power. And Snowden has threatened both.
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A device goes off every day in Iraq, Pakistan and Syria. Britain endured an IRA bombing campaign. But there's nothing like that in the U.S. In fact you are nine times more likely to choke to death, eight times more likely to be killed by a cop, 1,048 times more likely to die in a car crash and 87 times more likely to drown than die in a terrorist attack.
Put another way, your risk of dying from a fireworks accident is 1 in 652,046. The risk from dying from terrorism is 14 times smaller. The State Department says only 17 Americans were killed by terrorists in 2011, and that includes in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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James Bamford, the country's most experienced writer on the National Security Agency, points out that when you drive down the Baltimore-Washington Parkway past Fort Meade, behind the trees on your right is the vast campus of the NSA. But across the street on your left are the offices of the handful of private-sector contractors that have a made a bundle off the so-called War on Terror.
An estimated 80 percent of the NSA's approximate $10 billion annual budget goes to these contractors. Personnel changes hands too. James Clapper, the current director of national intelligence, was an executive at Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton. Mike McConnell left Booz Allen to be the first DNI and then returned to it after he left government. Ex-CIA director James Woolsey works at the firm. The company is owned by the Carlyle Group, one of the biggest military contractors. Their incomes depend on the programs Snowden is exposing.
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But one thing is certain. They have to keep the fear going and get Snowden to make an example of him and stop future leaks. Their careers may depend on it.
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