'Complete rape' of government by industry – Kirk Wiebe on private contractors in intelligence
'Complete rape' of government by industry – Kirk Wiebe on private contractors in intelligence
Published on Jan 17, 2015
Watch the full episode here: http://bit.ly/17SYHes
Kirk Wiebe, an NSA veteran and whistleblower, talks to Going Underground host Afshin Rattansi about mass surveillance. He says that the development of the internet caught the NSA by surprise, as they had been fixated on radio communications, and they weren't putting the people or technology into it. The internet presents three problems – huge amounts of data, a massive variety of information, and the speed with which communications moved and the Trailblazer programme was their attempt to deal with that. He worked on trailblazer, which was trying to deal with the problems the internet represented, and they managed to take information whilst protecting privacy.
The NSA threw out what they had worked on, and went to private contractors to develop something new. They believed that 'NSA couldn't do anything internally' and that philosophy was sold to Congress, but industry could not provide the solutions and it failed. There has been increasing sharing of data between NSA and GCHQ over the years, because sometimes a problem was too big to tackle on their own. He says the true danger in trailblazer is the military industrial complex – an 'unhealthy relationship between government and the commercial sector.'
He points to a speech by Eisenhower in 1961, where he warned that the defence establishment posed a threat to democratic principles if the relationship became too close, because interests such as money, rather than the success of the mission, become a priority. He describes the current situation as a 'rape' of government institutions by industry to make a high profit for programmes that don't always succeed. He did not see falsified data being used to justify war, but he thinks that they don't need to falsify it, as they can use the cloak of secrecy to ensure that the public never finds out.
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- I'm not sure it's called ''rape'' when the government and Wall Street has been in bed with one another for as long as they have. Maybe not a marriage, unless you're counting the''common-law'' type.
Concubinage? We know who the concubine is in this scenario, now don't we?
O'Brien: “You are a slow learner, Winston."
Winston Smith: "How can I help it? How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes?
Two and two are four!"
O'Brien: "Sometimes, Winston. Sometimes they are five. Sometimes they are three. Sometimes they are all of them at once. You must try harder. It is not easy to become sane.”[/center]
