Corporatizing National Security: What it Means

By Ralph Nader, Common Dreams, 6/22/131

Privacy is a sacred word to many Americans, as demonstrated by the recent uproar over the brazen invasion of it by the Patriot Act-enabled National Security Agency (NSA). The information about dragnet data-collecting of telephone and internet records leaked by Edward Snowden has opened the door to another pressing conversation – one about privatization, or corporatization of this governmental function.

In addition to potentially having access to the private electronic correspondence of American citizens, what does it mean that Mr. Snowden – a low-level contractor – had access to critical national security information not available to the general public? Author James Bamford, an expert on intelligence agencies, recently wrote: “The Snowden case demonstrates the potential risks involved when the nation turns its spying and eavesdropping over to companies with lax security and inadequate personnel policies. The risks increase exponentially when those same people must make critical decisions involving choices that may lead to war, cyber or otherwise.”

This is a stark example of the blurring of the line between corporate and governmental functions. Booz Allen Hamilton, the company that employed Mr. Snowden, earned over $5 billion in revenues in the last fiscal year, according to The Washington Post. The Carlyle Group, the majority owner of Booz Allen Hamilton, has made nearly $2 billion on its $910 million investment in “government consulting.” It is clear that “national security” is big business.

Given the value and importance of privacy to American ideals, it is disturbing how the terms “privatization” and “private sector” are deceptively used. Many Americans have been led to believe that corporations can and will do a better job handling certain vital tasks than the government can. Such is the ideology of privatization. But in practice, there is very little evidence to prove this notion. Instead, the term “privatization” has become a clever euphemism to draw attention away from a harsh truth. Public functions are being handed over to corporations in sweetheart deals while publicly owned assets such as minerals on public lands and research development breakthroughs are being given away at bargain basement prices.

These functions and assets – which belong to or are the responsibility of the taxpayers – are being used to make an increasingly small pool of top corporate executives very wealthy. And taxpayers are left footing the cleanup bill when corporate greed does not align with the public need.

With this in mind, let us not mince words. “Privatization” is a soft term. Let us call the practice what it really is – corporatization….

continue reading at Common Dreams

The most ‘prejudiced’ states

from “The Formula Behind the Voting Rights Act,” New York Times, 6/22/13 (showing theoretical ways in which the Voting Rights Act could be revised to protect voting rights):

The most ‘prejudiced’ states

At least 75% of non-blacks more prejudiced than the U.S. average

Law professors at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Connecticut have created an estimate of prejudice using survey data from 2008.

The National Annenberg Election Survey asked people to rank the intelligence, trustworthiness and work effort of different groups of people, on a scale from 0 to 100. Christopher S. Elmendorf and Douglas M. Spencer estimated prejudice based on how people rate their own ethnic group, compared with how they rate blacks.

“It may be argued that Virginia and perhaps South Carolina should not be covered, but the rest of the covered states in the Deep South top the list of the most prejudiced states by anti-black stereotyping,” the professors found.

[The full report, “The Geography of Discrimination in Voting: MRP Meets the VRA,” by Christopher S. Elmendorf and Douglas M. Spencer, May 9, 2013, can be downloaded at Social Science research Network]

If It’s All Kosher, NSA, Why Lie?

By William Boardman, Reader Supported News, 22 June 13

Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon: “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: “No, sir.”

On March 12, 2013, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) apparently committed perjury in his sworn testimony to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. There is little likelihood of his being criminally charged, but we’ll get back to that.

If it doesn’t matter to you (1) that your government can maintain a massive data bank on your life and the lives of everyone you know, and (2) that there is no effective control on how the government uses its data, and (3) that your government lies about its capabilities, then there’s no point in reading further.

Does Anyone Know the Full Scale and Scope of the U.S Surveillance State?

This issue is not just about the NSA, which is not the only surveillance agency within the Department of Defense, which is not the only federal cabinet department that gathers intelligence. Intelligence-gathering agencies also exist within the Justice Department, Treasury, Energy, State, and Homeland Security, as well as the CIA.

Officially, the United States Intelligence Community comprises the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (www.dni.gov) and 16 other intelligence entities, most of them military, a re-organization established in 2005. The stated mission of the Director of National Intelligence is to “lead intelligence integration” of the other entities “that work both independently and collaboratively” to gather intelligence.

There is no easily available, reliable figure for the number of personnel in the intelligence community. In addition to this unknown number, there is an unknown number of outside contractors with an unknown number of personnel.

Top Secret Security Clearance Held by 1.4 Million People

According to Office of DNI report on security clearances in January 2013, almost 5 million people held one of three levels of security clearance as of October 2012. Access to the highest level of top secret information is limited to 1.4 million people.

In 2010, the Washington Post published a series of articles titled “Top Secret America” that described the intelligence community as “a hidden world, growing beyond control,” written by Dana Priest and William Arkin after a two-year investigation:

“The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

Describing the intelligence establishment as “so massive that its effectiveness is impossible to determine,” the Post found that it comprised at least 1,271 “government organizations” and 1,931 private companies, operating at some 10,000 locations in the U.S. alone, with top-secret security clearances held by an estimated 854,000 people in 2010 (about three times the population of Washington, D.C.)….

continue reading at Reader Supported News

Security, legality, and the least untruthful untruths

by Nathaniel Smith, Politics: A View from West Chester, June 15, 2013

I’m really having trouble with the argument that to be safe, we need to violate our own rights, and that we should just trust the government to do it.

As Ben Franklin said in 1775, “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

If it is so essential to our security as a nation for the government to spy on us, shouldn’t we be treated to a public discussion of the pros and cons, rather than being told the matter is too secret to be talked about, even in Congress?

There is no doubt about it, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied in a hearing of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on March 12, 2013. That’s not just what I think; here is the editorial page editor of the New York Times….

continue reading at Politics: A View from West Chester