Where Uncle Sam Ought to Be Snooping

from Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality:


Where Uncle Sam Ought to Be Snooping
June 16, 2013

Let’s place private corporations with government contracts under surveillance — to make sure no one is getting rich off our tax dollars.

By Sam Pizzigati


Only 23 percent of Americans, says a new Reuters poll, consider former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden a “traitor” for blowing the whistle on the federal government’s massive surveillance of the nation’s telecom system.

Many Americans, the poll data clearly suggest, find the idea of government agents snooping through their phone calls and emails a good bit unnerving.

But Americans have more on the surveillance front to worry about than overzealous government agents. Government personnel aren’t actually doing the snooping the 29-year-old Snowden revealed. NSA officials have contracted this snooping out — to private corporate contractors.

These surveillance contracts, in turn, are making contractor executives exceedingly rich. And none have profited personally more than the power suits who run Booz Allen Hamilton and the private equity Carlyle Group. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://toomuchonline.org/where-uncle-sam-ought-to-be-snooping/#sthash.5BrKUbgB.dpuf