Corporate Spooks Are Watching You: The Dangerous Rise of the Industrial-Surveillance Complex

http://www.alternet.org/civil-liberties/outsourced-spooks



Whether one views Edward Snowden as a hero or a villain, perhaps we could all agree that if the government is to keep secrets, a 29-year-old private contractor with a soft spot for Ron Paul shouldn't have access to a treasure trove of its most sensitive information.

Of course, that assumes that there still exists a bright line between government and the private sector. But that's become an antiquated notion after two decades of ideologically driven outsourcing of what were once considered core government functions. As a result of that effort, there are now a million potential Edward Snowdons – or, more precisely, 483,263 contractors with top-secret clearances, according to James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence – any of whom could slip out with sensitive data on a thumb drive if they have a personal or ideological axe to grind.

More troubling is the fact that we're being constantly monitored by private spy companies with virtually no oversight or accountability. According to journalist Tim Shorrock, around 70 percent of our national security spending now goes to private firms. Michael Hayden, “who oversaw the privatization effort as NSA director from 1999 to 2005,” told Shorrock that “the largest concentration of cyber power on the planet is the intersection of the Baltimore Parkway and Maryland Route 32,” where the NSA's top contractors are located. Hayden coined the term, “Digital Blackwater” to describe the privatization of American cyber security agencies.

“I think it's extraordinarily frightening because the oversight by Congress is so minimal to begin with,” says Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois and author of Digital Disconnect: How Capitalism Is Turning the Internet Against Democracy. “From what we know, the oversight of spying, intelligence and surveillance is really rock-bottom, with members of Congress often knowing little or nothing” about the details of these programs. “So, they're going off the books [with private firms] to avoid even the minimal oversight they do have.”