Solve the real problem.

Walk and chew gum. The NSA both over reaches into civil liberties and improperly contracts out its work.

be farming anything out.

The government shouldn't be spying on its citizens. What difference does it make whether or not anything is being farmed out? Many people will infer that, so long as "only direct government employees" get or issue security clearances, then they can be trusted. This is simply not true. Even if there had never been a Snowden, this is still wrong and unamerican.

Privatizing of government functions is stealing taxpayer monies for the 1%.

But this is a huge profit for the companies involved in this function

If you want to have that conversation there are plenty of other threads for you to move to. Or, start your own.

This really can't be that hard...

There should be no such thing as for-profit spying. Just as there should be no for-profit national security, war contractors, or prisons.

outsourcing government jobs is not a good thing. People who work for the government will view things differently than people who work for a company that has a contract with the government.

At one point in my life, while serving in the USAF, I had a very high level security clearance. It wasn't because I wanted one, but what I was assigned to do or volunteered to do during my enlistment required it. It was a high level clearance, indeed, too.

At the time, in the mid to late 1960s, security clearance investigations were done by the FBI, and they were very thorough, as far as they went. They actually came to my little home town and personally interviewed a number of people regarding my character, etc.

But here's the thing: I was 19 years old when the first investigation was done, for a basic Top Secret clearance. I had zero history, and those investigations are about history, since that's really all they can investigate. I never sat for a polygraph exam, and never even had a personal interview about any of my clearance levels, which kept increasing as my duties required. 19 year old kids from small towns who haven't had any life experience really don't have much on which to base a clearance investigation, frankly.

By the time I left the USAF, I had accumulated many endorsements to that basic Top Secret clearance, but nobody checked anything except my history. There was no psychological testing or any such thing. They just assumed that if I didn't have any black marks in my past, that I was a reliable person. In fact, I was, and took the seriousness of the clearance and my legal obligations regarding the work I did to heart. But, that was me. Someone else might have done a different thing.

Now, I understand that some of those investigations are done by private contractors, rather than the FBI. I assume that there is some FBI involvement, but perhaps not on the level in previous decades. That might be cause for alarm, but still, with young people being investigated, there's often nothing to find in their history, and so it's all a matter of faith, really, that the people who get the clearances will act in accordance with the laws and the agreements they sign so often in connection with their work.

Security clearances are a crap shoot anytime the people getting the clearances are youthful. It's just how it is.

with a maturing conscience, as we are not the same person we were when we were young, fortunately.

If the gov wasn't participating in these illegal activities this wouldn't be the problem it is today, not to mention the support the internet gives to our young patriots.


Edward Snowden is a modern day Paul Revere with a thumb drive full of news that Tyranny is coming!

I've been in all three roles. I've been an army sgt with a TS clearance. I've been an army civilian with a TS clearance. And I've been a defense contractor with a TS clearance.

I wasn't any more or less likely to sell or protect classified information because I was in uniform, because I was in a suit, or because I was getting paid by a private company.

If people have access to information and want to abuse it for criminal activities, they'll do it regardless of their status. If people feel morally obligated to become a whistleblower, they will do it regardless of their status. If they get it in their head to spy, they will do it regardless of their status. If they are the sort of person who will protect it no matter what it is, they will do that.

A background check will filter out some of the criminal elements, but it won't do much beyond that.

private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. "

-Franklin D. Roosevelt, "Message from the President of the United States