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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIntelligence agencies pounce on Paris attacks to pursue spy agenda
Government officials are wasting no time in attempting to exploit the tragedy in Paris to pass invasive anti-privacy laws and acquire extraordinary new powers that they have wanted for years. In the process, they are making incredibly dishonest arguments and are receiving virtually no pushback from the media.
Absent any actual information or evidence so far about intelligence failures leading up to the deplorable terrorist attack in Paris, pundits spent the weekend speculating that Edward Snowden and surveillance reform were to blame for the fact that the attack went undetected. Then on Monday, in an epic episode of blame shifting, the CIA director, John Brennan, reportedly said privacy advocates have undermined the ability of spies to monitor terrorists. He explained:
Because of a number of unauthorized disclosures and a lot of hand-wringing over the governments role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists, there have been some policy and legal and other actions that are taken that make our ability collectively, internationally to find these terrorists much more challenging, adding that there is a misrepresentation of what the intelligence security services are doing.
Read Brennans comments carefully because they are very revealing. When he says legal actions, hes referring to the fact that multiple federal courts have ruled that the governments secret mass surveillance on millions of Americans is illegal. So it sounds like the CIA director is saying its a shame that intelligence agencies cant operate completely above the law any more, and is scapegoating any failings on his agencys part on accountability that is the hallmark of any democracy. (Though he still can apparently operate above the law.)
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http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/17/intelligence-agencies-pounce-paris-attacks-pursue-spy-agenda
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Intelligence agencies pounce on Paris attacks to pursue spy agenda (Original Post)
n2doc
Nov 2015
OP
AuntPatsy
(9,904 posts)1. Why am I not surprised?
moondust
(20,002 posts)2. Slam dunk!
Was George Tenet lying or was his intelligence bureacracy incompetent? Or both? Iraq's WMD programs had apparently been discontinued by the mid 1990s and a minimally competent intelligence bureacracy would have known that well before 2002.
They very well may use these attacks to try allow more intrusion and less oversight. And they may succeed given so many authoritarians of both parties in D.C. Tricky stuff in the age of asymmetric warfare and smartphones.