And it’s all a secret shared by public employees hiding behind state secrets and national security concerns and their private industry buds, most of whom are able to promise lucrative life-after-government careers to McConnell, his minions and successors. Conflict of interest issues abound and dictate that Congress impose practical regulations in this area.

There’s nothing novel about that. Just as the rest of the industrialized world treats healthcare and pensions as legitimate issues requiring state protection, they also regulate data protection. EU and other rules make exceptions for the needs of “national security”, but I question whether any government outside Russia or China has such out-sized, Texan notions of what gets lumped into “national security” as do we.

Just a footnote about McConnell, Booz Allen and contracts; I’m on the DoD listserve along with DoS among a few others, and occasionally a nugget of info pops up on my screen, especially in the contracts… like this one

Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., of Herndon, Va., is being awarded a contract for $6,304,373. This action provides for the Information Assurance Technical Analysis Center to research a state-of-art 3D facial recognition biometrics program and prepare a final technical report. At this time $289,855 has been obligated. 55CONS/LGCD, Offutt Air Force Base, Neb., is the contracting activity (SP0700-98-D-4002, Delivery Order 0332).

http://www.defenselink.mil/con…..actid=3707

But what do you do, then, if you’re outsourcing everything? What’s to stop one of these companies–or even one of its employees, who after all has already chosen money over country–to sell all this data to other countries, potentially including blackmail information? It seems like with corporations, it would be hopeless to conduct any meaningful counterintelligence, even ignoring the prevalence of the profit motive.

I think Angleton would have a fit about outsourcing. I think he’d call it the dumbest idea ever to come out of the White House.

Traditionally, every spy had to have a minder whose job it is to make sure that your spy is dependent on you, and no one else. One of the Bush-Cheney gang’s ideas was to outsource everything so that business could make money at public expense. But when they extended that concept to intelligence, they lost sight of oversight/controll of their own assets. Its a bit like outsourcing security of your crown jewels to the lowest bidder. SURE we’ll keep your assets safe. Just give’em all to us, and trust us. Yessiree, we’ll take care of you. Heh.

Bob in HI

– Best, Tim Shorrock