THE SHINY ONES

The NID announced that they pulled their undercover operatives out of China after the OPM hack raided the State Department's files and China found itself in the position of now knowing for certain who was an actual state department employee and who was just pretending to work for Uncle Sam's foreign affairs personnel meat grinder.

This is what NID had to say on the matter as relayed from Ars Technica.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the committee that while "we don't know in terms of specifics" what was taken in the OPM breach, it had "potentially very serious implications, first among them close to home [for me] in terms of the Intelligence Community and identifying people who may be under public status... This is a gift that's going to keep on giving for years." Still, he said, as "egregious" as the OPM breach was, it didn't amount to an attack on national infrastructure. "Rather, it would be a form of theft or espionage. We, too, practice cyber espionage. We're not bad at it."

I think we are going to have to take Clapper's word that we are not bad at cyber espionage but the only case I can think of was what we learned about the NID from Snowden so I'm not sure that's a credibility gap filler for me. But they sure do spy on everybody, don't they?

You remember valerie plame who launched the vandal that sank Scooter Libby because she claimed that 'he' outed her as an undercover CIA agent? Yeah, me neither but isn't it odd that that was a crime deserving the appointment of a special prosecutor who only ended up tripping up Scooter because he misremembered under oath and didn't know enough to just claim he could not recall. Funny too how it was actually a State Department loser who actually outed plame to the press and he got off scot free. Where is the special prosecutor in this case? Who has been fired or jailed at OPM?

THE FIGHT FOR LIBERTY GOES ON

In a totally expected showdown Sunday night, Senator Paul stood firm and by his own unique action saw to it that some of the more egregious provisions of the vile Patriot Act were sunsetted and left to rot in the field of domestic surveillance and unchecked tyranny.

The White House backs the House bill. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said in a statement: "The Senate took an important - if late - step forward tonight. We call on the Senate to ensure this irresponsible lapse in authorities is as short-lived as possible. On a matter as critical as our national security, individual senators must put aside their partisan motivations and act swiftly." 

But the Senate adjourned without final action on the bill after Paul asserted his prerogative under Senate rules to delay a final vote for a couple of days. And a couple of hours later, the midnight deadline came and went. 

"This is what we fought the revolution over, are we going to so blithely give up our freedom? ... I'm not going to take it anymore," Paul declared on the Senate floor hours earlier, as supporters wearing red "Stand With Rand" T-shirts packed the spectator gallery.

Don't we not get a kick out of this White House spokesman declaring that this was an irresponsible lapse of authorities even as it kicks to death the Constitution's separation of powers and continues to rule by Executive Decree and dream up and enforce regulations of Executive Branch agencies which then have the force of law even though Congress has passed no such laws? Where is the White House on the critical national security implications of a wide open border which millions of undocumented people/terrorists cross every year? When will the Executive Branch and the President enforce the laws of the land? You know, in the name of national security.

I like Mr. Paul. I wish we had a Senate full of members like him and fewer like John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama and almost all the rest.

ISLANDS IN THE NET

I wonder about a second and third generation of policy and decision makers who are learning to adjust to the absence of the .sci networks in their lives after they move on to greener pastures. How do tech savvy people accommodate themselves in a disadvantaged environment when they leave government service and lose access to the SIPR and NSAnet?

You have to wonder don't you? The people at NSA made a huge investment in building backdoors into every single piece of tech they could find. They all got used to having back door access to every single network under their control or auspice.

Do you really think they left government service without taking the keys to the classified world wide web?

I have a theory.

WHAT THE NSA DOES

An interesting and informative summary of all of the revelations about NSA spying revealed by Snowden.  Remember the days of long ago when people laughed out loud at paranoiacs who raved about ECHELON and OMNIVORE? The funny thing to me is that people still don't believe that the NSA spies on everybody.

Our Representatives were supposed to keep on eye on the spies in our name

TOP SECRET SILENCERS AINT CHEAP

 I see we just had the Under Secretary of the Navy get fired, allegedly for having an affair. His affair came to light during a routine investigation into the scandal known as Government Procurement. His firing is unrelated to the procurement fraud but one of the officers being investigated in the fraud testified that the Under Secretary gave verbal approval for the purchase of silencers for a Top Secret program.

Verbal authority? In this day and age? Only in the White House and maybe HHS. Everybody else gets the autopen at the very least. Still, the  Washington Post gets the story out and manages to slide in the sacking of 2 admirals, 2 captains and 2 commanders in an unrelated but similar scandal.

I'm a little disturbed by the security classification nonsense being bandied around though by just about everybody. Why is an 'acquisition' of silencers for the navy "TOP SECRET?" Why is it a security violation of ANY kind to tell the Husbanding Agent under contract to the United States Navy the dates and times when USN ships and US warships are expected to arrive and depart from foreign parts where that Husbanding Agent is expected to meet them with all their logistical requirements lined up and ready to load?

Nothing unrelated to National Security should have any kind of classification on it except FOUO and that only as it relates to the Privacy Act. Every other use of classification markings is nothing but an effort to hide the truth, hide the data and hide from being held accountable.

Agencies like the NSA have a great deal to hide and always have had. They let the fact that they could hide all the things they did from public scrutiny and accountability lead them to believe that they had a right to do all the things they do.

FROM THE NSA FILES

Ace investigators of INS have turned up the NSA files on a previously unsuspected group of insurgents. Below are the notes on these unsuspected national security hooligans.

The NSA. It's like they know everything. It does make me wonder why they were spying on Angela Merkel though. Outside of being an East German apparatchik, what did she ever do?