Let’s Prosecute Treasury, State, and Drone Misses for Illegal Leaking
Some crisis communications moron apparently advised John Inglis to repeat “unauthorized disclosure” over and over in his interview with Steve Inskeep (he does so 7 times).
Because Inglis implicitly accuses Treasury, the State Department, and failed drone operators for illegal leaks.
In response to Inskeep’s question whether the NSA conducts 44 million queries a year (which actually means the NSA is passively querying targets an order of magnitude more often, as Inglis’ response makes clear), Inglis tries to suggest that the only way a target would learn we were tracking him would be if someone leaked that information.
INGLIS: That’s what that math would lead you to but actually, it’s not that simple. So let’s say I’m interested in a particular terrorist, that individual might have dozens, might have across a given year hundreds of selectors. I’d kind of pick up and drop telephones on, you know, like it’s fast food. They might form, discard email addresses at a rapid rate. Why? Because we told them that they’re of interest to us. We’ve been telling them that for years through these unauthorized disclosures. So one individual might have attributable to them hundreds of these things. At the same time, we don’t query one time a year. We might try to find out every few hours. We might try to find out every once in a while, you know, where this thing is. It might be that geo-location is of interest to us. And so all of that then constitutes a broad number of inquiries.
Of course, the other way targets learn we are tracking them is if Treasury and State designate their organization a terror affiliate (or they themselves a designated target), or if they escape a near miss, perhaps by drone.
Seriously, Inglis would have to be a moron if he really believes many — if not most — of our top targets don’t know we’re tracking them. But he’s not a moron. Which presents the more logical conclusion that he has cynically started chanting leak leak leak when describing something that is a normal aspect of spying, all to suggest what Snowden has done devastated their work.
Yes, so much so that we’re now losing the war because we were winning it with the super secrecy. Results measure success. Or failure.
Shiny objects: Poor people drive Cadillacs, Reefer Madness causes laziness. Terrorists are living in your neighbors basement. The Pope is a Marxist. Christ, you’d think that someone in that town would have some self-awareness and hear the stupid coming out of their mouths.
I read that funny, had to go back and read again. Thought you were saying if Treasury and State designate themselves/each other as terror affiliates etc., if they themselves felt the consequences of their actions, if what they send arouund comes back around to themselves, like drones — man, the blossoms in my mind! Total paranoia, equal opportunity destruction, who could have foreseen? National security, baby! Must – stop – terror !
Well, that was fun, thanks. Of course we have transparency and checks and balances and good will to all so that could never happen.
Only the administration believes its own propaganda, despite being the only ones who theoretically have accurate, if unassimilated information. Must be some weird version of “politics makes strange bedfellows.”