[LINK] Snowden, Inteligence Gathering, Indonesia and Embarrassment

[Frank O'Connor]

And the 'Australian Council of Security Professionals' is obviously gonna be unbiased, economically disinterested and completely fair and honest about the need to exercise their services, and the results that they attain, on a client/citizen/state basis cost-benefit analysis, when the annual budget comes up?

My major point was, and continues to be, unless these agencies are held accountable and responsible for their actions ... preferably by outside parties interested in seeing the taxpayer/state gets value for money, and continue to enjoy the rights and privileges guaranteed by law and convention then we have advanced nowhere, then we have lost the plot. Agencies will continue to put forward increased budget estimates (and BTW, love the $600 million added to the last one to handle design deficiencies in the original building they wanted in our capital that nobody was held accountable for leaking), huge intelligence infrastructure increases and continue creating even more outstanding debacles like this, and consistent failures to predict.

And yes, I know intelligence agencies are between a rock and a hard place. And yes, I know that a parliamentary Committee and the Attorney General oversee them in secret. But I have seen no evidence that ANY of this oversight has resulted in any improvement of performance, any efficiencies, any increase in effectiveness or any lessening in the number and severity of the regular debacles which they oversee or cause. 

And given that most/all of the oversight appears functionally ineffective ... perhaps its time for the agencies to make their various empire building cases in a more public forum - like all other federal agencies have to do.

>From the North Korean invasion over the 39th Parallel, through central Europe in the Cold War, through Burgess, Maclean and Co, and through the Bay of Pigs, Indonesia and Sukarno, Malaysia in the early 60's, Vietnam after France pulled out, Chile, South America, Timor, religious fundamentalism in the 90's and Noughties, through Wikipedia, Manning and Snowden ... they missed it and/or interpreted what they saw badly ... and all resulted in diabolical messes despite (and in many cases, because of) our intelligence agencies. There are a heap of other examples if you want me to elucidate.

And now they take my privacy, my independence, they seek to institute ever more draconian controls on my behaviour and (like their private industry counterparts) suck up data concerning my behaviour, thinking and motivations.

I'm finding the cost is too damn high ... I'm doing a cost-benefit analysis if you like ... especially given what I see as the prospective risks - and I think the intelligence fraternity would be real smart to 'lie low' for a few years rather than continuing their push for more resources to invade of their citizen's private space using ever increasing amounts of the taxpayer dollar.

Just my 2 cents worth ...
---
On 21 Nov 2013, at 3:00 pm, Tom Worthington <tom.worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:

> On 21/11/13 13:05, Frank O'Connor wrote:
> 
>> I find it interesting that nobody... seems to be asking ...
> 
> It happens I am at the Australasian Council of Security Professionals 
> Seminar at the ANU in Canberra today. The delegates spend their working 
> days asking what information should, and can, be collected, analyzed and 
> how far to disseminate the results. But they tend not to discuss  any of 
> this in public forums: 
> http://blog.tomw.net.au/2013/11/australian-national-resilience-cyber.html
> 
> 
> -- 
> Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
> The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/
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