[LINK] The NSA Mission Statement

[Jim Birch]

This is an interesting piece on the uselessness of spying from John
Quiggin.  His argument is less about moral transgression and more about the
practical issue of it being a waste or resources.  You don't get a lot for
a billion dollars dollars:

"I’ve long maintained the view that spies never discover anything useful
about a country’s foreign enemies, though they are very useful in
suppressing domestic opponents. This is a straightforward implication of
game theory, but my attempts to explain it haven’t worked in the past, and
I don’t know how to do much better. So, I’m going to restate my arguments
from 10 years ago, against the massive expansion of spying that was already
under way, and make the observation that the evidence since then strongly
supports my case.

Despite an espionage and surveillance effort unparalleled in history, the
US NSA has been unable to produce any convincing evidence of stopping even
one domestic terror plot. Its best case was someone alleged to have sent a
few thousand dollars to Al Shabab in Somalia. The NSA not only missed
actual terror plotters like those in Boston, but also performed poorly
relative to ordinary police methods which have produced numerous
convictions (many of them admittedly, by methods that verge on entrapment)."

http://johnquiggin.com/2013/11/23/why-spies-never-discover-anything-useful/

- Jim



On 25 November 2013 07:28, Jan Whitaker <jwhit at internode.on.net> wrote:

> At 12:10 AM 25/11/2013, jore wrote:
> >For example, the best bits I like is evidence of ASIO *supporting* and
> >*protecting* terrorist groups such as the Croatian Ustaše by safely
> >trafficking them into Australia...
>
> Like they always say, one spook's terrorist is
> another spook's freedom fighter, and often they
> are the same individual at different times. Just watch Homeland.
>
> The trick is figuring out which is which when and where.
>
> Jan
>
>
>
> Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
> jwhit at janwhitaker.com
>
> Sooner or later, I hate to break it to you,
> you're gonna die, so how do you fill in the space
> between here and there? It's yours. Seize your space.
> ~Margaret Atwood, writer
>
> _ __________________ _
> _______________________________________________
> Link mailing list
> Link at mailman.anu.edu.au
> http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
>