You've got to be fracking kidding me.
The nation's top spy, Michael McConnell, thinks the threat of cyberarmageddon! is so great that the U.S. government should have unfettered and warrantless access to U.S. citizens' Google search histories, private e-mails and file transfers, in order to spot the cyberterrorists in our midst.
That's according to a sprawling 18-page story on the Director of National Intelligence by Lawrence Wright in the January 21 edition of the New Yorker. (The story is not online).
In the piece, McConnell returns, in flamboyant style, to his exaggerating ways, hyping threats and statistics to further his bureaucratic aims. For example, McConnell regurgitates the hoary myth that computer crime costs America $100 billion a year. THREAT LEVEL traced down the source of that fake-factoid in September to a former privacy officer for the state of Colorado.
Presumably using unsupported stats like that, in May 2007 McConnell convinced President Bush that a massive cyber-attack on a singe U.S. bank would be worse for the economy than than the deadly terrorist attacks of September 11, the article reports. In response, the NSA developed a mind-boggling, but still incomplete, plan to eavesdrop on the internet in order to protect it.
[From NSA Must Examine All Internet Traffic to Prevent Cyber Nine-Eleven, Top Spy Says | Threat Level from Wired.com]
Excuse me while I scream a bit, and look for the print edition of The New Yorker in question so I can read more of the article, screaming. There is a podcast at The New Yorker, if you are interested. Lest we forget, terrorists are not really the target of this internet monitoring (you think Al Qaeda operatives use natural language in their communications?), we are, the citizens.
Is it 2009 yet? Though, if such a disgusting program began, I'd be very surprised if any of the current Corporate Democrats or Republicans with a chance to become President would actually dial back this program. Sure, Kucinich might, but he's not winning.
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