So far, the biggest revelation of the NSA spying story is\u2026that anyone actually thinks this story is a big revelation.<\/p>\n
A look back to 2006 reveals a story in the USA Today<\/a> that sounds a lot like the whistle blown by Edward Snowden. In fact, the massive, technologically-driven surveillance state got its biggest push over a decade ago<\/a> under the inauspicious midwifery of Iran-Contra superstar Vice Admiral John Poindexter.<\/p>\n After 9\/11 changed everything\u2013including the Constitution\u2013Poindexter<\/a> slid into a cozy chair at the laboratory of shadow democracy called DARPA<\/a> (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) and quickly started experimenting with the market opportunity created by the PATRIOT Act. His work gave birth to the Total Information Awareness<\/a> program.<\/p>\n The TIA was exactly what it sounded like<\/a>\u2013an omnipresent database containing as much information as it could possibly collect. In addition to gathering and storing all emails, text messages, credit card activity, traffic tickets, court records, social network traffic and medical records, it also included a biometric gizmo called \u201cHumanID\u201d that could analyze facial features, body movements, gait and other biological traits and determine the identity of a distant human target.<\/p>\n That was just one of many dystopian daydreams being pursued by Poindexter and his Military-Industrial contractor buddies at Hicks & Associates\u2013a Northern Virginia \u201cconsulting firm\u201d populated with defense insiders. Hicks & Associates was also a wholly-owned adjunct of big-time<\/a> government contractor SAIC<\/a> (Science Applications International Corporation).<\/p>\n However, the unbearable \u201ctotalness\u201d of Poindexter\u2019s Frankendata program did not sit well with members of Congress. Just a couple years after 9\/11, Congress actually voted to defund<\/a> the TIA.<\/p>\n But mere democracy could not stop it.<\/p>\n As Shane Harris<\/a> of the National Journal reported in 2006<\/a>, the TIA \u201clived on\u201d like a B-movie monster. After Congress officially pulled the plug, key components of the TIA program were simply parceled out to other agencies. Cloaked in code-worded black budget secrecy, the money kept flowing into programs like Topsail (a cute re-naming of the TIA\u2019s Genoa II program) and into the main TIA program, which was re-named<\/a> \u201cBasketball.\u201d<\/p>\n Both Topsail and Basketball were quickly passed on to a little-known agency called ARDA (Advanced Research and Development Activity), which took control of the \u201cresearch\u201d and reengaged SAIC in a remunerative \u201cpublic-private partnership\u201d to further develop a program<\/a> that (it\u2019s worth noting again) had been officially ended by an act of Congress.<\/p>\n Silly Congress.<\/p>\n They just couldn\u2019t keep up with an \u201cintelligence community\u201d they\u2019d helped to unleash over the course of two dark days<\/a> in October of 2001 when they passed the ironically and perhaps tragically-named PATRIOT Act.<\/p>\n With the Fourth Amendment irrevocably exiled to the Island of Quaint Notions\u2013along with the Geneva Conventions\u2013there was little they could do to stop the national security behemoth standing astride both sides of the Potomac River.<\/p>\n Even if they\u2019d wanted to pursue TIA (aka Basketball) as it moved from DARPA to ARDA, intelligence busybodies made a renewed effort to obscure an agency that, according to an AP story<\/a>, wasn\u2019t even \u201clisted in the U.S. Government Manual, the 684-page official compilation of federal departments, agencies and offices.\u201d<\/p>\n But it did have a website.<\/p>\n So, in the interest of not-quite-full disclosure, ARDA\u2019s website was taken down in 2005 and the agency rechristened the DTO<\/a> (Disruptive Technology Office). Like its predecessors, the DTO was located at Fort Meade, Maryland on the site of\u2026wait for it\u2026the NSA<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite the shell games, speculation persisted that the TIA-Basketball-ARDA programs continued under the auspices of the DTO. So, in 2007 the DTO was folded into yet another acronymic agency\u2013IARPA<\/a> (Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity).<\/p>\n When IARPA was founded, the former head of the DTO\u2013Dr. Michael Macedonia\u2013left to join the newly-created \u201cNational Security Division\u201d of Forterra Systems<\/a>, the self-described<\/a> \u201cmarket and technology leader in private virtual worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n Forterra\u2019s advisory board includes a former Air Force colonel named Jack Thorpe who, according to Businessweek<\/a>, \u201c\u2026served as Program Manager and Office Director at Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for 12 years.\u201d<\/p>\n Isn\u2019t that a happy coincidence?<\/p>\n And Forterra\u2019s \u201cprivate virtual worlds\u201d are built on its OLIVE<\/a> (On-Line Interactive Virtual Environment) technology, which, not coincidentally, was purchased in 2010<\/a> by\u2026wait for it\u2026SAIC!<\/p>\n Also not coincidentally, OLIVE is now the foundation of SAIC\u2019s \u201cVirtual Government\u201d techno-product\u2013\u201cvGov.\u201d According to a Tech News Daily blurb<\/a> in 2010, vGov is a \u201cvirtual world that will function much like a secure \u2018Second Life\u2019 for government agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n SAIC developed vGov in concert with the USDA, Department of Homeland Security, Air Force and National Defense University, and they anticipate a plethora of national security applications<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, SAIC participated in the genesis of the TIA through its Hicks & Associates consultancy. It popped up throughout the shell games leading up to the folding of the DTO into IARPA. And it followed up on Dr. Macedonia\u2019s shift over to Forterra by buying it up so they could get into the business of selling \u201cVirtual Government\u201d back to the US taxpayer.<\/p>\n They\u2019ve already scored a profitable-sounding \u201cindefinite delivery\/indefinite quantity<\/a>\u201d contract to provide \u201cVirtual Government\u201d to the USDA<\/a>\u2013and there is little doubt that vGov is being sold back to the intelligence community. Unfortunately, you probably need an avatar with a security clearance to find out exactly what is going on inside the \u201cVirtual Government.\u201d<\/p>\n And this really is the point of the NSA spying story\u2013how the merger of corporations with government agencies has turned the US government into an actual \u201cvirtual government\u201d populated with public-private avatars operating in a Second Life-style<\/a> world all their own.<\/p>\n Insiders like John Poindexter, Jack Thorpe and Dr. Macedonia pass effortlessly between public and private, capitalizing on the ultimate captive market\u2013the fearful taxpayer. And national security is, and has been since the end of World War II, one of the greatest sales pitches<\/a> ever devised.<\/p>\n While the American taxpayer is fed a diet of shock and awe and fear and loathing, the people living in the recession-proof<\/a> world of public-private partnerships<\/a> work tirelessly to protect their job security under the guise of super-secret national security<\/a>.<\/p>\n They live in an \u201cindefinite delivery\/indefinite quantity\u201d America built on a virtual government of industrial complexes\u2013the Military-Industrial Complex<\/a>, the Prison-Industrial Complex<\/a>, the Political-Industrial Complex<\/a>, the Healthcare-Industrial Complex<\/a> and\u2013as we now see thanks to Edward Snowden\u2013the Security-Industrial Complex<\/a>.<\/p>\n So, the Wall Street Journal headline<\/a> that reads \u201cU.S. Relies on Spies for Hire to Sift Deluge of Intelligence\u201d may have it backwards. The banal truth<\/a> is more likely that \u201cSpies for Hire Rely on the Deluge of Intelligence Collected by the U.S. to Have Something to Sift Through.\u201d<\/p>\n And, therefore, they\u2019ve got a reason to keep sending taxpayers the bill<\/a>.<\/p>\n JP Sottile<\/strong>\u00a0is a freelance journalist, published historian, radio co-host and documentary filmmaker (The Warning, 2008). His credits include a stint on the Newshour news desk, C-SPAN, and as newsmagazine producer for ABC affiliate WJLA in Washington. His weekly show, Inside the Headlines w\/ The Newsvandal, co-hosted by James Moore, airs every Friday on KRUU-FM in Fairfield, Iowa. He blogs under the pseudonym \u201cthe Newsvandal<\/a>\u201c.<\/em><\/p>\n