{"id":31279,"date":"2013-04-02T17:04:47","date_gmt":"2013-04-02T16:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=31279"},"modified":"2013-04-02T17:05:15","modified_gmt":"2013-04-02T16:05:15","slug":"crackdown-on-whistleblowers-is-for-the-protection-of-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/latest-news\/crackdown-on-whistleblowers-is-for-the-protection-of-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Crackdown on Whistleblowers – The Protection Of Money & Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Forbes.com<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"obama_stern_econ_ap_img\"
(AP Photo\/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Obama administration\u2019s extraordinary secrecy and pursuit of leakers is usually viewed through the lens of the First Amendent: does a free press conflict with the imperatives of national security? But that\u2019s really not the best way to view it, as\u00a0this piece in the Nation<\/a>\u00a0on the\u00a0National\u00a0SecurityAgency illustrates. Here it was less about protecting important secrets from our enemies than keeping the lid on a massive NSA screwup.<\/p>\n

At issue is a program called Trailblazer, a project that was supposed to spearhead the NSA\u2019s 21st-century mission of sorting through the geometrically-increasing amounts of electronic data coursing around the world. It was also part of an organizational paradigm shift taking place across the government: let outside contractors do most of the work.<\/p>\n

But Trailblazer was a bust; the NSA shelved in 2006. Meanwhile, a promising data sorting program called Thin Thread \u2014 devised in-house and much cheaper \u2014 was ignored amid the agency\u2019s big move into privatization. Ultimately, Tim Shorrock writes (disclosure: Shorrock is a friend) not much intelligence got sorted, but private companies made a lot of money:<\/p>\n

[H]ere\u2019s the irony: Even though Trailblazer failed, the massive enterprise it created set the model for the wholesale privatization of national security work after 9\/11. As I described in my 2008 book\u00a0Spies for Hire<\/em><\/a>, this tsunami of taxpayer largesse reached into every nook and cranny of the\u00a0intelligence-industrial complex<\/a>\u00a0that had slowly been built over the 1980s and \u201990s to service the vast CIA and Pentagon needs for surveillance, reconnaissance and advanced IT. In the end, a handful of contractors earned at least $1.2 billion from Trailblazer, and probably several billion more, since huge amounts were squeezed from other parts of the NSA, including its detachments in the Army, Navy and Air Force.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When whistleblowers called attention to some of the embarrassing facts and absence of accountability surrounding Trailblazer, they were investigated by the FBI. One of them, Thomas Drake, was\u00a0indicted under the Espionage Act<\/a>after putting a\u00a0Baltimore<\/a>\u00a0Sun reporter onto the story. (He now works in theApple<\/a>\u00a0Store in\u00a0Bethesda<\/a>, MD.) Ultimately, the government\u2019s case against Drake collapsed: all espionage-related charges were dropped and he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor. The FBI also investigated three other whistleblowers. They weren\u2019t prosecuted but their security clearances were revoked; when they tried to form a private data security company, they say the NSA blackballed them among potential customers.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a lot more there, including the role of 9\/11 and the rise of the omniscient, unchecked security state. But when you get down to it, it\u2019s a straightforward case of CYA, the oldest story imaginable: if you have money and power, you will do everything to protect it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Obama administration\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s extraordinary secrecy and pursuit of leakers is usually viewed through the lens of the First Amendent: does a free press conflict with the imperatives of national security?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,1616],"tags":[49],"class_list":{"0":"post-31279","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-latest-news","8":"category-usa-news","9":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}