The Real Snowden Story Isn't About The NSA. It's About China.

June 12th, 2012

by F. Grey Parker

Image via Policy Mic

The public discussion over the NSA'a massive and ongoing invasion of American privacy is essential. 

It's also long overdue. 

This is because not much of the information which 29 year old former intelligence contractor, Edward Snowden, has revealed is actually new.

More than seven years ago, USA Today broke the story:

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," said one person, who, like the others who agreed to talk about the NSA's activities, declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within the nation's borders, this person added."

The fact that we now know this longstanding program is called "PRISM" and we've seen the NSA's shoddy Power Point presentation outlining its purpose doesn't change the fact that this is old news.

Some are wondering where the outrage was seven years ago when those of us who tried to raise the alarm were savaged for doing so. Nevertheless, everyone seems to care all of a sudden. Welcome to the party, kids.

Snowden has become a hero to some, a villain to others, and the discussion is turning to whether or not the NSA revelations amount to treason. I tend to think they do not.

However, Snowden didn't just leak information regarding domestic security and privacy. Using the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald as his conduit, he also managed to reveal our nation's covert strategy to counter China's massive and ongoing cyber-attacks against our nation's business and government internet servers.

Following the lead of his source, Greenwald published this classified information at precisely the time President Obama was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. What made this all the more jaw-dropping was the publicly announced agenda for this summit.

Via Reuters:

"Meeting at the luxurious Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs in California, Obama will seek Xi's assurance that he takes seriously accusations of growing Chinese cyber spying, including snooping on advanced U.S. weapons designs.

"All nations need to abide by international norms and affirm clear rules of the road," a senior U.S. official told reporters. "That's the backdrop to the discussions that the two presidents will have."

Instead of heading into this meeting with some advantage, Snowden ensured that our President was proceeding from a position of weakness.

The China leak was of no benefit to the American people. It was utterly unrelated to domestic privacy. It had no impact on our personal freedoms. But, it sure was a victory for the People's Republic.

When Snowden outed himself two days later, he did so from a hotel in Hong Kong.

The optics aren't just shady, they're shocking.

It appears that Edward Snowden may have ginned up new interest in an old story, however serious, in order to pave the way for the release of information that dramatically damages America's foreign policy.

Today, the AP reports:

"The former CIA employee who leaked top-secret information about U.S. surveillance programs said in a new interview in Hong Kong on Wednesday that he is not attempting to hide from justice here but hopes to use the city as a base to reveal wrongdoing."

So, he intends to continue leaking covert information.

It will be very interesting to see who actually benefits from this.

PRISM is a travesty and a violation of our basic principles. It must be stopped.

But Snowden is not only no hero, he may be something much worse.

Quote Of The Day

June 14th, 2012

"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower

George Will Vs. The GOP On Defense

Feb 10th, 2012

A few days ago, conservative columnist George Will penned a withering critique of current Republican messaging on defense. He begins with nothing less than a rebuke of the entire Iraq misadventure:

"Hours — not months, not weeks, hours — after the last U.S. troops left Iraq, vicious political factionalism and sectarian violence intensified. Many Republicans say Barack Obama's withdrawal — accompanied by his administration's foolish praise of Iraq's "stability" — has jeopardized what has been achieved there. But if it cannot survive a sunrise without fraying, how much of an achievement was it?

Few things so embitter a nation as squandered valor; hence Americans, with much valor spent there, want Iraq to master its fissures. But with America in the second decade of its longest war, the probable Republican nominee is promising to extend it indefinitely." EMPHASIS OURS

In fact, all of the GOP contenders (with the exception of Ron Paul) are now in a mad dash to outdo one another in promising more wars, longer wars and bigger wars. The situation is out of hand and these positions are dramatically at odds with the will of the people.

Preparing To Fight The Hawks

Dec 2nd, 2011

As substantial (not to mention long overdue) cuts the U.S. defense budget loom, Kevin Drum takes aim at one of the more dubious arguments against them.

"Defense hawks like to insist that we should judge the Pentagon budget as a percentage of GDP. The Bill Kristol contingent, for example, claims that we should never allow defense spending to fall below 4 percent of GDP. But is this a sensible way of looking at things? For some programs it is. Social Security and Medicare, for example, are both inherently tied to population growth and living standards, so as those go up so will outlays. But in other areas this doesn't make so much sense. Do we need more embassies overseas just because our GDP has grown? Not really. There will be some increase in wages that's tied to economic growth, but that's about it."

Worth 1,000 Words

Sept 19th,  2011

Meet the world's largest employer... and still growing.

Via The Economist

Some Interesting Conservative Thought On Libya

March 22nd, 2011

Since the start of hostilities, there have been some genuinely intriguing observations over at the National Review. Kevin D. Willaimson writes in response to some derision regarding the use of our military dollars:

"With all due respect to Mr. Felzenberg and Mr. Gray, I’m not sure that our Libya campaign shows the folly of cuts in defense spending. One might argue as easily that our $1 trillion or more in defense spending shows the folly of the Libya campaign. We’re lobbing missiles that go for about $750,000 a copy into a country for the entirety of which I would not trade the change behind my sofa cushions, inasmuch as Libya strikes me the very definition of a negative asset, one that we are in the process of taking custodianship over."

"Yes, I wrote $1 trillion. Even though the last DOD budget was only — only! — about $550 billion, supplementary war funding brings the number up to about $663 billion. But lots of military spending takes place outside of DOD: at NASA, at DOE, DHS, Veterans’ Affairs, etc. And NASCAR, for Pete’s sake. Throw in all that, and the interest payments on debt incurred for previous military spending, and you get a number between $1 trillion and $1.4 trillion, depending on how you count it up. I’ll be conservative and call it a cool trillion. That’s a lot of money for a national-security system that has repeatedly, predictably, reliably failed to address our actual security threats."

Although I disagree, at points strenuously, with Williamson's recommendations for change, it is refreshing to see the truth about our defense budgets so plainly stated at NRO.

Defending Ourselves To Death

March 22nd, 2011

In a typically thoughtful piece by Jim Manzi discussing the current Libyan misadventure, I found this observation:

"Yes, we ”spend more on our military than all other major powers combined.” But, depending on how you measure it, the U.S. has about 20 – 25% of world GDP. In the long-run, we cannot win an arms race with the whole rest of the planet."

We are also not the world's policeman. Please consult the following graphics. The first makes clear that it is not merely the corporatist revenue schemes of the last ten years, but the previously unheard of increases in military industrial spending that poise our nation for admittance to the dustbin of history.

GOP Budget Insanity, ctd.

Feb 9th, 2011

James R. Horney writes for The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities providing an analysis of the GOP's proposed spending cuts announced last week:

"Under the plan, non-security programs would shrink, on average, by 15.4 percent below current funding under the continuing resolution (which expires on March 4) and 19.4 percent below what President Obama proposed for fiscal year 2011.  Programs and activities that face the risk of such cuts include funding for K-12 education, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Centers for Disease Control, and food safety inspections, and a number of programs that serve low-income children, seniors, and people with disabilities."

Take a very close look at their plans for defense. Their intention is to raise it. The one department of government which literally misplaced 2.3 trillion dollars just before the 9/11 attacks will get higher funding without any greater oversight. The one government agency which awarded over 280 Billion dollars in contracts between 2007 and 2009 to private contractors convicted of defrauding the American taxpayer is the only body that will have it's purse increased without any new demands for accountability.