At the BBQ your neocon brother-in-law throws this weekend, try asking guests who shrug at the NSA’s universal eavesdropping whether they’re as blasé about other countries’ collecting our communications—for instance, Pakistan. Yes, Pakistan, notorious abuser of human rights (not fair, is it, that the USSA also grossly abuses those rights yet escapes the notoriety). Pakistan is “kinda copying the precedent shown by … the United States and trying to create their own NSA, or something that could rival the NSA,” according to one of Privacy International’s researchers. Nor are Paki rulers content with spying on their own serfs: like their idols at the NSA, their ambitions are global. “Pakistan has been trying to build a sophisticated National Security Agency-style mass surveillance system that would let it tap the phone calls and emails of hundreds of millions of people worldwide — and has been contracting with Western and other international companies to achieve its goal…” Those “Western and other international companies” have eagerly and profitably assisted Pakistan’s tyrants, just as they did Amerika’s. Talk about “equal opportunity”!
Meanwhile, Mark Luedtke sends a link about hackers—one “a former staffer at the NSA”—who crashed a car a volunteer was driving by hacking into its computerized systems. Mark wonders “how many times NSA has done this.” Indeed. Let us recall all those mysterious deaths at the wheel befalling Obummer’s critics. Then remember that the NSA is currently training 200 students in its nefarious methods at “summer camp,” with vehicles specifically mentioned as targets.
I guess the NSA’s “former staffer” missed the “ethics lessons” about not hacking at home that the agency preaches to campers. So, when the latter head back to Mom and Dad and scrupulously refrain from trying out their forbidden knowledge, whose car will be next?
12:13 pm on July 22, 2015
