It's not the NSA, and that's the problem

In my previous posts starting with Bush's Loogie I showed that the problem wasn't so much with NSA proper as with how those capabilities have been granted to private and State actors; which basically amounted to reducing our privacy protections to something like a strippers pasties and thong and the Metastasis of surveillance which has given NSA/FBI powers to State and local police. In the later I detailed how most of our security flows from well meaning directives or efforts to make security work better by sharing it with law enforcement or by inviting in State and private partners.

Thus almost all our problems derive from these seemingly well meaning National Security Council Directives. Since I wrote all that I've been investigating each of the institutions implied by the NSC directives. My last article on this subject was about the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) which went after Occupy as detailed by Naomi Klein. And other efforts that have gone after "intellectual property" have the intended/unintended consequences of strengthening the power of giant corporations.

The result of all this is that law enforcement has tools to go after innocent folks and is sufficiently in bed with powerful private companies that it now has the incentive. Organizations like DSAC are invitations to corruption, and themselves are corrupting because they are run by folks from organizations whose private interest is often at odds with the public interest. At best private companies are mercenary and at worst they are corruptors of our system. I have a lot more to write, but this let me put it all in one place.