'Digital Blackwater': NSA Leak Highlights Key Role of Private Contractors

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/11-1


Booz Allen's cyber facility on September 25, 2012 in Annapolis Junction, Maryland. (Jeffrey MacMillan/The Washington Post via Getty)

Like the mercenaries for hire used by the U.S. in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and New Orleans—contractors like Blackwater that have come under scrutiny for their extreme lack of oversight—the U.S. government has been outsourcing intelligence services to private companies who have access to the general population's most sensitive information.


This revelation, which has arisen out of the recent Eward Snowden NSA leaks among the trove of alarming civil rights violations, has rights advocates very concerned.

According to the offices of James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, of the 4.9 million people with clearance to access "confidential and secret" government information, 1.1 million, or 21 per cent, work for outside contractors—these intelligence corporations.

Of the 1.4 million who have the higher "top secret" access, 483,000, or 34 percent, work for contractors—meaning that, as Edward Snowden recently revealed in his interview with the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, contractors sitting anywhere, in a home office for example, have vast access to the personal communications of ordinary citizens.

[newmember]

1. Don't you worry ......... Obama got this

[Shivering Jemmy]

2. Someone has got to build maintain and operate the tech.

Lots of businesses do computation better than the Feds.

[Junkdrawer]

3. DemocracyNow covered this this morning....

http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/11/digital_blackwater_how_the_nsa_gives

[xiamiam]

4. privatized war and espionage...whose profit depends on the continuation and growth of the same

in the name of the us government.. WTF COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?..we now have run amok capitalism profiteering from perpetuating terror. The difference is that because of Snowdon, we are aware of the role of private contractors and the nsa...wake up folks..

[xiamiam]

5. wish i could recommend this a million times..this is what we should be talking about

privatization of war..and the war on terror. How do we stop this? How is this legal? As long as there is profit in keeping it ramped up it will never ever ever end.. never. So depressing.