I bet I got your attention with that title. Why did you think about one thing first?  You sinners are all alike.

NSA Spooks and Peepers

What I want to talk about is government spooks = spies, intelligence (what an oxymoron!), and any manner of creepy government law enforcement agency that lusts after your personal information (pretty much everyone from the IRS head to the CIA janitor). These freaks actually think they are serving the public interest by knowing about everything from your shopping habits to your bathroom habits. They also want to label everything Top Secret that they gather so you and I won’t know what or how they gather it and what they gather, and especially how illegal that might be. On top of this they will label Top Secret any embarrassing information they don’t want you to see whether it should be secret or not because they know better than you what is good for you and the United States in general.

Conspiracy Theories

Now I’m not a big conspiracy theory believer like former governor and AWA wrestling legend Jesse “The Body” Ventura. Anytime you get more than two powerful people in a room someone of them is going to squeal or otherwise “compromise” any agreement to get what they personally want over the others. Powerful people are almost always double crossers and if they think they can get more by ratting and they also think there is a reasonable chance of getting away with it (or just killing their co-conspirators), they’re going to do it. Think about it. Think about experiences you’ve had at work, with government, at church, at fraternal organizations, even in your social circle. Somebody always outs the information and we all know what they thought they were up to. Hence I don’t think the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergers are up to anything more than a lot of back slapping and circle jerking. What I’m getting to is I do think when these things leak out of the government they are probably real and not just someone (like me) playing Chicken Little and we ought to pay attention to it. I will also tell you why we ought to be thanking these “leakers” as patriots to the US Constitution and helping them get away with it instead of listening to all the folderol about putting them in jail or worse as traitors.

AWA’s Jesse “The Body” Ventura

Let’s go a little farther back in history. Say before the disgraceful Iraq war. Remember those “weapons of mass destruction,” WMD’s. Remember when the government tried to suppress the testimony of leading international nuclear inspectors as top secret. Well it was labeled secret because it didn’t support going to war. What other possible reason would this be classified as secret? How did it put our country at risk for this to be public knowledge? Also remember that as soon as it was outed by the leakers, we suddenly now had a war for regime change. Is there something fishy in Denmark? I’ll say!

Weapons of Mass Destruction

Now lets jump forward a little bit to Abu Gharib (I’m too lazy to look up the correct spelling for you sticklers out there). The photographs were initially suppressed by the DoD as secret. Why? Because they would have caused more allied casualties? Huh? That’s when “Top Secret” always comes in. It’s like saying we need to keep secret that we interrogated some mobsters so the mafia wouldn’t be so pissed off at the police. First when did we start being the “bad guys?” Weren’t we always supposed to be the good guy John Wayne types. Let’s get beyond this. Why were they tortured at all? For fun I presume. Now we’ve had a breakdown in our military that the US citizen needs to know. Why? Because we can never be sure it will ever be dealt with otherwise and it has to stop.

Abu Gharib Sweethearts

Jump forward to the Bradley Manning leaks to WikiLeaks. First if you read through and look at this there is nothing, I mean nothing, that put anyone in harm’s way other than by revealing we weren’t playing by the rules (international and our own) again and also not telling the truth even when we were playing by the rules. So why was it secret? Half of it was already known. It was secret because your own government is embarrassed by the fact that it doesn’t play nice, by the rules, our own rules, and doesn’t look like the good guys they want you to think they are. There was no other reason to keep this information secret.

Jump forward to now. Did you ever look at the crap Edward Snowden leaked? A bunch of PowerPoint slides that reveal nothing about how the NSA information is acquired but it did state that the way they did it would not exclude data on US citizens in the United States. This is illegal by US law. The espionage spooks cannot have operations targeted on US citizens on US soil, period. Snowden’s “revelations” did nothing to compromise US security. Nothing. It was suppressed because again, we weren’t playing by our own rules and it is embarrassing and illegal to be caught pissing in the corner with your pants down. On top of this we can also question why it is even legal for the US to spy on your phone calls to Mexico to your great grandfather, even if you both are US citizens. Bet you didn’t know that. Now if you think for a minute that international terrorists or criminals didn’t already think their calls could be monitored before Snowden’s leaks, then you are just simple minded, and he didn’t show any new way as to how they could avoid being monitored either.

What it comes down to is your government is spying on you for the purported reason of protecting you from terrorists. Did this prevent two Chechen kooks that weren’t even professional terrorists from bombing one of the most visible sporting events in the US?  Ask the three people who died or those who were maimed if tapping their phones was worth it. If we get beyond that, would the country be any safer from terrorists if the TSA didn’t push you through some scanner that shows your teats and arse to everyone. Tell me how? Your chances of being killed by falling down the stairs are greater than they are from a terrorist attack. We already know your chances of being killed by a fertilizer plant explosion or a train derailment are worse. Why don’t we mobilize thousands of people tomorrow to inspect every aspect of the rail system or fertilizer production including tapping their phones to see if they are “cheating” on the regulations. The reaction to this nonsense is absurd.

Finally if you think that the government does have the capability to get your private information then you should be worried that somebody of questionable moral character might use it illegally.  Do you think that government employees are any less prone to using your private information for nefarious reasons than anyone else?  Why do you think that?  Think about what was your last experience with a cog in the biggest bureaucracy, the federal government?  Was it good?  How about the last dozen?  I think I’ve made my point.  Government employees, and all these spooks are government employees, despite what you may like to think, are no less prone to using your private stuff illegally than anyone else on the street is.  If it’s available somebody will use it eventually.  Think about that next time you piss off a CIA paper pusher in the super market line or worse yet an IRS auditor.  If they have it, somebody will use it.  Remember that.  If they can’t have it we don’t have any trust problems here then do we.  Do you think the government cares if it gathers too much stuff even inadvertently?  I don’t think so.

Questionable Roadblocks

If what we really cared about were people’s lives we would take everyone in the war on drugs, the TSA, the NSA (and their sister agencies), federal law enforcement and put them out on the roads conducting questionable, but somehow legal, road blocks to look for drunk drivers. We would save thousands more lives if we even let all the other cranks go. It’s a matter of priority and your freedoms.  Why don’t we do it? Well there’s no power in arresting drunks.  It’s no fun like being a spy is.

Don’t believe what your government says to you. Don’t believe what multinational corporations say to you. Don’t believe unless you skeptically examine the truth of the statements they make.  They all think they know better than you how to “take care” of you.