While Congress and the Senate seem perfectly happy to have our secret police spy on law abiding Americans they apparently think they should be exempt from such measures.
And they’re particularly upset that the CIA, a distant second to the NSA is terms of spying power, intruded on their personal computers in search of a security leak.
By the standards of the regular spying on U.S. citizens the invasion of privacy here looks downright small. The CIA was tracing a national security leak of top secret information – a little investigating of staffer computers was a reasonable course of action to track down the leak.
And this is the CIA. It’s one of our secret police organizations, sworn to a deep web of secrecy all in order to protect us. They are expected to lie for a living. We pay them to lie for a living.
So it should come as little surprise that in Senate testimony, CIA Director John Brennan lied when he denied ordering CIA employees to search Senate computers to trace the leak.
Yet three Senate Democrats seem frustrated with his unwillingness to admit the obvious and on Friday called on Brennan to admit that he crossed the line.
Brennan initial denials of the hacking were contradicted by an investigation conducted by the CIA’s inspector general, showing he did, in fact, lie.
Showing just how impervious our secret police are from oversight or accountability, the CIA set up an outside review board chaired by former Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), yet the board’s final report did not recommend any punishments for the employees who hacked the Senate systems. It was just business as usual, hard-working Americans doing their patriotic duty. And their day jobs.
Brennan has not acknowledged any misconduct by CIA employees in the matter, which makes sense. This is what the CIA does. This is what a few select government officials have authorized them to do. In the interest of national security those decision makers have said our rights, freedoms and constitution don’t matter – if it catches a single terrorist, it’ll be worth it.
And yet three intrepid Senators, who are perhaps only now cluing in to the real consequences of these authorizations, released this somewhat laughable statement yesterday:
“It is vitally important for the American public to have confidence that senior intelligence officials respect U.S. laws and the Constitution, including our democratic system of checks and balances,”
“In our judgment your handling of this matter has undermined that confidence,” the letter continues. “We call on you to acknowledge that this search was improper, and commit that these unacceptable actions will not be repeated” reads the letter from the not-too-terribly-important Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), and Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii).
While it’s nice someone is paying attention, this is a not-in-my-backyard moment if ever there was.
Congress, the Senate and the White House are all in on it. They’ve all authorized our secret police to invade our privacy like never before. They’re all 100% OK with it.
So long as it doesn’t happen to them.
Or as long as they don’t notice.
The CIA is nothing compared to the vast and even more secretive NSA. The NSA has every single Senator, Congressmen, State Senator, Department of Defense, Supreme Court Judge and public official of note under complete surveillance.
They keep detailed files on their phone conversations, emails, location, social media posts and text messages. When any of these people say or do something, the NSA knows about it.
With Snowden and an assortment of others proving that this is not conspiracy theory, but cold hard fact, the three brave Senators condemning the CIA look like dogs chasing a bus. It’s much much bigger than that.
Until America wakes up and demands change it will just be more of the same.
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