They said it wouldn't happen ..

[Jay Vaughan]

> 
> I can see where people like the NSA are coming from, and it's a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, there are people that dream of imposing their own twisted ideas on the world at large, and have no qualms whatsoever by what means that can be brought about.
> 


Most of those people work in the Pentagon, or GCHQ.  Oh, you’re talking about ‘terrorists’.  Well, lets see what the Council of Foreign Relations people do for a living.  Oh, right, they impose their twisted ideas on the world at large and have no qualms whatsoever by what means that can be brought about.

> Twelve years later, we see that intelligence gathering has improved drastically, to the extent that they gather pretty much everything, and listen in on telephone conversations of supposedly friendly regimes. So, things have swung back, crossed "Start" without collecting $200, and are now at the other extreme of the spectrum.


Well .. they were doing this long before 9/11 Peter.  9/11 just gave them more authority to continue with the plans made in the 80’s and 90’s for full control over the worlds economy (see CFR, as above).


> In itself, there's nothing wrong with intelligence gathering. Are we complaining that the Polish nicked an Enigma machine, and that the British cracked its code and could decipher practically all German communications? I think not.

Are we *Actually* in a condition of Total War, or not?  Because thats the difference between then and now.


> There is, however, something wrong with intelligence gathering without democratic oversight. We, as the population, do not necessarily need to know what the intelligence community is up to (even though that pisses us off to no end), but we need to be able to choose the people to check the intelligence services and make sure that they operate within the limits of the law.


We, as a people, need to ensure our governments never keep secrets, because that is how all government corruption starts.  Secrets are the anti-thesis to a free society.

j.