Does anyone doubt that the NSA is so out of control that it should be shuttered? According to The Guardian, privacy-rapist-in-chief General Keith Alexander ordered architects to design him a lavish command center intentionally modeled after the captain’s bridge in “Star Trek.” Quoting a piece in Foreign Policy:
“When he was running the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.
“‘Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,’ says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits.”
Check this thing out:
4 Comments.
Ok, Ted, you’re way out of line here. It’s not like this dude was line dancing like those IRS monsters a few months back. (I mean, you know they were up to no good — some of them were black!) General Keith Alexander knows that nothing Protects Our Freedoms more than an infantile mastubatory fantasy.
And what Alexander knows about Protecting Our Freedom will boggle your mind!
(All emphasis in the original: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2013/09/nsa_incompetence_ways_to_fix_the_national_security_agency.single.html)
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Anyone ever seen Idiocracy? As amusing as that is, the premise makes no sense, partly because of something explored here: http://xkcd.com/603/
. . . but also because the rich and powerful have the best reason to become complete fucking morons in existence: because they can. Obama and his peers resort to gestapo tactics because their subordinates literally aren’t clever enough to do their jobs, so brute force and intimidation are the only cards left in the deck.
The ineptitude of the aristocracy may well be our greatest asset.
“The ineptitude of the aristocracy may well be our greatest asset.”
Let’s hope so. It seems truer all the time. We need all the help we can get. It is just bizarre how little care they take for efficiency, synergy, and security. Hubris? Laziness? It has been this way a longggggg time in the US “intelligence” business. Remember when Dubya had Iraq being run by some kids?
We have all the assets and resources to help the unemployment and healthcare peoblems. Instead, we use them to police the world and to deny the existence of these problems. Just ask many wealthy persons, but not all – and you will be amazed at their perception of the world. As long as a person has pretty much all they need to continue their status quo and associate themselves with other people that support their thinking, all other considerations or realities fade into the background. And not just fade away – in many cases they become distractions and irritants that need to be “dealt” with. My wealthy brother-in-law once told me that if we could simply “get rid” of all these worthless people, as in worthless meaning lazy, poor people hanging onto entitlements to live, that the world would be vastly improved.
«The ineptitude of the aristocracy may well be our greatest asset.» Only if it sinks in and engenders a response before the easily bored user switches to the next channel. Consider that many TV-watchers might find Mr Alexander’s «command centre» cool. Panem et circenses – without too much panem, of course….
Henri