On 11/27/2013 02:17 PM, [email protected] wrote: > Hmm. That sounds like something a criminal would say! > Does that answer your question? ;-)
Ha! Yes, of course. If I were a criminal, I'd be the lazy sort, say that walks along a row of parked cars trying every handle and only stealing the ones that had the keys in the visor. > Whatever you might think about the leaked NSA programs, you've got to at > least admit that they weren't being timid. And congressional leaders > in-the-know must have realized the potential blowback.. Yeah, that's a good point. Living inside a black operation like the NSA does allow a freedom of thought that is less available in more transparent (publicly traded) or more constrained (small/private) organizations. But it also diffuses accountability. If we had some surveillance tapes of the process so that we could identify the worker bees who executed the various NSA schemes, then get them fired and thrown in jail for doing that, I would guess future execution on such ideas would be dampened. We do that in the more transparent parts of the military, already. Only rarely is a member of the "brass" punished for signing off on some bad behavior. It's usually the soldier(s) who execute the plan that are held accountable. The continuous evaluation/monitoring seems to further encourage a multiple personality split in the person working in such an organization. First, as long as the organization "buys off" on whatever action, no matter how repugnant it may be in a normal context, then it's probably OK to do it. Hence, those invisible soldiers can act in ways we (and perhaps even they) would consider reprehensible were they out here in the normal world. And they can do it with a clear conscience because the organization signed off on it. But second, "vetting" the soldiers regarding financial, addiction, psychological problems with a continuous eval/monitoring program selects for people who are squeaky clean in their personal lives. The combination seems to optimize for multiple personality disorder. Someone who is able to completely fracture their self into "work" and "home", creating the ultimate "just following orders" excuses. All I can say is that I hope the health insurance plans for cleared employees includes full support for mental illness. -- ⇒⇐ glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
