Nevertheless, all three branches of government performed badly in this case, by misrepresenting the scope of official surveillance, misgauging public concern and evading public accountability.

Responses to “Secret Surveillance and the Crisis of Legitimacy”

George Smith June 10, 2013 at 5:20 PM #

From the NYT today, on Snowden’s employer, Booz Allen Hamilton: “The company employs about 25,000 people, almost half of whom hold top secret security clearances, providing ‘access to information that would cause exceptionally grave damage to national security if disclosed to the public,’ according to a company securities filing.”

We know that’s far from the only company with a similar business profile, including workers with top secret clearances. There’s Science Applications, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and many more, large and small. We have enormous money in outsourced national security and it didn’t just happen for the war on terror, it has been here as long as we can remember. It’s somewhat amusing that now some are shocked at a glimpse of the size of the corporate army involved in this.

Which brings us to a second point. The US government has done an exceptionally lousy job of explaining why, precisely, this gigantic security mechanism and its army of contractors is so valuable other than to make the always earnest but uninformative assertions that the country must have all the tools to ensure Americans are made safe. When everyone takes these assertions at face value we have evidence that a system is in place, one condoned, where no oversight is called for or expected.

So 12,000 people at Booz Allen have security clearances for our ongoing security purposes. Multiply that a good number of times to account for all the other separate contracting firms. For the last five years, at least, al Qaeda hasn’t had as many registered terrorists as Booz Allen has in its top secret security corps. How many terrorists, precisely, are there — even theoretically — hell bent on attacking the country? Not nearly as many as the cleared employees in the war against them.

There’s the question? What -exactly- do the American people get out of all it as a social good?

We know Edward Snowden made an excellent salary for someone of his level before having a major change of heart and sacrificing his career. Think of the many others on the Booz Allen payroll, or that of their competitors. Are the people getting a really great return on it? Isn’t it time to start making some real noise about giving them a haircut?