David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Bill Keller Wish Snowden Had Just Followed Orders

[xchrom]

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/06/17


Tom Friedman (Getty Images)

Edward Snowden’s disclosures, the New York Times reported on Sunday, “have renewed a longstanding concern: that young Internet aficionados whose skills the agencies need for counterterrorism and cyberdefense sometimes bring an anti-authority spirit that does not fit the security bureaucracy.”


Agencies like the NSA and CIA -- and private contractors like Booz Allen -- can’t be sure that all employees will obey the rules without interference from their own idealism. This is a basic dilemma for the warfare/surveillance state, which must hire and retain a huge pool of young talent to service the digital innards of a growing Big Brother.

With private firms scrambling to recruit workers for top-secret government contracts, the current situation was foreshadowed by novelist John Hersey in his 1960 book The Child Buyer. When the vice president of a contractor named United Lymphomilloid, “in charge of materials procurement,” goes shopping for a very bright ten-year-old, he explains that “my duties have an extremely high national-defense rating.” And he adds: “When a commodity that you need falls in short supply, you have to get out and hustle. I buy brains.”

That’s what Booz Allen and similar outfits do. They buy brains. And obedience.

[WovenGems]

1. For sale

My body and talent, but never my soul. Don't do a major wrong and I can't drop a dime on your ass. Obviously, I have no issues what so ever with whistle blowers.

Corporations are headed by sociopaths who think short term. It would never occur to them a six figure salary wouldn't cause a moral individual to shelve the morals for the pay.

[KG]

2. all hail the Mighty Mustache of Freedom!