I'm beginning to think the NSA, CIA, et. al. are bad ideas. Talk me down. [View all]
I've been wondering, what if Intelligence were to be crowd sourced instead of opaque?
It seems to me the problem with these agencies is that whomever has the reins of these organizations has tremendous effective power to shape the world as they see fit. The authoritarian's wet dream.
The way classified material is organized yields an organizational structure that can be visualized as a man of war jellyfish. The tentacles each with their own targets and purpose, but unlike the jellyfish these tentacles are steerable from on high.
The situation we have now is very troubling to me. My suspicion is that the NSA is operating a "Slurp-N-Burp" (tm) where communications are slurped up and stored, and then once a target is identified the entire stream of their past communications is available in its full glory. We have confirmation that this is done for a segment of the US population. We don't have it fully divulged as far as I know.
That even this small (relatively, it's still quite impressive, I'm sure) corpus exists in secret, anyone smart enough to gain access to it has to realize the potential of the system. The information is there for any company's executive who deals overseas. Congressional Staffers? Most likely. Journalists? You betcha, complete with that infamous airhead wink. All of that and most likely more ready to be tapped in service to shape the world.
From behind a veil. It seems every time a Toto comes along, they are smacked hard. Journalists dieing, whistle blowers jailed and politicians mysteriously change positions or fail to ask the crucial follow up in hearings. Is that what is actually happening? Fuck if I know, but God Damn it smells to high heaven.
So now, I'm pondering the notion that we need to burn the curtain this time. I have several problems with that notion because the world is truly a dangerous place. I will concede the idea that these opaque agencies had made it more so. Yet, still it remains that we do need intelligence.
That brings me to the subject, which is the question: Could we satisfy the intelligence needs of a free society with croud sourcing?
What else might work?
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