Greenwald’s Outrage Sandwich: NSA Analysts Can Analyze NSA Intelligence

[intaglio]

106. Sorry, but as a "Guardian Reader" of long standing

I can say your POSt is full of nonsense.

"Guardian Reader" over here refers to someone (loosely of the left) who studies the various Governmental, business, environmental and health scandals revealed by The Guardian with various levels of outrage, yet accepts (without demur) lifestyle and "alternative health tips which verge on the laughable. Most long standing Guardian readers are pretty sceptical of both types of story as often they are overblown and poorly researched. The polar opposite is the "Daily Mail Reader".

Over here "The Guardian" is often referred to as "The Grauniad" (pron. groaniad) because of past very poor editing and sub-editing.

This has been made worse by the arrival of on-line blogs, like Glen Greenwald's, which are often cited as authoritative because they appear with the kudos of "The Guardian".

The next piece of disinformation that you are trying to sell is that:

This is the very first time that DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE has been presented in regards to the unprecedented GLOBAL SUSPICIONLESS SPYING
(bolding and caps yours)

Well, you are completely wrong and one example shows it. Allow me to introduce you to the name Duncan Campbell. In September 1988 he published a hugely well researched, impeccably sourced and well documented piece in "The New Statesman" about the massive spying effort funded by the USA called (tah-da-dah!) Echelon. This was followed up by various newspapers in the UK and also, I believe, in the USA.

In truth even this was not particularly original as "Private Eye" had been publishing about this for some years. If needed I could even say that these were not the first documented reports as tales about generic GCHQ spying had been round since the early '70s though they were ("Private Eye" excepted) were the first to mention Echelon and (RAF) Menwith Hill.

I need to pretend nothing for I do not live in a fairyland of evil governments, superhuman assassination plots and perfect secrecy. I live in a world where governments are made up of more or less fallible humans, security services hate assassination because it complicates matters as well as revealing what interests the service concerned and secrecy consists, primarily, of the majority of the public not noticing what is going on.

If I wanted to wear a "tinfoil hat" I would not (it actually concentrates rf waves in the head) but I could point to tales told me about very high quality voice recognition software used (against the IRA) back in the 70's; the Signals regiment that was completely disbanded because of espionage in its ranks; or the large void under Hyde Park, not recorded on any map, that Imperial College lecturers used to have their geophysics students detect.

Essentially; I pay attention, I listen and I remember but with the caveat that I know memory to be a flawed recording informed by current knowledge.