This ProPublica story is one of the few by ProPublica that is actually very silly and not well researched. It wasn't necessary to have newly disclosed NSA documents referred to in the article to figure out and report on that there are ""contractual relationships" between the NSA and U.S. companies, as well as the fact that the NSA has "under cover" spies working at or with some U.S. companies." The reason why it wasn't necessary? Because it's been well established for years and it is not a secret that this is the case. TAREX, undercover agents, and of course, "corporate parters" referred to in the Intercept overview of the documents cited, can all claim (if pressed) that they are merely following the "voluntary DIB" ~ the DoD Defense Industrial Base Voluntary Cyber Security and Information Assurance rule, a.k.a. DOD-2009-OS-0183-0001 (CFR: 32 CFR Part 236; Federal Register Number: 2012-10651). For details, See: http://privacysos.org/node/641 (from 5/11/2012!!!) Some of the same language of the "administrative rule" referred to in the privacysos article, was later adopted by Congress, as H.Amdt.44 to H.R.624 (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) which passed the House in 2013, but was not enacted as there was too much opposition to allow it to move onto and pass the Senate. Independent of Congress's legislative process, the administrative rule was finalized and continues to be used today as a part of the basis for the corporation-state's activity. All of the corporation-state crimes against humanity are generally committed in full public view. They have no shame. You can't vote them out or demand they change (though it helps to publicly oppose what they are doing ~ I appreciate TheOpenMedia's recent efforts, for example, as shown at: https://openmedia.org/digitalfuture In general though, to address these rampant problems in a way that really alters the funding and ultimate disposition of resources that society has (assuming we don't want all our diminishing resources thrown down the gov-hole), the only thing we can do is empower people to remove resources from this deeply flawed system as we build new ones. Cheers, -Odinn https://keybase.io/odinn On 2014-10-16 07:30, bluelotus@openmailbox.org wrote:
http://www.propublica.org/article/nsa-documents-suggest-close-relationship-b...