I remained silent until now.
This all reminds me of a novel by Phillip F. O'Connor, a professor at BGSU when I knew him, called Defending Freedom.
I believe the novel was set in the 1950's in England, with an anti-aircraft unit. The premise was that a new (mega-expensive) sophisticated anti-aircraft system, (radar linked to a big gun), was developed and put into service. When tested, it failed miserably, after mega millions were spent on development by the contractor, and all the units were bought and paid for by the military.
Well where this became a novel was that the Army failed miserably for each unit that used it except one unit, (like five out of six companies.) This one unit's test scores were off the chart. They killed every target in testing.
Enter our hero, a second lieutenant, in charge of one of the gun batteries. He realized what his whole company, the one with the good results was doing was activating the safety, self-destruction charge in the target drones to make it look like they were getting hit in their open water, live target practice. For this unit, upon orders of the commander, shooting down a target was no more difficult than pushing a self destruct button, while the guns were firing.
You may ask what this novel from the '80's may have to do with NSA spying today.
1) There was no mechanism including the chain of command for the main character to report what he found.
2) When the lieutenant refused to drop his allegations, they courts martialed him.
3) The expensive highly technical system didn't work as advertised, (leading the reader to the obvious conclusion that mega-bucks were wasted on a bungle. Which would be mega-bucks we didn't have to waste.)
4) The Army assassinated the lieutenant's character to take the attention off of their own inept, immoral, and wasteful behavior.
I will bet the NSA Prism program doesn't work, any better than torture did. And the only hope these crooks in charge have is turning the American public like an angry crowd on an idiot that is no different than most of us.
Many Americans think these guys with the "keys to the kingdom" are harried hero's; but the problem is all those Americans watch too many movies. Too many movies of the wrong kind. The truth is, "Don't get caught in a moral quandary, and do the right thing. They will bury you, and all around you." No one can still accurately list the body count of operatives and informants in the field that were taken out because Valerie Plame was revealed for political purposes. And that is just one case we are lucky to know about.
And the other thing I haven't even heard anyone discuss is the premise that the Prism program isn't really about Terrorism. It is about spying, and corporate spying. Corporate spying in that much of what these organizations now do is farmed out to private companies. What could Prism be effective for? Showing contractors, and government officials that have relationships with foreign nationals, and showing agents who are attempting to steal technical secrets, when they contact their source governments.
