Blog Pong & ADVISE

Blogging sometmes resembles a game of Pong. [I just realised there are readers out there too young to know what the Hell Pong was... codswallop!]. Anyway, yeah, Pong. One blogger hits the ball, and another takes up the theme and hits it back, and then the original blogger hits it back again. BlogPong.

Well, a day or two ago I posted about a few Homeland SooperDooperSecurity Matters, and then CKW referenced that post in his blog, which is a very clever re-writing of the American Consitution. And that got me musing...

All this crapola about the FISA Act and secret wiretapping- everything being said by the Administration and the Republicans in Congress is one big shell game of mis-direction. On the face of it, the Administration's explanation that it does not "have time" to go after warrants is absurd. The FISA Act provides for retroactive warrants. Many critics have attributed the Administration's reluctance to comply with FISA to a power-grab by the Bushies, led by the Dikster, and that may well be part of it.

But it seems to me that the real reason they are ignoring FISA is that they can't comply with it for a completely different reason, and they don't want to say why. The most obvious answer is that they are data-mining on a scale so vast that it would be an immense scandal were it to be revealed. Such revelations would not endanger National Security -Hell, if you're a terrorist and you don't already assume that you may be being monitored, then you're incredibly stupid. But such revelations would provoke an outpouring of anger among Americans about their privacy being invaded and rights ignored, and it would set off yet another round of questions about the Constitutionality of the program. What the program probably really entails is now beginning to surface- ADVISE, the "Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement", was reported on in the Christian Science Monitor and several other papers this past week. It is nothing more than a massive data-minig operation designed to shred every last piece of privacy your average American citizen retains.

To the geeks who designed it I'm sure it looks incredibly cool. To the NeoNazis in the Bush Administration I am sure it looks incredibly cool. But if such a program is really going to be put into place, then it needs to be fully revealed and discussed by the American people. And that is the very last thing this Administration, with it's "Don't worry your silly little heads, We'll take care of you" attitude wants.

And that's quite probably what the whole warrantless wiretapping brohaha comes down to. The actual program in place at the NSA is related to ADVISE, and the Bushies don't want to have anything come out about that, so they are misdirecting everyone's attention.

Or not. My Evil Twin has a pretty good imagination sometimes... better not to muse too publicly or ask too many questions.