
Bugger - Maybe the real secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs - snth
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER
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JonSkeptic
I think most people who do anything are not very good at it. Period.

This applies to Mc Donalds employees, politicians, spies, strippers, doctors,
lumberjacks, Comcast customer service representatives, artists, physicists,
engineers, teachers, cops, pimps, and any other profession or hobby group you
can envision.

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poof131
After a decade in the U.S. Military, I always wondered how government got
anything done. The mere idea of ‘conspiracies’ assumes a level of competence
that far exceeds the capabilities of the largest, most bureaucratic
organizations in the world. In the end, regarding the military and
intelligence, the important thing is to be less incompetent then your
opponent.

Often times the most glamorous thing about the secret squirrel outfits and
organizations is the secrecy itself. Yet fewer and fewer Americans are serving
in government or the military, so it is easy to assume a level of competence
far above what actually exists. Hollywood helps a lot with this misconception.
Are the inner workings more like The Bourne Identity or Jackass? Spend an hour
at the DMV and take a guess.

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fit2rule
Not all government agencies are the same. If you ignore the competence because
its more fun to hate on their incompetence, you're just opening the door for
more abuse.

A lot of things get done because: government. Don't kid yourself.

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Zigurd
We have a security apparatus sized for orders of magnitude more threats than
we face, so the bulk of it goes about convincing themselves they are working
for out security, rather than against our productivity and rights.

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pan69
Interesting idea. Maybe we're just assuming that people who work for the NSA
are 1) very competent and 2) really engaged in their work.

Thinking about it I can imagine that even though they collect a lot of 'stuff'
that not many people who work for the NSA (or some other BS organisation) are
really motivated to do anything with that information. They are mostly, just
like any other corporate environment, people who need to pay their mortgage
and what to go home at 5pm.

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baddox
Maybe that's only true of the spies you hear about.

~~~
angersock
The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!

~~~
kirubakaran
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, just not _proof_ of absence.

~~~
baddox
Absence of evidence might just be evidence of absence of any attempt to find
evidence.

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bigd
This is one of the best readings I had in the last year. thanks for sharing.

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kmfrk
(August 2013).

