🚀 go-pugleaf

cuts, sapped by the
#   Militarization of intelligence. Diplomats, not spies, should be doing
#   analysis of events in peaceful places.
#   
#   The report, by 19 people from the worlds of espionage, diplomacy, the
#   Military, academia and business, says American intelligence "still has
#   not yet come in from the cold" and is "ill-prepared for the 21st Century."

The Cold War meant that not only were the government's SIGINT operations
to continue via the NSA, they were to grow and grow and grow. The threat
of Nuclear War is what spurred many decades of Cold War and SIGINT.

*   "Time Details Eisenhower Plan for U.S. Under Atomic Attack"
*   Reuters, The New York Times, August 3, 1992
*   
*   A "Doomsday Plan" devised to rescue United States leaders from nuclear
*   catastrophe included underground bunkers, secret rescue teams, and a
*   vault full of cash.

But by the time the Soviet Union collapsed, and we began giving Communist China
"Most Favored Nation" trading status, NSA's huge SIGINT operation had an
unstoppable momentum of its own. A worldwide network of intercept stations was
in place. The NSA is at least six times larger than the FBI, and uses its
people for ECHELON monitoring of the entire world.

NSA cannot by itself bring itself to disengage from this massive information
feed: it would be like undergoing drug withdrawal.

They will never admit their budget could be halved like our nuclear weapons
have been since the end of the Cold War.

We MUST let go of World War II and the Cold War.

We MUST dismantle domestic ECHELON, and embrace unimpaired encryption.

We MUST cancel CALEA. Forcefully disown it so it is never brought up again.


*   "Data Show Federal Agents Seldom Employ Surveillance Authority Against
*   Terrorists", By Stephen Labaton, The New York Times, 5/1/95
*   
*   An item in P