indymedia-copvcia

[Chuck Munson]

Carrol Cox wrote:
> 
> C P wrote:
> >
> >
> > I know people who worked at the NSA who have scary stories.
> >
> 
> Gee. Everyone has scary stories. I was attached to NSA 1951-1955 as a
> cryptanalyst. (I discovered the fact that the Czech Border Guard Traffic
> was only pseudo-onetime pad.) NSA eavesdrops on everyone, friend and
> foe. But they don't engage in "operations." And there is something scary
> about eavesdropping only to the naive. It's been going on for a long
> time. One of the first bits of advice passed on to new movement people
> in the '60s was don't delude yourself into thinking the telephone is a
> private utility. At the last SDS convention there were about 6 cops (in
> civvies) at every corner within 6 blocks of the ampitheatre, and every
> second story window on the block had a camera sticking out of it. They
> collect so damn much information that it probably chokes even the
> super-computers they have at NSA.
> 
> There is enough horror out in the open without going around screaming
> and whining about conspiracies.

I have never been one to buy into the paranoia about this shit that
pervades the Left and any paranoia I did have evaporated after 9-11, when
my suspicions about the government's information overload were confirmed.

Yeah, Carrol, we activists shouldn't consider the telephone to be a
private utility. At the same time we shouldn't pretend that everything we
say on the phone is of interest to the authorities, if they are bothering
to listen. A good rule of thumb is to not talk about shit on the phone
that could land you in jail. Otherwise, the government just collects way
too much information for it to make sense of the bigger picture.

Activists like to delude themselves into thinking that everything they do
is being jotted down by government agents. I'm a big fish in the activist
scene and I simply don't see much evidence of this belief that we are
constantly being monitored.

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