On 2013-06-12, at 1:44 PM, JOANNA A. wrote:
> 5. And then there's the question of expense; with schools and infrastructure falling apart, do you think the best the govt can do with money is to spend it on this sort of operation?
No doubt someone like Edward Snowden could have been be more productively employed in the education sector and other US public services and infrastructure badly in need of repair.
The national security apparatus, like the prison system, has become a huge private boondoggle based on hundreds of thousands of employees and so-called independent contractors like Snowden paid by big government contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton to collect information on other Americans - information which is almost never actionable.
Yesterday's Democracy Now had a good piece on "Digital Blackwater: How the NSA gives private contractors control of the surveillance state".
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/6/11/digital_blackwater_how_the_nsa_gives