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Walter Rhett: Gen. Alexander’s Failed Cold War Spy Tactics
This week, the Congressional testimony of National Security Agency (NSA) General Keith Alexander was brutish and boring. He is wrong in his view of spycraft, its role and service in the cause of national security. He lives and thinks in a world that has disappeared. His voice is an echo from a past season. He is obsessed, which is obvious from first glimpseno need to tap his phone. Mainly, he is dangerous.
Heres why. The outlines of Gen. Alexanders world describe a dark, clandestine place full of murky potential threats. It is marked by passages between shadowy cell leaders who channel money, plan bad acts, and train committed followers with the intent of terrorist actions that will disrupt society, kill civilians, embarrass governments, and emblazon others to take up the causea glorified short-sighted excuse that over-amplifies the despicable act of deliberately killing human beings who have brought no harm to those who bring them under attack.
Terrorism has widened the battlefield to every civilian door; it rules nothing out, and the technology of arms enables even small attacks to do great damage and kill innocents. Terrorism crosses national borders. It has no battle plan. Each act is an end in itself. Within the crazy quilt of random forces that constitutes terrorism, the NSA has gone into a frenzy of tapping phone calls, building high-tech platforms that are listening posts for personal e-mails to the personal smartphones of the heads of state. (Dear NSA: Can we get some cross-government cooperation to fix the healthcare.gov website?) No wonder there was insistence that President Obama surrender his Blackberry in 2009.
General Alexanders view is that of the Cold War warrior. Serpentine, byzantine subroutines fill his thinking. He who was programmed to take every inch of territory, believes he can cover every global binary byte...
More at: http://www.democratsforprogress.com/2013/10/30/gen-alexanders-failed-cold-war-spy-tactics/
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Walter Rhett: Gen. Alexander’s Failed Cold War Spy Tactics (Original Post)
DemocratsForProgress
Oct 2013
OP
bemildred
(90,061 posts)1. KnR
For this:
Gen. Alexander is coming dangerously close to claiming other governments have no moral or political authority to object to his tactical choices, which were not only wrong, but echo the kind of craziness that heretofore had characterized the other side! On the heels of the shutdown and the default threat, with the new revelations about the intrusions of its digital surveillance, it appears as if the US can no longer govern itself.
No wonder countries are wary! Already, Brazil canceled a state visit because of US spying on its President. The default canceled visits in Asia to Malaysia and the Philippines. Europe has sent a delegation en masse to protest the covert spying on legitimate top officials and demand an agreement that such unwarranted eavesdropping be stopped.
The fact is Gen. Alexander has been barking up the wrong tree in the wrong forest in the wrong place on the wrong path. Yet he thinks hes keeping us safe. Hes using souped-up technology to carry out Cold War tactics and his antenna are tuned to the wrong signals. He didnt learn when Edward Snowden made off with data that shockingly demonstrated how easily the NSAs own security could be breached, as Snowden drops documents from, of all places, Russia. He hasnt learned the limits of surveillance with every US ally screaming at him. He equates terrorism to incidents. He hasnt learned that terrorism is an attack on principles; it leverages violence and fear through murder to bring an internal collapse of a nations normal functions and to implode its world standing. As an example, look at the precipitous drop in Egyptian tourism, a major revenue stream.
Gen. Alexander thinks he is protecting the country, when he is at the center of a firestorm rapidly spinning out of control, inside and outsidewhich is the formula and point of the terrorism he cannot see he has failed to stop.
No wonder countries are wary! Already, Brazil canceled a state visit because of US spying on its President. The default canceled visits in Asia to Malaysia and the Philippines. Europe has sent a delegation en masse to protest the covert spying on legitimate top officials and demand an agreement that such unwarranted eavesdropping be stopped.
The fact is Gen. Alexander has been barking up the wrong tree in the wrong forest in the wrong place on the wrong path. Yet he thinks hes keeping us safe. Hes using souped-up technology to carry out Cold War tactics and his antenna are tuned to the wrong signals. He didnt learn when Edward Snowden made off with data that shockingly demonstrated how easily the NSAs own security could be breached, as Snowden drops documents from, of all places, Russia. He hasnt learned the limits of surveillance with every US ally screaming at him. He equates terrorism to incidents. He hasnt learned that terrorism is an attack on principles; it leverages violence and fear through murder to bring an internal collapse of a nations normal functions and to implode its world standing. As an example, look at the precipitous drop in Egyptian tourism, a major revenue stream.
Gen. Alexander thinks he is protecting the country, when he is at the center of a firestorm rapidly spinning out of control, inside and outsidewhich is the formula and point of the terrorism he cannot see he has failed to stop.