There are quite a few bubbles busting today for the federal government. Both the government itself and at least one of its snoop contractors will emerge from these revelations in trouble.
First, according to the Times, the private security firm responsible for vetting NSA employees is revealed to have valued money over security. Not surprisingly, they were hired during the Bush administration, the administration of the "Patriot" Act, ginned-up military actions, Abu Ghraib, private contractor scandals, torture, and all the rest.
The government said the company, U.S. Investigations Services, defrauded the government of millions of dollars by submitting more than 650,000 investigations that had not been completed. The government uses those reports to help make hiring decisions and decide who gets access to national security secrets.
In addition to Mr. Snowden, the company performed the background check for Aaron Alexis, a 34-year-old military contractor who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last year. Mr. Alexis, who died in a shootout with the police, left behind documents saying the government had been tormenting him with low-frequency radio waves.
The lawsuit highlights not just how reliant the government is on contractors to perform national security functions, but also how screening those contractors requires even more contractors. U.S. Investigations Service, now known as USIS, is the largest outside investigator for government security clearances. It is one of many companies that has found lucrative government work during the expansion of national security in the last decade.
From 2008 to 2012, about 40 percent of the company’s investigations were fraudulently submitted, the Justice Department said. ...NYT
This doesn't add anything much to the matter of Edward Snowden's decision to reveal government corruption, but it's further confirmation that the whole process of information gathering by the US government is tainted with greed, fraud, executive overreach and Congressional incompetence.
We need to know not just the extent of fraud commmitteed by private contractor USIS. We need to know how and why they were hired for the job. Cui bono?
Another mess and more revelations will come from a report from the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board on the utility and legality of NSA's voracious collection of metadata.
This will not end well for NSA.
The program “lacks a viable legal foundation under Section 215, implicates constitutional concerns under the First and Fourth Amendments, raises serious threats to privacy and civil liberties as a policy matter, and has shown only limited value,” the report said. “As a result, the board recommends that the government end the program.”
While a majority of the five-member board embraced that conclusion, two members dissented from the view that the program was illegal. But the panel was united in 10 other recommendations, including deleting raw phone records after three years instead of five and tightening access to search results. ...NYT
The FISA court also gets a black eye.
