Opening the mail

There is an old British diplomatic saying that allegedly goes:

A gentlemen does not open other gentlemen’s mail.

Well, guess what? Everybody does it.

I find the feigned anger and distress that the American technological spy agency, the National Security Agency or NSA, spies on “friends’, enemies and its own people just hilarious.

First, if you have the capability, you use it. If you don’t, then you are not human (look at the analysts who used the capability to snoop on girl and boy friends)… and probably derelict in your duties.

Are the leaders of these countries trying to tell us that they don’t conduct surveillance operations that target the United States? Get real folks. Yes, they do at what ever level of technology they can achieve.  They want advance warning if the US government is going to change a policy affecting them and they sure as hell want to see if they can crack some of the industrial secrets US companies have.

Second, are you trying to tell me that if these countries don’t have these national technical means (to use the euphemism for spying with machines) they are not trying as hard as they can to develop them? Get real folks. Of course, they are. Just like they would beg, borrow, steal, filch, etc., any other piece of technology they can snag for their own use.

Everything the NSA is accused of doing (and probably is doing) is absolutely logical and sensible from an intelligence point of view. (No, I am not saying it is wise policy, just a logical one when you are focused on accomplishing a particular purpose or mission to the exclusion of all else.)

You see the people at the NSA who are doing what everyone objects to (and you have to admit, other nations, groups and hackers are trying to do to us) are very intelligent people and probably very, very focused people. They are very serious in doing their job protecting their nation against all enemies, foreign or domestic (but particularly the foreign ones). It creates a form of tunnel vision or myopia that blocks out other considerations.

And you have to understand, everyone seems to want to take the United States down … and more than just a few pegs. All these leaders want to increase their power on the world stage and cutting back on the American ability to exercise the power it has held for the last 60 years or so, is to their benefit and their enrichment.

But to claim they are not opening other people’s mail? That is a farce.

Actually, Pappy would have put it much better when he would have called it “a tempest in a teapot.”