Judge Napolitano points out that if government is spying on everyone, it’s not spending it’s time on spying on those who are most likely to actually use violence against others. Napolitano explains:
“The NSA spies on all people all the time, and it’s too much information for them to sift through in a timely manner,” Judge Napolitano said. “That’s not my opinion. That’s the opinion of former NSA senior executives who were responsible for formulating the software that permits the NSA to do it.”
Perhaps due to Hollywood movies, many Americans imagine that national security agencies have magical methods of picking out the “bad guy” stuff from the millions of phone calls and communications they’re constantly spying on. In reality, virtually all tips come from informants, not from randomly catching a bad guy saying “let’s bomb that building” on a cell phone conversation.
Meanwhile, the taxpayers are made to expend vast fortunes on NSA programs that keep tabs on grandma rather than the people who provide actual reasons for suspicion.
Ultimately, this is all a byproduct of the fact that national security agencies can access practically limitless tax dollars, and is yet another illustration of how the national security apparatus is vastly over-funded. Any time Congress considers cutting a budget, the NSA cries “they’re coming to get us” and both the public and Congress cave. Spending, in real terms, is near Cold War highs, and this means that the NSA and other agencies don’t really need to prioritize their activities. They can just add more staff, more hardware, and claim that they must spy on everyone to ensure safety, and all the while, the actual threats are slipping through all that background noise, as Napolitano points out.
Moreover, as was pointed out by many after 9/11, the FBI had those bombers on their “watch lists” but the lists were so long, and so lacking in prioritization and meaningful threat levels, that the bombers were able to continue their activities unnoticed. The same is true today.
In practice, the only way to truly manage a list of “threats” that is millions of names long is to hire a vast army of human spies to monitor them. There’s no doubt that many in Washington would be happy with such a state of affairs, but that sort of thing gets expensive.
For now, the Feds will just keep expanding spy programs because, with the help of the Fed, deficit spending can ensure that no one ever has to face a budget cut. Eventually, however, money will become scarce, and then people will realize that in the real world, we have to prioritize what we spend on our money on.
