UnNews:Wikimedia accuses NSA of sloppy spying
| The news outlet with approval higher than Congress | ✪ | UnNews | ✪ | Thursday, April 25, 2024, 20:13:59 (UTC) |
| Wikimedia accuses NSA of sloppy spying | 
|
11 March 2015
FORT MEADE, Maryland -- The Wikimedia Foundation has gone to court to accuse the National Security Agency (NSA) of getting its information in sloppy, un-spylike ways.
The open-source provider of information to the public claims the NSA's practice of reading wikis not only violates the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search, but is intel-gathering in a lazy, uncool, unprofessional, and un-spooky manner.
Wikimedia claims it is an unreasonable search for the NSA to perform surveillance of public wikis, rather than just reading and printing off pages like everyone else does. The NSA counters that the searches are eminently reasonable, as NSA employees surf the web all day from their offices.
Wikimedia also claims under the First Amendment's Freedom of Speech that it would have a “chilling” effect on use of wikis if readers' tendencies to look up sexual fetishes were a matter of public record. The NSA retorted that wikis give the information to Google anyway, and the giant search company would have given it to the U.S. Government as a “gift” even if the NSA had not taken it first.
Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, joined in the lawsuit by Amnesty International, say they saw NSA agents (using Wikimedia’s webcam hack) browsing their site in false mustaches, thick black-rimmed glasses, and ill-fitting ginger wigs. They called browsing with stereotypical disguises “lazy spying” — and possibly illegal, as it is “totally unreasonable that a spy should be able to do his job just sitting on his ass.”
Speaking for the NSA, agent XXXXX XXXXXXX said: “Our job is to spy on the public by the most efficient method. That’s the economy the public and Congress demand. Without the disguises, we would just be web browsing — hardly value for the taxpayer. Imagine if you saw a chef downloading a recipe from a daytime TV site without wearing a chef’s uniform! Career-wise, that spy's goose would be cooked. Where does it end?” Indeed, Cheney aide G. W. “Scooter” Libby was legally fricasseed for “outing” a desk-bound spy after “Scooter” turned into a Flexible Flyer during adate with the FBI.
The agent continues: “What about “freedom of clothing” while looking at internet porn? Does this mean you can’t browse wearing a deep sea diver’s dry suit?....hmmm....forget that one, actually, but you know what I mean.”
Wales says he does not. He decries doing internet surveillance wearing a joke-shop nose, as surfing while wearing head accessories designed to mask one's identity cannot constitute reasonable spying. Wales says agents are supposed to pick locks, escape shark tanks, and tail suspects with death-defying car chases through downtowns. “Intelligence gathering is meant to be a high-risk, drawn-out process of pen microphones, bow-tie cameras, sleeping with glamorous double agents, and absurd roulette wins. Sat on the internet munching chilly popcorn while wearing joke-shop eyebrows and fake Vulcan ears is cheating, and quite frankly, crap. When was the last time anyone saw a telephoto lens sticking out of a fake hedge in the middle of the sidewalk? Standards are slipping.”
The full scale of crap spying carried out by the NSA has been revealed in documents made public by whistleblower Edward Snowden over the last two years. First the five star restaurant meals were scrapped for a self service canteen in HQ, where operatives had to Q for four pies only. Nowadays, operatives exist in a quantam of cyber-solace, using cheap spyware, sporting greasy hair and painting zits on their face to disguise themselves as online war-gamers. It looks like the days of Pussy Galore are finally over because the NSA believe the chance of returning to old techniques will be pie-in-the-spy, as most of them will have to diet another day.
Sources[edit]
- Reuters "Wikipedia to file lawsuit against NSA and US Department of Justice". The Guardian, March 10, 2015