Hi friends,

The latest Jacob Appelbaum talk from 30c3 is more than chilling, and it left me with an amplified version of a question I've been quietly asking for months: why the hell are we continuing to refer to the NSA as a governmental agency? What present justification do we have to frame its existence in those terms? I understand that to refer to it as something else is to invite questions even more ominous that the ones we are already being presented with, but isn't it time to start being more realistic about the situation?

Given the scale and scope of what the NSA are apparently capable of, they are unquestionably in a position to not just "own" our hardware and our software, but also, to a frighteningly real extent, our very lives. Much to Jacob's point, I don't think many high-ranking government officials (or corporate CEOs) have any conception of this at all, and those who do are just as exposed -- just as at-risk -- as any of us, the new proletariat. Isn't it obvious that in such a scenario, blackmail and coercion would not even be a second thought? Isn't it obvious that once such an infrastructure is in place, the flow of power literally begins running the other way? That's a control grid to match the surveillance grid, folks.

I don't know what we can do about this, but I do think we need first to adopt some new and admittedly more frightening language: The NSA may have bootstrapped on the back of governmental legitimacy, but we are almost certainly NOT dealing with "government" anymore. What we have here is a hydra far weirder, and far more dangerous, than any government in history. And by referring to it as 'governmental', we bestow a kind of untouchable authority and legitimacy that it probably 'ought not have, which just buys it more time to develop and grow.

My greatest fear is that if progress continues at this clip, the mask of 'government legitimacy' will become an unnecessary burden.

-wendell

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