The NSA: Too big to not fail

A concise explanation of NSA's troubles

Lest anyone get the impression that the National Security Agency has time to do anything but aggressively violate Americans' rights, the Guardian fronted a story about a draft memorandum of understanding between the NSA and Israel's signals intelligence agency. Notwithstanding the context, or a close reading of what the MOU actually permits, which you can read about here, the story is useful because it points to one of the reasons why the NSA has a lot of trouble figuring out just what the hell it is doing with all of its nodes and devices and satellites and fiber lines and servers.

With every NSA document dump, as Benjamin Wittes points out, you can read it as a case of an agency struggling with technological problems, identifying its own mistakes, conceding them, and rectifying them — or evidence of a continued, deliberate, unquenchable thirst to do what the mega-surveillance leviathans of fiction and philosophy are supposed to do. The NSA's history allows for both readings. To read is to interpret, is what Peter Gomes always said about the bible.

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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder is TheWeek.com's editor-at-large. He is the author, with D.B. Grady, of The Command and Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry. Marc is also a contributing editor for The Atlantic and GQ. Formerly, he served as White House correspondent for National Journal, chief political consultant for CBS News, and politics editor at The Atlantic. Marc is a 2001 graduate of Harvard. He is married to Michael Park, a corporate strategy consultant, and lives in Los Angeles.