Bugger - Maybe the real secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/posts/BUGGER

by snth • 13 years ago

33 11 13 years ago

bbc.co.uk

baddox2• 13 years ago

Maybe that's only true of the spies you hear about.

angersock• 13 years ago

The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence!

kirubakaran• 13 years ago

Absence of evidence is evidence of absence, just not proof of absence.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

(August 2013).

Zigurd• 13 years ago

We have a security apparatus sized for orders of magnitude more threats than we face, so the bulk of it goes about convincing themselves they are working for out security, rather than against our productivity and rights.

JonSkeptic• 13 years ago

I think most people who do anything are not very good at it. Period.

This applies to Mc Donalds employees, politicians, spies, strippers, doctors, lumberjacks, Comcast customer service representatives, artists, physicists, engineers, teachers, cops, pimps, and any other profession or hobby group you can envision.

bigd• 13 years ago

This is one of the best readings I had in the last year. thanks for sharing.

poof131• 13 years ago

After a decade in the U.S. Military, I always wondered how government got anything done. The mere idea of ‘conspiracies’ assumes a level of competence that far exceeds the capabilities of the largest, most bureaucratic organizations in the world. In the end, regarding the military and intelligence, the important thing is to be less incompetent then your opponent.

Often times the most glamorous thing about the secret squirrel outfits and organizations is the secrecy itself. Yet fewer and fewer Americans are serving in government or the military, so it is easy to assume a level of competence far above what actually exists. Hollywood helps a lot with this misconception. Are the inner workings more like The Bourne Identity or Jackass? Spend an hour at the DMV and take a guess.

fit2rule• 13 years ago

Not all government agencies are the same. If you ignore the competence because its more fun to hate on their incompetence, you're just opening the door for more abuse.

A lot of things get done because: government. Don't kid yourself.

pan69• 13 years ago

Interesting idea. Maybe we're just assuming that people who work for the NSA are 1) very competent and 2) really engaged in their work.

Thinking about it I can imagine that even though they collect a lot of 'stuff' that not many people who work for the NSA (or some other BS organisation) are really motivated to do anything with that information. They are mostly, just like any other corporate environment, people who need to pay their mortgage and what to go home at 5pm.

Bugger - Maybe the real secret is that spies aren't very good at their jobs

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