Uncle Sam and Email Snooping: Wasted Time and Money

Remember that etiquette adage when email first appeared: Don’t send an email that you don’t want to see on the front page of the New York Times?

Today, it’s more like don’t send an email you don’t mind the Feds reading.

Congressional committee investigations into the scope of federal agency surveillance around email are indicating that interceptions of private emails could be much more prevalent that originally thought, according to a New York Times article today.

The news is putting the National Security Agency (NSA), and its domestic security programs, under increased scrutiny. A former agency analyst has testified that he was part of a program that reviewed tons of private email messages written by Americans without the requisite court approval for such actions.

Elected leaders are being quoted as stating the news is troubling, according to Times reporters James Risen and Eric Lichtblau.

Here’s one quick quote from Rush Holt, a New Jersey Democrat congressman who chairs the House Select Intelligence Oversight Panel that is investigating the email abuse and has claimed the Justice Department's excuse was that the intrusive email program was done by accident. “Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” the Times quoted Holt saying.

The thing is, email snooping is the least of concern when it comes to the NSA and other federal security groups groomed under former Vice President Dick Cheney.

Seriously, I’m a bit more worried about orbiting space satellite cameras that are tracking people’s movements and zooming in to see what little Johnny happens to be doing on his computer at 3 a.m.

The irony here, lest we forget, is that while the NSA has been busy collecting, reading and obviously storing emails from private citizens, Cheney and company were busy directing White House tech staffs not to archive or preserve what is now likely millions of official presidential electronic messages that have gone missing.

Do I care that the NSA is reading my email? Nope.

What I do care about is the wasted time, money and resources on such a useless effort.

Yes, the bad guys use technology and use it well, but it’s highly doubtful the next sleeping Al-Qaeda cell is telegraphing its plan through email notes.

Twitter, though, could be another story. (That's just a joke for Dennis Blair, currently our national intelligence director).