Data mining | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's Note: Jim Bispo's weekly column appears in the Beaufort Observer.

    The NSA has been getting a lot of what surely is unwelcome (to them) press and TV coverage lately.

    And from the individual who a lot of us thought was supposed to be in charge, we keep hearing a lot of "I didn't know about that until I read I in the papers". Yes, it starts with the Prez but it is not at all uncommon to hear the same story from folks further down in the hierarchy. Eric Holder seems to be particularly adept at it - as does Kathleen Sebelius. (So whom in this Administration can we believe??) What makes the entire situation a complete fiasco is the suggestion (fact??) that we have been spying on everyone (and maybe then some) - and they have more than likely been spying on us. And we both knew it.. It has been like that for a long time. And now, all of a sudden, thanks to Edward Snowden, it is a large problem...

    As an aside - in the case of the Prez, it may (from time to time) even be true that he didn't know about some of these things until he read about them in the paper. I am about to make an excuse for his lack of information. (Bite your tongue.) As both a participant in and observer of Administrative Management in large bureaucracies for a long time, I have, over the years, developed a number of "truisms" that I lovingly refer to as "Bispo's Laws". One of them is: "Downward communications are amplified and upward communications are attenuated". (To learn about others, you will have to wait for the book. Hmmm...) That would explain an occasional "Presidential surprise". Subordinates simply do not want to bring bad news to the boss often fearing a "kill the messenger" response. Surely that would not explain why it seems to have happened so many times to the Anointed One (although we do hear that he believes he is good at killing) .

    But. all that aside, there are some other things we should probably be asking about. Let's talk about the monitoring of Angela Merkel's cell phone. So, if the Prez didn't know about it, just who did?? Were they looking for anything specific?? If so, what?? To whom was the information routed?? What did they do with the it?? Anything??

    How about the spying on France?? What could we possibly want to know about France and what goes on there besides what we can read in their papers.?? How to make a better croissant?? Maybe... And that's about all..

    How about spying on Italy?? Do you suppose someone in the Administration (surely not the Prez) was trying to figure out how to be more successful "hitting on the ladies" (a la Berlusconi)?? And do you suppose he (or she) got any good pointers?? Wouldn't it have been better to keep it all in America and check "Slick Willie's" phone, e-mail, Twitter, and Facebook accounts instead to get pointers on how to be successful with that sort of thing??. Additionally, by staying in America, it might even be possible to find out how to get forgiveness if you should get caught fooling around. In the meantime, poor Berlusconi is really "getting the business"over his alleged indiscretions - but not Slick Willie. Hmmm... It would surely seem that Willie has figured out the forgiveness thing...

    How about Russia?? Do you suppose we have been listening in on them?? It is hard to believe that we have. Otherwise, how do you suppose that they have seemingly gotten the best of us so easily in virtually all of our dealings with them?? First we pull out of our deal to install missile defense systems in eastern Europe when the Russians "suggested" they didn't like the idea. We then "sign on" with them to handle the Syrian situation (instead of making good on our "Cross this red line in the sand and you are in for it.." promise. It sounds as though they knew more about us than we did about them. So what happens,?? Their puppet (Syria) does what they are told by Putin and Russia is suddenly a great international superpower. America is turned into a "follower" in the International arena. About the only claim we can make about our performance is that we have certainly helped improve Vladimir Putin's stature nationally and internationally. Good move gang... (That would be the same Putin whom we were going to have a lot more latitude to deal with after the last election. Could this be it??)

    So what do we do with all the information we garner by spying on everyone (including ourselves)?? I have not heard the question - nor have I heard even the hint of an answer. It occurs to me that it could well end up just like a lot of other information we knew about - but didn't do anything with until after something (usually bad) happened. Maybe it simply gets put into a box and stored in the back corner of the seldom used guest bedroom closet until something untoward happens. Something like the Boston Marathon bombing; the Ft. Hood "workplace violence"(yeah, right); the recent Washington Navy Yard violence; the TSA shooting at LAX. for instance.

    In each of those cases, after the fact, we were able to dredge up a lot of information that should have (but didn't) raise any red flags before the fact.

    In the case of the alleged Boston Marathon bombers, we were alerted by the Russians (of all people) to pay attention to the brothers Tsarnaev. And what happened?? Short answer: nothing - until they allegedly set off their pressure cooker bombs.. Then we remembered the closet and suddenly we knew all sorts of things about them.

    It wasn't until the perpetrator of the work place violence at Ft. Hood started killing innocent people there to the tune of "Allah Akbar" that anyone looked in the box where they found that all manner of higher level military performance reviewers were reported as having been concerned about him but nothing was ever done other than give him passing grades, promoting him, and sending him on. More 20:20 hindsight about Maj. Hassan - but nothing about those who were derelict in their duty to honestly rate their subordinates. What about them??

    And so it was with the Navy Yard killer. We didn't even suspect anything about his mental health until after he allegedly murdered a bunch of innocent folks. Back to the closet and the box and suddenly we know that he had been hearing voices and exhibiting other "weird" behaviors. Again, after the fact. Probably good information, but too late to save any lives.

    We will surely be hearing more about the alleged LAX murderer .We already know he didn't like the TSA. But then who does?? They do, after all, give new meaning to the term "bureaucratic (read - idiotic) busy work".

    So far all we seem to have done is moralize abut the NSA activities and wring our hands over the possibility of losing all the benefits of our (no longer) clandestine efforts. The defenders keep saying it is an important cog in our national security machine. Really?? If it's so important, why doesn't anyone seem to know (or be willing to tell us) about the uses to which it has been - or could be - used to enhance our national security. Even if what we got was partially hypothetical (in the interest of preserving secrets - yeah, right), we could at least give it the "smell" test and then decide to either continue with our eavesdropping or maybe improve its focus or perhaps (not likely) stop it altogether.

    After the fact explanations of the causes of random violence don't pass the "smell" test as justification for continuing the practice.

    I'm not sure there are any politicians (or administrations) I would trust to do what is right in terms of eavesdropping or data mining, but I can tell you without equivocation that it is surely not this one.

    D'ya think??