Government Employees Suddenly Worried About Surveillance As New Plans To Stop The Next Snowden Strip All Privacy

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Mar. 12, 2014

The Associated Press has a story about how the US intelligence community is ramping up efforts to stop the next Ed Snowden by basically monitoring nearly everything that government employees and contractors with security clearance do:

Stung by internal security lapses, U.S. intelligence officials plan to use a sweeping electronic system to continually monitor workers with secret clearances.... The system is intended to identify rogue agents, corrupt officials and leakers and draws on a Defense Department model under development for more than a decade.... Intelligence officials have long wanted a computerized system that could monitor employees, in part to foil leakers like former National Security Agency analyst Edward Snowden....

Of course, now that it's about the intelligence community spying on the intelligence community, those government employees are suddenly feeling a bit uncomfortable about all of this:

Privacy advocates and government employee union officials expressed concerns that electronic monitoring could intrude into individuals' private lives, prompt flawed investigations and put sensitive personal data at greater risk.

The officials backing the program claim this is no real risk because "the system would have safeguards." Of course, that's the excuse we've been hearing for ages about the bulk data collection programs that the NSA and FBI use -- that supposedly they have "safeguards." Considering that the government employees union doesn't seem satisfied with that response indicates that the folks who actually work in the intelligence community know that such "safeguards" are pretty bogus and do little to actually protect privacy.

Of course, there seems to be no recognition from those who are complaining about this new system that it shows why the American public (and, well, the rest of the world) are so concerned about the other surveillance programs of the intelligence community.