Der flammenwerfer

Wow. Just, wow. The bullshit has officially gotten so thick that you're gonna need to get out your flamethrower to bust through it.

When the NSA wiretapping program began, Mr. Joel wasn't working for the intelligence office, but he says he has reviewed it and finds no problems.

Yeah, exactly.

"Although you might have concerns about what might potentially be going on, those potentials are not actually being realized and if you could see what was going on, you would be reassured just like everyone else," he says.

Oh, ok, now I feel reassured.

And therein lies the problem he faces: how to provide enough insight into government intelligence efforts to ease concerns about privacy invasions while protecting the usefulness of secret programs.

The problem he faces? What problem? How hard is it to be a mouthpiece and rubber-stamp man?

Mr. Joel's mission, like those of the other privacy cops, appears aimed more at policy than policing. While there might be occasion to look into complaints, he says most of his work is focused on creating a dialogue with government officials, intelligence operatives and others so they're thinking about privacy and civil liberties and ways to tailor a program to ensure rights aren't compromised.

Alright, alright, now I'm comforted. When they do ill shit to violate privacy and civil liberties, it will make it oh-so-much better knowing that they had some dialogue and thought about it before doing what they wanted to anyway.

In other news, I'm creating the post of Officer of Bad and Tasteless Jokes to create dialogue and get me thinking about offensive material before I release it into the wild as originally intended. I will also be appointing a Swearing Czar.

Fuckers.