[From article]
On the global scene, America has imploded: Its leaders have no grasp of its national interests, never mind any sense of how to achieve them. The assumption that we are in the early stages of “the post-American world” is now shared by everyone from Gen. Sisi to Vladimir Putin. Gen. Sisi, I should add, is Egypt’s new strongman, not Putin’s characterization of Obama. Meanwhile, in contrast to its accelerating irrelevance overseas, at home Washington’s big bloated blundering bureaucratic security state expands daily. It’s easier to crack down on 47 Elm Street than Benghazi.
[. . .]
Privacy is dying in all technologically advanced nations, and it may simply be a glum fact of contemporary existence that the right to live an unmonitored life is now obsolete unless one wishes to relocate to upcountry villages in Somalia or Waziristan. Nevertheless, even by the standards of other Western nations, America’s loss of privacy is deeply disturbing. Its bureaucracy is bigger and better-funded, and its response to revelations of its abuse of power is to make it still bigger and better-funded and more bureaucratic.
[. . .]
Maybe they could just have NSA customer-service representatives announcing that your call may be monitored for quality control purposes at the start of every telephone conversation. Of course, most customer-service representatives are based in India (telephone code 91) but there’s a sporting chance the NSA would confuse it with Kansas (code 913), which could do wonders for the employment rate.
[. . .]
But, like Obama says, it’s merely a theoretical “prospect” of abuse. You’d have to be paranoid to think it could actually happen…
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0813/steyn081913.php3#.UhmZrd00jDo
Jewish World Review
August 19, 2013/ 13 Elul, 5773
NSA oversight overstated, overrated
By Mark Steyn
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