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RE: Repost: Snowden Files Provide New Insight On The NSA And The Power It Wields

I note your professional reserve and find it appropriate and admirable.

I am not a held to such a standard, and can employ more direct statements.

I looked for the discussion of financial surveillance that would deliver actionable intelligence regarding business plans and undertakings, and was not disappointed. I sought this information because of the common apprehension of contractors and employees conducting 'love-ins', an agency euphemism for surveillance of current, potential, and past romantic interests of the stalkers (for some reason called 'analysts' in official parlance. They're really just creepy stalkers) in the agency, using government resources to spy on them for personal reasons, while on the clock.

In the context of financial concerns, I became certain the individuals with access to actionable business information attained the most lucrative possible insider information permitting trading and other operations to financially reward themselves using that information.

An example of how such surveillance covertly obtained could be used profitably would be learning of a business or high value individual being in financial difficulty, and seeking to divest assets. Knowing the specific price points would enable buyers to cut the deals to the bone, and pocket the sweet meats. Far more potential of lucrative profiteering is blackmail. There is no doubt copious discovery of information that would empower racketeers on government salaries or paid through government contract to rake in secret riches.

I noted the lack of discussion of either 'love-ins' or profiteering in this post, and guess none of the documents you reviewed dealt specifically with either. However, I am synthesizing information from other reports with what you review here, and find the surveillance of international financial institutions you did reveal extremely troubling, as clearly actionable insider information was available to stalkers infamous within the agency for such weak ethics as to so commonly use surveillance resources to stalk romantic interests thereby being labeled euphemistically.

It is certain that no ethical bars to using those resources to profit financially might either impede those parties.

Further, I noted the revelation that regional surveillance was undertaken and was undoubtedly often conducted in business districts, which would far more broadly potentiate illegal financial profiteering from the business plans and operations of more esoteric and less obvious targets. Such insider information would be vastly more difficult to detect being used profitably by those who attained it covertly, and particularly when such targets aren't typically either commonly considered targets of insider trading, or corporate espionage.

I bet none of these guys will retire poor. Given the atrocious record of government 'servants' regarding corruption, I consider this certainly widespread problem to be as significant, if not more so, due to it's immediate impact on private citizens and their assets and income, than the insidious effect ubiquitous surveillance has on public policy.

Lastly, I note the reference to Colin Powell's categorization of the SIGINT informing his speech to the UN as 'an intelligence failure' that somehow managed to supportively underpin the propaganda effort to demonize Saddam Hussein and Iraq, in the drive to war.

I will call this what it clearly appears to be: they made that shit up, and lied through their teeth, so they could kill millions of innocent people, and destroy a prosperous and sovereign nation, for profit. They kept doing it, and are still doing it today, not only in Iraq, but across the entire Middle East, and beyond, from Niger to Mongolia, from Chile to Norway. Maybe, just maybe, they're making shit up about Russia too ;)

Thanks very much for your hard and diligent work bringing previously obscure and highly relevant information into the sunshine of public disclosure.