An appeals court says all that federal spying on your phone traffic is illegal. Some nerve. Don’t those judges realize how bad the economy is? Don’t they realize how many people will be out of work when the espionage agencies are forced to fire thousands of eavesdroppers, report aggregators, librarians and group supervisors?
And it’s not just the working men and women of the alphabet agencies. It’s also the delis and coffee shops and auto repair technicians who depend for their livelihoods on business from the spies.
This requires some explaining. You think all this goes on at NSA headquarters in Ft. Meade, Maryland. But no. According to recently declassified documents obtained by Wessays, the operation is decentralized. Localized if you will.
Remember the Ravenite Social Club on Mulberry Street in Little Italy. Well, many people thought it was a mob meeting place. And it may well have been, though we all know there is no mob.
But when some of its members … uh … left the area, it closed. And someone put in a shoe store. Well, down in the basement where they used to bury … No, wait. Down in the basement, they now have a group of cubicles with men and women wearing headsets. It looks like a modern bookie joint, but it isn’t.
The ever economy minded people at the NSA figured that since the place was already wired, why not put a listening post in the basement and let the shoe guy just do business upstairs .
Since (classified number) of people work there, the restaurants in the area and the taxis and Uber drivers all profit smartly. Much more so than they did when the social club was there and brought in its own food.
Now, these poor business people will go hungry.
There are mini Ravenites all over the country. That abandoned building on Main St. that countless people have offered to rent? Don’t look too closely. There’s plenty of activity there, but the workers all park in the nearby Denny’s to throw you off the trail (And because no one eats in that Denny’s more than once, so the parking lot is generally empty.)
This economic calamity will not happen all at once. The federal appeals court ruled that the program can wind down slowly. And it’s asked congress to define the boundaries of acceptable nosiness. Expect a quick decision. Possibly by November of 2016.
Meantime, the (classified number) people will have to find work elsewhere. But it’s a worry. Most have no real skills. They’ll end up in fast food joints which currently brag of their unending generosity by increasing pay to $9.00 an hour, part time, no benefits. This compares with the hourly rate of (classified number) that the current busybodies are paid.
Shrapnel:
--RIP, Guy Carawan, folksinger and civil rights musician who died at 87. He brought “We Shall Overcome” into the mainstream. And he was a leader in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee when it still was non-violent.
I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®
Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com
© WJR 2015
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