US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Jan Klimkowski]

"I had my hand literally on the paperwork," he told Peter B. Collins. "They went after members of Congress, the Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence and armed services committees and the judicial committee, but they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms and they went after judges. They went after State Department officials… They went after U.S. international corporations, U.S. banking firms and financial firms. They went after NGOs (non-governmental organizations) like the Red Cross and people like that, that go overseas and do humanitarian work…

(snip)

Question: this creates the potential for massive blackmail…

"Absolutely. I was worried that the intelligence community now has sway over what is going on. I haven't given you any names. This was in the summer of 2004. One of the papers I had in my hands was a bunch of numbers associated with a forty-something wanna-be Senator from Illinois, that's who they went after…

Intelligence agencies have always used personal information for blackmail and leverage.

It's a key reason why our democracies are so undemocratic.

But Snowden was a private contractor directly employed by the multinational part of the military-multinational-intelligence complex.

It's not just the intelligence agencies who now have the dirt on our politicians and key policy formers. It's the private sector, driven entirely by the lust for profit and power. The private contractors have been given the keys to the castle.

The democratic model is totally, fatally, undermined.