The National Security Agency (NSA) has always been highly classified, a fact captured by the joke that NSA really stands for Nonesuch Agency.

Lately, with all the revelations by Edward Snowden about “inadvertent” and “unintentional” spying on Americans, the NSA seems to be defining a new acronym for itself.  Call it the

Nothing to See here, move Along, outfit.

The American people are being told by their government and their media that NSA domestic spying is a non-story.  The headline is something like: They’ve always done it, or They’re doing it to keep you safe, or You can trust powerful government agencies that have access to your private data.

In other words, nothing to see here, move along.

A true democracy jealously guards the rights of its citizens, notably the right to privacy.  A true democracy also has sufficient checks to guard against the acquisition of power and influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-intelligence complex.  We are no longer such a democracy.

Perhaps the biggest “reveal” of the whole Snowden affair is how much of government intelligence is not government.  It’s been outsourced, privatized.  We’ve added the profit motive to spying, ostensibly in the name of efficiency.

So, along with acquiescing to government spying, we’ve now made it a for-profit business in which lobbyists give money to Congress to ensure that this intelligence complex continues to grow in power and reach.  All in the name of keeping us safe, naturally.

The Army has an off-color saying: Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.  Please don’t tell me you’re spying on me and mining my data so that I’m “safer.”

There is something to see here, citizens.  And what it is is not pretty.

W.J. Astore