Are You in Big Brother's Database?

[wkmac]

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency

A single paragraph really caught my attention but moreso a single part of a sentence highlighted below.

More recently, the NSA was unaware of India's impending nuclear test in 1998, the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, the attack on the USS Cole in 2000, and the 1998 bombing of two of America's East African embassies. The agency first learned of the September 11 attacks on $300 television sets tuned to CNN, not its billion-dollar eavesdropping satellites tuned to al-Qaeda.

Now was al-Qaeda so good that with all the intense listening from our intelligence appratus that not once did they (al-Qaeda, terrorists) slip up and make some mention, not the slightest hint, not an inkling of what was about to take place? What raises an even more interesting point is that we've been told that bin Laden and company and al-Qaeda are painted in America as the zealous, fanatic religionists who are devoted unto death to religous purity and yet our hijackers on a mission to heaven and 70 virgins show a very different lifestyle leading up to 9/11.

Considering this display of vulgar male lifestyle, what are the odds these undisciplined sorts could keep all manner of secrets until after the fact? And especially when you consider that there were billion-dollar eavesdropping satellites tuned to al-Qaeda by people who were smart enough to pick up the slightest defect or at least we're led to believe that's the case!

I have to say it is rather thought provoking!