{"id":808,"date":"2006-01-18T13:19:39","date_gmt":"2006-01-18T18:19:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wire-hitch\/"},"modified":"2006-01-18T13:19:39","modified_gmt":"2006-01-18T18:19:39","slug":"wire-hitch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wire-hitch","title":{"rendered":"Wire Hitch"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Hitchens is mighty bothered<\/a> by the discovery that he was the subject of one of those warrantless wiretaps conducted by the NSA. It’s not just the intrusion privacy that seems to anger him, but the waste of resources:<\/p>\n

We are, in essence, being asked to trust the state to know best. What reason do we have for such confidence? The agencies entrusted with our protection have repeatedly been shown, before and after the fall of 2001, to be conspicuous for their incompetence and venality. No serious reform of these institutions has been undertaken or even proposed: Mr George Tenet (whose underlings have generated leaks designed to sabotage the Administration’s own policy of regime-change in Iraq, and whose immense and unconstitutionally secret budget could not finance the infiltration of a group which John Walker Lindh could join with ease) was awarded a Presidential Medal of Freedom.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read the whole thing<\/a>. While you’re at it, you oughtta check out The Puzzle Palace<\/a> and Body of Secrets<\/a>, James Bamford’s books about the NSA, in case you ever thought any phone conversation you had might have been private.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Hitchens is mighty bothered by the discovery that he was the subject of one of those warrantless wiretaps conducted by the NSA. It’s not just the intrusion privacy that seems to anger him, but the waste of resources: We are, in essence, being asked to trust the state to know best. What reason do … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Wire Hitch”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-explicit"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-d2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2105,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/billion-dollar-baby","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":0},"title":"Billion-dollar baby","author":"Gil","date":"June 19, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Today I shook hands and exchanged business cards with a gentleman whose personal worth exceeds $2 billion.","rel":"","context":"In "Big Business"","block_context":{"text":"Big Business","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6191,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/who-am-i-20","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":1},"title":"Who Am I?","author":"Gil","date":"November 27, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm the guy whose idea of a good getaway vacation is spending 4 days in May\/June in Annapolis discussing the work of Flannery O'Connor. Anyone with me?","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1402,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/agent-of-wtf","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":2},"title":"Agent of W.T.F.?","author":"Gil","date":"March 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"For a few years now, I developed a theory that America's cold war worldviews were encapsulated in the psyche of Lee Harvey Oswald, but this relied on my belief that Oswald had so many cover stories, there was no actual person underneath them all. What do we get nowadays? A\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics (explicit)"","block_context":{"text":"Politics (explicit)","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/politics-explicit"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2644,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/last-nights-debate","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":3},"title":"Last night’s debate","author":"Gil","date":"October 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Y'know, Sen. McCain, when you're debating about potential picks for Secretary of the Treasury, maybe your first proposal shouldn't be someone whose company laid off 10% of its staff one day earlier. (I know: she retired from the company in March. But praising EBay's business growth -- \"started with 12\u2026","rel":"","context":"With 2 comments","block_context":{"text":"With 2 comments","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/last-nights-debate#comments"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6275,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/who-am-i-the-love-that-dare-not-speak-its-name-edition","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":4},"title":"Who Am I? The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Name edition","author":"Gil","date":"February 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Who am I? I'm the guy whose wife bought him The Fran Lebowitz Reader for Valentine's Day. I'm also the guy who bought her Simon Doonan's\u00a0Gay Men Don't Get Fat for Valentine's Day.","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=virtualmemories-20&l=as2&o=1&a=B004C43ETY","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1251,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/sweet-relief","url_meta":{"origin":808,"position":5},"title":"Sweet Relief","author":"Gil","date":"December 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"It's over: the year-end issue clocked in at 406 pages, and it's all out the door (except for a couple of house ads that our art dept. is putting together)! I officially apologize to everyone whose e-mails I've failed to reply to, and I also apologize in advance for the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}