One of the things I kept hearing regarding the spying into Obama's passport info, was that they fired the CONTRACTOR the first time and then they fired the CONTRACTOR the second time. The third time the person was reprimanded. I can't remember hearing if the third person was a contractor. But I have thought and keep on thinking that we are stupid to allow our essential data pass through the hands of a contractor.
This passport business was the problem of the state department and they got behind in processing passports and rather than hire people they put contractors into the jobs. Now some reports have said that some contract relations go back 20 years. I am not sure if those relations were in actual passport processing.
But you add this to the IRS (see below)
Published: August 24, 2006
To the Editors:
Re ''I.R.S. Enlists Outside Help in Collecting Delinquent Taxes, Despite the Higher Costs'' (news article, Aug. 20) and ''Tax Farmers, Mercenaries and Viceroys,'' by Paul Krugman (column, Aug. 21):
When you strip away the rhetoric surrounding the Internal Revenue Service's plans to begin collecting tax debts through private collection companies, what remains is a sound program that makes sense in a time of tight federal budgets and increased attention to deficit reduction.
Private collection companies are already used by a majority of the states to collect delinquent taxes, and the federal government has long used them to collect education loans and other past-due debt.
We are putting tough safeguards in place to protect taxpayers' rights and privacy. Contractors will receive only limited taxpayer information, and they must follow the same legal standards as I.R.S. employees. We will be closely monitoring their performance to make sure that they're following the letter of the law and our own stringent internal standards.
This program involves only the simplest cases that would not otherwise be worked given the limited I.R.S. budget. Redirecting these cases to private companies will permit the I.R.S. to focus its existing collection and enforcement personnel on more complex and productive tax issues.
Mark W. Everson
Commissioner
Internal Revenue Service
Washington, Aug. 21, 2006
(I am not sure if the IRS did indeed go to contractors. I suspect they did, if only because nothing has stopped this administration from anything.)
You add to this mix the fact that Rice doesn't manage contractors at all well - i.e. Blackwater debacles, and the fact that the same data is available to various segments of the Homeland Security folks who seem to be constitutionally unable to care about OUR rights and freedoms.
Contractors probably allowed the quick firing of the miscreants because that is what contractors are for! But had they been regular employees, more than just a token protest could have been made about that firing and more could have been learned about the reasons for the peek into unauthorized data.
And it is possible that regular employees would have had a more profession view of their work and their responsibilities.
Regardless, aint nothing about us is unknown to anybody any more. If the gov't don't know it, your insurance company probably does. The real problem isn't that the truth will come out, the real problem is how they twist and lie and fudge the truth into something totally outlandish. Like Obama's talking about his grandma being a "typical white woman". What the hell. Ignoring all the news that might have happened while "FOX and Friends parsed that over and over and out of context, ignoring the fact that these folks exemplify my contention that Obama's speech would definitely put the brain dead segment of punditry in a world of hurt, ignoring the fact that these folks probably no longer know WHO they are currently shilling for, we can see that twisting truth is all to easy and too simple. If the brain dead can do it, anyone can. So who will save us when the Homeland SS comes to get us? Maybe just the fact that THEY are mostly contractors and could care less?
So how easy do you think it would be to bribe a contractor?
How much data is spooled at Homeland Security and since these guys are such maniacs about computers what are the odds of hacking said data base. (Or maybe they haven't even gotten the servers up and running!?)
Or is all the clowing around about the missing emails just a ploy to make us think they are dumber than dirt?