Sunday, September 7, 2014

Sunday Globe Special: Dear Zelda

Globe literally putting a lipstick smiley-face on a literal pig of repressive surveillance:

Zelda’s logo, presented in color here, appears in the agency’s employee newsletter.
Zelda’s logo, presented in color here, appears in the agency’s employee newsletter (National Security Agency).

“She acts as a wise friend or senior co-worker, and there is a certain mystique about Zelda. . . . She’s bigger than life

"Meet Zelda, the unlikely ‘Dear Abby’ of NSA" by Bryan Bender | Globe Staff   September 07, 2014

WASHINGTON — The anonymous employee wrote to complain that a high-ranking official “is frequently MIA,” or missing in action.

“We never know if he is coming or not,” the underling wrote. “He frequently leaves work in the middle of the day to run routine errands. I overheard him tell a co-worker, ‘This place is last on my list of priorities.’ ”

“This place” is none other than the super-secret National Security Agency. The writer, “Headless in Headquarters,” was airing one of scores of grievances to “Zelda,” the often cheeky and opinionated advice columnist in the agency’s employee newsletter — a popular fixture inside the spy agency whose role is revealed in documents obtained by The Boston Globe.

Great investigative reporting!

“Ask Zelda,” in its quirky, sarcastic, and at times blunt and sobering style, reveals a host of workplace ills at the agency that has been under fire for monitoring huge amounts of private communications since a former contractor, Edward Snowden, last year leaked thousands of documents about its domestic intelligence-gathering practices.

But the Globe is going to put a smiley face on it for you! 

No wonder AmeriKa's newspapers are $hit

As for the Snowden psyop.... "Meanwhile, no NSA major programs have been halted or ceased.  No revelation from Snowden so far was anything that wasn’t already known!"

It's a psyop to scare us into being quiet, and it now appears the NSA staff is much more worried about spying on each other in addition to watching porn or playing video games (just like all the others). 

Related: ANOTHER Pentagon Pedophile Busted Distributing Child Porn!

The gripes to Zelda range from potentially serious lapses — adrift supervisors, snoozing employees, and the lackadaisical handling of some of the nation’s most sensitive files — to the more mundane, such as foul-smelling, nosy, rude, or overbearing co-workers.

In one richly ironic column, from early 2011, a group of employees in the highly sensitive “signals intelligence division” told Zelda they found it hard to swallow what agency critics would, almost certainly without pity, consider a taste of their own medicine.

Oh, they hypocrites like the rest of this goddamn government?

They wrote that they had learned their private messages poking fun at their NSA superiors “weren’t private after all” and were posted on an internal computer network for all their co-workers to see.

In another instance, an employee sought guidance on how to handle a boss who had enlisted “snitches” to eavesdrop on private office conversations.

The Globe obtained the columns under a Freedom of Information Act request. Although the government determined that the columns could be released, the agency has kept Zelda’s real name a secret.

This is a CRAP ARTICLE that is leading the Sunday Boston Globe. 

Now wonder the Amerikan ma$$ media newspaper industry is imploding!

But the column carrying her nom de plume, depicted alongside a cartoon-like rendition of a wide-eyed blonde in red lipstick sitting before a glowing computer monitor, has clearly provided a welcome means for NSA employees to clear the air since the feature first appeared in 2010.

********************

Still, Zelda hasn’t shied away from wading into controversial topics. One such instance came, as it happened, two months after Snowden, then a 30-year-old computer specialist, began sharing internal NSA documents with the media in June 2013. An NSA employee complained that older, more experienced managers were discriminating against younger employees, including ignoring their expertise on technical matters....

Other commonly fielded complaints are about employees who wear skimpy outfits, are being passed over for promotion, are overly gossipy and chit-chatty, and who clutter up offices because they can’t seem to throw anything away.

What a PETTY piece of shit organization!

Snowden wasn’t the only thief. In the winter of 2012, a soda snatcher was on the loose.

Yeah, ha-ha..... ha.

********************

One troubling theme exposed in the columns is a lack of basic civility at the agency based in Fort Meade, Md. Indeed, a number of the columns suggest a profane and sometimes bullying culture.

What, what, what? NSA pukes like a bunch of mean bloggers?

The NSA is a military organization, headed by a four-star officer, so it should come as little surprise that some of its workers swear like sailors.

Do they have a rape crisis like other branches of the military, and is it excused like this?

But one recent scourge was what Zelda termed “lane hijacking,” in which employees, usually female, got shoved into walls and doorways by oblivious co-workers blowing by on their way to urgent meetings.

Things got so bad in the spring of 2012 that the NSA launched an agency-wide campaign termed “Civility Matters.”

Now, before I post I should think “will this e-mail/post come back to haunt me when I’m up for a senior-level position in a few years?” 

That is what they are all talking about, huh? 

So those are the kind of assholes overlooking the security of us all, huh?

--more--" 

I wonder if Lois Lerner answered hers. 

My advice to you, readers? 

Stop reading this blog and go watch some football.