Wonkette - national security agency

Category: national security agency

DEC

2005

Meet the Cryptokids!

Around these parts, the interwebs are frequently the inspiration for and the dissemination point of all of our mockery. One of the wonderful things the web has done is prompt the advent of government websites -- every agency seems to have one, and their content is usually a lovely sort of unintended comedy. Highlighting this is sometimes something that takes a little work, sometimes something that's ridiculously easy.

And then, every so often, a government agency will put something up on their website that's so surreally hilarious, it blows our minds. When tipster Glenn May pointed us in the direction of the National Security Agency's "For Kids" content, we salivated at the thought at what we might find. But we had. No. Idea.

Folks: They've got cartoon characters.

Anthropomorphic code-crackin' woodland creatures.

Meet the entire Cryptokids gang after the jump.— DCEIVER

Crypto Cat

Brief Bio: Parents were schoolteachers on Navajo reservation. Was taught the Navajo language by some old woman. In turn--get this!--he himself taught his native American classmates how to speak it! Way to go, paleface! "We did such a good job with our new codes that our teachers couldn’t even break them!" Sort of an Ancient Burial Grounds Poets Society! Moved away to new high school where he met the rest of the Crytokids gang!

Fashion Statemement:
Standard issue WB Network androgyny.

PC angle:
Aside from the feel-good story of cavortin' with the Injuns, CryptoCat has a sister with Down's Syndrome and coaches her special-needs swim team.

Sinister weirdness
Ultimate frisbee enthusiast.

Decipher Dog

Brief Bio:
Dad is a cop. Thinks stepmom is an NSA "network engineer" but when you read between the lines, it's clear she's actually Valerie Plame. Crypto Cat taught him Navajo coding, subjected him to unfortunate name "D-Dog." Now thinks being a Crypto Kid is "pretty cool." Career virgin fate was thus sealed.

Fashion Statemement:
Western Kentucky off-ramp dyke bar.

Unhinged dorkery:
Seems a little too proud of building wireless network in his house. Prone to gee-whiz statements like: "Plus we wouldn’t have all those cables lying around the house – I was tripping over them all the time."

Sinister weirdness
Loves playing hangman.

Rosetta Stone

Brief Bio:
Mother and father are archaeologists. Also, she's home-schooled--but she managed to fill the gaping void in her life with just about every piece of ancient Japanese hokum she could get her hands on. Fell under the spell of one of those military recruiters that stalk University campuses with their Roofies of Patriotism.

Fashion Statemement:
Wu-Tang Phooey.

This is really sad!
You're telling me.

Sinister weirdness
She's a little too blown away by sushi: "It sounds gross, but they both taste really good and they’re easy to pick up with chopsticks!"

T. Top

Brief Bio:
Learned BASIC in junior high, which means he went to Junior High in 1985 and fell into a two-decade long coma. When he awoke, he discovered he had become a socially inept putz. Met Crypto Cat in the computer lab looking for information on "advanced secret codes."

Fashion Statemement:
Seth Green called, he wants his closet back.

Deserves a white-hot death because:
Of his propensity toward using the word "kewl" every twenty seconds.

Sinister weirdness
Dreams of building a robot that will walk the dog for him.

Joules

Brief Bio:
Regularly pummeling her brain with a cereal bowl full of Ecstacy, she flits from place to place in an ADD-fueled haze armed with her saxaphone and her perpetually terrified dog.

Fashion Statemement:
And here I'd thought Jem and Holograms had broken up!

Saddest part of all:
Thinks her life is "interesting."

Sinister weirdness
That motto of hers: "Never stop wondering!" Can't you see that hanging in the NSA foyer?

Sergeant Sam

Brief Bio:
Imagine if Chris Cooper's kid in American Beauty had turned out the way he had hoped.

Fashion Statemement:
Olive drab; high-tensile alloyed ramrods.

Career overview:
Syriana, and how.

Sinister weirdness
Do we need to spell it our for you? Total fucking pedophile!

READ MORE: national security agency , top

Daily Briefing: 'It Just Disintegrated Our Capacity'

• Former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) says Congress rejected White House request for the authority to eavesdrop on U.S. citizens: "I can state categorically that the subject of warrantless wiretaps of American citizens never came up. I did not and never would have supported giving authority to the president for such wiretaps. I am also confident that the 98 senators who voted in favor of authorization of force against al Qaeda did not believe that they were also voting for warrantless domestic surveillance." [WP, WP]
• Congress has turned on Bush. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.): "What you have seen is a Congress, which has been AWOL through intimidation or lack of unity, get off the sidelines and jump in with both feet." [WP, LAT]
• Republican lawmakers "largely have themselves to blame for the muddled and haphazard finale of the Congressional session." [NYT]
• House and Senate extend the Patriot Act for five weeks, pushing fight into the new year. [WP, NYT, LAT]
• Bush approves reduction of U.S. combat forces in Iraq; troop level could fall to 130,000. [WP, USAT]
• John Yoo, "a mere deputy assistant attorney general in the legal counsel office," was the main author of controversial legal policies; viewed as an aggressive force among conservative legal scholars. Yoo: "If you're being criticized for what you did and you believe that what you did was right, you shouldn't take it lying down. You should go out and defend yourself." [NYT]
• Michael Brown warned Tom Ridge in 2003 that the bureaucracy of the DHS would strangle FEMA's effectiveness: "People became distracted from the mission, because we spent so much time and energy fighting for resources and working on reorganization. It just disintegrated our capacity." [WP, WT]

• Supreme Court has shied away from defining the precedent of the eavesdropping program. [NYT]
• Administration cites '78 law to defend eavesdropping program. [NYT]
• Most Congressional leaders initially supported the eavesdropping program. [NYT]
• Republicans "hold" the Senate Intelligence Authorization Bill for the first time in 27 years. [WP]
• Congress approves $29b for the Gulf Coast. [WP]
• Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) distances himself from Christian group that advocated intelligent design. [WP]
• 72% of Americans disagree with Pentagon's propaganda campaign in Iraq. [USAT]
• Independent writers and researchers are often quietly backed by lobbyists without disclosure. [NYT]

DEC

2005

Also, Two Wrongs are the New Right

In the wake of revelations that the Bush administration conducted a campaign of illegal wiretaps pursuant to matters that are widely claimed to be vital to the national interest yet simultaneously devoid of any evidence that the legal avenues available to the President were insufficient to the pursuit thereof, it's possible to imagine that dull-witted, tranked-up press corps failing to ask any number of questions. Like: Why, Mr. President, are you so angry about the Patriot Act filibuster when you seem jolly well disposed to conferring whatever powers you like upon yourself? Like: What part of "You have seventy-two hours to seek a warrant after the initiation of a wiretap" don't you understand? Like: Why can't you and the idea of separation of powers just hug it out, bitch?

Nevertheless, some hopeful and naive part of us still wonders why no one is questioning one of the central planks in the Administration's defense of their actions, namely: "Hey, it's totally okay that we are wiretapping American citizens without legal authority because we totally briefed some Democrats that we were going to be doing it." That's an extraordinarily bizarre justification! Since when does briefing members of the opposition party have boo-boo-poopy to do with something being legal or not?

You'd think that the Bush administration could more fully harness their crazy-ass "let's brief the Democrats" power by gathering the gang of four and telling them you were going to save the taxpayers some scratch by knocking over a few jewelry stores. We wish we could avail ourselves of this executive privilege, unfortunately, down here in the real world where we common folk live, the po-po have a name for what Bush suggests gives him legal cover: criminal conspiracy.— DCEIVER

DEC

2005

Daily Briefing: Different Strokes

• Bush defends eavesdropping program but offers no details: "This is a different era, a different war." [WP, WP, NYT, USAT, USAT]
• House approves $39.7b in cuts and drilling of ANWR; showdown expected in the Senate. Sen. Kerry: "Let's be very clear about what's happening here. Republicans -- Senator Stevens in particular -- are putting oil companies ahead of our troops." [WP, WP, WP, NYT, USAT, LAT]
• Approval of Bush rebounds to 47% in WP-ABC poll: "His approval rating on Iraq jumped 10 percentage points since early November, to 46 percent, while his rating on the economy rose 11 points, to 47 percent. A clear majority, 56 percent, said they approve of the way Bush is handling the fight against terrorism." [WP]
• Bush " apparently decided that a passionate offense was his best defense"; his mood "was casual and crisp." [WP]
• ACLU claims the FBI has wrongly monitored antiwar, environmental, and civil rights groups; FBI used secret informants to track PETA for years. [NYT, WP]
• Sen. Rockefeller penned hand-written note to Cheney about civil liberties concerns over eavesdropping. [WP]
• Force reductions expected in Iraq, Afghanistan. [WP, NYT]

• Senators still struggling over renewal of the Patriot Act. [USAT]
• Leak to the Washington Times in 1998 about bin Laden's communication preferences "made it much more difficult for the National Security Agency to intercept his conversations," the 9/11 commission found. [NYT]
• Many Republicans welcome resistance from Democrats on security issues to differentiate their positions. [LAT]
• House has frequently held controversial votes in the wee hours of the morning to avoid news cycles. [WP]
• Sen. Baucus (D-Mont.) returns contributions linked to Abramoff. [WP]

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DEC

2005

Metro Section: She Can Solve All Our Problems Edition

• From the people that brought you Butterstick comes the next great thing that'll improve your life: the SmartTrip Dissection! [DCist]

• Believe it or not, at least one ex-employee at the NSA is having a worse day than the current ones [WJLA]

• The Examiner's Harry Jaffe says Chinatown "may have just become the hippest, hottest place in D.C." He adds, "You have to walk the streets to grasp the change," but that's not really true. The "change" is: most of Chinatown's Chinaness has been beaten to death with large sticks. [Examiner]

• We always suspected that the googly insanity that beams forth from Nancy Grace's crazy eyes would claim a victim. [Reliable Source, last item]— DCEIVER

Patriot Games

If you're like Wonkette, you probably planned to spend the day curled up in large bowl frolicking with a butt plug of your own. That was before we learned that we have become Butterstick, under the watchful eye of the NSA's pandacam. The reports filed by the New York Times and the Washington Post certainly didn't help avert the foretold conclusion of today's Patriot Act vote: needing 60 votes to end debate on the bill's reauthorization, those who supported the act fell eight votes short.

It's certainly a weird time in the War on Terror. The administration wants full latitude to spy on Americans, refusing to discuss the whys and wherefores, but, at the same time, are happy to make big announcements about our secret plan to win the war in Iraq and then post that plan on the White House website. And our hopes in Iraq are further pinned to the Iraqi security forces, who, like they keep saying, have to get up, get on up so our troops can get down, get down -- the same Iraqi security forces who we learn today let Abu Musab al-Zarqawi go last year because they didn't recognize him when he was in custody.

Sometimes, it seems to us that safety and security are just a few legible wanted posters and a phone call to Colleen Rowley away. But, hell, by all means, keep making a list of every American who's checked out the freakin' DaVinci Code, and check it twice. Priorities, you know?— DCEIVER

Daily Briefing: 'A Lot of Joy'

• White House backs Sen. McCain's ban on the torture of detainees; noted as a "particularly significant setback" for Cheney. [WP, WP, NYT, USAT, LAT]
• In 2002, Bush authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop domestically without needing a court warrant; under pressure from the White House, the New York Times held the story for a year to "conduct additional reporting." Former senior official: "This is really a sea change. It's almost a mainstay of this country that the N.S.A. only does foreign searches." [NYT]
• Republicans try to outmaneuver Democrats on final legislation. Filibuster may be in order for the Patriot Act debate; Republican lawmakers "are increasingly showing independent streaks." [WP, NYT, LAT, LAT]
• Bush on Iraq vote: "There's a lot of joy, as far as I'm concerned, in seeing the Iraqi people accomplish this major milestone in the march to democracy." [NYT]
• Bush doubles proposal for rebuilding New Orleans levees to $3b; new structure would not shield from Category 5 hurricanes. [WP, NYT, USAT]
• Congressional report finds that the administration withheld some prewar intelligence from lawmakers; White House disputes claim. [WP]

• Pentagon kept information about American citizens for longer than necessary. [NYT]
• Democrats attack Bush for asserting Rep. DeLay's innocence. Sen. Reid: "To have someone of his stature, the president of the United States, prejudge a case is something I've never seen before." [WP]
• Rep. Pelosi praises Democrats' diversity of opinions on Iraq: "There is no one Democratic voice." [WP]
• House Republicans support construction of 698 miles of fences along the U.S.-Mexico border. [LAT, NYT, USAT]
• Jack Abramoff pleads guilty to fraud and conspiracy charges in Florida. [WP]

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