…will be thwarted by firewalls and deemed broken

Security Theater from GovernmentExecutive.com:
Muellers book is filled with statistics meant to put terrorism in context. For example, international terrorism annually causes the same number of deaths as drowning in bathtubs or bee stings. It would take a repeat of Sept. 11 every month of the year to make flying as dangerous as driving. Over a lifetime, the chance of being killed by a terrorist is about the same as being struck by a meteor. Muellers conclusions: An Americans risk of dying at the hands of a terrorist is microscopic. The likelihood of another Sept. 11-style attack is nearly nil because it would lack the element of surprise. America can easily absorb the damage from most conceivable attacks. And the suggestion that al Qaeda poses an existential threat to the United States is ridiculous. Muellers statistics and conclusions are jarring only because they so starkly contradict the widely disseminated and broadly accepted image of terrorism as an urgent and all-encompassing threat.

via Bruce Schneier

Read this for a well written example of how telcos and their lobbyists (aka the FCC) are looting the public treasury in the United States.

It is just one more example of the brazen profiteering of US corporations at the expense of the public. The scariest example seems to be the huge number of private contractors that are doing the jobs that the military used to do in Iraq. There are almost as many private individuals representing the US in Iraq as there are military personnel. Some claim that these private firms are doing the grunt work so that the military can focus on what they do best, but that doesn’t explain why they are paid many times more than the soldiers who are taking higher risks. Is it a coincidence that the corporation that profits the most from the Iraq war is the one that was led by the current vice president? The man should be in prison. Not just any prison, but the deepest, darkest, hellish nightmare hole of a prison.