Congress to Scrap NSA, Create ‘Transparent’ Spy Agency

(Satire) — Concerned that the National Security Agency (NSA) may have violated the civil liberties of Americans by analyzing records of millions of phone calls to detect patterns that might indicate terrorist activity, a bipartisan coalition in Congress today will unveil legislation to scrap the NSA and replace it with a more ‘transparent’ spy agency.

According to language in the measure, the new intelligence unit, dubbed Open-Source Intelligence (OSI), will “harness the power of the internet to protect the right of the American people to know how their spy dollar is spent.”

“There’s nothing like sunshine to ensure accountability,” said an unnamed Congressional aide who spoke in exchange for a lobster dinner, a fine chianti and a $12 Macanudo cigar. “Just because the enemy is among us, using our telecommunications infrastructure to plot the next major attack, doesn’t mean the government can sneak around doing secret stuff simply to save a few thousand, or million, lives. We have rights.”

Under the terms of the bill, the OSI website will include a list of all covert agents, with photos, home addresses, email links and IM screennames. As the OSI gathers data, it will be accessible in real-time through the website to “premium subscribers,” but even non-members will be able to view the aggregated data, and listen to brief, sample clips of legally intercepted phone calls.”" -- Satricial Reporting by Scott Ott/ScrappleFace

Why do we want to make it so difficult for our government to catch the bad guys? The irony is that when disaster strikes some expect the government to come to our rescue. Then we ask, why didn't the government know and do something to prevent it? Don't you think there is a real double standard at play here?

Q. Are you willing to give up anything in order to protect the lives of perhaps thousands or even millions of people? If so what? Voice your opinion...