Category: Policy Page 32 of 35

The New York Times has an excellent story this morning on just how pervasive contractors have become in the Federal government. Government contracting is hardly a new phenomenon, nor is it necessarily inherently bad. However, it’s gone far beyond what seems reasonable and necessary. I encourage you to read the whole article, but here are some key bits:

The most secret and politically delicate government jobs, like intelligence collection and budget preparation, are increasingly contracted out, despite regulations forbidding the outsourcing of “inherently governmental” work. Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, a watchdog group, said allowing CACI workers to review other contractors captured in microcosm “a government that’s run by corporations.”

[ . . . ]

The most successful contractors are not necessarily those doing the best work, but those who have mastered the special skill of selling to Uncle Sam. The top 20 service contractors have spent nearly $300 million since 2000 on lobbying and have donated $23 million to political campaigns.

[ . . . ]

Contracting almost always leads to less public scrutiny, as government programs are hidden behind closed corporate doors. Companies, unlike agencies, are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Members of Congress have sought unsuccessfully for two years to get the Army to explain the contracts for Blackwater USA security officers in Iraq, which involved several costly layers of subcontractors.

You’d think that the government would be trading all these negatives for a substantial upside, yes? Well . . .

[T]he government had made no effort to count contractors and no assessment of the true costs and benefits. “We have no data to show that contractors are actually more efficient than the government,” he said.

Perhaps they can contract out a study on that one.

You know the people we used to make fun of? The ones who insisted on PGP encryption for “See you at the bar around 8:30” emails? If we’re smart, we’ll be getting more like them, sooner than later. The LA Times helps us understand why:

IN THE LATEST illustration of the Bush administration’s disregard for your privacy, the Justice Department is trying to convince a panel of federal judges that the FBI should be free to read your e-mail without obtaining a warrant.

It’s not all your e-mail — only messages left on a Web-based system such as Hotmail or on your Internet service provider’s computers. A 1986 law forbids the interception and disclosure of e-mail and other online transmissions without a warrant. But there is an exception. If the messages are more than 180 days old, they can be obtained merely with a subpoena or a court order, which investigators can obtain more easily than a warrant.

Now the Justice Department is arguing, in a case before an appeals court in Ohio, that even new messages can be obtained without a warrant if their intended recipient has already read them. The Justice Department views an opened e-mail left on a service provider’s computer as more like a postcard left on a table than a sealed letter in a drawer. Which is to say, its owner has no reasonable expectation of privacy.

To be fair, law enforcement’s disregard for privacy isn’t unique to the present administration. But they’ve certainly taken it farther than any administration so far. And don’t count on Congress, Democrat-controlled or not, to roll it back. There are some folks dedicated to the good fight up there (Sen. Leahy, for the most part), but most politicians couldn’t give a damn about your privacy.