It’s hard for soldiers to be deployed half-way around the globe in a desert country. It’s even harder when the mission demands that our soldiers have no intimate relationships with the native population. It should shock no one that soldiers stationed in Iraq engage in a lot of phone sex. It should shock people that employee’s of the National Security Agency (NSA) routinely eavesdrop on our soldier’s phone sex calls, pass tapes of the calls around, and make mocking critiques of their quality. What’s the Pentagon’s excuse?
Asked for comment about the ABC News report and accounts of intimate and private phone calls of military officers being passed around, a US intelligence official said “all employees of the US government” should expect that their telephone conversations could be monitored as part of an effort to safeguard security and “information assurance.”
Sound reasonable to you?
‘Fucking ridiculous’ is a close approximation of how it sounds to me.
When they aren’t even provided with necessary armor in a timely fashion is this really surprising?
they didn’t address the passing around bit. They have to listen because otherwise the “terrorists” would just wrap their plans in phone sex talk. But passsing the tapes around is wrong.
Now the next question is do they tape the listeners to see if there is group phone sex going on?
I like how we now automatically assume that our soldiers deployed overseas – soldiers who volunteered to join our armed forces and fight for whatever cause the fools in our government decide to send them on – I like how we just automatically assume that they must be “persons of interest” whose phone calls must be listed to to make sure they aren’t passing information along to terrorists. When they’re calling their wives and husbands here in the states.
That’s nice. That makes me feel so patriotic that I’m humming Lee Greenwood as as I’m typing this. It’s just too damn bad that “Support the troops by eavesdropping on their private conversations with family members on the assumption that they’re terrorists plotting the downfall of Western Civilization” is too damn long to fit on a cute bumpersticker or magnetic ribbon.
What if the NSA discovers a soldier have gay phone sex?
NSA has become a farce compared to what it was in the 1950’s. Checking for phone sex and sending tapes around of juicy talks is another indication of a crumbling civilization. Guess the stock market agrees.
“It’s hard for soldiers to be deployed half-way around the globe in a desert country.“
It’s a hell of a lot harder for the legitimate inhabitants of that “desert country” to have them delpoyed there. In fact, it is often fatal for said legitimate inhabitants and those they love.
“It’s even harder when the mission demands that our soldiers have no intimate relationships with the native population.“
Oh, boo f**ing hoo! Poor put upon babies! They can’t use the “native population” for their own sexual satisfaction. Oh, boo f*ing hoo! Poor put upon babies! They can’t knock up and abandon “native girls” to help pass the time. Oh, boo f**ing hoo! My heart just bleeds for them!
“the National Security Agency (NSA) routinely eavesdrop on our soldier’s phone sex calls, pass tapes of the calls around, and make mocking critiques of their quality.“
Your tax dollars at work!
Aww Hurria, you’re me-e-e-ean! What we can’t invade and occupy a country AND do so comfortably?
Nah, you’re right. I remember back in the Navy in the late 90s, our office computers all had a single line out that everybody shared (Majorly annoyed people when we tried to get music coming in over the line as that completely bollixed everything up) and at one inspection, our Officer in Charge announced “We know one of you is looking at porn on your computer. Stop doing that. We can trace who’s doing it as we all share one line. This is your only warning.”
So when a soldier or sailor uses government phone lines, yeah I can kinda see NSA folks snooping in.
But trading tapes? Turning each other on to “Dude, listen to this one”? To listen to a phone sex conversation past the time needed to determine that it’s a phone sex conversation?
Hell, when I was on duty on a ship that was in port, it was easy to tell when one of my shipmates was engaged in intimate, non-sex phone conversation. His or her voice would get really low and slow. You could barely make out a word six or seven feet away.
I dunno. I can understand random checks, but sounds to me like these folks went really overboard.