With the NSA, It's Not Just the Orwellian Stuff, it's also the Outright Corruption

There are reasons for secrecy, but we need to remember that secrecy is the enemy of competent and honest government, as the recent corruption scandals at the National Security Agency proves:

One of the nation’s top spies is leaving her position at the National Security Agency (NSA), a spokesman confirmed Friday, amid growing disclosures of possible conflicts of interest at the secretive agency.

The shakeup comes just a month after BuzzFeed News began reporting on the financial interests of the official, Teresa Shea, and her husband.

Shea was the director of signals intelligence, or SIGINT, which involves intercepting and decoding electronic communications via phones, email, chat, Skype, and radio. It’s widely considered the most important mission of the NSA, and includes some of the most controversial programs disclosed by former contractor Edward Snowden, including the mass domestic surveillance program.

The NSA provided a statement Friday that said Teresa Shea’s “transition” from the SIGINT director job was routine and “planned well before recent news articles.” The agency indicated she would remain employed, but did not provide specifics.

The Sheas did not respond to a message left at their home telephone number.

In September, BuzzFeed News reported that a SIGINT “contracting and consulting” company was registered at Shea’s house, even while she was the SIGINT director at NSA. The resident agent of the company, Telic Networks, was listed as James Shea, her husband.

This is in addition to the trail of corruption that the former NSA head Keith Alexander left behind him, with the NSA's CTO taking a lucrative consulting gig with former NSA head Keith Alexander's new security consulting firm, along with Keith Alexander's suspicious stock trades, patents that appear to come from his work product at the NSA, and his consultancy that clearly plays on his connections in the intelligence community.

Secrecy is a petri dish for incompetence, corruption, and dysfunction, which is why our fetishizing of secrecy is so dangerous.