Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A.

Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by law on Saturday January 22, 2011 @06:47PM (#2131364)

Actually, this is a terrific idea from the oversight and human rights perspectives. Let's consider a hypothetical for-profit corporation to which the government would outsource these operations. Under a broken system (what we have now), the management of these companies would have some sort of non-business relationship with the government officials responsible for awarding the contracts. Moreover, these companies, under a broken system, would keep their books shut, offering less transparency than we already have.

Now let's consider the best case: these companies compete with each other for government contracts, which the people award. This type of system would compel the companies to maintain high levels of transparency, especially with the SEC and IRS now taking interest.

The reason the government is so inefficient is because they don't have any external auditing agencies. The SEC and the IRS, for example, will never put the CIA or FBI through the same rigorous audits that they would put private companies through.

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by jdp23 on Saturday January 22, 2011 @08:12PM (#2131519)

a hypothetical for-profit corporation like Blackwater?

or the guys who were pimping Afghan teenage boys to warlords?

yeah, that worked well.

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by law on Saturday January 22, 2011 @11:00PM (#2131748)

Right, I tried to make it clear that our current system is broken... the for-profit corporation approach absolutely can work with transparency.

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by shkb on Sunday January 23, 2011 @12:47AM (#2131880)

Transparency in spying?

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by joe_the_user on Saturday January 22, 2011 @06:54PM (#2131380)

You only know about non-classified private companies.

Classified private companies today have pretty much carte blanche in similar fashion to the CIA or FBI.

A friend of mine was unable to resolve a labor dispute with his classified employer because he could only sue them using a lawyer with clearance (and then his manager coerced him into signing a termination agreement... using a baseball bat! Again, try and sue?)

This was not a small, fly-by-night operation either but one of the largest government contractors.

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by law on Saturday January 22, 2011 @10:57PM (#2131744)

That was pretty much the point of my comment. Non-classified companies get that status because of their corporate structure. The hypothetical company that I referenced would be structured such that being classified would be impossible.

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by shkb on Sunday January 23, 2011 @12:57AM (#2131892)

So what would they be doing, unclassified spying? How would you advertise and award contracts for matters you want no one to know about?

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by law on Sunday January 23, 2011 @01:16PM (#2132952)

The same way companies contract with other service providers without disclosing secrets. Companies do this all the time: obviously they can't give away all the details about whatever it is they're doing, so they either do it in-house, or they reveal the minimal information necessary to attract candidates, and use non-disclosure agreements to begin discussing the rest of the details. This is absolutely something that contract law could handle.

So what issues do you see? Oh right: the over-arching theme of corruption. However, I addressed that in my initial post; the only way we can get to a point where government efficiency is no longer questioned is by eliminating corruption.

I think one way to reduce corruption is to decrease the government's size, but that of course leads to situations like those we presently face. There will always be corrupt politicians who award contracts to their friends in return for some sort of illegal remuneration, but I think by reducing the number of politicians/government employees with the power to make those decisions, we will lower the amount of corruption present.

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by law on Sunday January 23, 2011 @01:05AM (#2131905)

It looks like everyone missed the point of this post. I'm advocating for transparency in the companies with which we contract regarding their day-to-day operations, their budgets, etc. For-profit corporations have an economic incentive to remain frugal, which comes, in part, from external government pressure. My point is that the government does not have the equivalent financial oversight that corporations have.

Any questions of classified operations is completely irrelevant; of course you won't be able to load profiles of all spies à la tv shows like '24'.

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Re:Ex-Spy Runs His Own Private C.I.A. by hnhg on Sunday January 23, 2011 @06:12AM (#2132236)

I think everyone did get your point, but you've not addressed the problems that people have mentioned. Just hand-waving and saying 'transparency' is not convincing.

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