“We were coming into conflict with what I refer to as ‘feasting’ by the corporations that were leeches on the side of NSA and other agencies of the government, the ‘military industrial happiness management complex’. They were keeping each other happy: officials would retire from government, go to work for those corporations, the corporations would send people in to manage the programs, they’d get the contracts back and they’d feed some more.

It’s a circle, it just keeps going round. The entire leadership at NSA was focused this way and they wanted no creativity, no innovation, no problem solved, “keep the problem going so the money keeps flowing” that was their vision statement, I just didn’t realize it.

They didn’t want success, because that means you solved the problem, which they need to ask for more money to feed the corporations.”

Paraphrased from his presentation at HOPE 2012.

That’s the same conference where private investigator Steven Rambam did Privacy, A Postmortem.

And Privacy is Dead – Get Over It before that in 2010.