http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith-alexander-star-trek
Is great when you have million of dollars from the taxpayers. 16 million per day is what NSA spends. Is so good that if one day there is no more terrorists, it would be good to create them and to continue the scheme. Oh, wait…
There’s been a lot of people who have modeled home theaters and other rooms off of Star-Trek and science-fiction, you’re saying that government employees in Intelligence outfits cannot join the club of the inspired and instead have a bare white room with a computer, a swinging light, and a bolted-down chair to shackle civilians in like in the movies? O.o
Apparently this might be just the latest salvo in the attempts to turn the Off Topic forum into Bao2’s video blog and conspiracy corner (where you then proceed to pretend that the ‘edit post’ button doesn’t exist), seriously, how many days have been total in the last month where you haven’t started a couple of new threads?
And this is how our tax dollars is spent ? Surely in the grand scheme of things everything fits, but this just chews the custard.
If you go to walmart and buy some chair you don’t have a problem.
When you ask for someone to make something special furniture, then that requires much more special amount of money. Tax payer money.
And it only happens when people agrees this is good practice. Like intelligence agencies, the day people understand all the intelligence is AGAINST them, then there will be no more intelligence agencies.
The budget to build a Star-Trek room is just a tiny drop in the bucket compared to the trillions that get spent, there are many inefficiencies in place that should be of a much higher priority to fix (like those that cost tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars).
Lets hope the auditors disseminate this information to the general public so the outrage generated ensures that things like this don’t happen again. But then again, a few have short memories.
The problem with NSA, and with a lot of other similarly-situated US Government agencies, is that no one is “from Missouri” with regard to what they are doing or what they are spending: “Show Me.”
These groups are entirely accustomed to merely muttering the Magic Word: “Nine Wun-Wun.” Such that, immediately and miraculously, the Floodgates of Money Are Opened. Merely because they say “this is for National Security (ommmm…),” no one thinks to question whether it is a truly defensible expenditure of public funds: they just do it. Trillions of Dollars get spent in just this way. (Very convenient, huh? …)
Furthermore, most of the Members of Congress don’t know … aren’t allowed to know … (say what?!?!?!) … what they are spending money on. Only a few of them have “secret clearances.” The rest are quite-literally lied to, and their few colleagues who are “in $$ the $$ know” do not bother to correct them.
I, for one, have a wee problem with that. Especially as legitimate social programs are facelessly, silently, “sequestered” out of existence.
I, for one, don’t think that I am truly getting value for my money. I don’t think that my money is being spent … (a) in a way that actually provides for my “security,” and (b) is consistent with what I think is the most urgent set of social priorities. I think I’m getting ripped-off. (Along with about 316 million of my Best Friends.)
One problem when your in security,
Lets bring in furniture
it could have bugs in it,
Theres only some lice at walmart…
“No, the other kind”
Ahhhhh…
They make most of there own things, because a trojan horse can be a chair…
if you have a in house shop… like skunkworksish… they get bored anyway…
Hey come on! If you’re going to invade the privacy of millions, why not do it with style? 
It’s comforting though that they got their priorities straight.