Anonymous eavesdrops on the eavesdroppers

There's a kind of rough justice in this latest report on the antics of the hacking cooperative known as Anonymous:

Anonymous Listens in on FBI, Scotland Yard Hacking Call - ABC News: "The hacking collective Anonymous managed to listen in on a conference call between the FBI and Scotland Yard as the law enforcement officers were discussing anti-hacking operations, the FBI admitted today.

Calling it "OpInfiltration," Anonymous members were allegedly able to steal a personal email which included instructions for dialing into the Jan. 17 private call. Today the group published a recording of the call -- which discussed the timing of planned arrests and identities of suspected hackers -- as well as the email addresses of the officials on it."

If anyone needed evidence of how ham-handed and inept the government agents charged with snooping on our society are, this would be it. These government agents have enormous powers, of course, and their efforts are being augmented by ever more sophisticated technologies.

But at the heart of it all is the people, and the people are cruel, insidious doofuses.

They are douchebags and imbeciles, who can't even manage to have a secure conference call between their brother snoops in Scotland Yard.

If there really was a terrorist threat -- a serious threat, that is, and not a bunch of pissed-off Arabs with no tactical training or smarts -- then it's quite obvious that these clowns would be totally unprepared to deal with it. With every advantage at their disposal, when it comes right down to it the people charged with "keeping us safe" can't even keep their phone conversations private.

We've watched to many crime dramas on TV. In the real world, it ain't CSI so much as Keystone Cops.

But these Keystone Cops, unfortunately, are equipped with all kinds of surplus military hardware and automatic weapons, so when they get the drop on grandma, she's a dead duck.