The Wall Street Journal has been doing good reporting on the not-so-paradoxical Washington DC property market, the one that kept booming even as other markets slumped. The reason: government spending on consultants and contractors, which has fed private fortunes in the defence and intelligence businesses. Now with the Prism/Edward Snowden revelations, the government is finding out that the supposed efficiency of contracting doesn't even bring information security, whatever its (dubious) financial benefits. Also, we've been saying it for about 9 years, but there's already a word out there for the people on the government side of these transactions: Securocrats.