11 ms·

NSA veterans speak out on whistle-blower [video]

233 points by cgshaw 13y ago

cgshaw 13y ago
Most of us had heard about Binney before, but the other guys back up many of the same claims. Binney's take on what they'll do to Snowden. "Binney: First tortured, then maybe even rendered and tortured and then incarcerated and then tried and incarcerated or even executed."
rdl 13y ago
Interesting that he now calls Snowden a traitor for the China-specific intel turned over, while supporting him broadly otherwise. Pretty much the same line I'd draw (although I think he should have gone to IG/Congress rather than the media, but with the threat of going to media if no action taken. It's possible he went to IG/Congress already, but I don't think so.)
- cgshaw 13y ago
  Giving up British intelligence for the G20 surveillance is also probably crossing the line. If developed countries can't trust each other not to spy on their diplomats where does that leave us? I guess they should all assume they are being spied on at all times while on foreign soil, but airing that in public is likely to worsen his chance of avoiding jail time—or worse.
  - rdl 13y ago
    I have ~no problem with gov on gov spying. I actually have more problem with China's spying on US companies for commercial reasons than China's spying on the USG. USG spying on private individuals might be worse than China spying on USG from an abstract moral perspective. I'd argue that US v USSR spying during the Cold War, particularly PHOTOINT and SIGINT and other forms of technical intelligence, largely averted a global thermonuclear war. Gov v Gov spying is just another form of transparency. (obviously as a US citizen I'd prefer the US to have an edge there, but generally for something like Brazil v Argentina I don't particularly care)
    - caf 13y ago
      This has long been recognised, and sometimes even codified. For example there is the Treaty on Open Skies, under which member states allow each other unarmed surveillance flights over their territories.
    - saraid216 13y ago
      It's worth noting that, with "gov on gov spying", identifying enemy agents isn't all that easy and effectively requires well... a surveillance state spying on its own citizens.
      - pyre 13y ago
        | requires It doesn't require anything. The government didn't need Big Brother powers to play the spy game during the Cold War.
      - dfc 13y ago
        Intelligence and counterintelligence are two different things.
    - dfc 13y ago
      HN loves wikipedia pages lately. If anyone is interested in a fascinating example of this blurry line between spying and transparency that rdl brings up check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies
  - glurgh 13y ago
    If developed countries can't trust each other not to spy on their diplomats where does that leave us? It leaves us precisely where we are - developed countries have been spying on each others' diplomats and using their diplomats for spying for, well, just about ever. US Secretary of State Henry Simpson famously said "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail" some 80 odd years ago. A quaint attitude, even back then.
    - cgshaw 13y ago
      There's a difference in knowing how the sausage is made. I'm certainly not naive enough to think that governments aren't always spying on each other's diplomats, however the appearance that the UK and US went to pretty crazy lengths to keylog and tricks G20 diplomats into giving up intel out in the public could have some pretty negative implications for diplomatic discourse down the road.
      - glurgh 13y ago
        Oh, agreed that it's quite unhelpful and Snowden revealing details about such activities is a pretty terrible idea. On the other hand, such revelations in general aren't all that new or rare - the most recent one probably being about US spying on UN diplomats just a couple of years ago. Beside light spattering of egg on some faces and a bit of ritualized indignant posturing, though, this sort of thing doesn't seem to cause much lasting damage to the global system of international diplomacy, probably because everyone knows everyone is doing it.
        einhverfr 13y ago
        First, I suspect that Snowden revealing these details is not that harmful. The fact is, I think everyone would expect that everyone keeps track of everyone's diplomats. That's just the way the world works. Additionally, hacking into network backbones in China? Is there anybody out there that was aware of the NSA's activities over the last few decades that doesn't immediately assume that they do? Or is this news to those who didn't read about the NSA tapping into undersea cables back in the 1990's? In other words, the details Snowden has given are largely harmless affirmations of what everyone probably knows already. They don't cause significant harm to our diplomatic relations. They don't cause significant harm to our intelligence. I suspect given his moves so far, he agrees with my assessment above, so the question is, what is he doing with them? I don't think that is a hard question to answer. He's making public what those in power have assumed is the case for a long time in order to send signals to all sides that he knows a lot more than he is saying. In essence he's upping the ante regarding any indictment and extradition request. He's sending a threat to the US: Try to extradite me and maybe I will spill your secrets, real ones, not the ones hidden in plain view I have been talking about so far. He's also sending a message to China: I know enough to be valuable. Time will tell what happens. However this follows on "I chose Hong Kong because of their tradition of free speech and rule of law." This totally follows his strategy of pitting the US against China, and Hong Kong against both.
der3k 13y ago
"We were gathering bulk data from telecoms even before the Patriot Act" Thought this was important to note.
- cgshaw 13y ago
  Perhaps even more important to note "before 9/11." So if mass surveillance didn't prevent 9/11, is the rationale to expand it to TOTAL surveillance, if necessary?
  - pyre 13y ago
    | Perhaps even more important to note | "before 9/11." To me, at least, that's basically how I read "before the PATRIOT Act." I looked it up and the PATRIOT Act was signed into law on 2001-10-26; for some reason I thought that it was quickly pushed through a day or two after 9/11.
    - cgshaw 13y ago
      I read it similarly, but not everyone may recall the ins and outs of the Patriot Act's passage—it was nearly a dozen years ago now. Many of the folks on HN were in grade school. I was trying to draw attention to the line that government keeps giving us about how "they are trying to prevent another 9/11" with the secret laws and secrets courts that enable warrantless wiretaps and constant surveillance.
  - dllthomas 13y ago
    FWell, there was Total Information Awareness, which was "shut down" after public objection, where "shut down" meant moving the functions to various other places.
- saraid216 13y ago
  I would be honestly surprised if it started as late as 1980.
- wyck 13y ago
  This is documented in several books including "The shadow factory", it's been going on for decades. The Telco's basically get absolved of any legal responsibility directly from the oval office. How exactly that works in terms of law, I have no idea, but I would assume it's locked inside a safe. ps. Do not use satellite phones unless you want everything listened too:)
Zigurd 13y ago
Hobbes would be saying "No, no, I meant about the size of a very large whale,. Big enough to keep random individuals from running amok and spoiling things... This is more like Cthulu."
danso 13y ago
> Binney: Part of his job as the system administrator, he was to maintain the system. Keep the databases running. Keep the communications working. Keep the programs that were interrogating them operating. So that meant he was like a super-user. He could go on the network or go into any file or any system and change it or add to it or whatever, just to make sure — because he would be responsible to get it back up and running if, in fact, it failed. > > So that meant he had access to go in and put anything. That's why he said, I think, "I can even target the president or a judge." If he knew their phone numbers or attributes, he could insert them into the target list which would be distributed worldwide. And then it would be collected, yeah, that's right. As a super-user, he could do that. I have a feeling that the NSA deals with access control just like the rest of us...very poorly. Even more egregious is that Snowden was a contractor...if we're going to leave open the possibility of the NSA targeting us at their whim, can't they at least do that in-house?
- pero 13y ago
  Does the fact that they're contractors and not employees absolve the contractee of some/any liability/culpability? Perhaps, further, even recursively as the contractors themselves wouldn't be able to discuss the contractee's business to the extent a direct employee could? It does seem absurd if there isn't politico-judicial rationale.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Which is funny, because I thought mandatory access controls was the key feature that the NSA added in SELinux.
  - rdl 13y ago
    Yeah, everything I've been seeing seems to be that they seriously threw out everything about being competent in the 1990s, and then blew up into something huge (and incompetent) in the post-9/11. Hayden does not seem to have been a good director at all, at either NSA or CIA, and was responsible for the big push toward contractors as well.
    - 13y ago
laurentoget 13y ago
off topic. who knew usa today has such a nice website?
- nekopa 13y ago
  I wouldn't know. It kept crashing my iPad safari browser. I will have to check it out later on my laptop, as judging from the comments here it looks like an interesting story.
- jrockway 13y ago
  Agreed. I mostly consider USA Today as "that newspaper dumb people read" so never checked out their website. The design is pleasing and the linked roundtable discussion was quite good. No controversy, no professional talking heads, just some folks having a chat on camera. I am impressed.
- kentor 13y ago
  i can't seek in the video. what the hell? i accidentally clicked outside of the popup box and now i have to watch from the beginning...
- CamperBob2 13y ago
  Good God, if that's what you call a "nice" website, I'm speechless.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
miles 13y ago
Somehow this quote from the interview by Thomas Drake, a former senior executive of the NSA and a decorated Air Force and Navy veteran[1], carries a bit more weight for me than the widely trumpeted blatherings of Dick Cheney[2], winner of five draft deferments[3]: I actually salute him. I will say it right here. I actually salute him, given my experience over many, many years both inside and outside the system. Remember, I saw what he saw. I want to re-emphasize that. What he did was a magnificent act of civil disobedience. He's exposing the inner workings of the surveillance state. And it's in the public interest. It truly is. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake [2] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0616/Dick-Cheney-Edward-Snowden-a-traitor-who-likely-spied-for-China-video http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0616/Dick-Chene... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/politics/campaign/01CHEN.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/politics/campaign/01CHEN.h...
- dfc 13y ago
  I agree with the overwhelming majority of your post but I have to say the draft dodging/deferring comment was a little odd. I think its really tough for us (people who have grown up under an all volunteer service) to pass judgement on how a previous generation dealt with the draft, even more so if we pass those judgements as civilians.
  - miles 13y ago
    Thanks for your reply, dfc. Sorry if the draft deferral comment was inappropriate. I mainly wanted to contrast their experience and expertise in the field. BTW, thanks for the recommendation on your profile page to use dfcdfc as the topcolor; I stumbled onto it over a year ago and have been using it ever since.
    - dfc 13y ago
      No worries, more than anything the draft thing was distracting. It was superfluous and it took something away from the clearly reasoned point you were making. Added: I just saw bit about topcolor=dfcdfc. That brought some much needed levity to the discussion. You are good people miles.
nikcub 13y ago
I feel bad for Drake, he was facing federal charges and nobody seemed to notice. 89% of federal cases are plead before trial and of those that go to trial 90%+ are found guilty, that is how much the odds were stacked against him. He got nowhere near the attention that he deserves[1[] William Binney is an absolute hero. I have absorbed everything this guy has ever said or done[2]. He was not only employed at the NSA, but he was a director who designed the software that is being used right now to dragnet all the communications. It is difficult for anybody - congressman, president, republican voter, etc. - to argue that what the NSA is doing is fine when the guy with all the technical details and design of the program says it isn't. That he is against what is happening is a big deal and needs more attention. This video is on the front page of USA Today, so these guys and the topic is starting to get the recognition they deserve. [1] The New Yorker did a great feature on him called 'The Secret Sharer' - good for background http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_... [2] Search YouTube for Binney - he was the keynote speaker at the 2600 HOPE conference last year - a presentation that everybody must watch. Apparently Snowden decided to go the route he did after watching Binney in Laura Poitras' "The Program" for the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-security-agencys-domestic-spying-program.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-secur... Potras is the same person who was the first journalist Snowden contacted.
- krek 13y ago
  Binney didn't design the system that's currently being used, and that's his whole point. He designed a cheap way to do what the current program does but that would protect people's privacy (in part by not storing all the data that it filters). His point is that the NSA spent billions on a dragnet system that violates privacy and isn't even able to catch terrorists as well as the privacy-respecting system he designed internally for dirt cheap.
  - nikcub 13y ago
    In one of his interviews[1] he mentions that after he left and TrailBlazer was abandoned the NSA took what he built in ThinThread but removed the privacy shields he had in place that would encrypt US communications. The rest of the platform is ThinThread (which was a lot cheaper than the failed TrailBlazer project). Also interesting that a lot of the NSA platform is open source. OpenCloud for server management and Hadoop for distributed computing. [1] I can't recall which one, in his keynote at HOPE he does make another reference to the crypto privacy shield being removed
jayferd 13y ago
Warning: auto-playing video.
- cgshaw 13y ago
  Apologies, I should have linked the print-friendly version. I hate autoplays as well.
gruseom 13y ago
I couldn't stop watching this video. It is the most riveting thing I've seen since the Snowden interview itself. It's a pity they broke it up; you have to scroll down the page to get all the pieces. But I highly recommend watching the entire thing if you're interested in this story. It packs a wallop and it's... pretty damn convincing. Every one of the four interviewees is deeply impressive, each in a distinct way. It is hard to believe that they don't know what they're talking about. More striking than that, though, is what good people they all seem to be. I'm surprised that USA Today put this out and I hope they do more like it. The contrast with typical news pap could not be stronger.
lemming 13y ago
Sentenced to a year of probation and community service, Drake was stripped of his security clearance. He now works at an Apple retail store. I hope they have him employed as a Genius.
quattrofan 13y ago
On topic, the best critique I have read of the failed hope that is Obama: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/15/broken-promise-barack-obama http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/15/broken-promise-b...

233 points by cgshaw 13y ago

Most of us had heard about Binney before, but the other guys back up many of the same claims. Binney's take on what they'll do to Snowden. "Binney: First tortured, then maybe even rendered and tortured and then incarcerated and then tried and incarcerated or even executed."

rdl 13y ago

Interesting that he now calls Snowden a traitor for the China-specific intel turned over, while supporting him broadly otherwise. Pretty much the same line I'd draw (although I think he should have gone to IG/Congress rather than the media, but with the threat of going to media if no action taken. It's possible he went to IG/Congress already, but I don't think so.)

cgshaw 13y ago
Giving up British intelligence for the G20 surveillance is also probably crossing the line. If developed countries can't trust each other not to spy on their diplomats where does that leave us? I guess they should all assume they are being spied on at all times while on foreign soil, but airing that in public is likely to worsen his chance of avoiding jail time—or worse.
- rdl 13y ago
  I have ~no problem with gov on gov spying. I actually have more problem with China's spying on US companies for commercial reasons than China's spying on the USG. USG spying on private individuals might be worse than China spying on USG from an abstract moral perspective. I'd argue that US v USSR spying during the Cold War, particularly PHOTOINT and SIGINT and other forms of technical intelligence, largely averted a global thermonuclear war. Gov v Gov spying is just another form of transparency. (obviously as a US citizen I'd prefer the US to have an edge there, but generally for something like Brazil v Argentina I don't particularly care)
  - caf 13y ago
    This has long been recognised, and sometimes even codified. For example there is the Treaty on Open Skies, under which member states allow each other unarmed surveillance flights over their territories.
  - saraid216 13y ago
    It's worth noting that, with "gov on gov spying", identifying enemy agents isn't all that easy and effectively requires well... a surveillance state spying on its own citizens.
    - pyre 13y ago
      | requires It doesn't require anything. The government didn't need Big Brother powers to play the spy game during the Cold War.
    - dfc 13y ago
      Intelligence and counterintelligence are two different things.
  - dfc 13y ago
    HN loves wikipedia pages lately. If anyone is interested in a fascinating example of this blurry line between spying and transparency that rdl brings up check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies
- glurgh 13y ago
  If developed countries can't trust each other not to spy on their diplomats where does that leave us? It leaves us precisely where we are - developed countries have been spying on each others' diplomats and using their diplomats for spying for, well, just about ever. US Secretary of State Henry Simpson famously said "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail" some 80 odd years ago. A quaint attitude, even back then.
  - cgshaw 13y ago
    There's a difference in knowing how the sausage is made. I'm certainly not naive enough to think that governments aren't always spying on each other's diplomats, however the appearance that the UK and US went to pretty crazy lengths to keylog and tricks G20 diplomats into giving up intel out in the public could have some pretty negative implications for diplomatic discourse down the road.
    - glurgh 13y ago
      Oh, agreed that it's quite unhelpful and Snowden revealing details about such activities is a pretty terrible idea. On the other hand, such revelations in general aren't all that new or rare - the most recent one probably being about US spying on UN diplomats just a couple of years ago. Beside light spattering of egg on some faces and a bit of ritualized indignant posturing, though, this sort of thing doesn't seem to cause much lasting damage to the global system of international diplomacy, probably because everyone knows everyone is doing it.
      - einhverfr 13y ago
        First, I suspect that Snowden revealing these details is not that harmful. The fact is, I think everyone would expect that everyone keeps track of everyone's diplomats. That's just the way the world works. Additionally, hacking into network backbones in China? Is there anybody out there that was aware of the NSA's activities over the last few decades that doesn't immediately assume that they do? Or is this news to those who didn't read about the NSA tapping into undersea cables back in the 1990's? In other words, the details Snowden has given are largely harmless affirmations of what everyone probably knows already. They don't cause significant harm to our diplomatic relations. They don't cause significant harm to our intelligence. I suspect given his moves so far, he agrees with my assessment above, so the question is, what is he doing with them? I don't think that is a hard question to answer. He's making public what those in power have assumed is the case for a long time in order to send signals to all sides that he knows a lot more than he is saying. In essence he's upping the ante regarding any indictment and extradition request. He's sending a threat to the US: Try to extradite me and maybe I will spill your secrets, real ones, not the ones hidden in plain view I have been talking about so far. He's also sending a message to China: I know enough to be valuable. Time will tell what happens. However this follows on "I chose Hong Kong because of their tradition of free speech and rule of law." This totally follows his strategy of pitting the US against China, and Hong Kong against both.

der3k 13y ago

"We were gathering bulk data from telecoms even before the Patriot Act" Thought this was important to note.

cgshaw 13y ago
Perhaps even more important to note "before 9/11." So if mass surveillance didn't prevent 9/11, is the rationale to expand it to TOTAL surveillance, if necessary?
- pyre 13y ago
  | Perhaps even more important to note | "before 9/11." To me, at least, that's basically how I read "before the PATRIOT Act." I looked it up and the PATRIOT Act was signed into law on 2001-10-26; for some reason I thought that it was quickly pushed through a day or two after 9/11.
  - cgshaw 13y ago
    I read it similarly, but not everyone may recall the ins and outs of the Patriot Act's passage—it was nearly a dozen years ago now. Many of the folks on HN were in grade school. I was trying to draw attention to the line that government keeps giving us about how "they are trying to prevent another 9/11" with the secret laws and secrets courts that enable warrantless wiretaps and constant surveillance.
- dllthomas 13y ago
  FWell, there was Total Information Awareness, which was "shut down" after public objection, where "shut down" meant moving the functions to various other places.
saraid216 13y ago
I would be honestly surprised if it started as late as 1980.
wyck 13y ago
This is documented in several books including "The shadow factory", it's been going on for decades. The Telco's basically get absolved of any legal responsibility directly from the oval office. How exactly that works in terms of law, I have no idea, but I would assume it's locked inside a safe. ps. Do not use satellite phones unless you want everything listened too:)

Zigurd 13y ago

Hobbes would be saying "No, no, I meant about the size of a very large whale,. Big enough to keep random individuals from running amok and spoiling things... This is more like Cthulu."

danso 13y ago

> Binney: Part of his job as the system administrator, he was to maintain the system. Keep the databases running. Keep the communications working. Keep the programs that were interrogating them operating. So that meant he was like a super-user. He could go on the network or go into any file or any system and change it or add to it or whatever, just to make sure — because he would be responsible to get it back up and running if, in fact, it failed. > > So that meant he had access to go in and put anything. That's why he said, I think, "I can even target the president or a judge." If he knew their phone numbers or attributes, he could insert them into the target list which would be distributed worldwide. And then it would be collected, yeah, that's right. As a super-user, he could do that. I have a feeling that the NSA deals with access control just like the rest of us...very poorly. Even more egregious is that Snowden was a contractor...if we're going to leave open the possibility of the NSA targeting us at their whim, can't they at least do that in-house?

pero 13y ago
Does the fact that they're contractors and not employees absolve the contractee of some/any liability/culpability? Perhaps, further, even recursively as the contractors themselves wouldn't be able to discuss the contractee's business to the extent a direct employee could? It does seem absurd if there isn't politico-judicial rationale.
dllthomas 13y ago
Which is funny, because I thought mandatory access controls was the key feature that the NSA added in SELinux.
- rdl 13y ago
  Yeah, everything I've been seeing seems to be that they seriously threw out everything about being competent in the 1990s, and then blew up into something huge (and incompetent) in the post-9/11. Hayden does not seem to have been a good director at all, at either NSA or CIA, and was responsible for the big push toward contractors as well.
  - 13y ago

laurentoget 13y ago

off topic. who knew usa today has such a nice website?

nekopa 13y ago
I wouldn't know. It kept crashing my iPad safari browser. I will have to check it out later on my laptop, as judging from the comments here it looks like an interesting story.
jrockway 13y ago
Agreed. I mostly consider USA Today as "that newspaper dumb people read" so never checked out their website. The design is pleasing and the linked roundtable discussion was quite good. No controversy, no professional talking heads, just some folks having a chat on camera. I am impressed.
kentor 13y ago
i can't seek in the video. what the hell? i accidentally clicked outside of the popup box and now i have to watch from the beginning...
CamperBob2 13y ago
Good God, if that's what you call a "nice" website, I'm speechless.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

miles 13y ago

Somehow this quote from the interview by Thomas Drake, a former senior executive of the NSA and a decorated Air Force and Navy veteran[1], carries a bit more weight for me than the widely trumpeted blatherings of Dick Cheney[2], winner of five draft deferments[3]: I actually salute him. I will say it right here. I actually salute him, given my experience over many, many years both inside and outside the system. Remember, I saw what he saw. I want to re-emphasize that. What he did was a magnificent act of civil disobedience. He's exposing the inner workings of the surveillance state. And it's in the public interest. It truly is. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Andrews_Drake [2] http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0616/Dick-Cheney-Edward-Snowden-a-traitor-who-likely-spied-for-China-video http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0616/Dick-Chene... [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/politics/campaign/01CHEN.html http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/politics/campaign/01CHEN.h...

dfc 13y ago
I agree with the overwhelming majority of your post but I have to say the draft dodging/deferring comment was a little odd. I think its really tough for us (people who have grown up under an all volunteer service) to pass judgement on how a previous generation dealt with the draft, even more so if we pass those judgements as civilians.
- miles 13y ago
  Thanks for your reply, dfc. Sorry if the draft deferral comment was inappropriate. I mainly wanted to contrast their experience and expertise in the field. BTW, thanks for the recommendation on your profile page to use dfcdfc as the topcolor; I stumbled onto it over a year ago and have been using it ever since.
  - dfc 13y ago
    No worries, more than anything the draft thing was distracting. It was superfluous and it took something away from the clearly reasoned point you were making. Added: I just saw bit about topcolor=dfcdfc. That brought some much needed levity to the discussion. You are good people miles.

nikcub 13y ago

I feel bad for Drake, he was facing federal charges and nobody seemed to notice. 89% of federal cases are plead before trial and of those that go to trial 90%+ are found guilty, that is how much the odds were stacked against him. He got nowhere near the attention that he deserves[1[] William Binney is an absolute hero. I have absorbed everything this guy has ever said or done[2]. He was not only employed at the NSA, but he was a director who designed the software that is being used right now to dragnet all the communications. It is difficult for anybody - congressman, president, republican voter, etc. - to argue that what the NSA is doing is fine when the guy with all the technical details and design of the program says it isn't. That he is against what is happening is a big deal and needs more attention. This video is on the front page of USA Today, so these guys and the topic is starting to get the recognition they deserve. [1] The New Yorker did a great feature on him called 'The Secret Sharer' - good for background http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer?currentPage=all http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_... [2] Search YouTube for Binney - he was the keynote speaker at the 2600 HOPE conference last year - a presentation that everybody must watch. Apparently Snowden decided to go the route he did after watching Binney in Laura Poitras' "The Program" for the NYTimes: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-security-agencys-domestic-spying-program.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-secur... Potras is the same person who was the first journalist Snowden contacted.

krek 13y ago
Binney didn't design the system that's currently being used, and that's his whole point. He designed a cheap way to do what the current program does but that would protect people's privacy (in part by not storing all the data that it filters). His point is that the NSA spent billions on a dragnet system that violates privacy and isn't even able to catch terrorists as well as the privacy-respecting system he designed internally for dirt cheap.
- nikcub 13y ago
  In one of his interviews[1] he mentions that after he left and TrailBlazer was abandoned the NSA took what he built in ThinThread but removed the privacy shields he had in place that would encrypt US communications. The rest of the platform is ThinThread (which was a lot cheaper than the failed TrailBlazer project). Also interesting that a lot of the NSA platform is open source. OpenCloud for server management and Hadoop for distributed computing. [1] I can't recall which one, in his keynote at HOPE he does make another reference to the crypto privacy shield being removed

jayferd 13y ago

Warning: auto-playing video.

cgshaw 13y ago
Apologies, I should have linked the print-friendly version. I hate autoplays as well.

gruseom 13y ago

I couldn't stop watching this video. It is the most riveting thing I've seen since the Snowden interview itself. It's a pity they broke it up; you have to scroll down the page to get all the pieces. But I highly recommend watching the entire thing if you're interested in this story. It packs a wallop and it's... pretty damn convincing. Every one of the four interviewees is deeply impressive, each in a distinct way. It is hard to believe that they don't know what they're talking about. More striking than that, though, is what good people they all seem to be. I'm surprised that USA Today put this out and I hope they do more like it. The contrast with typical news pap could not be stronger.

lemming 13y ago

Sentenced to a year of probation and community service, Drake was stripped of his security clearance. He now works at an Apple retail store. I hope they have him employed as a Genius.

quattrofan 13y ago

On topic, the best critique I have read of the failed hope that is Obama: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/15/broken-promise-barack-obama http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/15/broken-promise-b...