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NSA whistleblower warns of surveillance state
- stefantalpalaru 11y ago> “I’m out here exposing their underwear,” he said. But with no proof other than his word. It's easy to ignore one disgruntled former employee's lunatic ramblings. Not so easy with actual documents supporting their claims.
- herbig 11y agoI lost trust in anything Binney says when I saw that he did an interview with Alex Jones on Infowars. You need to completely separate yourself from that garbage if you want people to take you seriously.
- herbig 11y agoHow is this downvoted?
- danneu 11y agoBecause your comment lambasts him for doing an interview, not for anything he said.
- at-fates-hands 11y agoHas nothing to do with him doing the interview. its his association with someone who has a horrible reputation for misinformation and barely being able to keep his facts straight on the myriad of conspiracy theories he believes in. Not exactly a solid source you want to align yourself with.
- diafygi 11y agoSo I guess the lesson is that if you want to have a bigger impact when you blow the whistle, you need hard documentation and evidence. You can't just tell the world there is a bad thing happening. You need to show them the paper that proves it.
- wahsd 11y agoWhat is most worrisome is that even with all the overwhelming documentation, people, especially in the USA are largely ignoring it. Sure there are some that protest and there is much ado about the violations in European countries, but reality is that nothing substantial is happening beyond token and illusory reforms. It's almost as if someone discovered a time machine, went back in time, showed everyone the documented and recorded evidence that a totalitarian dictatorship was forming; and everyone simply shrugged and called you a witch. Unfortunately, humans are not really all that good at being preemptive. We are ultimately a rather stupid, reactionary life form that won't get it until after we have teetered on the edge of the abyss.
- joesmo 11y agoAnd those of us who have lived under such a totalitarian state cower in fear both of the government and the idiots ignoring the warnings and thereby enabling the government's tyranny.
- Cthulhu_ 11y agoIt doesn't affect people directly, so people don't care. When Facebook started using people's faces on ads, people cared - it affected them. Now though, the NSA does sweeping data gathering, as do all the major internet companies - but they don't show you how they use it, so nobody feels like it's affecting them.
- fweespeech 11y agoDid you see the John Oliver episode about dick pics? Oh, they care once they really understand. The problem is, most people, aren't really thinking that critically about it until it smacks them in the face at which point its (usually) too late.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoInterviewing people on the street is mostly a rhetorical (political) or comedic technique. Extrapolating anything serious from it is unwise at best. At the end of the day, John Oliver hosts a comedy show. Though it tends to be on the informative side, it still oversimplifies and exaggerates to get its effect. The more I've watched him, the more I've grown tired of his explicit style of "share a factoid before immediately following on with a forced pop culture reference" that summarizes his work. He seems to be becoming more popular as a research substitute, though.
- tek-cyb-org 11y agoI knew about the surveillance program since 2006 and i dont work for the nsa....
- towelguy 11y agoDid you tell anybody about it?
- tek-cyb-org 11y agoYea. It was common knowledge to me just as the sky is blue. Seeing where we were at with technology, it's a matter of fact that the "government", (which ever of the 3 letter divisions we are talking about) would have the tech and the want, to do this.
- Canada 11y agoA lot of people have known about the surveillance the whole time. I found out through friends working at ISPs many years before any Binney went public. I told a lot of people. I don't think many of them believed me at all. Even after room 641A was documented by the New York Times, talking about the surveillance programs I personally knew of in an online discussion was always met with demands for proof or ridicule. Only after Snowden does the general public accept the truth.
- e12e 11y agohttp://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70944 http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/05/70... Note the date.
- vezzy-fnord 11y agoWell, if we want to go that route, then one could say Frank Church was aware (and his committee made the results public) some 38 years or so before Snowden.
- stygiansonic 11y agoMany of you have probably seen this, but I highly recommend the PBS Frontline documentary, United States of Secrets: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-secrets/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/united-states-of-sec... Binney, along with the other NSA whistleblowers, are interviewed at length for the film. That, and Citizenfour were, for me, the most intriguing documentaries about these issues.
- pdkl95 11y agoA key point in United States of Secrets is that they discuss Google just as much as they discuss the NSA in part 2. Government and corporations work under different sets of restrictions; by working together, it becomes easy to work around many of theses restrictions. The recent theater about section 215 is a new step in this relationship: the government gets to look like they re making changes while Google (el al) get their letter of marque, excusing their continued mass data collection. If you found part 2 of United States of Secrets to be interesting, I strongly recommend Aral Balkan's recent talk on the same subject ( https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html#balkan https://projectbullrun.org/surveillance/2015/video-2015.html... ). If you found Frontline's description of Google in part 2 to be a bit frightening or disturbing, then Balkan's talk might terrify you.
- bandrami 11y agoHell, Drake warned back in 2005, and Congress rushed back into session to make it legal. Drake managed to do it without passing reams of classified data to Wikileaks, too...
- higherpurpose 11y agoYou're thinking Chelsea Manning.
- some1else 11y agoWord abut the surveillance programs (dubbed Echelon) was common-sense on #phrack as far as 2002. We have had American and German Intelligence agencies capture traffic at the Slovenian Internet Exchange at least since 2007. When the affair broke out, Germans stated that they will cease cooperation with the Slovenian Intelligence Agency, and the entire thing was swept under the rug. Unfortunately, whistleblowing really takes substantial evidence, and that's what Snowden provided.
- jmkni 11y agoA year before Snowden took off to Hong Kong, William Binney was on a panel at Def Con where NSA surveillance was talked about at length, worth a watch - www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqIz-RNUL1g A lot of the stuff which was later leaked by Snowden is discussed here, nice to see Binney vindicated. Interestingly, the NSA facility in Hawaii where Snowden was working at the time is mentioned by name. I often wonder if this Defcon talk inspired him to do what he did.
- e12e 11y agoI belive Binney's talk[1] at Hope 9[2] came out before defcon[3] -- at any rate it is well worth a watch. It's been a while since I watched the defcon talk -- not sure how much repletion there is. Does he mention there how he managed to blackmail the FBI to not prosecute him? ;-) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxnp2Sz59p8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dxnp2Sz59p8 [2] http://www.hopenumbernine.net/speakers/ http://www.hopenumbernine.net/speakers/ [3] According to wikipedia DEF CON 20 was held at the Rio Hotel & Casino July 26–29, 2012 -- according to the Hope 9 page, Hope 9 was 13th-15th of July the same year.
- jmkni 11y agoWaow his talk at Hope is really interesting, just from a technical/data science aspect, thanks for linking It's cool the way he talks about solving technical problems on pen and paper. He says, "miracles don't happen on the computer, they happen in your mind", that is awesome! Super smart guy! Also, he mentions later on that Laura Poitras was at attendance at that talk, who of course went onto direct Citizenfour.
- csbrooks 11y ago"Binney doesn’t see much distinction between the Bush and Obama administrations when it comes to intelligence policy." This has been such a disappointment for me. I had such high hopes for Obama. :(
- arca_vorago 11y agoThis is the core of the problem. Many of the other commenters are pining on about how nothing has been done about the state of surveillance since the Snowden/Binney/Drake/Risen leaks, but what everyone is either not saying or ignoring is that the buck stops with the Executive branch. I keep wanting to cheer for the exec. It should have some of the best intelligence in the world on subversive actors at play in the beltway and wallstreet, so I often expect a power play against those interests. Given that the exec repeatedly fails to do so tells me one thing: The executive is already compromised. Uncomfortable conclusion to say the least. I mean more than just monied interest making donations too, as should be obvious. I have two main questions: was continuity of government (aka shadow government) put into operation on 9/11, and does it still continue? I haven't found anyone but Peter Dale Scott asking these questions, and I never hear any answers. "What is the first step out of this current state of affairs, in which the constitution appears to have been superseded by a higher, if less legitimate authority? I submit that it is to get Congress to do what the law requires, and determine whether our present proclamation of emergency “shall be terminated” (50 U.S.C. 1622, 2002). As part of this procedure, Congress should find whether secret COG powers, never submitted to Congress or seen by it, are among “the powers and authorities” which Bush in 2007 included in his prolongation of the 2001 emergency. This is not a technical or procedural detail. It is a test of whether the United States continues to be governed by its laws and constitution, or whether, as has been alleged, the laws and constitution have now in places been superseded by COG. " What I would say is that as a former Marine and a combat vet who tried to understand the "why?" behind the war(s), I consistently return to Smedley Butler and the attempted facist coup known as the business plot and Butler's testimony to the committee. (also his War is a Racket speech) http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack-Dickstein_Committee#ref_deleted8 http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack-Dickstein_Committee#... Honestly, I don't think the facists ever went away, they just went "underground" and became subversive while playing along with whatever both parties were spouting. Hence the business class owns both parties. All these are tough and complex issues and many of the answers are dirty and unpleasant. The American people are propagandized into the ground by the same interests, which is my main quabble with those who just want to blame the American people for their ignorance and apathy. They didn't get there all on their own!
- preek 11y agoYesterday Thomas Drake spoke on this topic: https://voicerepublic.com/talks/the-digital-surveillance-state https://voicerepublic.com/talks/the-digital-surveillance-sta...
- at-fates-hands 11y agoThe issue at hand here is how do we prevent terrorist attacks from within our own borders without mass surveillance of the population and without the profiling of certain populations (ie middle easterners, northern africans, etc)?? I don't think we need mass surveillance since it creates more useless data and not enough indicators someone is planning something. So where is the line drawn between mass surveillance and no surveillance? How do we keep this country safe, without infringing people's freedom?
- zmanian 11y agoSo Bill Binney is often described as a legendary mathematician inside the NSA, have anyone ever had a technical discussion with him about things like ECC?
- jjtheblunt 11y agoYawn.