I’m a retired NSA officer. During all my 33 years of service with the Agency, I NEVER targeted any US person. We were focused on the main adversary until the fall of the USSR. I spent most of my career out on the tip of the spear and we lived under the rule that any attempt to target a US person would lead to dismissal or prosecution. I am proudly wearing my cap with the Agency’s shield.
Thank You! Your number is shrinking ... May you continue to warn us.
I pray you dance!
Isn’t this type of overreach the reason Bill Ayers walks free today?
I can only conclude that Obama ordered the NSA to break the law.
thank you, I’m sick of seeing a couple of freepers keep saying this is nothing because the NSA has been doing it for years.
It is refreshing to hear/read of your kind of guy/gal. Thank you for being an American.
You like me, served in a very different time. You in the NSA and me in the Army. Both are now not what we were in in those days of the cold war and the hot war of Vietnam, etc.
I guess times change. If this gets worse, it will be sad, but your cap may cease to be a good way of showing off your service during WW III (a.k.a. the Cold War).
Back during the row about Bush’s “warrantless wiretapping” we were given to believe that it was all directed at cross-border communications, and I defended the practice as falling under the President’s war power authority as signals intelligence. I still would, and would go so far as to hold that NSA collection of all available content and “metadata” of communications to, from and within any hostile nation or any region outside the U.S. which is known to harbor Al Qaeda cells whose communications cannot be directly targetted is appropriate under those same powers, with or without a FISA warrant or any other warrant. The fact that this would catch innocent phone calls made to relatives in Waziristan (for instance) is no more objectionable to American liberty than the fact that the innocent party making a dinner reservation at a restaurant, which unknown to him is a mob front and subject to a court-ordered wiretap, has his dinner plans overhead by the police.
However, blanket collection of data about communications, even just “metadata” within the U.S., is a very different matter — should the government really be able to know down to 100 foot resolution (or maybe better for smart-phones under some circumstances) where every cell-phone user in the country has been whenever he or she placed a phone call, and what number he or she was calling? I think not.
I would imagine that there is much that can’t be said about the work there, but when and if you weigh in on the subject I’ll be paying attention. It is always important to hear from someone with experience.
It’s obviously a different NSA now, if you were working for them during the Cold War.
>> I am proudly wearing my cap with the Agency’s shield.
As you should. Thank you for your service.
The NSA has been given directives from the elected officials. The NSA is not the problem.
Thank you for your service to our Republic.
I believe you, but there has been mission creep it seems.
I almost went to work for the NSA right out of graduate school (mathematics). Decided to join industry instead.