Posted on 06/11/2013 6:59:21 AM PDT by BarnacleCenturion
National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney explains how the secretive agency runs its pervasive domestic spying apparatus in a new piece by Laura Poitras in The New York Times.
Binney—one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history—worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution."
In a short video called "The Program," Binney explains how the agency took part of one of the programs he built and started using it to spy on virtually every U.S. citizen without warrants under the code-name Stellar Wind.
Binney details how the top-secret surveillance program, the scope of which has never been made public, can track electronic activities—phone calls, emails, banking and travel records, social media—and map them to collect "all the attributes that any individual has" in every type of activity and build a profile based on that data.
"So that now I can pull your entire life together from all those domains and map it out and show your entire life over time," Binney says.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
...One of NSA’s most important contractors may be Narus – http://www.narus.com/ – a subsidiary of Boeing that makes a key telecommunications software that allows government agencies and corporations to monitor huge amounts of data flowing over fiber-optic cables. According to Bill Binney, one of four NSA whistleblowers who’ve been warning about NSA’s immense powers, one Narus device can analyze 1,250,000 1,000-character emails every second. That comes to over 100 billion emails a day. “Narus is the one thing that makes it all possible,” Binney told me over the weekend, of the Verizon surveillance program unveiled by the Guardian. “They probably pick up 60 to 80 percent of the data going over the [U.S.] network.” The Narus technology, he added, “reconstructs everything on the line and then passes it off to NSA for storage” and later analysis. That includes everything, he said, including email, cell phone calls, and voice over internet protocol calls such as those made on Skype. NSA’s use of the Narus technology first came to attention in 2006. That was when an AT&T technician named Mark Klein went public with his discovery -> http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/11/07/AR2007110700006.html – that NSA had hooked Narus devices to AT&T’s incoming telecom stream in San Francisco and set up a secret room that allowed NSA to divert AT&T’s entire stream to its own databases. Binney believes the equipment was hooked up to as many as 15 sites around the country. The Narus devices can’t pick up everything, however, because large amounts of traffic (such as domestic calls and internet messages) don’t go through the switches. That’s why NSA apparently decided in 2006 to create – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-data -> the PRISM program... The outsourcing plan was finalized in 2000 by a special NSA Advisory Board set up to determine the agency’s future and codified in a secret report written by a then-obscure intelligence officer named James Clapper. “Clapper did a one-man study for the NSA Advisory Board,” recalls Ed Loomis, a 40-year NSA veteran who, along with Binney and two others, blew the whistle on corporate corruption at the NSA. “His recommendation was that NSA acquire its internet capabilities from the private sector. The idea was, the private sector had the capability and we at NSA didn’t need to reinvent the wheel.”... http://www.alternet.org/digital-blackwater-meet-contractors-who-analyze-your-personal-data?paging=off
I don’t know that Edward Snowden gave us any new information. The timing was perfect though as he came out on the wind of the IRS Scandal. Why? And why the big deal in hiding in Singapore and Russia offering him refuge above all places?
More up to date
In other words
What are they going to charge him with: Repeating the truth?
Don’t be fooled by the canard of a supreme court ruling in 1979, Smith v Maryland. That was overturned by 18 U.S.C. §3121 et seq years later.
The empty skirts on fox have cited this case as justification for millions of pen registers. The logic of the original case was completely twisted.
It said that because originally when phones first came out, you had to tell the operator (Hey Mable, get me Suzanne Mudd) so therefore there was no expectation of privacy, and just because it’s all automated now, there still should be no expectation of privacy. Good thing Congress intervened.
Are you starting to get the feeling that the hiring process at your local McDonalds is more selective than that at the NSA?
Also, it’s interesting how Wyden made a liar out of “the clap” Clapper in Congressional hearings. Wyden had been briefed on the domestic spying but was bound by secrecy not to reveal it. That didn’t stop him from asking “on off, on off” Clapper if the nsa was spying on millions of americans, and he knew full well he was lying when Clapper told the committee under oath that no such activity was going on. When will Clapper be arrested?
Binney has been talking about this stuff for years... lots of Binney interviews and speaking engagements on YouTube.
I have always been suspicious that the Time Warner Cables and Dish Networks of the world were collecting
They hire for computer skill not ethics. Just WRoNg!
Binney—one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history—worked for the Defense Department’s foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he “could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution.”
***That rings true.
I think it is hilarious that Alex Jones has been talking about this stuff for years and darn near everyone called him a conspiracy nut case.
Yup, I take Alex Jones with a grain of salt, no, a giant block of salt like this:
But when the "crazy guy" starts making sense.... It really scares the hell outta me...
I know Glenn Beck has a documentary about this program he broadcast earlier this year too.
I feel betrayed by a government that is supposed to be "servants of the people" trying to make the "people into servants"......
When the gov’t knows more about you, your communications, your secrets and your activities than the average citizen knows about the gov’t and their activities, that is not good.
These reports make me wonder just how much information that the nutcases talk about is actually true. Sure they put a slant on it that tries to scare the pants off of you but is their basic premise based on facts? It is appearing more and more likely they do have some factual basis.
Wow this Snowden dude has a lot of information for some low level techy from a sub contracting company. I mean, he wasn’t even high on the food chain, like, at all. NSA is getting sloppy allowing PC repair guys in on big secret stuff like this.
In the article there was a link to a video which is worth checking out. 8 minutes
In a short video called “The Program,” Binney explains how the agency took part of one of the programs he built and started using it to spy on virtually every U.S. citizen without warrants under the code-name Stellar Wind.
These reports make me wonder just how much information that the nutcases talk about is actually true. Sure they put a slant on it that tries to scare the pants off of you but is their basic premise based on facts? It is appearing more and more likely they do have some factual basis.
They could have someone leak an actual preserved alien body and it sure as hell wouldn’t surprise me anymore....
Heck they could leak that the government has been in a treaty with the aliens since the mid 50’s and part of the treaty is to establish programs to reduce population, de-industrialize and set up a world government with a tight control network in exchange for alien tech and I would only raise an eyebrow...
IT HAS GOTTEN THAT BAD IN TERMS OF GOVT. CREDIBILITY.....
We must destroy it in order to protect it...
When Microsoft tried to spin up the RAID hardware at one of the research data centers, it shut everything down. They had to upgrade their power.
I hate what these traitors are doing, but it's pretty impressive for a nerd like me. That's probably why they're getting away with it - unlimited nerd toys if you keep your mouth shut.
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