“””””Though Binney and a number of others left the NSA when it instituted the illegal wiretap program, “”””
Is he saying 9/11 would have been prevented if the government was able to tap all our phones illegally?
If Clinton would have taken care of bin laden when he attacked the towers in 1993 then none of this would be necessary.
Most of the idiots in the country are led to believe that 9/11 was the first attack by terrorists on American soil. Hildabeast should be asked about this extensively. All that happened when she was co-president Billary.
Yep. Al queda attacked the WTC, our embassies, a navy ship and more between 1993 and 2000. All on clinton’s watch. One hit during Bushs term and they we took major action. Tired of the Bush bashing on this issue.
“If Clinton would have taken care of bin laden when he attacked the towers in 1993 then none of this would be necessary.”
If Clinton had focused on his job as Commander-in-Chief, he would have stopped a lot of this cold. Unfortunately, many Americans would have considered him a do-nothing President obsessed with addressing a non-existent threat.
The problem, IMO, is with the American people. We want a President who will do it all. Bush, whom I consider better than Clinton or Obama, wanted to be the “education President.” Few objected.
No, you needed to read the rest of the sentence:
Though Binney and a number of others left the NSA when it instituted the illegal wiretap program, Stellar Wind, Drake remained at his post — and tested ThinThread to “find out if there’s any information of the 9/11 attack that we should have known about but didn’t,” he explained.
Binney left, but Drake stayed. Drake tested the system that Binney had developed, and found that it did indeed identify information that would have warned of the 9/11 attacks. The system that replaced it (only a few weeks before 9/11) missed the info.
A number of people have posted that this is Monday-morning quarterbacking. But, in data analysis and data mining systems, "look-back" testing is essential to determine the effectiveness of algorithms and methodologies. It's typically called a "validation" exercise. If it doesn't identify known events, then it is likely to miss unknown events.
I doubt the original system that was cancelled has been updated since 9/11. So, it's very likely it would have identified the information warning of a terrorist attack. However, it's worth noting that doesn't mean the information would have been acted on.... we already know that one of the future hijackers had been detained by the FBI and despite an agent's best efforts, they didn't follow up on the possibility of a larger plot.
““””””Though Binney and a number of others left the NSA when it instituted the illegal wiretap program, “”””
Is he saying 9/11 would have been prevented if the government was able to tap all our phones illegally?”
No, he left because it was an illegal domestic wiretap operation. He was saying that a targeted and legal program, thinthread would have prevented 9/11.
Essentially thinthread was profiling, targeting terrorists and using their legally obtained metadata to find them. The NSA went with wide net and decided it would be better to collect everything, on everybody. More illegal, less effective.
What is the connection between OBL and 1993 WTC? Haven’t heard that one before.