NSA Spying: Whistleblowers Claim Vindication On Surveillance State Warnings

[marmar]

For years, four former National Security Agency analysts warned that the government was conducting widespread surveillance on domestic communications. Their warnings were largely ignored.

But on Thursday, after The Guardian newspaper reported that Verizon was turning over customer phone records to the intelligence agency as part of a secret court order, Kirk Wiebe had a “feeling of great gratification.”

“What we've been saying all along has proven to be so," the 68-year-old whistleblower told The Huffington Post. "Our worst fears are being realized.”

While at the NSA, Wiebe, along with Ed Loomis and Bill Binney, created a computer program that could isolate large amounts of information collected by the NSA while protecting Americans’ privacy. But the NSA ignored their program, saying “it was too invasive,” Loomis said. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/06/nsa-spying-whistleblowers_n_3399258.html?ncid=txtlnkushpmg00000037&ir=Politics

[OnyxCollie]

1. Russell Tice warned us years ago.

Russell Tice Confirms Everything We’ve Surmised About Bush’s Illegal Wiretap Program
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/01/21/russell-tice-confirms-everything-weve-surmised-about-bushs-illegal-wiretap-program/

First, Tice’s description of the program confirms everything we have surmised about the program. The program:

Established the means to collect all American communications
Analyzed meta-data to select a smaller subset of communications to tap further
Conducted human analysis of those messages
That is, the Bush administration used meta-data (things like length of phone call that have nothing to do with terrorism) to pick which communications to actually open and read, and then they opened and read them.

~snip~

Tice figured out that they were getting journalists’ communications when he realized that they were separating out all the journalists’ communications–but then ensuring that those communications were still collected 24/7.

~snip~

Tice also explained how BushCo evaded oversight by claiming some of this program was an intelligence program, and some was a military program. (Presumably, though, my smart Senator Carl Levin might notice something like that…) That strategy seems remarkably similar to the means by which BushCo legally justify the PAA (and presumably the program operating without Congressional sanction before it)–by using hybrid means of approving the program so as to eviscerate the Fouth Amendment. Nothing was too cute for these folks in their efforts to gut the Constitution, I guess.