William Binney Quotes
You've got the NSA doing all this collecting of material on all of its citizens - that's what the SS, the Gestapo, the Stasi, the KGB, and the NKVD did.
Binney, William. "National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance." Interview by Amy Goodman. Democracy Now!, 20 Apr. 2012.
In 1967 Cunningham headed a CIA study group reviewing U. S. Intelligence operations.
The reason this quotation is famous is that Clapper answered “No, Sir”. 3 months later Edward Snowden disclosed the fact that the NSA was collecting some information from EVERY telephone call and e-mail made or sent in the United States. The colloquy became famous when the government tried to capture Snowden and try him for illegally revealing classified information when others saw him as a whistle blower who had told the truth and the guys who lied to Congress and the American people wanted to prosecute him.
Snowden, was a contract worker for Booz Allan assigned to the National Security Agency (NSA). He felt that some of the NSA activities were illegal and unethical and tried to complain to NSA officials who rebuffed him. Despite the fact that he had signed an agreement not to do so, he copied many critical, classified documents that exposed much of the NSA activities that the NSA officials had denied existed—including lying under oath to the Senate. He then made many of them public, violating his oath, breaking the law, and opening up an entire area of government spying which most Americans knew nothing about and about which senior government officials had lied under oath to Congress. They of course wanted to prosecute Snowden who had told the truth, while they had lied. For many Americans, this became a moral and ethical conundrum.
The NSA had been publicly exposed (by the Edward Snowden leaks) as collecting data on virtually every American’s phone and on-line conversation, and criticism was rampant.
Expressing concern over President Obama extending some of the American citizen entitled privacy rights to foreigners. He was concerned that this might inhibit our spying efforts.
to enhance its ability to conduct surveillance
The Great Firewall of China is the digital control system whereby the Chinese government can block the Chinese public from seeing web sites that are considered dangerous. Generally, these either involve pornography of political viewpoints unacceptable to the government.
Critics of NSA observe that there is a fundamental difference between government invasion of privacy and that of corporations in that the Government can deprive a citizen of his/her liberty or even life while corporations can just invade their privacy, embarrass them, or hurt their economic status. Counter-critics rejoinder is that 99 percent of all the specific abuses of privacy and damages to citizens in the U. S. from massive data collection are made by private corporations, not the NSA or other government agencies.
William Edward Binney is a former intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and whistleblower. He retired on October 31, 2001, after more than 30 years with the agency.
