Guardian: The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control
The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control
At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are
recorded and stored in the US, says whistleblower William Binney – that's a
'totalitarian mentality'
theguardian.com, Thursday 10 July 2014 19.54 EDT
William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers
to ever emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet
Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by
Washington’s move towards mass surveillance.
On 5 July he spoke at a conference in London organised by
the Centre for Investigative Journalism and revealed the extent of the
surveillance programs unleashed by the Bush and Obama administrations.
“At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the
US”, Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all
communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata,
are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.”
The NSA will soon be able to collect 966 exabytes a year,
the total of internet traffic annually. Former Google head Eric Schmidt once
argued that the entire amount of knowledge from the beginning of humankind
until 2003 amount to only five exabytes.
Binney, who featured in a 2012 short film by
Oscar-nominated US film-maker Laura Poitras, described a future where
surveillance is ubiquitous and government intrusion unlimited.
“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population
control”, Binney said, “but I’m a little optimistic with some recent Supreme
Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before
searching a smartphone.”
He praised the revelations and bravery of former NSA
contractor Edward Snowden and told me that he had indirect contact with a
number of other NSA employees who felt disgusted with the agency’s work.
They’re keen to speak out but fear retribution and exile, not unlike Snowden
himself, who is likely to remain there for some time.
Unlike Snowden, Binney didn’t take any documents with him
when he left the NSA. He now says that hard evidence of illegal spying would
have been invaluable. The latest Snowden leaks, featured in the Washington
Post, detail private conversations of average Americans with no connection to
extremism.
It shows that the NSA is not just pursuing terrorism, as
it claims, but ordinary citizens going about their daily communications. “The
NSA is mass-collecting on everyone”, Binney said, “and it’s said to be about
terrorism but inside the US it has stopped zero attacks.”
The lack of official oversight is one of Binney’s key
concerns, particularly of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
(Fisa), which is held out by NSA defenders as a sign of the surveillance
scheme's constitutionality.
“The Fisa court has only the government’s point of view”,
he argued. “There are no other views for the judges to consider. There have
been at least 15-20 trillion constitutional violations for US domestic
audiences and you can double that globally.”
A Fisa court in 2010 allowed the NSA to spy on 193
countries around the world, plus the World Bank, though there’s evidence that
even the nations the US isn’t supposed to monitor – Five Eyes allies Britain,
Canada, Australia and New Zealand – aren’t immune from being spied on. It’s why
encryption is today so essential to transmit information safely.
Binney recently told the German NSA inquiry committee
that his former employer had a “totalitarian mentality” that was the
"greatest threat" to US society since that country’s US Civil War in
the 19th century. Despite this remarkable power, Binney still mocked the NSA’s
failures, including missing this year’s Russian intervention in Ukraine and the
Islamic State’s take-over of Iraq.
The era of mass surveillance has gone from the fringes of
public debate to the mainstream, where it belongs. The Pew Research Centre
released a report this month, Digital Life in 2025, that predicted worsening
state control and censorship, reduced public trust, and increased
commercialisation of every aspect of web culture.
It’s not just internet experts warning about the
internet’s colonisation by state and corporate power. One of Europe’s leading
web creators, Lena Thiele, presented her stunning series Netwars in London on
the threat of cyber warfare. She showed how easy it is for governments and
corporations to capture our personal information without us even realising.
Thiele said that the US budget for cyber security was
US$67 billion in 2013 and will double by 2016. Much of this money is wasted and
doesn't protect online infrastructure. This fact doesn’t worry the
multinationals making a killing from the gross exaggeration of fear that
permeates the public domain.
Wikileaks understands this reality better than most.
Founder Julian Assange and investigative editor Sarah Harrison both remain in
legal limbo. I spent time with Assange in his current home at the Ecuadorian
embassy in London last week, where he continues to work, release leaks, and
fight various legal battles. He hopes to resolve his predicament soon.
At the Centre for Investigative Journalism conference,
Harrison stressed the importance of journalists who work with technologists to
best report the NSA stories. “It’s no accident”, she said, “that some of the
best stories on the NSA are in Germany, where there’s technical assistance from
people like Jacob Appelbaum.”
A core Wikileaks belief, she stressed, is releasing all
documents in their entirety, something the group criticised the news site The
Intercept for not doing on a recent story. “The full archive should always be
published”, Harrison said.
With 8m documents on its website after years of leaking,
the importance of publishing and maintaining source documents for the media,
general public and court cases can’t be under-estimated. “I see Wikileaks as a
library”, Assange said. “We’re the librarians who can’t say no.”
With evidence that there could be a second NSA leaker,
the time for more aggressive reporting is now. As Binney said: “I call people
who are covering up NSA crimes traitors”.
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