The New York Times has a short documentary video (which they won’t allow people to embed, so you must follow the link) directed by Laura Poitras about William Binney, the former NSA analyst and mathematician-turned whistleblower.
Binney described details about Stellar Wind, the N.S.A.’s top-secret domestic spying program begun after 9/11, which was so controversial that it nearly caused top Justice Department officials to resign in protest, in 2004.
The video is well worth watching, as it vividly reiterates what Binney has been coming out and saying, that the Bush administration, in its post-9/11 surveillance activities, committed “a direct violation of the constitutional rights of everybody in the country,” and that the NSA is currently collecting information on “virtually every US citizen.” Binney has also condemned the Obama administration: “…the real problem I see is that the [Obama] DoJ is covering up for all the crimes that this administration and the previous administration has been committing against every one in the public.”
Poitras has her own experiences with intrusive surveillance practices of the US government.
The United States apparently placed me on a“watch-list” in 2006 after I completed a film about the Iraq war. I have been detained at the border more than 40 times. Once, in 2011, when I was stopped at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and asserted my First Amendment right not to answer questions about my work, the border agent replied, “If you don’t answer our questions, we’ll find our answers on your electronics.”’ As a filmmaker and journalist entrusted to protect the people who share information with me, it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to work in the United States. Although I take every effort to secure my material, I know the N.S.A. has technical abilities that are nearly impossible to defend against if you are targeted.
The 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which oversees the N.S.A. activities, are up for renewal in December. Two members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Senators Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats, are trying to revise the amendments to insure greater privacy protections. They have been warning about “secret interpretations” of laws and backdoor “loopholes” that allow the government to collect our private communications. Thirteen senators havesigned a letter expressing concern about a “loophole” in the law that permits the collection of United States data. The A.C.L.U. and other groups have also challenged the constitutionality of the law, and the Supreme Court will hear arguments in that case on Oct. 29.
Excellent post. John, I hope you have a chance to go hear the oral arguments on October 29th. Maybe this case will restore Americans' faith in checks-and-balances.
"Maybe this case will restore Americans' faith in checks-and-balances. "
You're joking, right? (Sometimes that Bovard humor goes over my head.)
Maybe Roberts will some how reason that all this law breaking is yet another tax and tell us that makes it constitutional.
As ridiculous as that sounds it may happen.
Nothing those thugs in black robes do surprises me anymore.
It doesn't make sense to monitor the activities of 300,000,000 Americans when the threat to America come from a few thousand. Isn't that a bit of overkill and expensive? The so-called Patriot Act was perhaps the worse legislation since the Anti-sedition Act a couple centuries back and a stain on the fabric of American democracy. I hope the ACLU prevails in their case.
You only need to "monitor" the CIA, FBI, NSA, DEA, DHS, TSA, Pentagon, White House, Congress, Wall Street and your local Cops and DA's and you'd have 99.9% of all your "probable terrorists".
From my understanding the NSA and thier ilk collect everything through splitters that take all the raw data on a backbone and dump it into a datacenters. There is so much data they can't possibly monitor everyone, thank god. I believe their strategy is to have datasets that they can sift through once they identified someone that needs some harassing/monitoring. It will also be effective after the next terrorist attack (I hope there isn't one) to take all the data that they have collected on everyone and identify the individuals that perpetrate the attack and will probably gather some patterns and associations. They then can use those patterns and associations to sift back through the data they have collected identify others that may fit similar profiles.
Essentially it is the nascent begins of a system of pre-crime that so many dystopic novels have dwelled on. Thankfully I don't believe that a group of private individuals would ever invest in such a monster and we are so close to the collapse of the current system that it will die before it ever lives…hopefully!
"after the next terrorist attack…" You must mean the next staged "event" geared towards further totalitarianism. Of that you can bank on.
Ahh, but evin – never fear. When the Utah Data Center comes on line next year they'll capture and store every single bit of floating data about you and me and all of us in the USA. Perhaps the system is not so "nascent" as we'd prefer. I admire your beliefs. It's good to believe. Keep hoping!
"… it nearly caused top Justice Department officials to resign in protest, in 2004."
Why didn't they resign? It was a resigning issue. As far as I remember, only Elizabeth Wilmshurst of the UK Foreign Office resigned over Iraq (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4377605.stm), when there should have been mass resignations in the Labour Party (particularly Gordon Brown and Jack Straw who were in the cabinet) as well as the civil service for what seems clearly to have been a gross violation of international law, not supported by the flimsiest of legal justification.
Now that I think of it, Robin Cook did resign and his resignation speech in the House of Commons looks better and better as time goes by. http://youtu.be/I0f8NBlmwwE
I love that "nearly resigning" bit. They're always just about to but never follow through. That's because they're moral and ethical cowards.
Neil, if ever there was a resigning issue, this was it. A couple of real patriots did resign, but the large majority did not. Perhaps the worst of the lot not resigning was Colin Powell, a blow hard and a coward.
Name a president since Harry Truman who hasn't subverted the constitution.
Maybe Roberts will some how reason that all this law breaking is yet another tax and tell us that makes it constitutional.
None of this is a surprise to me, whatsoever. As a child I was taught what a great nation the USA was. As an adult I began to learn better, and closer to the truth. Yes! Freedom, truth, justice, has all gone out of the window. What now exist is an empty shell filled with all kinds of evils and we have elected politicians and the supreme court to thank for the demise of liberty, truth, justice and fear even from torture or endless imprisonment for dissenters. Fortunately I'm 74 years old. ML K, Jr., Malcolm X, the Kennedy brothers, a list too numerous to call down to those who were just ordinary citizens, never reached my age. To God I am thankful to reach my senior years.
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President Barack Obama on Friday presented a vision of little adjustments for the National Security Agency in a announcement that can likely please neither reformers nor agency defenders.The announcement, which was held in the Great Hall of the Justice Department building, came a lot more than seven months after the leaks from former NSA employer Edward Snowden started out. Recognizing the public complaint those leaks have produced, the president however defended many of the agency's most controversial methods as required in the prevent terrorism."The work before us at this point is more than simply restoring the deterioration performed on our operations; or avoiding more disclosures from occurring later on. Alternatively, we need to make some appropriate judgements about how exactly to safeguard our very selves and keep up our management on the globe, whilst upholding the civil liberties and privacy protections that our values — and our Constitution — require," Obama claimed.
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