The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control

Eugen Leitl eugen@leitl.org
Fri Jul 11 03:36:00 PDT 2014


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/11/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'

Antony Loewenstein theguardian.com, Friday 11 July 2014 00.54 BST

William Binney testifies before a German inquiry into surveillance.
Photograph: Getty Images

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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