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NSA CS Man: My Tracking Algorithm Was 'Twisted' By the Government
decora writes "Crypto-mathematician Bill Binney worked in the Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center at the NSA. There, he worked on NSA's ThinThread program; a way to monitor the flood of internet data from outside the US while protecting the privacy of US citizens. In a new interview with Jane Mayer, he says his program 'got twisted. ... I should apologize to the American people. It's violated everyone's rights. It can be used to eavesdrop on the whole world. ... my people were brought in, and they told me, "Can you believe they're doing this? They're getting billing records on US citizens! They're putting pen registers on everyone in the country!"'"
I'm shocked. The US government would never do something like that ever! A shame this will never reach +5 Sarcastic
... cryptologist Bill Binney was found dead today in his New York apartment the victim of an apparent accident.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
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Hmm.
I designed a gun.
No, no, no! You're supposed to point it away from you.
For some reason US citizens always only think of themselves. Personally, I think it is great that they treat themselves as they do other human beings on the planet. It may bring some hard needed reflections on how technology is abused (but I'm not holding my breath).
The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers.
The NSA doesn't recruit people by telling them that they will be spying on Americans. I have met an NSA recruiter, and this is the story they tell you: As a cryptologist at the NSA, you will be working on interesting mathematics, mathematics you won't find in academia or in industry, and your work will help protect American lives. So say you are a 28 year old, you just finished a PhD in math or CS; wouldn't such a job be tempting?
The people who run the show at the NSA are not idiots. They know how to work with geniuses who might have a moral objection to spying on Americans. They know how to convince people that their work will only be used against foreigners, and how to get those people to put as much effort into their work as possible. If I had to venture a guess, I would say that most NSA mathematicians and computer scientists are aware of how their work is actually being used, except in rare cases where it is reported in the mass media (like the wiretapping scandal).
Palm trees and 8
Who knows about how this stuff works besides people like us and telecom people? Even this technician at AT&T didn't know exactly what was going on. Funny enough, the discovery came about because he wanted to make sure the people working in this room were working according to CWA union rules. The unions - the last remnants of ordinary worker's organization and input into a company, which is now almost totally under the control of the top corporate management and ownership, and apparently, the government and its spy agencies.
As far as people saying this is to keep Americans safe from foreign terrorists - is that why Nixon had his guys break into Democratic headquarters at the Watergate? Is that why Clinton had the FBI send him various political opponents files, or Sandy Berger was sneaking documents out of the National Archives? Or why Martin Luther King had his rooms bugged by the FBI, when what he wanted was to non-violently work for the right to vote - a right blacks theoretically had under the Constitution? In 2006 a movie called "The Lives of Others" came out, condemning the Stasi in communist East Germany for creating a police state. While American critics feel good about themselves condemning the apparatus of a police state from ancient history, one is growing in the phone companies of America. Before 2001-2003, the US did not have an internal Stasi-like phone system - now it does. There's no reason to be hyperbolic about it, it is just that the government and corporate telecommunications monopolies are attempting to remove a right to privacy and freedom we once had.
he U.S. government is EXTREMELY corrupt. Weapons investors want war all the time. Financial institutions get rich.
Yes, we were warned about this a very long time ago. The term used was the "military-industrial complex". The fear was that its interests would become better represented by government than any interests of the people. Sometimes all you have to do is read the handwriting on the wall and they will call you "prophet".
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Here's a better link to the article, the whole article on one page instead of entering on page 3 of 10.