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NSA Official Disputes Chief's Claim That Agency Doesn't Collect American Data
NSA Director Gen. Keith Alexander was playing a "word game" when he said the agency does not collect files on Americans according to William Binney, a former technical director at the NSA. Binney says the NSA does indeed collect e-mails, Twitter writings, internet searches and other data belonging to Americans and indexing it. "Unfortunately, once the software takes in data, it will build profiles on everyone in that data," he said. "You can simply call it up by the attributes of anyone you want and it's in place for people to look at."
Collecting e-mail without a warrant violates the fourth amendment. Any government official who does this or orders it done is violating the civil rights of both the sender and the addressee under color of authority. If we had a justice system in this country, they'd end up behind bars for that.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ask yourself if it really makes sense that hundreds, if not thousands, of professional civilian and military members of our government have so little regard for their fellow citizens that they are systematically violating both the letter and spirit of law and the Constitution
It very much makes sense. We have fairly severe restrictions on our police forces and they regularly try and often succeed in circumventing them. The FBI has a decades long record of abusing the civil rights of US citizens. Every law enforcement and intelligence agency regularly chaffs against the restrictions placed on their power. Those same "professionals" you cite did nothing while our government condoned torture in clear violation of the spirit and letter of our laws. Why should I believe the NSA is any different? Those restrictions are inconvenient, expensive and it's not as if regular citizens can check their work to ensure they aren't breaking the rules. I believe they have power without sufficient accountability and that is almost certain to result in abuse of that power.
Trust the NSA? No I don't trust the NSA, it's employees or any other branch of our government and that is the way it should bet. We have checks and balances because we KNOW we cannot trust them. Unchecked power absolutely will be abused. The real question is do we have sufficient oversight from congress or the judiciary? It's not clear that we do.
This is a good comment. No, I don't think anyone is asking you to blindly trust NSA or any other element of government. But as government is ultimately here to serve the people, you can't exclusively have distrust of every single action government takes. Be cautious, be vigilant. But as I have said before, the mistake is believing that because there are some examples of abuse or mistakes — and there are plenty — that EVERY activity is intentional, systematic government abuse.
This is an excellent question, and one that has always been relevant to the Intelligence Community. Oversight of the IC has always been institutional oversight, not direct oversight by the public. But intelligence operations require secrecy to be effective — and that secrecy, especially in an open society, invites confusion, suspicion, misunderstanding, and distrust. So don't blindly "trust" NSA, but have the fortitude to thoroughly examine its purpose, missions, and history, and the challenges associated with executing its missions.
Actually its better for the government that way as its not bound by the constitution and thus makes it easy for them to get data without any of those "pesky" rights getting in the way. We've seen for years that FISA is a "rubber stamp" court and by simply using someone like Google to collect the data they aren't subject to freedom of information requests.
Frankly if groups like the NSA aren't so chummy with Google they have a "Google liaison" just to keep it nice and friendly I'd be amazed. Just the amount of data they gather on an average day would make J. Edgar green with envy, no way in hell the government just lets that amount of data slide without getting a peek, no way.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.