Whistleblowers: How NSA Created the 'Largest Failure' In Its History (zdnet.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Former NSA whistleblowers contend that the agency shut down a program that could have "absolutely prevented" some of the worst terror attacks in memory. According to the ZDNet story: "Weeks prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, a test-bed program dubbed ThinThread was shut down in favor of a more expensive, privacy-invasive program that too would see its eventual demise some three years later -- not before wasting billions of Americans' tax dollars. Four whistleblowers, including a congressional senior staffer, came out against the intelligence community they had served, after ThinThread. designed to modernize the agency's intelligence gathering effort, was cancelled. Speaking at the premier of a new documentary film A Good American in New York, which chronicles the rise and demise of the program, the whistleblowers spoke in support of the program, led by former NSA technical director William Binney."

Comments

I doubt there was intention to catch perpetrators

[Trachman]

Legends and myths grow around the historic events.

It is true that a couple of years before 9/11 events CNN/ABC sent a crew to meet Bin Laden's to get the interviews multiple times. Even two months before the events bin Laden was giving interviews to the local journalists.

If journalists could meet, why the fuck do we need electronic surveillance at all and later we hear complains saying that we needed more surveillance, since if we had more surveillance events would have been prevented. If journalists can get interviews freely, then I would be really stupid to believe that US, which has very powerful and most expensive intelligence agencies in the world, really wanted to catch him, because they did not.