Former CIA Analyst Sues Defense Department To Vindicate NSA Whistleblowers (theintercept.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: In 2010, Thomas Drake, a former senior employee at the National Security Agency, was charged with espionage for speaking to a reporter from the Baltimore Sun about a bloated, dysfunctional intelligence program he believed would violate Americans' privacy. The case against him eventually fell apart, and he pled guilty to a single misdemeanor, but his career in the NSA was over. Though Drake was largely vindicated, the central question he raised about technology and privacy has never been resolved. Almost seven years have passed now, but Pat Eddington, a former CIA analyst, is still trying to prove that Drake was right. While working for Rep. Rush Holt, D-N.J., Eddington had the unique opportunity to comb through still-classified documents that outline the history of two competing NSA programs known as ThinThread and Trailblazer. He's seen an unredacted version of the Pentagon inspector general's 2004 audit of the NSA's failures during that time, and has filed Freedom of Information Act requests. In January, Eddington decided to take those efforts a step further by suing the Department of Defense to obtain the material, he tells The Intercept. "Those documents completely vindicate" those who advocated for ThinThread at personal risk, says Eddington.

Comments

Re:the unique opportunity

[WillAffleckUW]

I'm not a liberal. Not sure you get that nobody is scared of socialism nowadays.

But I have served in counter-terrorism ops and I have served with people who fought in both the Korean and Vietnam conflicts, as well as more current ones.

It's amusing that you don't understand who does what anymore. Try turning off Pravda and their lapdogs.

Re:Whistleblowers Defend Freedom

[BLKMGK]

This isn't Pat's first rodeo, he wrote a book about the first one and at least one other. They took his clearance, they took his job, they did the same to his wife. Cost them their home and most of their friends but he's still at it and many of the things he wrote in his first book have been proven right. Not sure he's too worried about what they might do to him - he's already been there done that.