National Security Agency Whistleblower William Binney on Growing State Surveillance
In his first television interview since he resigned from the National Security Agency over its domestic surveillance program, William Binney discusses the NSA’s massive power to spy on Americans and why the FBI raided his home after he became a whistleblower.
Binney was a key source for investigative journalist James Bamford’s recent exposé in Wired Magazine about how the NSA is quietly building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah. The Utah spy center will contain near-bottomless databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other personal data.
Detained In The U.S.: Filmmaker Laura Poitras Held, Questioned Some 40 Times At U.S. Airports
The Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Laura Poitras discusses how she has been repeatedly detained and questioned by federal agents whenever she enters the United States. Poitras said the interrogations began after she began working on her documentary, “My Country, My Country,” about post-invasion Iraq.
“We Do Not Live in a Free Country”: Jacob Appelbaum on Being Target of Widespread Gov’t Surveillance
We speak with Jacob Appelbaum, a computer researcher who has faced a stream of interrogations and electronic surveillance since he volunteered with the whistleblowing website, WikiLeaks. He describes being detained more than a dozen times at the airport and interrogated by federal agents who asked about his political views and confiscated his cell phone and laptop.
Whistleblower: The NSA Is Lying–U.S. Government Has Copies of Most Of Your Emails
William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion “transactions” — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans.
In Part 2 of our national broadcast exclusive on the growing domestic surveillance state, we speak with National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney, and two targeted Americans: Oscar-nominated filmmaker Laura Poitras, and hacker Jacob Appelbaum, who has volunteered for WikiLeaks and now works with Tor Project, a nonprofit organization that teaches about internet security. Binney left the NSA after the 9/11 attacks over his concerns about the agency’s widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens. He describes how the FBI later raided his home and held him at gunpoint and notes there is still no effective way of monitoring how and what information the NSA is gathering on U.S. citizens, and how that data is being used.
Sources: Democracy Now! (Part 1, Part 2)
