William Binney
On Tuesday, National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney compared the US surveillance program to Nazi Germany.
Binney was once a high-ranking official within the agency, having worked for them for three decades. In 2002, along with two others, he demanded that the US Department of Defense investigate the NSA for wasting “millions and millions of dollars” on a program called “Trailblazer,” which was designed to analyze data on the internet.
He has also been openly critical about the domestic surveillance program which was brought to light by Edward Snowden.
“They [the NSA] don’t care what they do, they feel that they have the right to do anything that they feel necessary, and they will cover up crimes and procedures and violations of regulations that they’ve done to achieve whatever their ends are,” Binney told Loud & Clear host Brian Becker on Radio Sputnik.
Binney had created a software program called ThinThread that would monitor terror suspects, while safeguarding the privacy of Americans. He alleges that the agency took his software and corrupted it, violating the Constitution.
“They used our software and corrupted it and turned it against the people of the United States,” he stated. “That was fundamentally a violation of the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments of the Constitution. So they were scrapping the Constitution, they were doing this all in secret.”
Proponents of the controversial surveillance program insist that it is justified to keep Americans safe from terrorism, but Binney disagrees.
“The president can declare anyone a terrorist threat and have the military take them off the street, anywhere, and incarcerate them indefinitely without any due process. Those are violations of fundamental rights of the Constitution,” he explained.
“That’s exactly what Special Order 48 issued by the Nazis in 1933 did, right after the Reichstag fire. It says almost exactly the same thing.”
Further, he expressed concern that the US government may use what they obtain through the NSA as a power play against foreign governments and private businesses.
“It’s not just inside the US, it’s worldwide. [The NSA] gives them power and evidence to use to intimidate and manipulate members of parliament in any government in the world. Any commercial company that’s doing things [the US] doesn’t want to happen, they’ve got data on them to.”
“It gives them a great deal of power. Knowledge is power.”
The post NSA Whistleblower Compares US Surveillance to Nazi Germany appeared first on We Are Change.
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