Most informed, reasonable people know (or at least have guessed) that the NSA is keeping tabs on everybody in America. Thanks to 3 NSA whistleblowers, these fears are now confirmed. A HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) Conference the weekend of July 14 featured whistleblower William Binney, who stated that the NSA now has a dossier on nearly every US citizen.
“Domestically, they’re pulling together all the data about virtually every U.S. citizen in the country and assembling that information, building communities that you have relationships with, and knowledge about you; what your activities are; what you’re doing. So the government is accumulating that kind of information about every individual person and it’s a very dangerous process.” He estimated that one telecom alone was sending the government an “average of 320 million logs every day since 2001.”
This directly contradicts testimony by NSA chief General Kieth Alexander to Congressman Hank Johnson:
Rep. Johnson: Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizens’ emails?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Does the NSA intercept Americans’ cell phone conversations?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Google searches?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Text messages?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Amazon.com orders?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: Bank records?
Gen. Alexander: No.
Rep. Johnson: What judicial consent is required for NSA to intercept communications and information involving American citizens?
Gen. Alexander: Within the United States, that would be the FBI lead. If it was a foreign actor in the United States, the FBI would still have the lead and could work that with NSA or other intelligence agencies, as authorized. But to conduct that kind of collection in the United States, it would have to go through a court order, and the court would have to authorize it. We are not authorized to do it, nor do we do it.
Our government has vastly expanded its powers in the last few decades, and we may really begin to see infringements upon our privacy and information.
The Freedom of Speech issue of my generation is the Freedom of the Internet from government oversight and the Freedom of Private Information—we need to stop the warrantless information searches!
Whistleblowers like William Binney are true American patriots. We need more like him if we are ever to reveal the potential oppressiveness of our government.
I don’t think our government is going to misuse their power (yet). But we can either wait and hope they don’t, or we can try to make it so it is impossible for them to do so.
I think it should start with tearing down the NSA.
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Reblogged this on Prepper Politics.