It’s difficult to ascertain how the “chilling effect” of dragnet spying has changed society in the post 9/11 world.
However, many insiders in the intelligence community understood the dangers of these programs from the beginning.
Edward Snowden is celebrated as a hero for bringing proof of NSA’s mass spying and bulk collection to the world.
But years prior, Bill Binney had blown the whistle on this very same program. A 36-year NSA veteran, Bill Binney was the technical director, responsible for developing and overseeing the agency’s spying technology.
He even developed Thin Thread, the data monitoring program that was later hijacked by the Bush administration to implement widespread warrantless surveillance.
Mounting pressure caused Obama to pass the USA Freedom Act in 2015, which only outsourced it’s bulk acquisition to telecom companies, using the secretive FISA court as an intermediary.
And nearly 20 years after 9/11 these unaccountable agencies are using new fears, like of Russian cyber-warfare, to grow their power and operations.
I caught up with Binney in Vancouver, at the University of British Columbia, where he received the Allard Prize for International Integrity, to talk to him about blowing the whistle and the fight against the surveillance state today.
This is why this guy matters.
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