Ex-CIA Director Admits 'We Kill People Based On Metadata' With Drone Strikes

Worldwide debate on mass surveillance still was not finished yet, but today is a new alarming report revealed that US government murdering people around the world based solely on their metadata.

Former CIA and NSA Director Michael Hayden admitted that Government selects targets on the basis of metadata for killing people with Drone Strikes around the world.

During a recent debate between Georgetown University Law Center professor David Cole and General Michael Hayden, concerning the National Security Agency’s bulk surveillance programs at Johns Hopkins University, General Hayden made the comments, "It is absolutely correct. We kill people based on metadata. But that’s not what we do with this metadata..."

Ex-CIA Director Admits 'We Kill People Based On Metadata' With Drone Strikes

See article for how Hayden immediately tried to walk back his comments:

Though immediately after realizing the gravity of the admission he had just made, he tries to qualify the statement to;
"...But that’s not what we do with this metadata. So NSA gets phone records, gets them from the telephone company, been getting them since October of 2001 from one authority or another, puts them in a lockbox… and under very strict limitations can access the lockbox," Hayden said.

Other sources:
Former CIA director: ‘We kill people based on metadata’

Hayden was CIA director from 2006 to 2009, Director of National Intelligence from 2005-2006, and Director of the NSA from 1999-2005. (bio at Wikipedia). His little slip of the tongue deserves to be treated as more than a Freudian slip.

The articles were published today (May 14), but are based on comments made by Hayden during a Georgetown debate back in April. Jump to 58 minute mark for his above comments.



This topic comes under the "no s**t, Sherlock" banner, but it never hurts to get these war criminals on record every time they make these little admissions.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Insanity...It's just pure carnival style insanity.
Thank you for posting this sir.

Star for you.

A definition for others -

"The main purpose of metadata is to facilitate in the discovery of relevant information, more often classified as resource discovery. Metadata also helps organize electronic resources, provide digital identification, and helps support archiving and preservation of the resource. Metadata assists in resource discovery by "allowing resources to be found by relevant criteria, identifying resources, bringing similar resources together, distinguishing dissimilar resources, and giving location information."
en.wikipedia.org...


Basically he admitted to using the methods of gather rather then the final render of those gathered information points..
It's like being killed for having eyes as the criteria not mentioning that target only has one where as the victim had two.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Or is it, We so lost our eavesdropping powers due to Snowden that now all we can do is make hollow threats.

The people their snooping is designed to pinpoint are too smart to let themselves get caught by Meta data.

Its all the sheep that are supposed to be afraid of what they say on the internet.

Watch out, Santa is up there in his sleigh discovering who has been naughty or nice.

We so lost our eavesdropping powers due to Snowden

Th world should be so lucky.

So if I get a new phone number and it happens to be Osama's old number, I am in deep.

originally posted by: roadgravel

We so lost our eavesdropping powers due to Snowden

Th world should be so lucky.

So if I get a new phone number and it happens to be Osama's old number, I am in deep.

Just make sure you don't accidentally dial the wrong number.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

he said that they put the info in a lockbox. now where have i heard that term before?

geez, these people are all the same. dems , repubs...all the same.

a reply to: roadgravel

Th world should be so lucky.

"The world" is busy remaking the internet and securing servers like they do gold. I saw segment somewhere about the Swiss or someone doing just that.

The narrator stated that if someone wants whats stored in this memory they will have to physically break in to get it.

The changeover will be slow, but once you discover someone peering at you through a window or keyhole, its easy to put a stop to it.

Pssst, hey… come closer. That USA, they are peeping Toms.

Wow! You better be careful who you call. Or who's calls you answer. If the wrong metadata comes out with the massive data gathering in the US, you will be taken away in the wee hours of the morning, or worse catch a hellfire missile driving down the road. Kind of makes you wonder why Holder wouldn't answer the question on if they would use a drone strike to kill an American in the US.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Exactly what everyone who has been paying any attention what so ever, already knew years ago. I find it absolutely horrific, that lethal force is authorised against targets which have not been properly identified. Using meta data is a stupid method of acquiring a target for destruction. It is great for assembling a case, but if metadata is all that is needed, to produce a kill order, then that is ASKING for collateral damage, it makes it a certainty, rather than a possibility.

The people the CIA is supposed to be chasing, know full well that their metadata could be used to locate them, and I have every reason to believe that those people probably have methods of re-directing their traffic, or creating decoys which make them appear in one place according to their metadata, when in actual fact, they are in a completely different location. They could for instance, pay an underling to use their communication devices, while they switch systems, and locations, dropping their lackey neck deep in a crap storm, and making the CIA and friends, think they are dead!

The whole idea has zero merit, and is actually part of the reason that terror networks find it so easy to radicalise people. If ones family were wiped out by drones as collateral, or worse, in error, that puts one in a position of having very little recourse, other than to stamp on the necks of those one holds responsible, and one will take any route to make that happen. The only one available to many, will be to hand themselves to the radicals, and take up arms against the powers which unleashed the death machine upon their loved ones.

Frankly, it is about time all this drone crap was done away with, in favour of actual intelligence operations, involving people who can confirm a targets identity visually, and then destroy or capture them. These drones cause more problems than they solve by a very long chalk.

a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Paul Walker anyone? Single car collision.....

* high fives self for good detective work

a reply to: TrueBrit

The people the CIA is supposed to be chasing, know full well that their metadata could be used to locate them, and I have every reason to believe that those people probably have methods of re-directing their traffic, or creating decoys which make them appear in one place according to their metadata, when in actual fact, they are in a completely different location. They could for instance, pay an underling to use their communication devices, while they switch systems, and locations, dropping their lackey neck deep in a crap storm, and making the CIA and friends, think they are dead!

Scary, isn't it? A wanted terrorist cracks your wifi router password, starts using your IP to send little terrorism missives, and next thing you know you get a Tomahawk missile up your keister. Who needs verification when you got metadata. Or on a more practical note, Mr. Al Qaeda knows his phone calls can be used to direct drone strikes and uses that to his advantage.

a reply to: EA006

Well yeah but they went head on into that tree...or was that Micheal Hastings? So many cars blowing up lately it's hard to keep track sometimes... Either way, we all know that an automobile is basically the same design as a WW2 era bomb the you find in the woods. One little impact in the wrong spot and "ka-boom!" you're immediately explode and engulfed in flames... especially when that impact is with a very sensitive and explosive device. like a tree, or a curb/median.

Apparently they can make tanks etc invisible. I don't see why they couldn't do the same with a missile with their 20-200-or 2,000 years of technology ahead of that made available to public. And then the evidence disintegrate into dust afterwards...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic."

Hey! Look at that 21st century top of the line automobile! It just exploded out of nowhere... almost like.... like magic!

But... But... I thought Meta Data wasn't important and we shouldn't be concerned with its collection...

How many times are we going to have this realization?

Drone strikes won't happen to Americans, OH... Wait... They do,

Well... Theres at least Due Process in america... Oh wait...

But at least they are only spying on Terrorist... Oh wait...

But at least its only Certain Americans... Oh wait.

Well, at least its only Meta Data...


Seriously, how f-ed are we.

Battered wives staying with the man who beats her when we upset him... Thats all America has become.

originally posted by: EA006
a reply to: Blackmarketeer

Paul Walker anyone? Single car collision.....

* high fives self for good detective work

Yes a single car collision with a concrete light pole and two trees.

a reply to: EA006

Someone's never had the joy of driving a Porsche.

Or the terror of when that rear engine decides to step out on you

Celebrities just need to stop buying Porsche's and go with something safe like a Volvo.

I hate having to listen to people who lie for a living. Government employees in the intelligence community, some more than others, have deception as part of their job description. Think about it this way: the intelligence community, when the higher-ups are interviewed, are not going to admit their wrongdoings. We know that. So why do some sit there and believe what they say? I guess that is my only real point. Why would we believe those who we know are deceiving us? I mean it has been proven that we have been deceived on multiple occasions. We don't find out about it through them, rather something occurs where the information gets leaked or whatever. Like with the Snowden release. The government never would have come out and told us the extent of what they were doing.

Something else that bothered me is when the guy talked about the Angry Birds game. I took it to mean the following: The developers or whoever are the ones who initially started collecting all that data, and I think he said it was GCHQ, which is British signals intelligence, simply went in and got the data. They were not the ones collecting it. And I'm sure that is one argument that the US government would put forth to justify what they are doing in some way. But it is not justifiable. And I am not convinced that the government doesn't urge these companies to collect such data, or did at one point, considering that they probably now have the means to do it themselves...Illegally in some instances.

So it ended up like how frank zappa said, eh .....

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