The NSA is collecting everything - Bill Binney interview

Abby Martin interviews former Technical Director of the National Security Agency, Bill Binney, who blew the whistle on warrantless spying years before Edward Snowden released the evidence. They discuss the US empire's mass surveillance program and dangers of the Intelligence Industrial Complex.


The NSA is collecting bulk acquisition of data on everyone, letting other agencies view that data, and has, as bill claims, done a bad job in many cases of preventing terrorism in order to justify more funding. (Bill explains that better).

Not only that, but bill claims that 70% of the 15 billion or so budget is used for the acquisition of data from large companies. That's taxpayer dollars going to the NSA to acquire citizen information. He guessed around 2 Petabytes of information each day. However, from my research, most people are saying the NSA is collecting about 29 Petabytes per day. 1024 Terabytes = 1 Petabyte

He was saying that he was intimidated by an FBI raid during the time the NSA was being brought into Congress. He seems sure that the NSA is letting agencies use their information against journalists, politicians, ect.. Basically allowing blackmail or intimidation with a gross violation of the fourth amendment.

With continued advances in AI, and other technologies, there is no telling what the NSA will be capable of. The NSA had no problem developing secret advanced programs that violate the constitution in the past.

Bill Binney knew of these highly advanced programs that we heard about, and this was 2001 that he retired! The NSA is 18 years ahead of programs in 2001 that were advanced enough to organize information on anyone from massive piles of data.

Anyway, I'm not very informed in these fields, so I'll stop ranting and feel free to correct me. Enjoy the video.

Um, yeah, many of us have been playing that harp for over a decade.

At the time of Snowden, I was off in me time capsule, but my un-'published' response was it was only a 'thing' because of the media backlash against Obama's draconian anti-journalism policies.

Which I could go on and on with facts that paint that 'backstory', although the irony is 'the media' still bowed and scraped when it was time to talk elections. Hell, 'it' still does.

a reply to: blueman12

Anywhere between a million and 29 million GB per day? Huge amount of information.

(they've) done a bad job in many cases of preventing terrorism in order to justify more funding

Just prevent? Who's to say that some of this information isn't being used to orchestrate terrorist attacks as in false flag style, it's been done before. Additionally, how the hell is any non-transparent government to be trusted on any level?

a reply to: Zcustosmorum

The Amish may have been right in some respect

Why wouldn't they? They can obviously get away with it. They've sent up a zillion trial balloons over the years since 9/11 and people basically just don't care and are desensitized to it anyway so that horse has left the barn.

originally posted by: BlueJacket
a reply to: Zcustosmorum

The Amish may have been right in some respect

Like the NSA's activities, your point must be stealthy because it went right past me

meanwhile, at Intel
www.eweek.com...

New Intel Chip Bug Can Expose All Data on a Computer to Hackers

A "bug" with a system called "VISA" on intel chips.

Then you have a whole lot of handwaving by pundits saying you need physical access to exploit this "bug".

It is to bad that "physical access" can be attained through any USB 3.0 port.

a reply to: dubiousatworst

Our a compromised bus controller.

Last I checked usb, hard drive, and Ethernet ran through the same chip- before even reaching ram.

nywhere between a million and 29 million GB per day?

Most of it's porn,illegal movies,music.

a reply to: blueman12

en.wikipedia.org...

I suggest you watch this. It's something that should be seen by every American, and it should make every damn one mad as #.

Doesn't matter what Binney says, or what CONgress does.
You put all your information out there, and the NSA is grateful.

People willingly expose their lives on the internet for free, with no care at all about "If I have nothing to hide..." because that is the mentality of fakebook. "If I have nothing to hide why would I care who sees it?"

I find these things disgusting but also fascinating. What is the function of all this information? There is no purpose to store menial things that people talk about on a daily basis. There literally is no reason to have the storage capacity other than to sell it to corporations who use the meta-data for selling and business.

I can't see any other reason.

NSA: Violating the Constitution one petabyte at a time.

originally posted by: neo96

nywhere between a million and 29 million GB per day?

Most of it's porn,illegal movies,music.

Damn, with that amount of stuff the hardware costs would be through the roof

I imagine they do. But with that much information...me just being a simple guy...I don’t break the law, keep to myself. I’m not all that worried about it.

If they are collecting 29 pentabytes per day, that is about 1% of data generated per day, which really puts things into perspective because 29 pentabytes is a MASSIVE amount of data or 10^15 bytes or:
29,000,000,000,000,000
A DVD is:
4,500,000,000 = 6.5 million DVD's of data per day.

So even with all this data collection and the massive amounts of financial, material and man power resources put into this effort, they are still missing 99%+ of the data created, which I think has to have some important info in there.

I also see the potential for the information to be used to set people up, create false flags, etc. Now I don't mean to say this is done by the NSA directly, but from what I understand, the data (all or some?) is available to other agencies upon request or openly, and how do they keep track of how this is used and whether the data is replicated once it leaves their facility or in other agencies hands?

a reply to: Zcustosmorum

I'm guessing that it's just url of web pages. The same thing a ISP would see. They are just seeing your exact activity, but not downloading it. Just a guess though.

a reply to: DigginFoTroof

Well, Imagine if AI can analyze all the data per day and pick out certain things it finds important to store. Right now, I think they use algorithms for this, but a sophisticated AI system would preform much better.

I also see the potential for the information to be used to set people up, create false flags, etc. Now I don't mean to say this is done by the NSA directly

I'm not sure exactly how it works and what the limitations were. Bill seemed to suggest that the ethical limitations seemed to be pushed/ignored more and more each year. That was 2001 when he retired (whistleblowed). And snowden was just analyst with 2013 info.

Who knows what they can do in 2019 or how they give information away. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't remember any significant oversight of the NSA being applied since 2013. I may be wrong though.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

Just imagine, if there is no real oversight in the next 20 years what the NSA will be capable of. The population doesn't really care about being spied on. Hell, many people see Snowden as a villain, or Russian spy. You could possibly have AI just identify people that are possible risks and considered future alt-right terrorists. Then some agency creates a trumped up attempted-terrorism charge.

originally posted by: neo96

nywhere between a million and 29 million GB per day?

Most of it's porn,illegal movies,music.

It's funny how the entertainment industry spent so many years pretending to be such rebels and they want to say it's illegal to take a movie you bought, make a copy of it and give the copy to someone else. And then for that person to share the copy. It's absurd.

I wouldn't doubt is this is a big part of where they're getting the support for spying. The entertainment industry is still trying to go back to the 1970s -1990s when they could rake in the profits charging kids 10-30 dollars a pop for hundreds of movies and albums. Follow the money. As always. They have succeeded in shutting down a lot of the torrent sites and that's not an easy thing to do.

Frankly, I hope it backfires on them and people just stop watching and listening to commercial movies and music. I know, fat chance. But it would be funny.

Well.. yeah.

Every little bit of data about you is valuable. Its also quite handy in behavior modification.

When it comes down to it, if someone is going to profit from "who I am," then I feel I should be involved in that process. Ideally, with me being the (or a) beneficiary.

I think that is a concept that many could agree with, including those who "don't do anything wrong" (since that's not particularly relevant).