Whistleblower: The NSA is Lying–U.S. Government Has Copies of Most of Your Emails (Democracy Now)

Democracynow.org
April 20, 2012


Published on Apr 20, 2012 by democracynow
http://youtu.be/hfS2Op9l3nk

DemocracyNow.org - National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney reveals he believes domestic surveillance has become more expansive under President Obama than President George W. Bush. He estimates the NSA has assembled 20 trillion "transactions" — phone calls, emails and other forms of data — from Americans. This likely includes copies of almost all of the emails sent and received from most people living in the United States. Binney talks about Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act and challenges NSA Director Keith Alexander's assertion that the NSA is not intercepting information about U.S. citizens.

This interview is part of a 4-part special. Click here to see segment 1, 2, and 4. [includes rush transcript]


GUESTS:
William Binney, served in the NSA for over 30 years, including a time as director of the NSA’s World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group. Since retiring from the NSA in 2001, he has warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could "create an Orwellian state."

Jacob Appelbaum, a computer security researcher who has volunteered with WikiLeaks. He is a developer and advocate for the Tor Project, a network enabling its users to communicate anonymously on the internet.

Laura Poitras, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and producer. She is working on the third part of a trilogy of films about America post-9/11. The first film was My Country, My Country," and the second was The Oath.

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Wikileaks publishes a private think tanks emails and gives a glimpse into the world of a 'private CIA'

Wikileaks: The GIFiles
2012-02-27
On Monday February 27th, 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files, over five million e-mails from the Texas headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The e-mails date between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defence Intelligence Agency. The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment laundering techniques and psychological methods.
...
Read more at the-gifiles.html
wikileaks.org

The Strategic Forecasting Inc., commonly known as Stratfor, is a private firm dealing in the lucrative business of intelligence gathering and assessment.

Founded in 1996, the company gained global prominence during the NATO bombing of Kosovo in 1999 when its seemingly cutting-edge analysis was publicized by various news agencies. But it was the events of 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terrorism” that elevated the stature of the firm, turning it into a highly sought after informant for major Western media organizations like Bloomberg, Associated Press, Reuters, The New York Times, and the BBC.

...Stratfor was founded over a decade ago in Austin, Texas by George Friedman, a former political science professor. Friedman is the company’s chief intelligence officer, financial overseer, and CEO.

Commonly referred to as the private CIA, Stratfor claims that it gathers its intelligence through a number of publicly accessible sources, such as wire services, chat hubs, other Internet sites, and unclassified government studies, in addition to well-placed sources internationally. The agency now boasts close to 300,000 subscribers and over two million recipients of free email updates.

Until recently, much of the inner workings of Stratfor had been shrouded in mystery. But last December, members of the internet activism collective Anonymous, hacked into the system during the "LulzXmas" campaign to highlight the plight of Bradley Manning, an American soldier currently incarcerated by the US government for suspicion of passing on information to WikiLeaks.

Read more at alakhbar.com (by Yazan al-Saadi Feb 27, 2012)

News articles
WikiLeaks publishes security think tank emails
Stratfor: Inside the World of a Private CIA
Israel, Kurdish fighters destroyed Iran nuclear facility, email released by WikiLeaks claims

TARGET: Julian Assange, A Pattern of Conspiracy?

-BREAKING NEWS: Julian Assange released on bail

-EXCLUSIVE Julian Assange Interview with Cenk Uygur (host of The Young Turks)-(12/22/10)

As we all know, Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, handed himself over to London police last week to answer a European arrest warrant from Sweden, who wants to question him about alleged sex crimes. He was granted bail on Tuesday (14-Dec-2010) but remained behind bars due to the Swiss prosecutor`s immediate appeal against the decision.

Meanwhile, Wikileaks` release of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic and military documents is under criminal review in the United States. The website angered U.S. authorities last month by publishing the first of some 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables and the website continues to publish more and more cables daily. Amazon, PayPal, Mastercard and other companies and banks have ceased their relations with Wikileaks and Julian Assange, which gave way to computer hacker groups who are are targeting those same companies. The groups are thought to be supporters of Wikileaks and Julian Assange.

The whole ordeal with Julian Assange begs the question and thought, is this an ongoing conspiracy against exposing or uncovering the truth? Whenever there is government opposition to anything, those who voice their concerns, those who advocate and bring forth the truth against the government - they are targeted, and targeted in a specific way to demoralize them, discredit their reputation and eventually wreck their lives - by essentially blasting them with sex charges. Its always a sex charge when you think about it, which not only will it tarnish a person`s reputation but ties them up in legal limbo for as long it takes.

For example, remember Scott Ritter, former chief U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, who was a very outspoken vocal critic of the Iraq war and the U.S. goverment, whose voiced his opposition to the 2003 Iraq war invasion and publicly said many times that Iraq did not have WMD`s and did not pose a threat. Immediately there after, sex charges against Scott Ritter appeared. Since 2001, Ritter has been arrested and subsequently released twice on charges related to sexual exploitation of minors.

Another comes to mind - Eliot Spitzer, former NY attorney general and governor who went up to challenge the big banks and Wall Street and said, "hey I`m going to stop your crimes, fraud and insider trading...etc". All of a sudden, sex charges against Spitzer coming from a bank - "oh he spent this amount of money, maybe the federal government should look into it - oh well will you look at that, its for a hooker".

And now a day after Julian Assange released the first leaks of the diplomatic cables, sex charges against him were announced. Surely, this can all be a wonderful coincidence but really it can`t be. All of a sudden, now there`s a great "interest" in pursuing these sex charges by the Swiss government?

Time will tell if the truth is truly free, till then it seems the truth comes at a heavy cost.

Related blog links:

Leak Intrigue: 'Surprise sex' charge exposes Swedish consent to jail Assange

WikiLeaks: Cable Gate

Julian Assange Talks About Iraqi War Documents [Part 1]

Julian Assange Talks About Iraqi War Documents [Part 2]

Julian Assange talks to RT: Wikileaks gives 'most accurate picture of war'

WikiLeaks: Cable Gate

The Secret U.S. Embassy Cables

WikiLeaks

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/ or http://wikileaks.ch/cablegate.html

"Wikileaks began on Sunday November 28th publishing 251,287 leaked United States embassy cables, the largest set of confidential documents ever to be released into the public domain. The documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US Government foreign activities.

The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February this year, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington DC. 15,652 of the cables are classified Secret."

The cache of embassy cable documents can also be accessed on The Guardian`s website on their comprehensive US Embassy Cables page, featuring an interactive database and commentaries.