A former high-ranking official at the U.S. National Security Agency said Sunday night the NSA will continue to spy on American citizens irrespective of any action taken by Congress on the Patriot Act.
William Binney, known to many as the architect of the NSA who became a whistleblower against the agency during the administration of George W. Bush, made the comment on Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.
Klein asked Binney, who served as NSA’s technical director: “Do you see the NSA actually continuing with the collection of millions of Americans’ phone records and emails?”
“Yes I do,” Binney responded, “And, in fact, they’ll be doing it under Executive Order 12333, Section 2.3.c where it authorizes them to … collect [from] any device if their intention is to go for a terrorist or a dope smuggler or an international crime. Which means they can take any fiber-optic line … collect it all and say we’re going after terrorists, and oh by the way, we’re gonna keep all the data anyway, and it’s called coincidental collection of U.S. citizens.”
Binney believes the NSA is now using its collected data to target Americans for their politics, including members of the tea party and the Occupy movement.
He thinks former Gov. Eliot Spitzer, D-N.Y., was among the victims in 2008, when he resigned from office in a highly publicized prostitution scandal.
“They looked into his email, phone calls,” said Binney.
“All that stuff was stored at NSA, and they found evidence to embarrass him to get rid of him. They appear to be using it against any number of other people, too, if you get in their way. This I saw as a totalitarian-state process, and that’s what totalitarian states do.”
Binney said he thinks everyone aware of NSA’s activities should be indicted, including members of current and previous administrations.
“Then after you [indict] all those people in the Bush administration, you do the same to the people in the Obama administration, then you try [NSA whistleblower Edward] Snowden, in that sequence,” he said.
When asked by a caller if the NSA has all the emails of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Binney said: “Of course, they have everybody’s emails. [Former FBI Director] Mueller testified to that to the Senate Judiciary Committee, [on the] 30th of March, 2011. He said we’ve got this database with the Department of Defense and NSA where I can make one query on all past emails and all future ones that come in on a person. Yes, they’ve got ‘em all.”
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