In their conversation, Binney explains why he thinks the government is overreaching with Apple in its attempt to access data from a cellphone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Binney talks about how the NSA is now overwhelmed with data, doesn't need nearly as much as it is collecting, and how there are other ways to get the data it is looking for without invading most Americans' privacy. Click, subscribe, and share. Robert Scheer: Hello, this is another edition of Scheer Intelligence, conversations with people who are actually the source of this intelligence.
In the case of today's interview, it's with William Edward Binney, a major figure in the U.S. 30 years with the United States National Security Agency, the NSA. William Binney: Yes, I am. It's good to talk with you again, Bob. Is it, does our national security require breaking into our personal codes on our phone, and what's your assessment,
] and so they're asking Apple to fix up their mistake. ] what we had. That is, we were supposed to know what our government was doing on our behalf, and they were supposed to not know what we were doing unless they had probably cause to do so. RS: Well, you know, it's interesting you bring up the Founders. Because the cheap argument that's made by the national security establishment, in terms of security, is that the Founders never faced threats that we do today.
Because power corrupts, and even though they were going to be the power in the new government, they were worried about their own corruption by it, and they wanted the citizens to be armed against their own lying and distortion. And we get, now, we're the most powerful nation in the world--you know that; you worked in the military ever since you were a young Pennsylvania State University graduate.
WB: Yeah, that's true. In fact, if the capacity that they had to spy on people existed back then, our Founders wouldn't have made it to first base. ] They would have been picked up right away. So, but the real point is, and one of the reasons why we have successful terrorist attacks both here and around the world, is because they're taking in too much data. What that means is, their analysts are so buried in the data that they can't figure out any threats.
This has been published by The Intercept in May of 2015, they published an article where they were listing different--and they had the backup documents for the articles written by NSA analysts, inside NSA--this was Edward Snowden's material. And some of the titles of it were, "killed by overflow," or "data is not intelligence," you know, and "buried in intercept," and you know, all kinds of things.
The "praising not knowing," and things like that; all talking about, analysts can't figure things out because there's too much they're asked to do. WB: --exactly, yeah, exactly. But the consequence of that, Bob, is people have to die first before they find out who committed the crime. Then they focus on them, and they can do real well.
But if you've noticed, every time that's happened, they've always said, oh, yeah, we knew these people were bad people, and we had data on and information on them, and they were targets. Well, if that was true, why didn't you stop them, You should have been focusing on them, instead of looking at everybody on the planet.
RS: Well, you know, that's an important point you make that people very often ignore or don't know about. Apple is acting as some kind of a terrible watchdog and not letting us at the code. You have been one of the pioneers in encryption; you're a mathematician, you know all about breaking codes, you know all about protecting people's freedom. WB: Well, I just think that's a false issue.
0 Comments