Washington's Blog is running a two-part exclusive interview with former NSA senior executive Thomas Drake this weekend and, to put it mildly, it's pretty damning...
[Diarist's Note: Washington's Blog permits reproduction of its posts in their entirety, per disclosures on the top page of their website.]
EXCLUSIVE REPORT: Senior NSA Executive: NSA Started Spying On Journalists in 2002 … In Order to Make Sure They Didn’t Report On Mass Surveillance
Posted on June 13, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog
The Story of NSA’s “First Fruits” Program Has Never Been Told
You may have heard about the government’s spying on the Associated Press. And high-level NSA whistleblower Bill Binney told Washington’s Blog that the government also spied on Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter James Risen, and chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen.
But Senior NSA executive Thomas Drake tells Washington’s Blog that the spying on reporters started 12 years ago – in 2002 – and has been fairly systematic.
By way of background, Drake had championed the “ThinThread” program, which automatically encrypted Americans’ data (data could only be decrypted after a court found there was probable cause that the American was a bad guy).
But after 9/11, NSA instead adopted the competing “Stellar Wind” system, which didn’t protect Americans’ privacy, and was less effective and more expensive.
THOMAS DRAKE: Part of what I discovered is that part of the surveillance system, part of the Stellar Wind system – and that’s an umbrella term in itself – there were offshoots of that.
It metastasized. It grew like a cancer on the body politic.
One of the things that was done was [along the lines of]: “You know what? We’ve got to make sure” (because they were paranoid) “we’ve got to make sure that this stuff doesn’t get out … oh yeah, the press. Let’s violate the Fourth Amendment and just monitor the press.”
The whole story of that has not come out.
There was a program called “First Fruits.” They’ve no doubt changed the name of the program [since then.]
And that First Fruits program was a cutout which was designed from all of the domestic surveillance take. “Let’s just pipe off from all” that is involving designated [reporters] … or in some cases whole groups of reporters and journalists.
So you’re targeting actual newspapers. You’re targeting media outlets.
And you’re monitoring – on a persistent basis – their communications.
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: How early did that start?
THOMAS DRAKE The preliminary version of that – as far as an active program – was in 2002.
Postscript: Sadly, journalists are treated like the enemy in modern America.
Look below the "fold" for more from this weekend's exclusive Washington's Blog interview of Thomas Drake...
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EXCLUSIVE: Senior NSA Executive: OF COURSE They’re Collecting Everyone’s Content, As Well As Metadata
Posted on June 13, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog
The Government’s “Limited Hangout” In Mass Surveillance
The NSA claims that it only collects our “metadata”, and not our content.
Washington’s Blog called senior NSA executive Thomas Drake and asked him whether it’s only metadata we have to worry about, or whether the government is collecting our content as well.
Initially, Drake explained that admitting to metadata collection is simply a “limited hangout” by the NSA: admission of one small piece of the puzzle which Snowden’s documents already reveal, in order to hide the bigger picture of mass spying on all Americans.
WASHINGTON’S BLOG: NSA apologists claim that the agency is just collecting metadata and not content.
NSA whistleblowers Bill Binney and Russ Tice – and Tim Clemente from the FBI and a lot of other people – say that they’re recording all content, and that’s why they’re building the massive data storage facility at Bluffdale, Utah. [Background See here, here and here.]
What do you think?
THOMAS DRAKE: Simple response. I’ve been by Bluffdale [and it's huge.] I call it the “dark cloud on the ground.” It’s the dark digital cloud that’s sited on the ground.
And you don’t build a facility of that size if it’s all about metadata.
I could put the metadata of the world – with current technology – in less than the space of an average size house.
In fact, I could essentially put the metadata of the world in a couple of rooms. But we’ll be fair … with infrastructure and racks and all of that, the size of a house. A regular house, maybe 2,500 to 3,000 square feet.
That type of facility [a giant data storage facility like Bluffdale] was in the planning stages many, many years ago, while I was at NSA … in 2002.
It’s far beyond metadata. The technology gave them the ability to store everything that they collected.
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