PBS NewsHour: "Mass Surveillance REDUCES Our Ability to Stop Terror Attacks"

Ex-NSA Analysts on Their Top-Secret Discoveries
PBS NEWS HOUR:



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NSA Whistleblower: Government Failed to Stop Boston Bombing Because It Was Overwhelmed with Data from Mass Surveillance On Americans
Posted on November 1, 2013 by WashingtonsBlog

Mass Surveillance REDUCES Our Ability to Stop Terror Attacks

The former head of the NSA’s global intelligence gathering operations – William Binney – says that the current spying program not only violates Americans’ privacy, but sucks up so much data that it INTERFERES with the government’s ability to catch bad guys.
In the following brief excerpt from an interview by PBS NewsHour, Binney explains that over-the-top spying actually interfered with the government’s ability to stop the Boston bombing:

AND:

Israeli-American terrorism expert Barry Rubins points out:

What is most important to understand about the revelations of massive message interception by the U.S. government is this:

In counterterrorist terms, it is a farce. Basically the NSA, as one of my readers suggested, is the digital equivalent of the TSA strip-searching an 80 year-old Minnesota grandmothers rather than profiling and focusing on the likely terrorists.

There is a fallacy behind the current intelligence strategy of the United States, the collection of massive amounts of phone calls, emails, and even credit card expenditures, up to 3 billion phone calls a day alone, not to mention the government spying on the mass media. It is this:


If one looks at the great intelligence failures of the past, these two points quickly become obvious. Take for example the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. U.S. naval intelligence had broken Japanese codes. They had the information needed to conclude the attack would take place. Yet a focus on the key to the problem was not achieved. The important messages were not read and interpreted; the strategic mindset of the leadership was not in place.

So what needs to be in place, again, is to focus on the highest priority material, to analyze correctly what is available, to have leaders accept it, and to act.

If, however, the material is almost limitless, that actually weakens a focus on the most needed intelligence regarding the most likely terrorist threats. Imagine, for example, going through billions of telephone calls even with high-speed computers rather than, say, following up a tip from Russian intelligence on a young Chechen man in Boston who is in contact with terrorists or, for instance, the communications between a Yemeni al-Qaida leader and a U.S. army major who is assigned as a psychiatrist to Fort Hood.

That is why the old system of getting warrants, focusing on individual email addresses, or sites, or telephones makes sense, at least if it is only used properly. Then those people who are communicating with known terrorists can be traced further. There are no technological magic spells.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2013/11/nsa-whistleblower-government-failed-to-stop-boston-bombing-because-it-was-overwhelmed-with-data-from-mass-surveillance-on-americans.html