This second half continues the review of the noteworthy quotes from the three whistleblowers and their USA Today interview:
Radack: “I consider this to be an unlawful order. While I am glad that we finally have something tangible to look at, this order came from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. They have no jurisdiction to authorize domestic-to-domestic surveillance.” Comment: As we have already asserted, secret warrants from secret judges sitting in secret courts with aoo facets breaking the law.
Drake: “For me, it was material evidence of an institutional crime that we now claim is criminal.”
Radack: ‘Congress has been a rubber stamp, basically, and the judicial branch has been basically shut down from hearing these lawsuits because every time they do they are told that the people who are challenging these programs either have no standing or (are covered by) the state secrets privilege, and the government says that they can't go forward. So the idea that we have robust checks and balances on this is a myth.” Comment: checks and balances is a myth, could not agree more regardless of what the President and his surrogates say.
Radack: “The proof is in the pudding. Last year alone, in 2012, they approved 1,856 applications and they denied none. And that is typical from everything that has happened in previous years. ... I know the government has been asserting that all of this is kosher and legitimate because the FISA court signed off on it. The FISA court is a secret court — operates in secret. There is only one side and has rarely disapproved anything.”
Radack: “Even for people in the know, I feel like Congress is being misled.”
Drake: “But see, I am Exhibit No. 1. ...You know, I was charged with 10 felony counts. I was facing 35 years in prison. This is how far the state will go to punish you out of retaliation and reprisal and retribution. ... My life has been changed. It's been turned inside, upside down. I lived on the blunt end of the surveillance bubble. ... When you are faced essentially with the rest of your life in prison, you really begin to understand and appreciate more so than I ever have — in terms of four times I took the oath to support the Constitution — what those rights and freedoms really mean. ... “
Drake: “Well, I feel extraordinary kinship with him [Snowden], given what I experienced at the hands of the government.”
Radack: “I would thank him for taking such a huge personal risk and giving up so much of his life and possibly facing the loss of his life or spending it in jail. Thank him for doing that to try to help our country save it from itself in terms of exposing dark, illegal, unethical, unconstitutional conduct that is being done against millions and millions of people.”
Binney: “Two basic principles you have to use. [to collect data on potential terrorists and protect the Fourth Amednment] ... One is what I call the two-degree principle. If you have a terrorist talking to somebody in the United States — that's the first degree away from the terrorist. And that could apply to any country in the world. And then the second degree would be who that person in the United States talked to. So that becomes your zone of suspicion. And the other one (principle) is you watch all the jihadi sites on the Web and who's visiting those jihadi sites, who has an interest in the philosophy being expressed there. And then you add those to your zone of suspicion. Everybody else is innocent — I mean, you know, of terrorism, anyway.” Comment: reasonable approach to keeping freedom intact and the citizens secure in this age of terrorism which we do not want to morph into the age of liberty destruction.
Drake: “It's been within our capabilities [to operate with these liberty safeguards] for well over 12 years.” Comment: which raises the obvious question: why were these safeguard capabilities not used?
Drake: ‘This (kind of surveillance) is all unnecessary. It is important to note that the very best of American ingenuity and inventiveness, creativity, had solved the major challenge problem the NSA faced: How do you make sense of vast amounts of data, provide the information you need to protect the nation, while also protecting the fundamental rights that are enshrined in the Constitution?” Comment: which gets us back to the old saying: just because you can does not mean you should. Just because you can collect and store EVERY piece of electronic communications from every American, the vast, vast amount are innocent of any wrongdoing does not mean you should, especially when more effective and targeted approaches are available.
Binney: “But when it comes to these data, the massive data information collecting on U.S. citizens and everything in the world they can, I guess the real problem comes with trust. That's really the issue. The government is asking for us to trust them.“
Binney: “It's not just the trust that you have to have in the government. It's the trust you have to have in the government employees, (that) they won't go in the database — they can see if their wife is cheating with the neighbor or something like that.” Comment: that this is the second major flaw in this strategy of secretly tracking everyone: not only is it unnecessary but the potential for abuse by government employees and government politicians is immense with very little positive benefit back to society.
Wow, scary and fascinating stuff. I applaud these newly identified whistle blowers and the others, Edward Snowden, Maxine Walters, and Shia LaBeouf who also have done their part in exposing the massive attack on privacy and Fourth Amendment rights in this country. They have sacrificed personal and professional safety and careers to do the right thing.
There is a way to do this electronic surveillance without persecuting, tracking, and spying on every Americans’ communications like Big Brother would do in an Orwellian world. These experts have shown how to do it. Do we want to allow the non-experts in Congress and the White House to convince us that their creepy and all surveillance all the time approach is the only effective way to fight terrorism?
I for one would trust these brave whistleblower experts way before I would trust a Washington politician, given their recent and historical tendency to just plain out lie to our faces. That is why we continue to focus on the need for term limits for Washington politicians. They have gotten use into this liberty sapping situation for reasons that we now know from these data systems experts is totally unnecessary.
Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:
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Please visit the following sites for freedom:
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org
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http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w
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