Snowdon is a dummy

.it will be mentioned in only the most general terms.

There is a difference (and I believe you know it) between surveillance and Bulk data collecting which has done little to catch terrorist.

Quote:

.it will be mentioned in only the most general terms.

Nonsense the government have a long long history of shouting from the roof top anything that made them look good.

And if the surveillance has been effective in doing that...it will be mentioned in only the most general terms.

Baloney.

Top security experts agree that mass surveillance is ineffective … and actually makes us MORE vulnerable to terrorism.

For example, the former head of the NSA’s global intelligence gathering operations – Bill Binney – says that the mass surveillance INTERFERES with the government’s ability to catch bad guys, and that the government failed to stop 9/11, the Boston Bombing, the Texas shootings and other terror attacks is because it was overwhelmed with data from mass surveillance on Americans.

Binney told Washington’s Blog:


A good deal of the failure is, in my opinion, due to bulk data. So, I am calling all these attacks a result of “Data bulk failure.” Too much data and too many people for the 10-20 thousand analysts to follow. Simple as that. Especially when they make word match pulls (like Google) and get dumps of data selected from close to 4 billion people.

This is the same problem NSA had before 9/11. They had data that could have prevented 9/11 but did not know they had it in their data bases. This back then when the bulk collection was not going on. Now the problem is orders of magnitude greater. Result, it’s harder to succeed.


Expect more of the same from our deluded government that thinks more data improves possibilities of success. All this bulk data collection and storage does give law enforcement a great capability to retroactively analyze anyone they want. But, of course,that data cannot be used in court since it was not acquired with a warrant.

Binney and other high-level NSA whistleblowers noted last year:


On December 26, for example, The Wall Street Journal published a lengthy front-page article, quoting NSA’s former Senior Technical Director William Binney (undersigned) and former chief of NSA’s SIGINT Automation Research Center Edward Loomis (undersigned) warning that NSA is drowning in useless data lacking adequate privacy provisions, to the point where it cannot conduct effective terrorist-related surveillance and analysis.

A recently disclosed internal NSA briefing document corroborates the drowning, with the embarrassing admission, in bureaucratize, that NSA collection has been “outpacing” NSA’s ability to ingest, process, and store data – let alone analyze the take.

Indeed, the pro-spying NSA chief and NSA technicians admitted that the NSA was drowning in too much data 3 months before 9/11:


In an interview, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, the NSA’s director … suggested that access isn’t the problem. Rather, he said, the sheer volume and variety of today’s communications means “there’s simply too much out there, and it’s too hard to understand.”

***

“What we got was a blast of digital bits, like a fire hydrant spraying you in the face,” says one former NSA technician with knowledge of the project. “It was the classic needle-in-the-haystack pursuit, except here the haystack starts out huge and grows by the second,” the former technician says. NSA’s computers simply weren’t equipped to sort through so much data flying at them so fast.

She added that the report did not contradict findings of groups that have concluded that “the domestic bulk call record program has not helped stop an act of terrorism.” But she noted that the report “does importantly acknowledge that there are additional steps that the intelligence community can take to increase transparency, improve oversight, and limit the use of information collected.”

BUT...as we all know...whether the collections are effective or not...has nothing to do with whether or not Edward Snowden stole secret government documents and released them to unauthorized people.

He is charged with that...not with anything that has to do with the efficacy of the gathering.

If he wants to return to the United States, rather than living in a country free from such intrusions into personal data, like Russia, I want him to get a fair trial on those charges.

I am willing to leave the decisions up to the intelligence experts...and to the courts who rule on whether it can be done or not.

'm not charged with anything, Bill.

I'm not charged with anything, Bill.

Edward Snowden has three serious charges pending against him. But he is tucked away safe in a much less intrusive society over in Russia.

If he ever does come back there, though, I will demand that he be given a fair trial.

He deserves it.

The European Union's legislature has called for member states to protect US surveillance whistle-blower Edward Snowden from possible extradition.

The European Parliament voted in a narrow 285-281 vote at a plenary session in Strasbourg, France, a non-binding resolution that calls for all criminal charges against Snowden to be dropped.

The legislature described Snowden in a statement as an "international human rights defender".