Former NSA analyst tells Germany that ‘NSA has totalitarian mentality’

While everyone has had their knickers in a knot over Snowden and his revelations, William Binney, a former NSA analyst told us what has been going down years ago. That is why I never bought the story of Snowden as being the operative. I covered this in the post Edward Snowden – the great spy hoax of the century? .

In 2007 Binney’s home was raided by the FBI during a leaks investigation. This week Binney testified before a special committee of the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament, that is looking into the NSA’s spying activities in the country and Germany’s own intelligence services’ complicity in those activities.

Testifying, Binney accused the NSA of having a “totalitarian mentality” and wanting “total information control” over citizens in breach of the US constitution. It was an approach that until now the public had only seen among dictators, he added.

Deutsche Welle reports:. (Worth the full read.)

Mass collection was “senseless” and did not help in counterterrorism, and actually hindered the agency’s capabilities, Binney said.

The NSA represented the “greatest threat” to American society since the US Civil War of the 19th century, Binney added.

German media also report that the NSA targeted Internet users who encrypted data or tried to remain anonymous on the Internet.

Here the filmmaker Laura Poitras profiles William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.