
Bill Binney: “Things won't change until we put these people in jail” - bootload
http://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2017/02/11/news/usa_nsa_bill_binney_integrale_eng-158062766
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rdtsc
That was a pretty good interview. I read about Binney before Snowden and I
think Snowden knew about him as well. That's why he had to get all that data
out otherwise he would not be believed.

I remember Binney sort being painted as a crazy conspiracy lunatic.

It is interesting how he stood up to them but was afraid for his life for a
bit there. Wonder if he knew of any cases of people being suicided on US soil
by the US govt or just a general precaution. Wonder if anyone from that dept.
would leak anything...

~~~
Cieplak
I'm really grateful that we have folks like Binney thinking about the bigger
picture. It's not as though our government has not made mistakes in the past;
during the Korean War for instance, we killed ~20% of the North Korean
population [1], largely with napalm. That, in my humble opinion, is an
unacceptable civilian casualty ratio. Binney is the kinda guy, were he around
back then, who would have spoken up and said "This ain't right."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio)

~~~
wavefunction
I've watched Binney speak before and I sense very little personal remorse
about his own involvement. Maybe it was just the times I caught his speeches,
but he seemed to be a geek who never really stopped to think about what he was
doing until it was too late.

He was one of the principal forces behind the "Five Eyes" agreement that
"allows" for the end-run around our Constitutional protections, for example.

Still, I find 'purity' useless in the real world and it's important to have
folks like Binney speaking out.

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equalarrow
Sadly, this will never happen and like so many gov documentaries that bring to
light abuses by groups, people will be outraged and then life will happen.

I wish the FBI or relevant body could get their shit together and say "hey, we
really should look into this and do something about it."

:-/

~~~
greenyouse
I agree. Even General Hayden complains about how ridiculously over-classified
the US cyber warfare operations are.[0]

Why can't we have a well informed debate over the new cyber weapons that our
government has developed? I didn't know about operations like Nitro Zeus until
a few days ago. (That's where the US used software to infiltrate Iran's power
grid, radio communications, surface to air missiles, etc. in preparation for
war back in 2009). How are normal citizens supposed to understand the stakes
when we can't even see most of the information? If they were able to do that
attack back in 2009 I shudder to think of what they can do in 2017...

[0][http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/off-message-michael-
ha...](http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/off-message-michael-hayden-
hillary-clinton-2016-221276)

~~~
a3n
> Why can't we have a well informed debate over the new cyber weapons that our
> government has developed?

Because some of these new toys would be denied.

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webmaven
Interesting conclusion:

 _" Would you advise young people to put their talents at the service of the
NSA?"_

 _" I am an advocate of infiltration: joining the ranks of those working and
coming out through the ranks of the administration of that agency, whatever
the agency may be: the CIA, the FBI, whatever. As long as you preserve your
character and integrity, you do the right thing, and that is what we need:
people doing the right thing. It's the only way to change things, in the end.
The other way is to come from the outside and put them in jail"._

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cupantae
Anyone else read the title and think "these people" were bankers?

~~~
erikpukinskis
We don't need to put the bankers in jail (though it would help). We just need
to realize that we no longer need them. We have all the tools we need to have
a Lyft of financial services. Banks are like premium horseshoeing services.
Thanks but horses are a niche market now.

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CharlesW
> _Tom Drake took the software we had for ThinThread, basically after the NSA
> cancelled our programme, and ran it against the entire NSA database in
> February 2002. We found that all the data about the attack was in there,
> where they were going, who they were connecting with, actually even the date
> of the attack: 9 /11._

I'll bet I could design a system to reveal the exact dates of terrorist
attacks after they've happened too.

~~~
riffraff
I think the point was, the data was there but it needed to be identified,
adding more data by spying more random people would not have increased the
chance of this happening.

~~~
mtgx
Yes, the point is that after every attack, the intelligence agencies push the
narrative in the media that it wasn't their fault for not stopping the attack,
but the problem was that _they just didn 't have enough spying powers_.

And usually everyone takes this as fact, and the government ends up giving
them more powers, because "they are the experts, and if they say they the
problem was that they needed more spying powers, then it must be true."

People need to push back against this narrative, and show everyone the facts.
And the facts are that mass surveillance can't stop terrorist attacks [1]. The
attacks that are usually prevented are those where the agencies received some
strong tips that those people were planning something, and only then the
surveillance becomes effective. But they wouldn't need mass surveillance
powers for that. They just need a warrant (a regular one).

[1]
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_f...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/03/data_mining_for.html)

~~~
throwanem
That's not the narrative here. The narrative here is that they _did_ have the
tools they needed to identify the threat in advance, but for reasons basically
of venal nest-feathering corruption those tools were not used, and so the
attack proceeded unhindered.

You've only got Bill Binney's word for it, to be sure. But let's not lose
sight of the matter at hand in the rush to make points which are strongly held
but tangential.

~~~
jessaustin
Binney is currently saying mostly the right things. That isn't to say that his
story is especially believable. His team of heroes developed a system that
"would have worked", had it been used. Yet he also tells us it has been used
quite a bit since then, only with all the human rights protections stripped
out. It seems as though "terrorism" still happens? Also, in future, we ought
to build fewer super-powerful surveillance machines with "To Violate the
Constitution, Press This" buttons.

~~~
asimpletune
I think he said that it didn't work because another feature that got changed
was including all data, instead of relevant data.

~~~
jessaustin
If the system has facilities for classifying data by its "relevance", one
would expect those to be used by those who fired Binney yet arranged for his
system to be installed anyway. If the system relies on only "relevant data"
ever being entered, then it's useless and always was.

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thora
An in depth interview w/ Bill Binney is available here:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3owk7vEEOvs)

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3825
> I hold out very little hope for any of this to change, but we as citizens
> need to keep resisting anyways. Gut some government agencies, cut the
> budgets, stop the revolving door of lobbyists.

I don't like this idea but I respect it. I might even support it. Problem is
that evil people will use this sentiment and turn it around to say they want
to cut taxes so these agencies have less money to spend which leads to smaller
government. Evil people like Ronald Reagan have argued that with starve the
beast and we know how that worked. Please do not support tax cuts in an effort
to gut government agencies. If you want to gut government agencies, do so
directly.

~~~
relics443
"evil people like Ronald Reagan"

I guess it's true that every opinion exists, and they just need a person to
have them.

~~~
croon
I doubt he was evil, but his economic policies did nothing to help the
American people.

~~~
rurban
Ever heard of Nicaragua and Iran Contra?

Even if it can be largely attributed the Bush Sr, Reagan was still President
and ultimately responsible.

The strikers banned for life?

------
jonloldrup
When will open-minded inquiries into 9/11 become non-taboo?

~~~
Hasknewbie
There has already been a thorough inquiry into 9/11
([https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf](https://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report.pdf)).

If any of the conspiracies peddled since then had any credibility, Russia,
Iran, and China would have been all over it. Get real.

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charleshmorse
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homomorphic_encryption)

