Watched: 36 Years at the NSA, a year of Whistleblowing, Months-long Legal Battle

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Produced by: 
KBOO
Program:: 
Air date: 
Fri, 10/24/2014 - 10:00am to 10:15am
Interview with William Binney

William Binney, Kirk Wiebe, Ed Loomis, Diane Roark, Thomas Drake

Here is some interesting material a
and here is the Link to Jane Mayer's article that appeared in The New Yorker in May 2011
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/05/23/the-secret-sharer
 

Trailblazer Project

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Trailblazer was a United States National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks like the Internet. It was intended to track entities using communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.[1][2]

NSA whistleblowers J. Kirk Wiebe, William Binney, Ed Loomis, and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staffer Diane Roark complained to the Department of Defense's Inspector General (IG) about waste, fraud, and abuse in the program, and the fact that a successful operating prototype existed, but was ignored when the Trailblazer program was launched. The complaint was accepted by the IG and an investigation began that lasted until mid-2005 when the final results were issued. The results were largely hidden, as the report given to the public was heavily (90%) redacted, while the original report was heavily classified, thus restricting the ability of most people to see it.

The people who filed the IG complaint were later raided by armed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. While the Government threatened to prosecute all who signed the IG report, it ultimately chose to pursue an NSA Senior Executive — Thomas Andrews Drake — who helped with the report internally to NSA and who had spoken with a reporter about the project. Drake was later charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. His defenders claimed this was retaliation.[3][4] The charges against him were later dropped, and he agreed to plead guilty to having committed a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something that Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project (which helped represent him) called an "act of civil disobedience".[5]

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