News of Mass Internet Spying Explains NSA Whistleblower Resignation, Ashcroft Hospital Room Showdown

The latest disclosures from NSA documents leaked by Edward Snowden to The Guardian show the U.S. government collected bulk "metadata" on the emails of millions of Americans for about 10 years. Under a program that fell under the overall NSA domestic surveillance operation known as "Stellar Wind," the government swept up information including email accounts and IP addresses, but not the contents of the messages themselves. The Obama administration continued the effort after taking office before shutting it down in 2011. The disclosures confirm the claims of William Binney, the career NSA official turned whistleblower. Binney has said the NSA took an electronic surveillance program he developed, ThinThread, and used it to conduct mass surveillance on a national scale.

Ex-US General under Investigation for Leaks

A four-star general who used to be second in command in the United States military is reported to be under investigation for leaking secrets. General James Cartwright was in charge of a computer virus which was used to attack Iran's nuclear facilities. Al Jazeera's Rosiland Jordan reports from Washington.


IF THE GOVERNMENT WASNT DOING THINGS THAT ARE ILLEGAL THERE WOULD BE NO NEED FOR LEAKS OR WHISTLEBLOWERS - DONT KILL THE MESSENGER - DISSOLVE THE US GOVT AND REPLACE THEM WITH HONEST PATRIOTIC CHRISTIAN AMERICANS - NO MORE PROGRESSIVES

NSA Whistleblowers: "All U.S. Citizens" Targeted By Surveillance Program, Not Just Verizon Customers

http://www.democracynow.org - A leaked court order has revealed the Obama administration is conducting a massive domestic surveillance program by collecting telephone records of millions of Verizon customers. The Guardian newspaper published a classified order issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court directing Verizon's Business Network Services to give the National Security Agency electronic data, including all calling records on an "ongoing, daily basis." The order covers each phone number dialed by all customers, along with location and routing data, and with the duration and frequency of the calls, but not the contents of the communications. We're joined by Shayana Kadidal, senior managing attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and two former National Security Agency employees turned whistleblowers: Thomas Drake and William Binney. In 2010, the Obama administration charged Drake with violating The Espionage Act after he was accused of leaking classified information to the press about waste and mismanagement at the agency. The charges were later dropped. "Where has the mainstream media been? These are routine orders, nothing new," Drake says. "What's new is we're seeing an actual order and people are somehow surprised by it. The fact remains that this program has been in place for quite some time it was actually started shortly after 9/11. The PATRIOT Act was the enabling mechanism that allowed the United States government in secret to acquire subscriber records from any company." Binney, who worked at nearly 40 years at the NSA and resigned shortly after the 9/11 attacks, says: "NSA has been doing all this stuff all along and it's been all the companies not just one. And I basically looked at that and said if Verizon got one, so did everybody else. Which means that, they're just continuing the collection of this kind of information of all U.S. citizens."