How Many Of You Idiots -

[the other mike]

"When Europeans send their people --- they're not sending you. They're bringing diseases... they're bringing slavery... they're papists.... and some I assume are good people".

 

[MarcATL]

A tantrum so early?

Deflection so early?

 

[MarcATL]

If Al Gore had been president, you would have gone along with whatever schemes he cooked up so don't even pretend you're above the fray, fake negro.

If your uncle was a woman, he'd be your aunt!

 

[OldLady]

ghey

Whats the sense of it?

It was a fad, like a pet rock.

 

[the other mike]

You idiots already opened that door and left it open the moment you supported Shrub II & Co. in their grab for power, in the guise of fighting Mooslims, that allowed them to legally spy on us from then on to forever more.

You should have cried then.

That ship has sailed moron.

You self-professed Conservatives are so damn dumb, you're a danger to life on earth.

The NSA was spying on us before 9/11, during Slick Willy's reign, in case anyone forgot.

 

[AzogtheDefiler]

- still have this thing in your house?

Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time

I do. I like eavesdropping.

Peeping Tom !

LOL I need the binoculars

 

[impuretrash]

You idiots already opened that door and left it open the moment you supported Shrub II & Co. in their grab for power, in the guise of fighting Mooslims, that allowed them to legally spy on us from then on to forever more.

You should have cried then.

That ship has sailed moron.

You self-professed Conservatives are so damn dumb, you're a danger to life on earth.

The NSA was spying on us before 9/11, during Slick Willy's reign, in case anyone forgot.

Clinton and the media took advantage of American ignorance and patriotism to justify his wars which also happened to kill a lot of Muslims. Not too different from GWB.

 

[MarcATL]

The NSA was spying on us before 9/11, during Slick Willy's reign, in case anyone forgot.

Go on...

How were they spying on us at that time?

 

[the other mike]

Clinton and the media took advantage of American ignorance and patriotism to justify his wars which also happened to kill a lot of Muslims. Not too different from GWB.

America was totally sleepwalking in the 80's and 90's. ( and it's worse now) By the time 9/11 happened we basically became shell-shocked and caught off guard completely by it all. But there is a civil war happening behind closed doors on the Hill as we speak between the Constitution side and the dark side, deep state, shadow government or whatever you choose to call it.

 

[impuretrash]

The NSA was spying on us before 9/11, during Slick Willy's reign, in case anyone forgot.

Go on...

How were they spying on us at that time?

Bill couldn't possibly do anything wrong! He's got a D next to his name, see? That proves it!

 

[Dekster]

- still have this thing in your house?

Alexa has been eavesdropping on you this whole time

Alexa is a russian name anyway. What did you expect. They should have called her Bertha.

 

[Billy_Kinetta]

Marge.

 

[the other mike]

The NSA was spying on us before 9/11, during Slick Willy's reign, in case anyone forgot.

Go on...
How were they spying on us at that time?

You could start here...
(it started in the 70's with FBI wiretaps actually)
Take us to before Sept. 11. What were the concerns of the NSA? What was the threat as the NSA viewed it? ...
I probably should start in the late '80s, because that's when the communications and the world started ballooning with cell phones and email and the Internet. And it really started growing in the early '90s.

At that time, that was the time that the [Berlin] Wall fell and the Soviet Union disintegrated. So NSA started looking around: "What's our next target in the world?" And of course the communications ballooning offered opportunities for guys doing illegal activities, like dope smuggling. And eventually terrorists joined in, so they were a part of it. ...

In '97, I became the technical director of the geopolitical -- military geopolitical analysis and reporting shop for the world, which was about 6,000 people. Those were analysts and reporters, the people, not the technicians or the computer people. It was more analyzing the data to figure out what was going on and report it. ...

In '97, I became the technical director of the geopolitical -- military geopolitical analysis and reporting shop for the world, which was about 6,000 people. Those were analysts and reporters, the people, not the technicians or the computer people. It was more analyzing the data to figure out what was going on and report it. ...

But part of the issue was volume, velocity and variety, as the agency put it. ... This is too much data. It's moving too quickly, you know, too many kinds of data; we can't do it.

And in our little group, which we'd formed in the early '90s, '92 I think it was, when Dr. John Taggart and I formed the SIGINT Automation Research Center [SARC]. Then Ed Loomis took John Taggart's place, I think it was in 1995, or somewhere around there, '93 to '95, somewhere in there, when John retired.

At that point, we were still dealing with that major issue. We started to bring that up. And Ed was working on the front end of the program in the SIGINT Automation Research Center. So he was looking at the acquisition of data off the cables and the satellites and the fibers and how to convert it and get it into some database or some process where other people could handle it. And that was what we called the backend. ...

So I started working on the backend, which was to figure out ways of processes that could manage how to look at that data, and manage getting information out that was important for analysts to look at, to write reports, and report on the activity of potential enemies or threats.

Because the problem is, you're getting a massive amounts of material now, and now you've got to figure out which material you're supposed to look at.

Exactly. And that was the whole point. ... And that was the concept: How could we look at tens of terabytes of data per minute and look into it ... without having to look at it? Because if you have to look at it, you'll never get through it. There's just too much.

So the whole idea was to use the metadata around it that identified who communicated with who, so that you could build social networks around the world of everybody and who they communicate with. Then you could isolate all the groups of terrorists and all the groups of drug smugglers and money launderers and all those kind of illegal activities. You could identify those groups. And, once you could do that, you could use that metadata to select that information from all those tens of terabytes going by.

1. So this is the beginning of ThinThread.
   
   Well, we were actually doing it in parts. The ThinThread was the integrated effort at the end, yeah. Yeah. These were the parts to ThinThread.
   
   
2. Tell me a little bit about the culture at the NSA at this point. ... It seemed to be ingrained in the DNA of people at NSA at that point that the thing we do is we target foreign targets. We do not, do not, do not spy on Americans. Explain how that was felt to the core at the NSA. ...

Well, the Church Committee ... basically said, if you pulled in anything that happened to involve U.S. citizens, that you had to go through a check to make sure that it wasn't a violation, first of all, of the acquisition system, and secondly, to get rid of the data in the base and purge it and make sure that you were clean. And everybody religiously followed that. ...
The FRONTLINE Interview: William Binney | United States of Secrets | FRONTLINE | PBS

 

[the other mike]

"No foreign enemy could have done as much harm to us as we've done to ourselves."

 

[Crepitus]

You guys got guilty consciences?

Funny, I kept hearing the same crowd whining "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about".

I've never had one of these devices but apparently what it does is affixes the shoe to the other foot.

I don't have one either, but not because I'm afraid it will spy on me.

 

[Crepitus]

You guys got guilty consciences?

Funny, I kept hearing the same crowd whining "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about".

I've never had one of these devices but apparently what it does is affixes the shoe to the other foot.

Classic attack on privacy.

How? All you gotta do is not buy one.

 

[Rambunctious]

Alexa??? hell no...you may as well have Peter Strzok sitting at your dinning table.....

 

[miketx]

You guys got guilty consciences?

Funny, I kept hearing the same crowd whining "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about".

I've never had one of these devices but apparently what it does is affixes the shoe to the other foot.

Classic attack on privacy.

How? All you gotta do is not buy one.

Fail deflection

 

[Crepitus]

You guys got guilty consciences?

Funny, I kept hearing the same crowd whining "if you have nothing to hide you have nothing to worry about".

I've never had one of these devices but apparently what it does is affixes the shoe to the other foot.

Classic attack on privacy.

How? All you gotta do is not buy one.

Fail deflection

How is that a deflection?

It speaks directly to the topic.

Is it just because you can't support your position without looking foolish now that it has been pointed out?

 

[the other mike]

It may have started in the 60's they say.

Old Maxwell had some little feets like creepy here.

How is that a deflection?

It speaks directly to the topic.

Is it just because you can't support your position without looking foolish now that it has been pointed out?