NSA 'totalitarian,' ex-staffer tells German parliament [View all]

[reorg]

Source: Deutsche Welle

Filed under "top stories", ipj/dr (dpa, AFP), 03.07.2014

A former NSA technical chief has told Germany's parliament that the US agency has become a "totalitarian" mass collector of data. German public broadcasters say the NSA targets individuals who use encryption services.

Former NSA technical head William Binney described the US National Security Agency in Berlin on Thursday as an entity that had abandoned every rule-of-law principle and breached the democratic freedoms of citizens.

Binney was the first American insider to testify to the German Bundestag's newly formed NSA inquiry committee, which is pursuing three questions, including whether German intelligence services had worked with the NSA.

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.

Read more: http://www.dw.de/nsa-totalitarian-ex-staffer-tells-german-parliament/a-17757008

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Much more at the link, including video. Most interesting for all users of encryption and anonymization procedures and software such as TOR was the news from today's hearing in the Bundestag that details of those users such as IP addresses and emails are collected by the NSA's XKeyscore, the source code of which has been leaked to journalists.

Another interesting item in these stories breaking today was that we now have learned the real name of one more German who is under surveillance by the NSA (apart from Angela Merkel):



It is a student in Bavaria, Sebastian Hahn, who was targeted by the NSA because he operated a server as part of Tor, which is used by hundreds of thousands daily.

Out of concern for certain DU rules which have been brought to my attention I like to point out that "Deutsche Welle" is a respectable news source, that the stories are brandnew and due to the fact that they refer to a Bundestag hearing today (Bundestag is in Germany what Congress is in the US) they report on a current event and are not "background stories", although the NSA and their tool XKeyscore has been subject of other news stories throughout the past year. I consider the story also of great national interest for the US, given that not only was a US citizen and former highly placed individual at the NSA, William Binney, the main witness at the hearing today, but also due to the nature of his remarks.

The news has been reported in other informative reports. Russia Today, for instance, came out with a good article which I suggest for everyone to find and read. However prejudiced one may be towards Russian state media, this report is very good and basically just translates what has been reported today in Germany.