Thomas Drake: Snowden saw what I saw - surveillance criminally subverting the constitution

[jct74]

great editorial by NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake in The Guardian Wednesday, and he puts to rest the notion that taking your concerns up the chain of command or to Congress is going to do any good.



Snowden saw what I saw: surveillance criminally subverting the constitution
So we refused to be part of the NSA's dark blanket. That is why whistleblowers pay the price for being the backstop of democracy

by Thomas Drake
Wednesday 12 June 2013 07.00 EDT

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/6/12/1370992426900/tomdrake_460x276.jpg


What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.

Like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA's lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said:


"The White House has approved the program; it's all legal. NSA is the executive agent."

It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. "You don't understand," I was told. "We just need the data."

In the first week of October 2001, President Bush had signed an extraordinary order authorizing blanket dragnet electronic surveillance: Stellar Wind was a highly secret program that, without warrant or any approval from the Fisa court, gave the NSA access to all phone records from the major telephone companies, including US-to-US calls. It correlates precisely with the Verizon order revealed by Snowden; and based on what we know, you have to assume that there are standing orders for the other major telephone companies.

...

read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/12/snowden-surveillance-subverting-constitution

[Brian4Liberty]

Great article. Worth reading in it's entirety.

[jct74]

Great article. Worth reading in it's entirety.

yeah it is.

[Origanalist]

And here I thought it was all Obama's fault. :rolleyes:

[Brian4Liberty]

Many people have asked why Snowden did not use some "official" whistleblower procedure. Here is a description of the "official" procedure.


I differed as a whistleblower to Snowden only in this respect: in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he's been following this for years: he's seen what's happened to other whistleblowers like me.

By following protocol, you get flagged – just for raising issues. You're identified as someone they don't like, someone not to be trusted. I was exposed early on because I was a material witness for two 9/11 congressional investigations. In closed testimony, I told them everything I knew – about Stellar Wind, billions of dollars in fraud, waste and abuse, and the critical intelligence, which the NSA had but did not disclose to other agencies, preventing vital action against known threats. If that intelligence had been shared, it may very well have prevented 9/11.

But as I found out later, none of the material evidence I disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation.

I reached a point in early 2006 when I decided I would contact a reporter. I had the same level of security clearance as Snowden. If you look at the indictment from 2010, you can see that I was accused of causing "exceptionally grave damage to US national security". Despite allegations that I had tippy-top-secret documents, In fact, I had no classified information in my possession, and I disclosed none to the Baltimore Sun journalist during 2006 and 2007. But I got hammered: in November 2007, I was raided by a dozen armed FBI agents, when I was served with a search warrant. The nightmare had only just begun, including extensive physical and electronic surveillance.

In April 2008, in a secret meeting with the FBI, the chief prosecutor from the Department of Justice assigned to lead the prosecution said, "How would you like to spend the rest of your life in jail, Mr Drake?" – unless I co-operated with their multi-year, multimillion-dollar criminal leak investigation, launched in 2005 after the explosive New York Times article revealing for the first time the warrantless wiretapping operation. Two years later, they finally charged me with a ten felony count indictment, including five counts under the Espionage Act. I faced upwards of 35 years in prison.

[jct74]

this guy has been all over the TV and radio the past week or so.. Fox News and the conservative radio shows I see him and William Binney being interviewed practically every day... God bless them for speaking out so much.

[sailingaway]

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/6/12/1370992426900/tomdrake_460x276.jpg


What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.

Like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA's lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said:

"The White House has approved the program; it's all legal. NSA is the executive agent."

It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. "You don't understand," I was told. "We just need the data."

In the first week of October 2001, President Bush had signed an extraordinary order authorizing blanket dragnet electronic surveillance: Stellar Wind was a highly secret program that, without warrant or any approval from the Fisa court, gave the NSA access to all phone records from the major telephone companies, including US-to-US calls. It correlates precisely with the Verizon order revealed by Snowden; and based on what we know, you have to assume that there are standing orders for the other major telephone companies.

It is technically true that the order applies only to meta-data. The problem is that in the digital space, metadata becomes the index for content. And content is gold for determining intent.

This executive fiat of 2001 violated not just the fourth amendment, but also Fisa rules at the time, which made it a felony – carrying a penalty of $10,000 and five years in prison for each and every instance. The supposed oversight, combined with enabling legislation – the Fisa court, the congressional committees – is all a kabuki dance, predicated on the national security claim that we need to find a threat. The reality is, they just want it all, period.

So I was there at the very nascent stages, when the government – wilfully and in deepest secrecy – subverted the constitution. All you need to know about so-called oversight is that the NSA was already in violation of the Patriot Act by the time it was signed into law.

When I was in the US air force, flying an RC-135 in the latter years of the cold war, I was a German-Russian crypto-linguist. We called ourselves the "vacuum-cleaner of the sky" because our capability to gather information was enormous at the time. But it was always outward-facing; we could not collect on US targets because that was against the law. To the US government today, however, we are all foreigners.

I became an expert on East Germany, which was then the ultimate surveillance state. Their secret police were monstrously efficient: they had a huge paper-based system that held information on virtually everyone in the country – a population of about 16-17 million. The Stasi's motto was "to know everything".

more at link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/12/snowden-surveillance-subverting-constitution

[Carson]

"This executive fiat of 2001 violated not just the fourth amendment, but also Fisa rules at the time, which made it a felony – carrying a penalty of $10,000 and five years in prison for each and every instance."


Times 6,000,000,000 comes to some serious cash.

[sailingaway]

^^That is why FISA had retroactive immunity in it, remember? And why Obama said he would filibuster it if it came to the senate with that in it, remember? And then he voted for it, remember? And this was BEFORE he was given the primary.......much less the election.

[DamianTV]

///

[Working Poor]

Something that is really grinding my gizzard is how much the people who do jobs like Snowden did are getting paid. The contractor charged the gov 200thousand and paid Snowden 120 thousand. I feel greatly abused by those numbers!!

[Occam's Banana]

RT inteviews Thomas Drake (very good):



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff7c0H6ESBA&feature=youtube_gdata

[better-dead-than-fed]

I asked Drake:


Why do you say metadata-collection violates [the Fourth Amendment], when SCOTUS says it doesn't? (http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?417027-Can-you-BELIEVE-this-NYTimes-title-quot-Making-a-Mountain-Out-of-a-Digital-Molehill-quot&p=5063231&viewfull=1#post5063231)

He has not replied. I don't like SCOTUS's position, but I don't see any help in pretending it isn't there.