A formerly high-ranking member of the National Security Agency says the FBI’s investigation into former CIA director David Petraeus is proof that digital privacy is nonexistent in America.
“What I’ve been basically saying for quite some time, is that the FBI has access to the data collected, which is basically the emails of virtually everybody in the country,” NSA whistleblower William Binney said in a recent interview with the Kremlin-funded news outlet RT. “And the FBI has access to it.”
Binney is one of several former NSA officials who have recently offered testimony in a lawsuit against the NSA that looks to end the agency’s post-9/11 domestic surveillance effort.
According to his testimony, Binney quit the agency after he came to believe that the NSA’s powers were unconstitutional. Binney says that, through a technology known as “Naris”, the agency is able indiscriminately collect emails and other digital data without having to request the data from providers themselves. According to Binney, if a person is targeted by the agency, the government can then sift through the collected data for clues.
“All the congressional members are on the surveillance too, no one is excluded,” said Binney.
“They are all included,” he said, “So, yes, this can happen to anyone. If they become a target for whatever reason – they are targeted by the government, the government can go in, or the FBI, or other agencies of the government, they can go into their database, pull all that data collected on them over the years, and we analyze it all.”
“So, we have to actively analyze everything they’ve done for the last 10 years at least,” said Binney.
Supreme Court justices John Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito recently criticized the government’s domestic surveillance efforts, which are still officially secret.
The debate over whether law enforcement should require a warrant to access a person’s online communications has already hit the boiling point in the Senate, with the Senate Judiciary Committee voting in favor of increasing consumer email privacy.
The FBI did not immediately return The Daily Caller’s request for comment.