Whistleblower William Binney: 'The NSA's main motives are power, control and money'

[Ichingcarpenter]

Whistleblower William Binney recently made headlines when he told the German parliament that the NSA, his former employer, had become "totalitarian." DW spoke to him about NSA overrreach and the agency's power.


DW: In your testimony, you described the NSA as "totalitarian," and many commentators say that Germany's Stasi history has made the country more sensitive to NSA revelations. But others have suggested this comparison is too easy. After all, the Stasi also targeted intellectuals and general writers opposed to the East German regime.

Sure, they haven't gone that far yet, but they tried to shut down newspaper reporters like Jim Risen who is fighting legal action by the Department of Justice to testify against an alleged source - the eds..

Look at the NDAA Section 1021, that gave President Obama the ability to define someone as a terrorist threat and have the military incarcerate them indefinitely without due process. That's the same as the special order 48 issued in 1933 by the Nazis, the so-called Reichstag Fire Decree. Read that - it says exactly the same thing.


These were totalitarian processes that were instituted. And it's not just us - it's happening around the world. Totalitarianism comes in the form first of knowledge of people and what they're doing, and then it starts to transition into using that power against people.

That's what's happening - in terms of newspaper reporters, in terms of crimes. That's a direct violation of our constitution.


But surely the difference is that there was an ideological regime behind the Stasi and the Nazis.
You mean like putting people like John Kiriakou in prison for exposing torture [the former CIA officer was the first to discuss waterboarding of terrorism suspects with the press. He is serving a 30-month prison term for leaking the name of an undercover agency operative to a reporter - the eds.], and giving the torturers immunity?


That's what our country's coming to. That's what we did. That's disgraceful. The motives of totalitarian states are not exactly the same every time, but they're very similar: power, control and money.



http://www.dw.de/binney-the-nsas-main-motives-power-and-money/a-17862571

[navarth]

1. Sadly, I must agree. nt

[starroute]

2. Fascist ideology isn't the relevant part

A couple of weeks ago, the phrase "It Can't Happen Here" was running through my head -- so I decided to check out what Wikipedia had to say about the 1935 Sinclair Lewis novel with that title, which was the origin of the phrase.

What struck me in particular in what I quote below was (1) how familiar it all sounds, (2) that critics have seen it as a weakness that it depicts the totalitarian regime as American-style corporatism without any fascist ideological basis, and (3) that it's still too controversial to appear on US television without turning it into a story about man-eating reptilianoids from Sirius.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here

Published during the rise of fascism in Europe, the novel describes the rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a populist United States Senator who is elected to the Presidency after promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and traditional values. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force, in the manner of Adolf Hitler and the SS. ...

Though having previously foreshadowed some authoritarian measures in order to reorganize the United States government, Windrip rapidly outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the Minute Men, who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of Windrip and his "corporatist" regime. One of his first acts as President is to eliminate the influence of the United States Congress, which draws the ire of many citizens as well as the legislators themselves. The Minute Men respond to protests against Windrip's decisions harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets. In addition to these actions, Windrip's administration, known as the "Corpo" government, curtails women's and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by "Corpo" authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minute Men officers. Those accused of crimes against the government appear before kangaroo courts presided over by "military judges". Despite these dictatorial measures, a majority of Americans approve of them, seeing them as necessary though painful steps to restore American power. Others, those less enthusiastic about the prospect of corporatism, reassure themselves that fascism cannot "happen here"; hence the novel's title. ...

Keith Perry argues that the key weakness of the novel is not that he decks out American politicians with sinister European touches, but that he finally conceives of fascism and totalitarianism in terms of traditional American political models rather than seeing them as introducing a new kind of society and a new kind of regime. Windrip is less a Nazi than a con-man-plus-Rotarian, a manipulator who knows how to appeal to people's desperation, but neither he nor his followers are in the grip of the kind of world-transforming ideology like Hitler's National Socialism. ...

Inspired by the book, director–producer Kenneth Johnson wrote an adaptation titled Storm Warnings in 1982. The script was presented to NBC for production as a television miniseries, but NBC executives rejected the initial version, claiming it was too cerebral for the average American viewer. To make the script more marketable, the American fascists were re-cast as man-eating extraterrestrials, taking the story into the realm of science fiction. The revised story became the miniseries V, which premiered May 3, 1983.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Ichingcarpenter.

[KoKo]

4. Recommend...