SF Gate, July 17, 2013
EXCERPT...
Q: What do you make of Edward Snowden’s actions?
A: With regard to the information he released on domestic surveillance, I consider him a whistleblower. He revealed details of massive violations by the NSA of the privacy rights of all Americans. The NSA has no constitutional right to secretly obtain the telephone records of every American citizen on a daily basis, subject them to sophisticated data mining and store them forever. It’s time government officials are charged with criminal conduct, including lying to Congress, instead of going after those exposing the wrongdoing.
Q: What has changed the most about the NSA since your last book, “The Shadow Factory,” came out in 2008?
A: The agency has expanded enormously, in terms of size, power and invasiveness since “The Shadow Factory” was published. As I wrote in my Wired magazine cover story last year, the agency has been going on a massive building spree, expanding eavesdropping locations around the world, including one for 4,000 intercept operators at its facility near Augusta, Ga. In addition, it is in the process of building a gigantic one million square-foot surveillance center in Utah where it will store billions of records, phone calls, email and Google searches, many of them involving Americans.
The agency has also increased enormously in power. In my current July 2013 cover story in Wired, I write about Gen. Keith Alexander, the director of NSA, and how he has become the most powerful figure in the history of American intelligence. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign or the depth of his secrecy. As a four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the U.S. Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force and the Second Army.
SNIP...
Q: In “The Shadow Factory,” you wrote that the NSA’s watch list — “of people, both American and foreign, thought to pose a danger to the country” — once had only 20 names on it, then rose to “an astonishing half a million.” Do you know what the figure is now?
A: The Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list, known as TIDE, now contains about 875,000 names.
CONTINUED...
http://blog.sfgate.com/bookmarks/2013/07/01/interview-with-nsa-expert-james-bamford/
PS: Thanks for grokking where and to whom all the intel, power and money went, thanks to secret goverment spying, 21st century style.
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