NSA Whistleblower Thomas Drake Testifies at EU Hearings

[2banon]

The European Parliament/Committees conducted a series of hearings in Brussels last week. Among others, the Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs Committee (LIBE) held several hearings.

Speakers included former NSA Whistle-blower Thomas Drake, gave a riveting testimony specifically summing up what is wrong with the system and why it matters..

It should also be mentioned a statement submitted by Thomas Snowden was read to the committee.

Here's an excerpt from Drake's testimony:

I used to fly as a crypto-linguist on RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft in the greater European theater during the latter years of the Cold War. My primary target of interest was East Germany. The Stasi became monstrously efficient using surveillance to enable their pathological need ‘to know everything’ – their very operating motto. However, I never imagined that the US would use the Stasi playbook as the template for its own state sponsored surveillance regime and turning not only its own citizens into virtual persons of interest, but also millions of citizens in the rest of the world. Do we really want to become subject to and subjects of a secret surveillance state?

In a surveillance state everybody is suspicious and laws protecting privacy and citizen sovereignty are regarded as inconvenient truths bypassed in the name of keeping the rest of us safe and secure as justification for the wanton and surreptitious bulk copy collection and unbridled access to vast amounts of data about our lives. Unfortunately, this surveillance regime has now grown into a globe girdling system that has gone far beyond prosecuting terrorism and other international crimes and wrongdoing.

Your Committee faces the challenge of dealing with a secret hidden shadow surveillance state dissolving the very heart of freedom and liberty and our respective citizen rights and using this power to expand sovereign-free zones – even when it undermines the very fabric of society, breaks trust between nations and endangers the very mechanisms we use for commerce and trade.

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