Thomas Drake, NSA whistleblower speaks on his own ordeal & Snowden.

[mother earth]

Thomas Andrews Drake (born 1957) is a former senior official of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, computer software expert, linguist, management and leadership specialist, and whistleblower.

Listen to Thomas Drake, NSA whistleblower who followed “the chain of command”, he speaks of the NSA having foreknowledge that could’ve prevented 911 (Trailblazer multi-billion dollar fraud), safeguards being stripped from ThinThread thereby changing surveillance to one that violates the Constitution, bypassing Congressional approval simply because they rightly assumed they’d be denied.

His expertise in East Germany tactics made him realize the criminality of NSA tactics.

If you have any doubt about Snowden, if you ignore Binney (another NSA whistleblower), hear from Drake in regard to real threats ignored, while the zeal for domestic surveillance takes a criminal turn, if that doesn’t make you think, perhaps the incredibly wasteful multi-billion dollar funding does?

Mind you, at the time there were only a few dozen people who actually knew the scope of NSA tactics, Drake tells us why he decided to come forward and the results of doing so.

The next video is of Drake defending Snowden against criticism from the left.

[mother earth]

1. Drake gives you a privacy exercise:

And I run this exercise, what I call a privacy exercise with people. And every single time I have them do the privacy exercise, it's always the same response. If I say take your entire life, all your passwords and all your accounts and all your credit cards and every email address, and put it into a box, drive to the other side of town, knock on the door of a perfect stranger, but a fellow citizen, and say, here, I'm giving you this box for safekeeping, would you do it? Everybody to date has said, of course not. And then I ask, why not? Well, because I don't trust them. So then I say, well, if you don't trust your fellow citizen, then why would you trust the government in secret, without your consent--without your consent, I want to reemphasize--with learning everything there is to know about you? Well, and then they kind of look at you funny and say, oh, I never thought about it quite that way.

That's what we're facing. And as we saw during the Nixon administration, the ability of the government to abuse and misuse that kind of information is just--without controls, without checks, without the ability to provide legitimate and fundamental oversight, well, then we have a scenario where the government's out of control in its ability to know everything there is to know about all of its people.

And that's why I speak out. That's why I've called, you know, for a new American Revolution. I don't want to live--I lived the past five years of my life, from 2006 until 2011, under the boot of the surveillance state. I know exactly what it's like to have your life turned inside out and everything there is to know about your life and every account and all your email and everything else being taken in by the government to figure out why you're such a bad guy, and then having information framed to make you look bad for their own purposes, or what it's like to have FBI agents sitting in parked cars at the end of your street monitoring your every physical move. And as they told me during my cooperative period with them, we knew when you left home in the morning, we know what vehicles you use, we knew where you stopped, we knew when you got to work, we knew when you left work. We knew everywhere you're going, Mr. Drake, with rare exception. Is that the kind of life we want to live as citizens, whether it's in the United States or overseas? I don't. And that's why I resisted.

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11264

[neffernin]

7. Am I missing something?

Or are you saying that the NSA has collected AND analyzed all of this data? Or just a very small portion of it? If they've managed to analyze that much data to the point where they have "your entire life, all your passwords and all your accounts and all your credit cards and every email address" then god damn they deserve the money they get because that's downright amazing.

Not agreeing with what they are doing at all, but data mining is not that advanced yet. Its getting closer every day though.

[mother earth]

8. See that's the perceived and accepted thought, they don't have that ability, but the NSA

whistleblowers say otherwise. This is what is yet to be determined, IMHO, and perhaps what is yet to be revealed. Everyone who knows through their inside knowledge and because they work in NSA, all of them, are saying much more is yet to be revealed. We don't even have the full scope of what has been taking place at this point.

I don't try to convince anyone, let's wait and see what is revealed along the way. There's a reason why they compartmentalize the NSA, and any intelligence community environment, it's easier to get people to conform when they don't realize the impact their actions are having. There's also a reason why lifelong NSA employees are becoming whistleblowers, putting all they've worked their entire lives at risk...these are career men coming forward, they know the consequences of their actions. Yet they choose to end their association and reveal what they know to be criminal.

[Titonwan]

2. Thanks, mother earth

K&R

[iamthebandfanman]

3. Dont have time to watch it this minute

but will later...

wondering..
does he say anything about giving intelligence information to foreign governments?

that's my only problem with Snowden.. if he had kept himself a whistleblower to the American people about domestic spying, hed probably have even more support on DU..

[mother earth]

4. Foreign gov'ts spying on each other is nothing new, it is addressed. nt

[90-percent]

5. "NSA withheld evidence that could have prevented 9-11"

And somebody decided to withhold it so the neocons could get their "NEW PEARL HARBOR"

The GWB White House is guilty of Treason and Murder! And the jerk gets to paint cats for the rest of his miserable life!

-90% Jimmy

[saidsimplesimon]

6. Also, his self portraits in the tub

GWB worst President ever, history can not be rewritten.

"And the jerk gets to paint cats for the rest of his miserable life!"