PART I...Hedges and BINNEY DEBATE COMING!

[KoKo]

http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11321

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http://therealnews.com/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=11321

FOR LOW BANDWIDTH DU'ERS....here's Pt. 2...for Transcript...you can get Pt. 1 Transcript just hitting the link:

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PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome back to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore. And this is Reality Asserts Itself.
In a few days, President Obama's going to announce his new policies regarding NSA telephone and data gathering. And in part one of this series of interviews, we talked about the nature of the problem, what's been going on with NSA gathering, which is essentially, in many people's opinion, unconstitutional, illegal, which means some people have committed criminal acts, which they are not--and it looks like they will not they will not, at least not by this administration, be held accountable, because, as it was pointed out in part one, it's--the leading members of this administration are up to their eyeballs in it.
Well, without much hope President Obama is going to either watch this interview--and if he is, follow any of the advice--we're going to give it to him anyway.
Now joining us are two gentlemen who've been in the middle of this debate. First of all, Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a senior fellow at the Nation Institute, and author of many best-selling books, including Days of Distraction, Days of Revolt. And he writes regularly for Truthdig.
And William Binney, who is the former technical director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group and a senior NSA cryptomathematician at the NSA. (I love saying those words. I don't know why.) He worked there for over three decades, until he retired after 9/11 as the agency began to implement domestic spying programs that he says are unconstitutional. He was also a whistleblower in 2002. And he continues to be an outspoken critic of the NSA.
So President Obama, lo and behold, phoned you last night (of course, he didn't, but let's do our imaginary thing), and he said, okay, Bill, tell me what I should be saying. How do I balance constitutional rights, national security interest, and protecting our people and so on? What would you advise?
WILLIAM E. BINNEY, FORMER NSA TECHNICAL DIRECTOR: Well, first of all, we have prepared advice for him and sent that down to the White House.
JAY: Who's we?
BINNEY: The collective group of four whistleblowers from NSA--Kirk Wiebe, and Ed Loomis, Tom Drake, and myself--also Diane Roark, a former House Intelligence Committee staffer, who managed the NSA account, we all chipped in and put in some advice to the president as to some of the things he should be doing, as opposed to the 46 points that were prepared for him by the other--.
JAY: And what are the highlights of what you recommended?
BINNEY: There were two main issues. One was to do--one was to show or to do a focused collection of information on targets that were really important for international crime or other types of terrorism and things like that. Those kinds of focused target collection are possible, and we in fact had achieved that in a previous program that was killed, but that's the kind of thing they need to really get rid of all of this bulk collection, because all that does is add more data that's not relevant to anything.
JAY: And how do you parse what's to be focused on? How would you know?
BINNEY: Actually, it's really pretty simple. If you know a terrorist or a dope smuggler, then that's a known bad guy. And if you look at who he communicates with, either in email or phone, that's, like, one degree of separation from a known bad guy. Then the next degree out is the second degree, that--who that guy communicates with.
JAY: But what about a situation that took place in England, like the 7/7, when the buses blew up. As far as I can make out, those guys didn't know anybody, and that that--you know, tracing it back from them wouldn't have found them, because I don't think they ever found any connection between the 7/7 guys and any kind of organized network.
BINNEY: Well, see, the other rules that you input other than just the relationships [incompr.] zones of separation is that--look for people who are visiting websites that advocate violence or jihad against the West. And if you see those kinds of [crosstalk]
JAY: And I think in this situation, you would have found that.
BINNEY: Yes. Yeah. Those are the other rules. Other things, other kinds of things, very simply put, are if you have a satellite phone that's coming out of the middle of Afghanistan in the mountains or in the middle of the jungles in Columbia, chances are those are terrorists or drug smugglers.
JAY: It's probably not vacationers. Yeah.
CHRIS HEDGES, SENIOR FELLOW, THE NATION INSTITUTE: Or a foreign correspondent.
BINNEY: Or a foreign correspondent.
JAY: It could be a foreign correspondent.
BINNEY: But you see, okay, the rules go like this, that if you find a foreign correspondent, then you can identify them once you target them and look at them. Then you sort them out. So you do that on a finite number. Now you're not collecting the 7 billion people in the world; you're only down to maybe a few hundred thousand.
JAY: Okay. You had designed--you are--what was it?--a cryptomathematician. I love that. I'm going to keep saying that. So when you were in NSA, you actually designed a program to do exactly what you're saying, and they said no, and you quit. But they must have given you some arguments why they said no. What were their arguments against what you were doing?
BINNEY: They gave me no argument at all, except they just simply rejected the approach. It was just flat-out rejection.
I guess the argument went like this. They had almost 500 contractors working on this other program.
JAY: This--is that Trailblazer?
BINNEY: Yeah, that was Trailblazer. And they had six people, six contractors working on mine. So they said, what do I do? Make six people unhappy or 500? So it's happiness management. And that was the way they made the decision.
JAY: But this also--does this not filter up to a more senior level with some kind of strategy about all this?
BINNEY: This was from the senior level. This was from the senior level.
JAY: But the most senior level.
BINNEY: Exactly. And it came down to an issue of this program solicited billions into the budget; this program didn't.
JAY: And at the political leadership, you said in part one, in terms of Cheney and Bush's motivation, they don't mind Hoover on steroids.
BINNEY: No, they don't. They--in fact, the more information you have, the more power you accumulate to the executive office. And that's what they [incompr.]
JAY: Okay. So recommendation one: it is possible to actually isolate and target real targets and not go after everybody.
BINNEY: And that means that you eliminate the collection of information about the other 7 billion people on the planet, which means you give them privacy. [crosstalk]
JAY: And according to you, it's actually even more effective in terms of finding stuff.
BINNEY: Yes. Right.

[cantbeserious]

1. Thank You For Sharing

eom

[sabrina 1]

2. Everything he said makes so much sense you wonder how things got so out of control.

JAY: Okay. So recommendation one: it is possible to actually isolate and target real targets and not go after everybody.

BINNEY: And that means that you eliminate the collection of information about the other 7 billion people on the planet, which means you give them privacy.

JAY: And according to you, it's actually even more effective in terms of finding stuff.

BINNEY: Yes. Right.

Considering that they missed the Boston Bomber, already on a list of people who was being watched, by Russia eg, who shared information about him, this makes absolute sense. Had then not been watching the rest of us ordering pizza or planning baby showers, maybe they could have focused on HIS activities and the Boston Bombing might never have happened. I know those who support the security state do not like any reference to that total failure, but facts are facts.

[BelgianMadCow]

3. These guys are pretty clear on what time it is

and I find Binney very impressive.