CIA-Sponsored Trolls Monitor Internet & Interact With Users to Discredit Factual Information

Steven Gaal · December 1, 2012

In July of this year it became apparent through a flood of mainstream media reports that the National Security Agency (NSA) was “desperate to hire new hacking talent to protect the nation’s critical infrastructure” yet the NSA is notorious for its surveillance programs on American digital activity.

David Petraeus, former director of the CIA, said at a summit for In-Q-Tel, that he was speculating on the “internet of things” and that “‘Transformational’ is an overused word, but I do believe it properly applies to these technologies . . . particularly to their effect on clandestine tradecraft.”

Petraeus is seeking to better the CIA’s ability to create online identities for undercover spies. Currently, each internet user has a digital footprint that can trace the movements online to the person on the other end of the screen. Petraeus wants to utilize technology that will essentially erase a digital footprint; erasing all traces of anyone at the whim of the CIA.

In a possible preparation for the ability of the CIA to spy on American citizens with their household items, the NSA’s Utah Data Center is located in the Utah desert in the foot hills of the Wasatch mountain range. This is the centerpiece of the Global Information Grid; a military project that collects yottabytes of data. They are listening to every conversation, reading every post, intercepting every text message under the false flag of terrorism.

The facility has the technological ability to record and analyze every communication in the world. From emails to phone calls to text messages to chats; nothing is private anymore.

Based on “threat Levels” the NSA can use all the technology at their disposal to obtain information on:

• Finances

• Stock transactions

• Business deals

• Foreign military

• Diplomatic secrets

• Legal documents

• Personal civilian communications

This information could be used at Fusion Centers for the DHS to create a more efficient profile on each and every American citizen. The implications are staggering. This ability to collect these types of data are a violation of the 4th Amendment guard against unreasonable searches and seizures. By collecting intelligence on every American citizen, the US government is treating everyone as if they were a potential foreign or domestic terrorist. Whether this assumption is valid or not, under the US constitution, Americans are supposed to be protected from intrusion of government; even if that government is their own.

At the same time the NSA spy center was being constructed, Attorney General Eric Holder new guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC). These guidelines will allow the NCTC access to data on American citizens once held under right to privacy. The NCTC will focus on collecting and sharing information; regardless of whether or not there is the threat of terrorism. The will collaborate with local state officials, tribal courts and private partners; as well as the FBI and DHS and other federal agencies.

The Obama administration empowered the NCTC with the authority afforded Obama under Presidential Executive Order 13354. This EO was codified by the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004. The NCTC reports directly to the President and director of National Intelligence as instructed by the President and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Sen. John McCain was integral in the creation of this combination of military strength and governmental power culminating in all-encompassing tyranny.

Both private and public corporations will be employed to mine the data. Silicon Valley and other technology giants in the private sector will have open access to private information on any and all American citizens.

Since the manufactured attack on 9/11, the US government has created a “vast domestic intelligence apparatus” that spies on Americans and collects massive amounts of data to be profiled and used at the discretion of the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), local law enforcement, DHS and military criminal investigators. The FBI and NSA house more than 1.5 billion government and private sector profiles. The information on average citizens includes all sources of criminal and non-criminal databases that assist the US government in creating a filing system on each American.

The NSA has a comprehensive program to search out our schools into scouting grounds for a team of American grown hacker community. The Obama administration has made it a concern of theirs that the future of cybersecurity rest with the college graduates of tomorrow. The NSA is focusing on colleges and universities within the US. Four schools have already been singled out as officialCenters of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations (CAE-COP).

The CAE-COP focuses on recruiting persons with “particular emphasis on technologies and techniques related to specialized cyber operations (e.g., collection, exploitation, and response), to enhance the national security posture of our Nation.”

Those chosen for this program become vital researchers expected to assist the NSA in:

• Global communications and computing networks

• Developing a digital strategic advantage

• Collaboration with the US government on cyber issues

• Carry out directives on designated targets at the discretion of the US government

These “cyber operators” are trained to become an elite team of “computer geniuses” that are experts in computer hacking, digital communications, cyber intelligence – for the purpose of spying on Americans; as well as conducting interactive digital psy-ops with users of the internet.

Earlier this month, Janet Napolitano, in her blog entitled “Inspiring the Next Generation of Cyber Professionals”, would like future generations to learn about cybersecurity so that their contribution to the federal government is secure to “ensure their professional development.” The collaboration of the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency will support “the nation’s educational infrastructure by supporting Centers of Academic Excellence” to make sure that the “scope of cyber education” becomes an important function for those in the field as inspired by theNational Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE).

NICE is meant to “establish an operational, sustainable and continually improving cybersecurity education program for the nation to use sound cyber practices that will enhance the nation’s security.” The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) oversee NICE by providing information and leverage to encourage the development of citizens to become “responsible” when using the Internet.

Beginning in kindergarten, Napolitano hopes that the DHS-sponsored US Cyber Challenge will provide schools, universities and all forms of academia in the private sector the federal government-allocated tools they would need to “develop the best and brightest cyber talent to meet our nation’s growing and changing security needs.”

In 2011, the NICE report entitled, “Shaping the Future of Cybersecurity Education”, explored intercepting children in the public education system, as well as continuing the focus throughout their educational career, there can be a national recruitment and retention process that produces “skilled workers for the private sector and government.”

Napolitano’s Secretary’s Honors Program for Cybersecurity Professionals is meant to recruit college students for the purpose of assimilating their talents into the federal government for “missions including cyber” security as defined by the DHS Advisory Council Task Force on CyberSkills. This focus is to ensemble the most effectual cybersecurity team comprised of civilians, US veterans and those educated specifically in the field of IT technologies. For the sake of national security, DHS is selecting the most technically skilled citizens in the avenues of malware and digital forensic analysis, to participate in the Cybersecurity Internship Program for a 2 year internship that will result in a devotional career in the federal government and service to Big Sis.

In August, the DHS was central in the taking of domain names for websites without due process or explanation – simply using the blanket claim of copyright infringement. Holder and Napolitano received correspondence from several members of the House of Representatives who were in protest of the domain name seizures, citing that the copyright claims were questionable and that the websites were clearly being censored for alternative reasons.

The letter stated that: “Our concern centers on your Department’s methods, and the process given, when seizing the domain names of websites whose actions and content are presumed to be lawful, protected speech.”

According to Lynnae Williams, former CIA clandestine service trainee and DIA analyst, the FBI and CIA use trolls to monitor social media and interact with users to discredit information disseminated on the web. Williams explains that the CIA provides training videos to new recruits on how to xxxxx the internet. Once a target is locked-in, all open source information is obtained on the individual, and then any angle to discredit them in public forum is used on social media sites.

Software is used to sift through the “mountains” of users on social networking sites. At the Atlanta CIA branch where Williams was trained, she personally witnessed CIA-sponsored and sanctioned trolling of Americans on social networking sites.

In 2011, the CIA revealed its Open Source Center where recruited personnel are used as government trolls to “analyze” websites for information pertinent to the objective of the US government – meaning discrediting targets on certain websites. Under the guise of conducting business intelligence (i.e. cyberespionage), the Open Source software gathers digital data on targets; including all Facebook posts, Twitter posts, comments on website threads. Those assigned to monitor this data can interact with users online through anonymous portals. Agents are designated to surveillance operations to message anyone, analyze political and religious speech, assess trends and conduct electronic eavesdropping through cell phones, satellites and other digital apparatus.

Agents not only survey the internet and interact as anonymous persons through directed postings, but also are deployed to wander through the streets domestically and in foreign nations to monitor newspaper and other printed media to extract useful information about the temperament of the general public.

When professional trolls want to attack for copyright infringement, they may combine defamatory comments across the internet with a fraudulent DMCA notice of takedown, to discredit a source of information that they feel threatened by.

The EFF have reported on copyright trolls that experiment with claiming copyright infringement to “extract settlements from individuals.” These trolls “try to grow businesses out of suing Internet users.”

Professional trolls litter the court system with frivolous lawsuits based on wild accusations of copyright infringement in order to wear down the victim as well as hoping to squeeze monetary restitution for fraudulent claims. The members of the alternative media as well as readers need to be aware of these individuals who are cloaked in truth yet rife with disinformation. Their intention is to cut off the free flow of information on the internet and stifle voices that are exposing truth for their own selfish gains.

http://occupycorporatism.com/cia-sponsored-trolls-monitor-internet-interact-with-users-to-discredit-factual-information/

Edited December 1, 2012 by Steven Gaal

Len Colby · December 3, 2012

LOL the author seems to think the CIA is using Internet refrigerators and RFID chips to spy on the American public. That's not what her cited sources said. Ironically one of her sources painted a disturbing vision of what the NSA upto which is in someways worse than what she portrayed.

As for the claim in the title the only source for that was Lynnae Williams.

In other tweets, Williams, who in 2009 spent nearly four months training to be a CIA spy, details her own experiences with CIA case officers, psychiatrists, and the special security division of the agency that serves as the CIA’s police force. In short, Williams since late February has been disclosing details of her brief CIA career in 140 characters or less.

[...]

Williams’s main grievance with the agency revolves around her termination. Williams says that as a trainee in the agency’s national clandestine service, she was sent to Dominion Hospital, a public mental-health facility in northern Virginia. Williams referred to the hospital in the interview and her Twitter feed as the CIA’s “psychological prison.” She said the place had white walls and inedible food, and that doctors there urged her to take Risperdal, a drug commonly prescribed to schizophrenics and Lithium, a drug prescribed to manic depressives.

So she was only a trainee whose career with the agency was very short lived. She definitely has an axe to grind and she might well be crazy.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/29/lynnae-williams-the-cia-spy-who-tweets.html

Bamford article cited by the blogger:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/

Mark Wengler · December 3, 2012

Len have you heard of COINTELPRO??

the N.S.A.’s top-secret domestic spying program

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/opinion/the-national-security-agencys-domestic-spying-program.html

Church Committee Oversight Uncovered FBI Spying on Innocent Americans

http://www.aclu.org/images/asset_upload_file893_29902.pdf

Vietnam-era memo: CIA spying on Americans

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Security-Industry/2007/06/21/Vietnam-era-memo-CIA-spying-on-Americans/UPI-27771182460806/

This government has lied their teeth about spying on its citizens.

Len Colby · December 3, 2012

Len have you heard of COINTELPRO??

the N.S.A.’s top-secret domestic spying program

http://www.nytimes.c...ng-program.html

Church Committee Oversight Uncovered FBI Spying on Innocent Americans

http://www.aclu.org/...le893_29902.pdf

Vietnam-era memo: CIA spying on Americans

http://www.upi.com/B...27771182460806/

This government has lied their teeth about spying on its citizens.

All of what you said is true note that I wrote " Ironically one of her sources painted a disturbing vision of what the NSA [is] upto which is in someways worse than what she portrayed."

But the blogger's reliable sources don't really support her hysterical claims and William's is by no means a reliable source. She was in the CIA for only a few months making it unlikely she would have been privy to such programs if they existed, she has a serious grievance against the agency and she might well be crazy.

Steven Gaal · December 3, 2012

Oh Mr. Wengler ,you dont know how deep COLBY'S love is for the intell community.
Colby uses Miles Kara (consultant JCS) to say there were no problems in Air Defense created by all the TERROR EXERCISES on 911. BUT GOLLY GOLLY looking at the CV of KARA he denied the Army spied on US Citizens !!!
GEE he dosent know history ....or is as I say ,"KARA a long term DOD coverup man."
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
nbc news 2006
Earlier domestic intelligence gathering
The military’s penchant for collecting domestic intelligence is a trend, Christopher Pyle, a former Army intelligence officer, told NBC News when the report was first broadcast.
During the Vietnam War, Pyle revealed the Defense Department monitored and infiltrated antiwar and civil rights protests in an article he published in the Washington Monthly in January 1970.
The public was outraged and a lengthy congressional investigation followed that revealed the military had conducted probes on at least 100,000 American citizens. Pyle got more than 100 military agents to testify that they had been ordered to spy on U.S. citizens — many of them antiwar protesters and civil rights advocates. In the wake of the investigations, Pyle helped Congress write a law placing new limits on military spying inside the U.S.
++++++++++++++++++++ in 2000s
Nearly four dozen antiwar meetings listed
The Defense Department document provides an inside look at how the U.S. military has stepped up intelligence gathering since 9/11. The database includes nearly four dozen antiwar meetings or protests, including some that have taken place far from any military installation, post or recruitment center, according to NBC News’ Lisa Myers, who first wrote about the story in December.
Among those listed were a large antiwar protest in Los Angeles in March 2004 that included effigies of President Bush and antiwar protest banners, a planned protest against military recruiters in December 2004 in Boston, and a planned protest in April 2004 at McDonald’s National Salute to America’s Heroes — a military air and sea show in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The Fort Lauderdale protest was deemed not to be a credible threat, and a column in the database concludes: “U.S. group exercising constitutional rights.” Two-hundred and forty-three other incidents in the database were discounted because they had no connection to the Department of Defense — yet they all remained in the database.
The Department of Defense has strict guidelines (.PDF link), adopted in December 1982, that limit the extent to which it can collect and retain information on U.S. citizens.
Still, the database includes at least 20 references to U.S. citizens or U.S. persons. Other documents obtained by NBC News show that the Defense Department is clearly increasing its domestic monitoring activities. One briefing document stamped “secret” concludes: “[W]e have noted increased communication and encouragement between protest groups using the Internet,” but no “significant connection” between incidents, such as “reoccurring instigators at protests” or “vehicle descriptions.”

Edited December 4, 2012 by Steven Gaal

Len Colby · December 3, 2012

Gaal get back back to us with any confirmation of Lynnae Williams,' claims

Steven Gaal · December 4, 2012

http://www.activistpost.com/2012/12/stellar-wind-whistleblower-reveals-more.html

SEE ABOVE LINK FOR VIDEO AT BOTTOM

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

'Stellar Wind' Whistleblower Reveals More About NSA Domestic Spying

image source Activist Post

Former top NSA mathematician and code breaker, William Binney, has gone on record to publicly reveal the scope of a top-secret surveillance program called Stellar Wind which led to his resignation in 2001. It is a program that has directly targeted everyday Americans following 9/11.

Binney has endured harassment by his own government, as many other whistleblowers have when trying to reveal illegal activities and corruption. Binney has stated that the scope of the data collection conducted by the NSA forms a map that can "show your entire life over time."

In a new video interview with Russia Today posted below, Binney goes on to provide more details in light of the Petraeus/Allen scandal, and discusses Narus devices which can be accessed by agencies like the FBI that can in Binney's words, "collect on the order over one hundred billion one thousand character e-mails a day. One device."

The problem, to this point, has been how to centralize and sift through the massive amount of information collected. The U.S. government, however, has already stated its desire to seek new ways to manage this "big data", ensuring that this data collection can continue.

The NSA is set to complete <a href="http://rt.com/news/utah-data-center-spy-789/">its $2 billion fortress of domestic surveillance by September 2013 that indicates one step toward big data management. It can store 100 years worth of electronic information. But this data collection initiative is not only within the walls of the NSA; it is taking place across the board in our largest federal agencies and departments such as the National Institutes of Health, Department of Defense, National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, the U.S. Geological survey, and DARPA.

The Obama administration through the Office of Science and Technology Policy has announced a $200 million investment in taking this information "from data to decisions." This scientific and national defense endeavor is all-encompassing, as it seeks data input and sharing between government and private companies, such as Amazon, as well as public universities. (Source, PDF)

When Binney spoke to Wired in an article by James Bamford, he explained that the NSA could have focused only on international communications;

Instead it chose to put the wiretapping rooms at key junction points throughout the country—large, windowless buildings known as switches—thus gaining access to not just international communications but also to most of the domestic traffic flowing through the US. The network of intercept stations goes far beyond the single room in an AT&T building in San Francisco exposed by a whistle-blower in 2006. 'I think there’s 10 to 20 of them,' Binney says. 'That’s not just San Francisco; they have them in the middle of the country and also on the East Coast.' (

Source

)

The new NSA facility at Bluffdale, Utah, will have the capability to spy "on every single form of communication, ranging from the entirety of private emails, cell phone calls, Google searches and other Internet activity, to data on travel, parking receipts, purchases at bookstores, and anything and everything they can get their hands on." (Source)

However, rather than feel paranoid or try to hide from the runaway train of surveillance and the increasing number of lists we're all on, Binney offers a piece of sage advice that we all would do well to adopt:

RT:

Were you on the target list?

WB:

Oh, sure! I believe I’ve been on it for quite a few years. So I keep telling them everything I think of them in my e-mail. So that when they want to read it they’ll understand what I think of them

Len Colby · December 5, 2012

Still not seeing any confirmation of Lynnae Williams,' claims, your post above does little more than repeat What was said in te Bamford article.

Steven Gaal · December 5, 2012

William Binney confirms Lynnae Williams,' claims .

http://www.whistleblower.org/program-areas/homeland-security-a-human-rights/surveillance/nsa-whistleblowers-bill-binney-a-j-kirk-wiebe see link for CBS video

NSA Whistleblowers William (Bill) Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe

whistleblower.org

William (Bill) Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe are GAP clients and National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblowers who worked at the agency for decades. A mathematician, Binney worked for the NSA for almost forty years, where he and analyst Wiebe, who worked at NSA in excess of 30 years, developed a revolutionary information processing system called ThinThread that they believe could have detected and prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But NSA officials ignored ThinThread in favor of Trailblazer – a much more expensive program that not only ended in total failure, but cost taxpayers billions of dollars.

Worried about the nation’s ability to protect itself, they blew the whistle on the clear mismanagement surrounding the Trailblazer fiasco, using appropriate channels to share their concerns with Congress and the Department of Defense Inspector General (DoD IG). Despite their efforts, no one was held accountable at NSA for one of the worst intelligence failures in history. Little did they know at the time, Binney and Wiebe would face harsh retaliation from NSA for their efforts to make the truth known.

After the failure of U.S. intelligence to prevent the events of 9/11, the NSA wrongfully applied a component of the ThinThread system to illegally spy on the private communications of U.S. citizens. Unable to stay at the NSA any longer in good conscience, Binney and Wiebe retired in October 2001. After retiring, Binney and Wiebe continued to blow the whistle from outside the agency. GAP provided Binney and Wiebe with legal advice on whistleblowing matters and assisted them with media and public advocacy.

Since that time, Binney and Wiebe have made several key disclosures crucial to the ongoing public debate about America's national security state, such as the first public description of NSA’s massive domestic spying program, Stellar Wind, which intercepts domestic communications without protections for US citizens. Binney revealed that NSA has been given access to telecommunications companies’ domestic and international billing records, and that since 9/11 the agency has intercepted between 15 and 20 trillion communications. Binney further disclosed that Stellar Wind was grouped under the patriotic-sounding “Terrorist Surveillance Program” in order to give cover to its constitutionally-questionable nature.

Background

William (Bill) Binney is a former NSA crypto-mathematician, and J. Kirk Wiebe is a former NSA senior analyst who was awarded the Meritorious Civilian Service Award, NSA’s second highest distinction. They both worked in the agency’s Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (SARC), and served in the NSA for decades. As Technical Director of the World Geopolitical and Military Analysis Reporting Group, Binney mentored some 6000 technical analysts that eavesdropped on foreign nations, collecting private phone calls and emails for NSA databases. However, with the expansion of the Internet during the 1990s and the explosion of communications that went with it, it quickly became clear that NSA could not keep up with, and effectively analyze, all the new data available. Working in the SARC, Binney and Wiebe both realized this was a dangerous vulnerability for NSA and the country.

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In response, Binney and his team (of which Wiebe was a member), created a program – ThinThread – that could effectively isolate and streamline data in the new Information Age. More importantly, it could filter out all types of irrelevant data, thus eliminating the need to forward and store large amounts of information for subsequent analysis. To ensure the privacy rights of American citizens were adequately protected, Binney and his team installed an “anonymizing” feature to ensure Fourth Amendment protections for the communications of U.S. citizens.

ThinThread was ready to deploy by January 2001 – eight months before the 9/11 attacks. But NSA leadership, including then-NSA Director General Michael Hayden, ignored ThinThread in favor of an undeveloped program, Trailblazer – which existed only on paper and was far more costly. While ThinThread racked up a bill of only $3 million, Trailblazer cost billions before it was cancelled in 2006. The culture of NSA itself gave favor to more expensive projects like Trailblazer. Trailblazer’s large budget and requirements meant that it would benefit private contractors, where ThinThread (as an internal operation) was developed with existing NSA resources.

Though Binney and Wiebe continuously advocated for ThinThread among their superiors, they were ignored. In early 2000, they went to Congress to blow the whistle on the mismanagement and waste of funds they had witnessed in connection with Trailblazer. Diane Roark, a staffer on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence with a reputation for aggressive oversight, attended several meetings. Their contact with Congress angered General Hayden, who denigrated Binney, Wiebe, and their colleagues after one congressional meeting. Hayden sent an internal memo accusing the whistleblowers of betraying the agency: “Actions contrary to our decisions will have a serious adverse effect on our efforts to transform NSA and I cannot tolerate them.” In retaliation for communicating with Congressional overseers, Binney was demoted to a different position, so that he would not have easy access to the Congressional oversight committees. Wiebe was denied an assignment that would have been a career advancement.

Stellar Wind and the Wake of 9/11

NSA failed to detect 9/11 in advance of the attacks. But the 9/11 attacks didn’t come as a complete surprise to Binney and Wiebe, as they had long been aware that NSA was incapable of handling all the communications data it received. This failure resulted from NSA’s decision to shelve ThinThread and dump billions into Trailblazer while the latter failed to move beyond initial planning stages, and instead served as a funding vehicle. If ThinThread had been deployed in January 2001, as planned, Binney and Wiebe are confident that data indicating the movements of al-Qaeda in the days leading up to the attacks would not have been missed.

Meanwhile, in response to the terrorist attacks, President Bush approved new domestic surveillance programs, including Stellar Wind, which was organized and launched by NSA official Ben Gunn. Wiebe personally witnessed the program’s launch one day when he noticed piles of new computer hardware lined up in the hallway of his SARC office. He made his way to the “Situation Room,” a part of SARC’s lab that deals with threat warnings, when Gunn almost removed him from the room. At that point, Wiebe knew something important was in the works.

Binney became aware of the program when members of his ThinThread team were drafted to work on it and, alarmed by its violations of the law, immediately approached Binney about it. Hearing their descriptions, Binney knew that Stellar Wind was based on a component of the ThinThread capability, without the built-in privacy protections. Without Binney’s protections, any American could be targeted by name, phone number, or other attribute. Not only did Stellar Wind include collecting information on domestic phone calls, but also the inspection of domestic email.

At the outset, Stellar Wind recorded 320 million calls a day. However, the program continuously expanded, and Binney estimates that NSA has intercepted between 15 and 20 trillion transactions since 9/11. The massive data collection necessitated that the NSA have an enormous amount of storage capacity – the giant data center currently under construction in Bluffdale, Utah serves this purpose.

But the NSA was not only collecting data on Americans without a warrant – the agency approached telecommunications companies, asking them to participate and facilitate in surveillance. NSA gained access to AT&T’s domestic and international billing records containing detailed information on telephone calls, such as when they were made. Verizon added its calls to NSA’s data, giving the agency access to records for “over a billion and a half calls per day.”

Binney and Wiebe attempted to persuade NSA to use their version of ThinThread, proposing an additional capability that would computerize the process of getting a warrant to spy on domestic communications based on probable cause. At the time, federal law gave NSA 72 hours (from the time of interception) to obtain a warrant to track American conversations. Automating the system would have made it possible to legally intercept a couple of million communications per day.

This proposal required close coordination with the courts, and NSA officials weren’t interested. They continued to collect all the data they could find. “Get the data” was the new NSA mantra after the attacks, disregarding Americans’ constitutionally-protected privacy rights. The Bush administration grouped Stellar Wind with a handful of other programs under the so-called “Terrorist Surveillance Program,” which made it sound patriotic and made it politically difficult for Congress to challenge.

As they watched wasteful, fraudulent, and unconstitutional behavior involving both Trailblazer and Stellar Wind continue and expand after 9/11, both Binney and Wiebe knew they could no longer work for an agency that had strayed so far from its mission and the law. On October 31, 2001, both men accepted retirement packages.

Retirement and Continued Disclosures

As partners with a colleague in a newly-formed private company, “Entity Mapping, LLC”, Binney and Wiebe worked to market their analysis program to government agencies. Although demonstrating success on several short-term contract efforts with the government, NSA continued to retaliate against them for blowing the whistle, ultimately preventing them from getting work, or causing contracts they had secured to be terminated abruptly.

Finally, after seeing no change at NSA, Binney, Wiebe, Diane Roark, and former NSA colleague Edward Loomis filed a complaint with the DoD IG in September 2002. The complaint accused the NSA of massive fraud, waste, and mismanagement in connection with NSA’s rejection of ThinThread and endorsement of the failing Trailblazer. GAP client Thomas Drake did not sign the complaint, because he was still working for NSA at the time and feared retaliation. (Drake was mentioned as an unnamed “DoD senior executive” in the complaint and became a critical material witness for the DoD IG, fully cooperating with the investigation and using proper channels to provide the office with thousands of documents – classified and unclassified. For a full description of Drake's whistleblowing experience, click here).

The resulting audit report from the DoD IG, which amounted to several hundred pages, was issued over two years later, in late 2004/early 2005. It substantiated the whistleblowers’ concerns. Using FOIA, GAP obtained a heavily-redacted copy of the audit report in 2011.

After the DoD IG report was issued, Binney and Wiebe continued to engage in protected whistleblowing activity, including reporting their concerns about waste and domestic surveillance to members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

New York Times Warrantless Wiretapping Story and Aftermath

In December 2005, the New York Times published an explosive story disclosing the NSA’s secret domestic spying program. The FBI launched an expansive – and fruitless – investigation into the sources of the article, which at one time consumed five full-time prosecutors and 25 FBI agents. Although none of the DoD IG complainants were a source for the article, Binney, Wiebe, Diane Roark, and (later) Tom Drake were targeted as suspects. All cooperated fully and voluntarily with the investigation.

In July 2007, the FBI conducted coordinated raids of each of the complainants of the DoD IG report. FBI officers held a gun to Binney’s head as he stepped naked from the shower. He watched with his wife and youngest son as the FBI ransacked their home. Later Binney was separated from the rest of his family, and FBI officials pressured him to implicate one of the other complainants in criminal activity. During the raid, Binney attempted to report to FBI officials the crimes he had witnessed at NSA, in particular the NSA’s violation of the constitutional rights of all Americans. However, the FBI wasn’t interested in these disclosures. Instead, FBI officials seized Binney’s private computer, which to this day has not been returned despite the fact that he has not been charged with a crime.

Meanwhile, Wiebe’s family was subjected to a day-long armed raid, during which FBI agents rummaged through all the family’s belongings, taking phone directories and computer hard drives containing business records and other personal information, some of which have still not been returned. Binney, Wiebe, and the other complainants were forced to sue the NSA in November 2011, in order to attempt to recover their property.