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Whistleblower William Binney warned of NSA surveillance state TWO YEARS before Snowden
June 8, 2015 – William Binney spent more than 30 years at the National Security Agency designing programs that enabled mass surveillance of foreign terrorists.
Weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Binney retired in disgust when he saw the agency using that technology to spy on every American.
Since then, he has agitated for reining in unconstitutional invasions of privacy. At first he worked behind the scenes. Binney decided to go public after his actions resulted not in reform but retaliation, including being accosted at gunpoint by an FBI agent raiding his Maryland house. He began telling his story to journalists in 2011, two years before the stunning revelations of NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
Last week, Binney brought his warnings of a growing “totalitarian state” to an unlikely venue: the Bent Creek Golf Club in Eden Prairie, where about 80 Libertarians, antiwar activists and others gathered to hear from the second-best-known NSA whistleblower.
