NPR recently had an interesting piece on NSA whistleblowers before Edward Snowden, the tough times they had and the fact that no one listened to or believed them. Snowden learned from them -- taking off the kind of documentation that would force people to listen to him. Tom Bill Binney worked at the National Security Agency nearly three decades as one of its leading crypto-mathematicians. He then became one of its leading whistleblowers. Now 70 and on crutches, both legs lost to diabetes, Binney recalls the July morning seven years ago when a dozen gun-wielding FBI agents burst through the front door of his home, at the end of a cul-de-sac a 10-minute drive from NSA headquarters in Fort Meade, Md. I first knew that they were in there when they were pointing a gun at me as I was coming out of the shower, Binney says. When I ask him why the agents were there, he replies: Well, it was to keep us quiet. The NSA is overseen by Congress, the courts and other government departments. Its also supposed to be watched from the inside by its own workers. But over the past dozen years, whistleblowers like Binney have had a rough track record. Those who tried unsuccessfully to work within the system say Edward Snowden — the former National Security Agency contractor who shared top-secret documents with reporters — learned from their bitter experience. npr.org/2014/07/22/333741495/before-snowden-the-whistleblowers-who-tried-to-lift-the-veil
Posted on: Thu, 24 Jul 2014 15:15:01 +0000
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