(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
The US intelligence agency National Security Agency (NSA) should use its powers to reform the mass surveillance operations, which are now completely out of control. This also applies to the total storage of phone calls that both a judge and the independent Privacy and Civil Liberties Board have declared illegal. Instead, the NSA spends countless hours figuring out how the public discovered the offenses, running black campaigns against whistleblowers like Edward Snowden who revealed the truth to the public, and – in the classic NSA spirit – blaming officials for warnings down the system.
Correcting allegations against innocent employees further down the system is considered correct modus operandi of the highest men in the NSA.
Even the broadcasting company NBC has described the blundering of Snowden as weed. However, NBC reports that Snowden "may have used cheating to some extent" to access the information. Instead of punishing the high-ranking officials who caused both wastage and illegal espionage, the NSA now boasts to Congress that they should punish one of Snowden's employees. As a result, this Snowden colleague will have his security clearance lifted.
The mainstream media is drooling after publishing and repeating every single tiny fragment of anti-Snowden fabric. (This is much easier than understanding how the intelligence community leaders, a secret court, and several presidents have unleashed a surveillance device that violates the privacy of hundreds of millions of innocent Americans.)
The original The NBC article on Snowden did not include a statement from Snowden's legal representative – but NBC's Michael Isikoff should still be commended for later updating his article with a statement from the undersigned:
"Edward Snowden repeats the rejection he made on January 23. It is documented that the NSA has tried to blame its own mistakes on innocent employees, that they have fabricated evidence against them, and that they have misled Congress. "
The NSA has a long tradition of misleading both Congress and the public. Correcting allegations against innocent employees further down the system is considered correct modus operandi with the highest gentlemen in the NSA. When the New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning case of unauthorized telephone tapping, the NSA leadership blamed whistleblowers in the organization who had nothing to do with the New York Times article. Nevertheless, they had their security clearances withdrawn and were blacklisted from future assignments.
It should ring a bell when the NSA has time to write notes to Congress to "find those responsible" for making the public aware of the NSA's illegal activities – but for can provide a simple answer to the question of whether the NSA collects data on millions of Americans. We should also wake up to the NSA's defense of its own smear campaigns, which are nothing more than diversionary maneuvers.
Radack is an attorney for Edward Snowden and several other whistleblowers in the organization WISPeR – Whistleblower and Source Protection Program, which is affiliated with the Institute for Accuracy in Reporting.
