An Ex NSA Chief Calls Org. 'Totalitarian', Germany...

[Rhett E. Column]

As the fallout continues from the PCLOB 2014 report on Thursday an ex NSA chief called the organization 'totalitarian' before a German Parliament Panel on Security and International Affairs.

William Binney testified today before something called the German Bundestag, a German State Security & Privacy panel, tasked with answering 3 key questions about the NSA.

Testifying, Binney accused the NSA of having a "totalitarian mentality" and wanting "total information control" over citizens in breach of the US constitution. It was an approach that until now the public had only seen among dictators, he added.

Mass collection was "senseless" and did not help in counterterrorism, and actually hindered the agency's capabilities, Binney said.

The NSA represented the "greatest threat" to American society since the US Civil War of the 19th century, Binney added.

Besides Mr. Binney another former NSA chief testified before the panel today, Mr. Thomas Drake, Drake is a member of the so-called, "Thin Thread 5". And is himself a pronounced whistleblower who avoided eternal damnation in 2010 from the federal government with simple civil defense, proof, fair and just adjudication in a court of law.

Thomas Drake, who left the NSA after trying to use official complaint channels, told the inquiry that almost all data that transmitted Germany was accessed by the NSA and Germany's BND foreign intelligence service -- or the NSA alone.

The US government was exercising the ultimate form of control, Drake said, adding that the German BND's silence on the issue was "terrible."

"The public has a right to know what the NSA does," he said, according to a quote from the hearing delivered by the German DPA news agency in German.

Drake said the United States would soon become a "real surveillance" nation in which the private lives of individuals were becoming more and more the property of the state. ...

The inquiry committee's leading Social Democrat (SPD) Christian Fliesek demanded the German federal prosecutions service immediately begin a probe into the alleged "mass surveillance of German citizens."

Mihr demanded that Merkel's coalition government end its tactic of trying to "sit out the NSA scandal" and excluding areas of inquiry.

Inquiry committee chairman, Patrick Sensburg (pictured above center) of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrat conservatives, began Thursday's hearing in Berlin by claiming his committee knew little about the NSA's internal structures and practices.

This is truly an amazing story and one that I will stay on and keep you all informed. Until then, be well...

http://www.dw.de/nsa-totalitarian-ex-staffer-tells-german-parliamen...

--Rhett.

[AXJ USA]

On the case against the NSA violating civil and political rights to privacy it is up to the Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States to uphold the Constitution and protect the rights of all citizens not only in the United States, but around the world.