Former CIA/NSA Director Michael Hayden finally admits Ed Snowden was a whistleblower:
Ever since Snowden first leaked the documents he took from the NSA, there’s been a (somewhat ridiculous) debate over whether or not he was a “whistleblower” or “a traitor” (or potentially somewhere in between). However, it seems like many fall into one of those somewhat polar opposite positions. To many of us, it’s been quite clear that he’s a whistleblower.
However, to folks like former NSA and CIA boss Michael Hayden, the view has been somewhat different. After all, Hayden has directly called Snowden a traitor, claimed that he was worse than a variety of spies (including the Rosenbergs, Klaus Fuchs, Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen), and publicly fantasized about killing Snowden.
Hayden FINALLY admits that Snowden was really a whistleblower. See the video below:
Surveillance Costs: The NSA’s impact on the economy, internet freedom & cybersecurity:
Spying at the National Security Agency and elsewhere is hurting U.S. businesses, American foreign policy and security across the Internet.
The 60-page report released by the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute on Tuesday comes on the same day that Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) is introducing his new version of a bill to reform the contested spying outfit, and could provide a boost for critics of the agency.
“Our findings indicate that the NSA’s actions have already begun to, and will continue to, cause significant damage to the interests of the United States and the global Internet community,” the organization wrote in its report.
At the top of the list are tech companies, who have suffered losses estimated to be in the billions of dollars due to people’s loss of trust in their services. They could be further hurt by foreign governments who begin to distrust the current structure of the Internet and call for new laws that data be held in their countries or assert more control online.
Additionally, disclosures that the U.S. had snooped on foreign leaders in Brazil, Germany and other countries have damaged the countries’ international alliances, and the friction could be felt for years.
“The U.S. government is fighting an uphill battle at the moment to regain credibility in international Internet governance debates and to defend its moral high ground as a critic of authoritarian regimes that limit freedom of expression and violate human rights online,” the organization said in its report.
“Moreover, the fallout from the NSA’s surveillance activities has spilled over into other areas of U.S. foreign policy and currently threatens bilateral relations with a number of key allies.”
Finally, NSA operations to find vulnerability online and ensure agents have “backdoors” to peer into people’s communications “have undermined trust in the security of the Internet itself,” the report declared.
The report comes as Leahy is set to introduce his new, more aggressive version of the USA Freedom Act, which tech companies and organizations including the Open Technology Institute have rallied behind.
Kevin Bankston, the organization’s policy director, said in a statement that the new bill “would go a long way toward stemming the costs of the NSA’s spying programs and restoring trust in the American Internet industry, by prohibiting bulk records collection and providing substantially more transparency around the NSA’s surveillance programs.”
Direct Economic Costs to U.S. Businesses: American companies have reported declining sales overseas and lost business opportunities, especially as foreign companies turn claims of products that can protect users from NSA spying into a competitive advantage. The cloud computing industry is particularly vulnerable and could lose billions of dollars in the next three to five years as a result of NSA surveillance.
Potential Costs to U.S. Businesses and to the Openness of the Internet from the Rise of Data Localization and Data Protection Proposals: New proposals from foreign governments looking to implement data localization requirements or much stronger data protection laws could compound economic losses in the long term. These proposals could also force changes to the architecture of the global network itself, threatening free expression and privacy if they are implemented.
Costs to U.S. Foreign Policy: Loss of credibility for the U.S. Internet Freedom agenda, as well as damage to broader bilateral and multilateral relations, threaten U.S. foreign policy interests. Revelations about the extent of NSA surveillance have already colored a number of critical interactions with nations such as Germany and Brazil in the past year.
Costs to Cybersecurity: The NSA has done serious damage to Internet security through its weakening of key encryption standards, insertion of surveillance backdoors into widely-used hardware and software products, stockpiling rather than responsibly disclosing information about software security vulnerabilities, and a variety of offensive hacking operations undermining the overall security of the global Internet.
http://oti.newamerica.net/publications/policy/surveillance_costs_the_nsas_impact_on_the_economy_internet_freedom_cybersecurity
http://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2014/07/former-nsa-insider-william-binney-says.html
Just more Alex Jones BS.
We all know who the intelligence agencies work for, and here Alex is trying to hide Zionist control by blaming “the intelligence agencies”.
I thought it was the Arabs, Alex? Or was it the “Germanic death cult”, or “the black pope”, or “skull and bones”, etc. etc.
It’s really very simple if you look, because only this one group has the means to control the media, the economy, and our politicians. There are no other possibilities, and we don’t need Alex Jones to deliver a new lie about it every week.