Community Corner
NSA Whistleblowers Bill Binney and Thomas Drake Speak at WCU
After journalists began publishing articles based on the disclosures
of National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden last June, an
intense debate erupted over the balance between civil liberties and national
security. On Wednesday, April 23, two prominent figures in the ongoing debate
over constitutional privacy rights in the face of growing national security
surveillance will speak at West Chester University.
National
Security Agency (NSA) whistleblowers Bill Binney and Thomas Drake, both former executives with that agency, are
featured in a dynamic moderated discussion on “Essential Voices for
Accountability in the National Security Era.” They will explore
the challenges facing intelligence agency whistleblowers when they seek to
expose wrongdoing and violations of law, and discuss the unconstitutional
collection of personal data and the dangers associated with the increasing
power of the national security state. Background on the speakers is below.
The whistleblower
panel takes place Wednesday,
April 23, from 12 to 2 p.m. in Sykes Student Union Theater, West Rosedale
Avenue. It is free and open to the public.
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The event is
part of the Government Accountability Project’s (GAP) “American Whistleblower
Tour: Essential Voices for Accountability,” which brings notable truth-tellers
to universities nationwide. Tour programs are designed to raise awareness about
the vital role whistleblowing has in our democracy and encourage ethical
decision-making, among other goals.
The panel is moderated
by GAP National Security & Human Rights Counsel Kathleen McClellan. This
Tour stop is sponsored by GAP and the WCU College of Business & Public Affairs, and the WCU departments
of Criminal Justice, Political Science, Public Policy and Administration, Computer
Science, Philosophy, and Peace and Conflict Studies.
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Speakers
Bill Binney is a former NSA crypto-mathematician
who worked for the agency for almost 40 years, leading a team of technical
analysts to create a revolutionary information processing system called
ThinThread that could efficiently and cost-effectively analyze massive amounts
of information while protecting Americans’ privacy. He spoke up when NSA
leadership ignored ThinThread in favor of Trailblazer, a vastly more expensive,
intrusive and (eventually) inoperable program. He blew the whistle to Congress
on the mismanagement and waste of funds, but saw no change take place. In
retaliation for communicating with oversight bodies, Binney was demoted to a
different position. Shortly afterward, he retired but continued to take action
despite increasing retaliation, including having his home raided by the FBI.
Binney and his colleague J. Kirk Wiebe first revealed the NSA’s massive
domestic spying program, Stellar Wind, which intercepts domestic communications
without protections for U.S. citizens.
Thomas Drake is
a former senior executive with the NSA, an armed forces veteran, and served as
a CIA analyst. While at the NSA, he blew the whistle on multi-billion-dollar
programmatic fraud, waste and abuse; the critical loss and cover-up of 9/11
intelligence; and Stellar Wind’s dragnet electronic mass surveillance and
data-mining, conducted on a vast scale by the NSA with the approval of the
White House, after 9/11. Drake argued that this program violated the
Constitution and eroded our civil liberties while weakening national security.
In April 2010, he was charged by the Department of Justice with 10 felonies
under the Espionage Act and faced 35 years in prison. All 10 original charges
were dropped in July 2011 and Drake pled to a misdemeanor count of exceeding
the authorized use of a government computer with no fine or prison time. He is
the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize, and with Jesselyn
Radack the co-recipient of the 2011 Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in
Intelligence Award and the 2012 Hugh M. Hefner 1st Amendment Award.