What Do You Think?

[Arianna_Ludlam]

http://www.redkabbage.com/video/msnbc-nsa-monitors-all-communications


nsa monitors all communications
01/22/2009

Former National Security Agency analyst Russell Tice has now come forward with startling allegations that the NSA not only has access to all American communications, but, by scanning metadata of all American communications, the agency is able to pick and choose what data it wants to record for analysis.

In December 2005, Tice helped expose the NSA's warrantless wiretapping. A twenty year careerist at various agencies intelligence agencies, including the US Air Force, Naval Intelligence, the DIA, and finally the NSA, Tice has felt the brunt of what happens to intelligence who voice their criticisms.

In 2002, he was transferred from the NSA to the DIA after voicing his suspicions of Chinese spy Katrina Leung to the DIA's counterintelligence division. Tice later brought Congressional attention to the humiliating plight of intelligence personnell who dared to criticize the NSA. After being ordered to take a psychological evaluation, which he believed was retaliatory, his duties were relegated to maintaining NSA vehicles, pumping gas, and driving around officials. After 14 month paid leave, in 2005, this intelligence official of 20 years he was given the burdensome task of cleaning out warehouses and moving furniture.

"The National Security Agency had access to all Americans' communications -- faxes, phone calls, and their computer communications," Tice claimed. "It didn't matter whether you were in Kansas, in the middle of the country, and you never made foreign communications at all. They monitored all communications."

Tice further explained that "even for the NSA it's impossible to literally collect all communications. ... What was done was sort of an ability to look at the metadata ... and ferret that information to determine what communications would ultimately be collected."

According to Tice, in addition to this "low-tech, dragnet" approach, the NSA also had the ability to hone in on specific groups, and that was the aspect he himself was involved with. However, even within the NSA there was a cover story meant to prevent people like Tice from realizing what they were doing.

"In one of the operations that I was in, we looked at organizations, just supposedly so that we would not target them," Tice told Olbermann. "What I was finding out, though, is that the collection on those organizations was 24/7 and 365 days a year -- and it made no sense. ... I started to investigate that. That's about the time when they came after me to fire me."

When Olbermann pressed him for specifics, Tice offered, "An organization that was collected on were US news organizations and reporters and journalists."

"To what purpose?" Olbermann asked. "I mean, is there a file somewhere full of every email sent by all the reporters at the New York Times? Is there a recording somewhere of every conversation I had with my little nephew in upstate New York?"

Tice did not answer directly, but simply stated, "If it was involved in this specific avenue of collection, it would be everything." He added, however, that he had no idea what was ultimately done with the information, except that he was sure it "was digitized and put on databases somewhere."


Whistleblower: NSA spied on everyone, targeted journalists, RawStory.com


http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Whistleblower_Bushs_NSA_targeted_reporters_0121.html