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The Program - William Binney Interview

TheDigitalperipheral · 38.2K views · 2012-08-25 · 8:19

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Overview

A short NYT Op-Doc by Laura Poitras profiling NSA veteran William Binney, who says a program he helped design collects Americans' personal data.

On Hacker News

HN cites Binney's testimony in debates about NSA domestic surveillance.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2013–2025

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timschmidt · 2025-12 · Reference

"After 9/11, they took one of the programs I had done, or the backend part of it, and started to use it to spy on everybody in this country. That was a program I created called Stellar Wind. That was seperate and compartmented from the regular activity which was ongoing because it was doing domestic spying. All the equipment was coming in, I knew something was happening but then when the contractors I had hired came and told me what they were doing, it was clear where all the hardware was going and what they were using it to do. It was simply a different input, instead of being foreign it was domestic." - William Binney [VIDEO]

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timschmidt · 2025-12 · Reference

> Did you look at the slides you linked to? Many times. They detail methods and partners used in mass surveillance on US soil involving US corporations and US routed internet backbone connections. No independently verifiable proof is provided that US persons are not targeted by this program. Instead we're gifted such lovely terms as LOVEINT: [LINK] in which the NSA admits to warrant-less domestic spying for the most trivial of reasons. Further demonstrating a lack of appropriate controls or process around such capabilities. And testimony from "the agency official responsible for automating much of the NSA’s worldwide monitoring networks" indicating that mass surveillance infrastructure is used domestically: "After 9/11, they took one of the programs I had done, or the backend part of it, and started to use it to spy on everybody in this country. That was a program I created called Stellar Wind. That was seperate and compartmented from the regular activity which was ongoing because it was doing domestic spying. All the equipment was coming in, I knew something was happening but then when the contractors I had hired came and told me what they were doing, it was clear where all the hardware was going and what they were using it to do. It was simply a different input, instead of being foreign it was domestic." - William Binney [VIDEO] > Not a U.S. domestic surveillance program. "However, in recent years, FVEY documents have shown that member agencies are intentionally spying on o

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timschmidt · 2025-12 · Reference

> The only mass collection was phone metadata collection "email, chat, video, voice, photos, stored data, VoIP, file transfers, video conferencing, notifications, social networking details, and the ever ominous "Special Requests"" [LINK] You will claim this program does not target US persons. To which I have already responded in another comment that "They detail methods and partners used in mass surveillance on US soil involving US corporations and US routed internet backbone connections. No independently verifiable proof is provided that US persons are not targeted by this program." NSA self-reporting of [LINK] incidents seems to indicate that warrant-less surveillance of US persons does, in fact, happen. As does testimony from "the agency official responsible for automating much of the NSA’s worldwide monitoring networks": "After 9/11, they took one of the programs I had done, or the backend part of it, and started to use it to spy on everybody in this country. That was a program I created called Stellar Wind. That was seperate and compartmented from the regular activity which was ongoing because it was doing domestic spying. All the equipment was coming in, I knew something was happening but then when the contractors I had hired came and told me what they were doing, it was clear where all the hardware was going and what they were using it to do. It was simply a different input, instead of being foreign it was domestic." - William Binney [VIDEO]

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Video by TheDigitalperipheral, played through YouTube.

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