Elizabeth Murray — Examining the Stasi, Seeing the NSA [and MI5]

For many years, the East German Stasi was viewed as the most totalitarian of intelligence services, relentlessly spying on its citizens during the Cold War. But the Stasi’s capabilities pale in comparison to what the NSA can now do, notes former U.S. intelligence analyst Elizabeth Murray.

Edward Snowden is not the only analyst that saw what was happening and viewed it as the erosion of constitutional democracy in the US and UK.

Consortium News
Examining the Stasi, Seeing the NSA [and MI5]

Elizabeth Murray | formerly Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East in the National Intelligence Council before retiring after a 27-year career in the U.S. government. She is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Lars Schall — Secret information: The currency of power

The transcript of the following interview was exclusively arranged for Asia Times Online. An audio file of the interview is published at the German financial web site "Die Metallwoche" here.

Thomas Drake, born 1957, is a former senior executive at the US National Security Agency who blew the whistle on a multi-billion dollar program fraud and cover up as well as the NSA's secret unlawful surveillance program. The US Department of Justice prosecuted and indicted him under the World War I-era Espionage Act in April, 2010, under 10 felony counts including that he "mishandled documents". The case against him ultimately collapsed. He eventually pled to one misdemeanor count for exceeding authorized use of a computer. He is a former airborne crypto-linguist and electronic warfare mission crew supervisor. From 1991-1998 he worked at Booz Allen Hamilton as a management, strategy and technology consultant and software quality engineer. In 2011, Drake became the recipient of the Ridenhour Truth-Telling Prize and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Award. He holds a Bachelor's and two Master's degrees as well as numerous graduate certificates.

Worse than you thought or even imagined.

Asia Times Online
Secret information: The currency of power
Lars Schall

See also Washington's Blog, Is the U.S. Government Changing the Amount In People’s Financial Accounts and Manipulating Financial Systems with Its Offensive Cyber Capabilities?

David Ferguson — Former East German secret police captain says NSA spying ‘a dream come true’

Former East German secret police captain says NSA spying ‘a dream come true’ (via Raw Story )

A former agent of the Stasi, the much-feared East German communist secret police, has said that the recently revealed NSA spying program would have been his agency’s “dream come true” because it has collected “so much information, on so many…

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