William Binney: 80% of audio calls are recorded and stored in the US

I've seen that argument before but honestly...

What would stop them from building it themselves if they were elected?

Nothing, really.

Yes but, for instance, if you lived under a fascist anti-gay regime and were gay you would hide it very actively. On the opposite gays today, through their correspondances, might be quiet easily spotted by the NSA or anyone with access to their phone calls / mails / texts. Once the regime becomes anti-gay, they will come for you and it is too late to do anything.

So what your saying is you'd be able to destroy all crawlable evidence on the internet and wipe the memories of all your friends and strip out every reference to a "gay bar" or the like from your finances?

I think you greatly overestimate how effective people could be in wiping their fingerprints from the internet. There is a reason people talk about once you post something on the internet its out there forever. You aren't magically going to be able to wipe out decades of fingerprints because of a regime change, regardless of whether the NSA was collecting them or not.

You can use this argument when you can wipe out all copies of a nude woman whose ex posted her to imgur or something. Until then, you are just 100% wrong because you know you can't do what you claim.

Please don't politicize civil liberties. If progressives and libertarians can come together on anything, it's this.

The story in the Guardian by Antony Loewenstein certainly reports that William Binney's personal opinion as a former employee of NSA is that NSA is gathering up and recording whatever it can and that NSA has a "totalitarian mentality." That is a very important issue, if true, but it is at least debatable that NSA is really that thorough in its actual practices and really that generally blatant in disregarding the civil rights of Americans or even of people in other countries. For one thing, Binney also points to NSA intelligence failures in the same article, and if NSA is missing major activities of other countries (the Russian intervention in Ukraine) and nonstate terrorist groups (the "Islamic State" capture of much territory in Iraq), then surely NSA doesn't have the time and resources to analyze all of the data it gathers, and maybe it is not gathering as much data as some people claim.

Several comments posted before I read all those comments and read the fine article write about NSA blackmailing politicians. I don't believe NSA blackmail can or will happen in general, for reasons I have mentioned before here on HN. One of the most common kinds of comments here on Hacker News about issues like this is a comment that ASSUMES that if government leaders are under pervasive surveillance they are all afraid of blackmail. But I don't believe that, because some government leaders and some political candidates are essentially shameless. Even after they are caught (by old-fashioned journalism, or by a jilted lover or some unrelated criminal investigation) doing something unsavory, they are still willing to run for office, and SOME ARE REELECTED. United States Senator David Vitter was reelected in 2010 even after a scandal involving behavior that I would consider shameful,[1] and the antics of former DC mayor Marion Barry[2] are probably still notorious enough that they don't need further discussion here. In short, I call baloney on the idea that NSA can keep politicians on its leash simply by knowing their secrets. Some politicians have PUBLIC lives full of dirt, and still get elected and influence policy anyway.

The other reason I don't believe this HN hivemind theory of politics is that I by no means assume that everyone in politics lacks personal integrity. Some politicians, I am quite sure, could have all their secrets revealed only to have voters think "Why is that person such a straight-arrow? Why not have some fun once in a while?" The simple fact is that there is value system diversity in the United States electorate, and there is personal conduct probity variance among United States politicians, and there isn't any universal way to unduly influence politicians merely through even the most diligent efforts to discover personal secrets. If politicians think that NSA is going too far (as evidently several politicians from more than one party do think), then they will receive plenty of support from the general public to rein in the surveillance. (Obligatory disclaimer: Yes, I am a lawyer, who as a judicial clerk for my state's Supreme Court used to review case files on attorney misconduct, and, yes, some of my law school classmates are elected officials, including one member of Congress. I am absolutely certain that there are enough politicians ready to mobilize to roll back NSA surveillance programs if they really think the programs are excessive in their scope.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Vitter#D.C._Madam_scanda...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry#1990_arrest_.26_d...