NSA sought to prevent Snowden-style leaks, ended up losing staff – whistleblower to RT
The NSA has been steadily shedding staff ever since the agency introduced draconian internal rules to stop potential new Snowden-inspired whistleblowers, former NSA technical director William Binney told RT.
“The NSA has launched an internal program called ‘See something, say something,’” Binney, said, further explaining that the new internal code of conduct encourages agency employees to actually spy not only on their targets, but also on their fellow colleagues. The aim of this new measures were to prevent employees from becoming “another Edward Snowden,” he said.
However, the new draconian rules actually backfired as employees started leaving the agency in droves, with few people willing to fill the vacant posts. The new rules “create a very hostile, bad working environment,” Binney said. He added that the extreme precautionary measures taken by the NSA to prevent internal leaks after Snowden’s move “destroyed the moral of people doing work there.”
This new system also created a situation, in which some employees could exploit the new directives to settle old scores with their colleagues, the former NSA technical director said. Everyone, who “had a grudge” or was waging “a personal vendetta” against another employee could just “go and say something about their colleagues without giving their [own] names, report them for something just to get them into trouble.”
This new system is, however, not the only factor that has influenced the workforce exodus. Many NSA employees were also uncomfortable with NSA policies in general, as it involved “spying on US citizens and spying on everyone on the planet,” Binney pointed out. Heavy workload was another reason to quit, he said, adding, that the employees sometimes complained they just “could not figure the things out” or because they had too much data to analyze.
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And as the NSA gets increasingly entangled into the anti-Russian witch hunt, which Binney described as a “fake Russia-gate thing,” public distrust towards the agency continues to grow. He went on to say the NSA continues to discredit itself with its political bias and “corruption.”
The former NSA technical director-turned whistleblower also said the agency was not visibly “succeeding in stopping terrorism in any way” but was increasingly “engaging in illegal activities” and “violating the US constitution.”
