'Total Population Control' is NSA's Goal, Says Whistleblower

"The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control," claims William Binney, the one-time National Security Agency technical leader for intelligence who resigned from the spook house in 2001 after 30 years of employment there. He made his statement—which might once have seemed shocking, but now likely strikes residents of the post-Snowden world as a grim but realistic assessment—on July 5 at a conference put on by the Centre for Investigative Journalism in Britain.

Reports The Guardian:

"At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US", Binney said. "This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores."

The NSA will soon be able to collect 966 exabytes a year, the total of internet traffic annually. Former Google head Eric Schmidt once argued that the entire amount of knowledge from the beginning of humankind until 2003 amount to only five exabytes…

"The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control", Binney said, "but I'm a little optimistic with some recent Supreme Court decisions, such as law enforcement mostly now needing a warrant before searching a smartphone."

Binney's remarks come after the latest revelations that the NSA is targeting thousands of Americans for surveillance, and that simply displaying an interest iin protecting your privacy is enough to draw the snoops' interest.

An interview with William Binney appeared in Reason's May 2014 issue, with a video version embedded below. He told Nick Gillespie that he saw the direction the United States "going is toward a totalitarian state."