Speaking less than three days after coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris killed 129 and injured hundreds more, Mr. Brennan complained about “a lot of hand-wringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”
What he calls “hand-wringing” was the sustained national outrage following the 2013 revelations by Edward Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor, that the agency was using provisions of the Patriot Act to secretly collect information on millions of Americans’ phone records.
It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the C.I.A. had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the N.S.A.’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.
– From the New York Times editorial board article: Mass Surveillance Isn’t the Answer to Fighting Terrorism
Let’s get a few things clear right off the bat.
U.S. intelligence agencies have been waiting for a terror attack to do two things. 1) Blame Edward Snowden. 2) Target Encryption.
This is why in the immediate aftermath of the Paris tragedy, we saw the following…
From the post, Meet the Institution Most Intent on Destroying American Freedom – (*Hint: It’s Not ISIS):
CIA Director John Brennan said Monday he suspects the Islamic State is currently working on more terrorist plots against the West following Friday’s attack in Paris that killed at least 129 people and injured hundreds more. He also criticized new privacy protections enacted after Edward Snowden’s disclosures about U.S. government surveillance practices.
In his remarks, Brennan said the attacks should serve as a “wake-up call” for those misrepresenting what intelligence services do to protect innocent civilians. He cited “a number of unauthorized disclosures, and a lot of handwringing over the government’s role in the effort to try to uncover these terrorists.”
Of course, it wasn’t just Brennan. As noted in yesterday’s post, U.S. Government Moves to Exploit Paris Terror Attacks to Ban Privacy:
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