> Wyden repeatedly asked the NSA to estimate the number of Americans whose communications had been incidentally collected, and the agency’s director, Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, insisted there was no way to find out. Eventually Inspector General I. Charles McCullough III wrote Wyden a letter stating that it would violate the privacy of Americans in NSA data banks to try to estimate their number.
This is what I was referring to when I said the Senators didn't know how exactly it was being used. It is pretty basic knowledge about the program.
Has the NSA incidentally collected data on 300 Americans? On 3,000? On, say, 300 million?
In the recent Senate Intelligence hearing Senator Wyden asked General James Clapper "Does the NSA collect any data at all on millions or hundred of millions of Americans?" Response: "No sir, it does not .. not wittingly, there are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."
If ones assumes that William Binney both knows what he is talking about and is telling the truth, then the NSA has been collecting data on Americans since before September 11th.
If the rest of what William Binney says is also correct, then the NSA initially was keeping the data on Americans anonymized, for viewing only after a court order -- but then after September 11th disabled data anonymization for some order of time.
If the data has been anonymized once again, this may present legal problems in how officials can guarantee this because it would reveal past illegal activity which those same officials may have been involved in.
