US using eavesdropping as warfare tool: Analyst
Press TV has interviewed Steven Kelley, a former CIA/NSA contractor in Los Angeles, about an American whistle-blower, who the media refer to as the “New Snowden,” releasing a series of documents that contain highly sensitive intelligence on US drones.
What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: These revelations in The Intercept are basically a confirmation of what human rights organizations, anti-drone campaigners and victims of drone strikes have been saying all along?
Kelley: That is certainly true. I think one of…the issues that we are seeing here, that is more sinister, is that we are seeing another way that your cell phone can be used to betray you. I think that if we look at the entire eavesdropping campaign of the NSA, the original [one that} Edward Snowden of course talks so much about, we could begin to see why it is so important to have these cell phones located everywhere and be able to eavesdrop and listen to have an archive of every voiceprint.
And I think this is one of the reasons why they have so many of these faulty strikes, it is because they are looking for these voiceprints of these individuals and they could be picking it up off of someone else’s phone. So they may not even be using the actual victims’ phone to be locating the individual that they are looking to target. So obviously that is a very sloppy method but at the same time it is very sinister indeed.
Press TV: Considering how as this report itself has said that 9 out of the 10 fatalities have been innocent people, including US citizens, is it even advantageous for the US to continue these eavesdropping if it has been so faulty?
Kelley: Again you have to think of the mindset of the people that are using these things. I would suspect that it is a warfare tool. There are a lot of advantages in it. They are able, like you say, to fly these in areas that are not declared war zones. The nice thing about this particular weapon is that it has a very large radio so they can position these things at several locations all around the globe and actually have them operated by people here in the United States.
The thing about this that is so nice about international war fares that it does not require soldiers and it does not require judgments of the pilots and this sort of thing and so people that are using it and flying these things do not need the same set of rules of engagement or levels of moral, if morals and remorse, if you will.
Ultimately this is going to turn on the United States of course because this sort of weapon system is being prized by Obama not just for its ability to be used overseas but ultimately for it to be used here at home.
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