Greenwald and Scahill Launch First Look Media With NSA-Drone Story
The National Security Agency is endangering the lives of innocents by using electronic surveillance rather than human intelligence to identify targets for lethal drone strike, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill report in the first article of their new Web magazine, The Intercept.The National Security Agency is endangering the lives of innocents by using electronic surveillance rather than human intelligence to identify targets for lethal drone strike, Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill report in the first article of their new Web magazine, The Intercept.
Greenwald and Scahill write:
According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
The drone operator, who agreed to discuss the top-secret programs on the condition of anonymity, was a member of JSOC’s High Value Targeting task force, which is charged with identifying, capturing or killing terrorist suspects in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
His account is bolstered by top-secret NSA documents previously provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden. It is also supported by a former drone sensor operator with the U.S. Air Force, Brandon Bryant, who has become an outspoken critic of the lethal operations in which he was directly involved in Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen.
Read more here.
— Posted by Alexander Reed Kelly.
Your support matters…Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.