It is now known that, during the Bush Administration, the National Security agencies created a mountain of information about every American. Obama declared his team “scrubbed” the entire system. Not exactly. Under Obama, the same agencies, on steroids, now have an entire mountain range.

The director of the National Security Agency, Army Gen. Keith Alexander, told a Senate Committee the secret data-surveillance programs had prevented dozens of terrorist attacks in recent years. But in a statement, Senators Wyden and Udall said, “We have not yet seen any evidence showing that the NSA’s dragnet collection of Americans’ phone records has produced any uniquely valuable intelligence.”

If whistleblower Edward Snowden turns out to be a Chinese Communist sympathizer, it makes the NSA look even worse. If they couldn’t spot a ChiCom sympathizer, how can they catch an Islamic Jihadist?

It turns out much of this spying on Americans has already been somewhat public. William (Bill) Binney and J. Kirk Weibe were the lead developers of “ThinThread,” a low development cost ($3 million) program to identify terrorist threats while protecting innocent American’s privacy. NSA, going to outside contractors, commissioned a far more expansive and far more expensive ($4 billion) program, “Trailblazer.” After 911, the NSA unleashed Trailblazer. A month later, Binney (37 years of service) and Weibe (30 years of Service) retired. “Trailblazer” failed to catch terrorists and was replaced in 2006 with “Stellar Wind.” PRISM is apparently much newer.

By 2003, Binney and Weibe were whistleblowers. While their activities have been legal, they faced pressure that most would find terrifying. Binney, for example, had his shower door thrown open with several FBI agents pointing high caliber guns at him; one thrust right in his face.

In a Glenn Beck Radio Interview last week, Binney declared when the Obama administration says it is only collecting bare data, not the content of your phone calls or emails for example, that’s an “outright lie. Their statement about, ‘we don’t have content’ is an outright lie,” he explained, adding that emails, videos and other type of content are also covered under NSA and FBI’s secret “PRISM” program.

Binney went on to say that the spy program could easily be used to target political opposition, just as the IRS targeted conservative groups. “If you wanted to know who was involved in the Tea Party, this kind of activity would lay our their entire structure and everyone who is involved in it, no matter where they are inside the country,” he said. “That information could then be passed to the IRS to target people.” Here is the Beck interview:

Do not forget Doug Hagmann’s DHS insider: “If anyone thinks that what’s going on right now with all of this surveillance of American citizens is to fight some sort of foreign enemy, they’re delusional. If people think that this ‘scandal’ can’t get any worse, it will, hour by hour, day by day.”