William Binney ( U . S . intelligence official ) William Edward Binney is a former highly placed intelligence official with the United States National Security Agency ( NSA ) turned whistleblower who resigned on October 31 , 2001 , after more than 30 years with the agency . He was a high - profile critic of his former employers during the George W . Bush administration , and was the subject of FBI investigations , including a raid on his home in 2007 . Binney has continued to speak out during Barack Obama ' s presidency about the NSA ' s data collection policies , and continues to be interviewed in the media , regarding his experiences and his views on communication intercepts by governmental agencies of American citizens . In a legal case , Binney has testified in a sworn affidavit that the NSA is in deliberate violation of the U . S . Constitution . Biography . Binney grew up in rural Pennsylvania and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from the Pennsylvania State University in 1970 . He said that he volunteered for the Army during the Vietnam era in order to select work that would interest him . He was found to have strong aptitudes for mathematics , analysis , and code - breaking , and served four years from 1965 – 1969 at the Army Security Agency before going to the NSA in 1970 . Binney was a Russia specialist and worked in the operations side of intelligence , starting as an analyst and ending as Technical Director then becoming a geopolitical world Technical Director . In the 1990s , he co - founded a unit on automating signals intelligence with NSA research chief Dr . John Taggart . Binney ' s NSA career culminated as Technical Leader for intelligence in 2001 . Having expertise in intelligence analysis , traffic analysis , systems analysis , knowledge management , and mathematics ( including set theory , number theory , and probability ) , Binney has been described as one of the best analysts and code breakers in the NSA ' s history . After retiring from the NSA he founded “ Entity Mapping , LLC ” , a private intelligence agency together with fellow NSA whistleblower J . Kirk Wiebe to market their analysis program to government agencies . NSA continued to retaliate against them , ultimately preventing them from getting work , or causing contracts they had secured to be terminated abruptly . Whistleblowing . In September 2002 , he , along with J . Kirke Wiebe and Edward Loomis , asked the U . S . Defense Department to investigate the NSA for allegedly wasting " millions and millions of dollars " on Trailblazer , a system intended to analyze data carried on communications networks such as the Internet . Binney had been one of the inventors of an alternative system , ThinThread , which was shelved when Trailblazer was chosen instead . Binney has also been publicly critical of the NSA for spying on U . S . citizens , saying of its expanded surveillance after the September 11 , 2001 attacks that " it ' s better than anything that the KGB , the Stasi , or the Gestapo and SS ever had " as well as noting Trailblazer ' s ineffectiveness and unjustified high cost compared to the far less intrusive ThinThread . He was furious that the NSA hadn ' t uncovered the 9 / 11 plot and stated that intercepts it had collected but not analyzed likely would have garnered timely attention with his leaner more focused system . After he left the NSA in 2001 , Binney was one of several people investigated as part of an inquiry into the 2005 " New York Times " exposé on the agency ’ s warrantless eavesdropping program . Binney was cleared of wrongdoing after three interviews with FBI agents beginning in March 2007 , but one morning in July 2007 , a dozen agents armed with rifles appeared at his house , one of whom entered the bathroom and pointed his gun at Binney , still towelling off from a shower . In that raid , the FBI confiscated a desktop computer , disks , and personal and business records . The NSA revoked his security clearance , forcing him to close a business he ran with former colleagues at a loss of a reported $ 300 , 000 in annual income . In 2012 , Binney and his co - plaintiffs went to federal court to get the items back . Binney spent more than $ 7 , 000 on legal fees . During interviews on " Democracy Now ! " in April and May 2012 with elaboration in July 2012 at " " hacker conference HOPE and at DEF CON a couple weeks later , Binney repeated estimates that the NSA ( particularly its Stellar Wind project ) had intercepted 20 trillion communications " transactions " of Americans such as phone calls , emails , and other forms of data ( but not including financial data ) . This includes most of the emails of US citizens . Binney disclosed in a sworn affidavit for " Jewel v . NSA " that the agency was " purposefully violating the Constitution " .