A noted NSA whistleblower told a group of journalists earlier this week that the NSA is lying when they try to reassure Americans that they “just” collect call metadata, which is information about the caller, recipient, and timing of calls. Rather, the whistleblower says, 80% of all American voice phone calls are recorded and then stored with no plans for disposal.

You might remember the frequent reminders that phone metadata isn’t so bad and that it’s supposedly a key tool and is, at worst, a necessary evil. At least they aren’t listening to your phone calls! Even worse, what if they kept audio recordings of our phone calls indefinitely and with no reported reasoning? Well, that’s the world we apparently live in, now.

This information comes from William Binney, who retired from the NSA just weeks after the September 11, 2001 attacks after becoming disturbed by alleged misdeeds by the spy agency. Since, he has been a vocal critic of the NSA, both for their dubious interpretations of the American Fourth Amendment and for overall poor management that he says leads to wasted money.

In 2007, he was cleared of wrongdoing in an FBI investigation into NSA practices just before an FBI raid on his home, which was followed shortly thereafter by his loss of the security clearance that legitimized his private business. As of mid-2013, Binney was still trying to see the return of his items taken by the FBI at gunpoint as he stepped out of the shower.

Earlier this week, Binney had more to share to a group of investigative journalists, as reported by The Guardian.

At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.

Yikes. He goes on to explain the unfathomable expansion of the NSA’s capacity to store surveillance data, which he says is all part of an effort to essentially know everything about everyone. When your task is to offer as much security against terrorist threats, this is a logical goal. If you can know everything, you can probably snuff out all the problems.

Ah, but there’s that problem about living in a free society. The American government was built with realistic expectations about the people that would be in it and the people that would cast votes to create it. In Federalist No. 10, James Madison explains that the propensity to be self-interested is “sown in the nature of man.” How do we deal with this problem?

Well, we make sure we live in a society that is free and heterogeneous enough that it is unlikely that a majority of people would share a single dastardly interest for long. A republican government (that’s a small “r,” referring to elected representatives) “which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by regular vote.” Of course, it doesn’t always work that smoothly, but Madison knew that as well:

It may clog the administration, it may convulse the society; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence.

So, this is why William Binney actually had an air of optimism, according to The Guardian‘s report. The fact that Edward Snowden also saw the problem and that countless others within the NSA had confided their frustrations. Likewise, several court decisions like those that require a warrant to use cell signals to track a person’s location or to search the contents of a cell phone give him optimism that these issues can be taken care of by the system.

Unfortunately, we’re stuck in the clog and convulse stage, but it’s possible that people will take note of those problems and put an end to it.

Featured image by Samantha Celera (Flickr).