In a very powerful exclusive interview, I recently had the privilege of speaking to an American hero, William Binney, NSA whistleblower.

We discussed how NSA mass data collection makes us LESS safe; how the intentions behind it are not misguided but positively nefarious; how the lies that have been told about it are snowballing, and how Rand Paul presidential candidacy may uniquely represent an opportunity for change.

Click below for the audio – or read the astonishing transcript that follows.

ROBIN KOERNER: Welcome to a very important edition of Blue Republican Radio with Robin Koerner. This is all a more appropriate edition considering we have just had the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta. We are going to be talking today to a man who, to me, is a hero. I imagine he is a hero to many of my listeners. We've all heard of Edward Snowden; maybe not so many of us have heard of Bill Binney – we should have – but Bill Binney is the NSA whistleblower of 2002, whom I will be speaking to today, and who performed a great service to our nation when he saw that the NSA was implementing a bastardized version of the technology that he created to protect to security and liberty of Americans – and he saw that that bastardized version was to be used en masse to violate the liberties and privacy of Americans.

Bill Binney – welcome to the show. Thank you so much; this is a privilege. Have I fairly characterized the trigger of your leaving the NSA of which you were a veteran for between 30 and 40 years?