A Good American Video Scavenger Hunt

Instructions: Copy and paste this link into a separate browser. Before you begin the video, I
suggest carefully reading the first question, start the video, watch and listen for the answer; once
you've found the answer, stop the video, answer the question, then repeat. This tactic will
probably be the most efficient method for completing scavenger hunt assignments in the
timeliest manner. However, this is only a suggestion, and you are free to organize your time any
way you like. When you are done, complete the quiz on Canvas. *You have only one attempt to
take scavenger hunt quizzes*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=666wsDcoNrU
or https://boisestate.kanopy.com/product/good-american
A Good American
1. What program does Bill Binney claim "absolutely would have prevented 9/11?
Thin Thread

2. What did Bill tell his attorney, Jesselyn Radack, when he first met her?
I need you to know I would never deliberately commit suicide

3. What year was the first attack on the World Trade Center?
1993

4. Finish the narrated quote by Bill, "The _________ were burying themselves inside that
ballooning communications network worldwide."

terrorists

5. Finish the narrated quote by Diane Roark, "Bill was Mr. Externals at the NSA. He was
the person in the agency who knew the most about what we now call in the digital age
__________."
Metadata

6. What does Bill Binney say is "extremely patterned"?

Human behavior
7. How many "warning indicators" did Bill focus on to make predictions about real-world
events?
5

8. What is the name of the software engineer and former senior executive of the NSA who
"sat on the terrorism desk in the Pentagon in 1993"?

Tom Drake

9. What "shocked" Diane Roark about the condition of the NSA after she "got the National
Security Agency account," which provides oversight to the House Intelligence
Committee?

The poor condition of the agency because it was not prepared for the digital age

10. According to Bill Binney, what was "the new Cold War"?

Worldwide explosion of the digital age

11. Transcribe the missing sentence narrated by Bill Binney. "That's when I started looking at
what we had to do to solve the problem of the volume of data and how could we isolate
the things that were important for our analysts to look at, and the key was metadata.
(transcribe this sentence). So, you don't have to look internally at the content; you look
more at the relationships of the people communicating, or organizations communicating
in the world."
Just using the metadata in terms of relationships across the network

12. What was Bill Binney sitting at his desk doing with a pencil and paper?
Trying to build structure of the soviet military

13. Finish the narrated quote by Bill Binney, "My philosophy was very simple, if somebody
says something is _________, that is something you have to do."
impossible

14. What makes Bill "light up" when someone starts talking about it?

Math
15. What is the name of the former senior computer scientist for the NSA who helped Bill
Binney construct his metadata?
Ed Loomis

16. According to this former senior computer scientist for the NSA, what matters most about
your metadata?
What pattern your digital behavior is taking.

17. What digital technology did the NSA "seriously consider" withholding from the public
because, according to Tom Drake, "we don't know what they are going to send to each
other"?
Email technology

18. What did Bill Binney and his SARC team call the "big graph" of consolidated global
computer and phone connections?
Big Ass Graph

19. What year did General Hayden become the new director of NSA?

1999

20. How much were Bill Binney and his SARC team offered by the NTO deputy to develop
ThinThread further?
1.2 billion

21. What was the name of the program proposed by General Hayden that private contractors
would run?
Trailblazer

22. How far in advance was Bill Binney able to predict the Tet offensive in 1968?
2 months

23. How was the USS Cole damaged, which the news reporter said, "there was no defense"?

Suicide bombers in a small boat

24. What happened when Bill Binney, in 2000, proposed to use ThinThread to stop potential
terrorist attacks from eighteen sites starting in January of 2001?

We do a deployment of thinthread to those 18 sites but came back rejected

25. What corporation got the contract to develop Trailblazer?

SAIC

26. Who said, "Yes, Charlie, but we still need the money," regarding ThinThread?
Maureen Baginski

27. What did Bill Binney call Maureen's decision to end ThinThread?

Happiness management

28. Who said, according to Bill Binney, "We could milk this cow for fifteen years"?

Sam Visner

29. According to Tom Drake, who said, "9/11 was a gift to NSA."
Maureen Baginski

30. Finish the narrated quote by Bill Binney, "To do the spying on US citizens they had to
use the only software that managed large-scale operations, which was the software that I
put together, which was the back-end of ___________, the part that does the graphing
and management of information index into the graph."
Thinthread

31. What was Bill Binney's and Kirk Wiebe's last day at NSA?
October 31 2001

32. Finish the narrated quote by Bill Binney, “We were requested by the Senate Intelligence
Committee staff to go to the _________ ____________ ___________.”

National Reconnaissance office

33. What happened after Kirk and Bill sent a report "up the chain" showing how the NSA
missed "extremely valuable material" they had already analyzed with Trailblazer?
The data and their findings were erased, They were forced to stop their work with ThinThread, Their computers were dismantled.

34. When did Bill and Kirk file a DoD IG complaint against the NSA for corruption, fraud,
waste, and abuse?
september 2002

35. Finish the narrated quote by Kirk Wiebe, "In 2005, __________ was declared an abject
failure having wasted billions of dollars."
Trailblazer

36. Who was promoted to the head of CIA after presiding over the largest intelligence failure
in NSA's history?
Michael Hayden

37. What government agency raided the homes of Kirk, Ed, Diane, and Bill on July 26th,
2007?
FBI

38. Who said, "I looked at it as a total destruction of our society, and we lost all moral
standing in the world as a result of going to the dark side"?
Bill Binney

39. Why was Bill, Kirk, Ed, and Diane's case dropped (on-screen quote)?
Fabricated evidence

40. Finish the on-screen quote, "Since 2001, the USA has constantly expanded its mass
surveillance programs. Similar systems were adopted across the world. No single ______
attack was prevented."
terror