One of the highest-level whistleblowers to emerge from the National Security Agency, William Binney, spoke out recently about the NSA’s “totalitarian mentality,” and the fact that the agency’s intelligence controls the entire cyber network across the globe, making their global reach omnipresent.

As a former crypto-mathematician for the NSA, Binney was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. He resigned from the NSA after September 11, when he noticed, and was repulsed by the country’s move towards mass surveillance.

While Binney did not take any documents with him upon his departure, the way Edward Snowden did. He told The Guardian that taking any concrete evidence of illegal spying would have been invaluable.

“At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US,” Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.”

“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control,” said Binney, who believes the government is fighting for a future where surveillance is ubiquitous and government intrusion unlimited.

In an interview with RT, Binney addressed the fact that the current investigation in place is nowhere near sufficient to combat the threat posed by the NSA. “They need to have a process that does limit what NSA looks at and can take in and store at its databases, so that other law enforcement agencies in the government can’t take advantage of it and use it illegally,” said Binney.

“Fundamentally it boils down to the respects of the rights of others and their rights to privacy and their right to be left alone,” Binney said, regarding the moral standard that has to be set. “That is the foundation of our constitution that says that they have the right of free association, and due process and privacy.”

Binney maintains that the biggest problem with the NSA’s omnipresence is that, “around the world no one has any privacy. There is nowhere to hide.”

“The NSA is mass-collecting on everyone, and it’s said to be about terrorism but inside the US it has stopped zero attacks.”