NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Mon Jun 10, 2013 5:30 am

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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'
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Published on Jun 9, 2013
Copyright © 2013 Praxis Films / Laura Poitras
FAIR USE NOTICE: This video contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in this video is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'
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NSA Whistleblower Ed Snowden Risks Freedom to Expose Extensi

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Tue Jun 11, 2013 3:04 am

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NSA Whistleblower Ed Snowden Risks Freedom to Expose Extensive Government Spying
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Published on Jun 10, 2013
Michael Ratner: Citizens must demand an end to surveillance state and Obama admin's war on whistle-blowers
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Snowden leaks show NSA 'routinely lies' to Congress

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Tue Jun 11, 2013 3:19 am

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Snowden leaks show NSA 'routinely lies' to Congress
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Published on Jun 10, 2013
Over the weekend, The Guardian revealed that Edward Snowden was behind the leaking of documents revealing the NSA's surveillance program on American computer networks. The 29-year-old, who was formally employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, divulged the information in hopes of giving the people the power to decide whether or not these surveillance policies are right or wrong. David Colapinto, legal director for the National Whistleblower Center, and Sharon Bradford Franklin, senior counsel with The Constitution Project, give their thoughts on the situation.
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The Resident: This is how the gov't is tracking YOU

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Tue Jun 11, 2013 3:31 am

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The Resident: This is how the gov't is tracking YOU
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Published on Jun 6, 2013
The US Supreme Court just ruled that police departments can now swab citizens for DNA upon arrest - even if they have never been found guilty of a crime. This is just the latest in the many ways the government is keeping track of its citizens. They utilize the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, your cell phone's GPS, even your face - all to keep track of who you are, what you are doing, where you are doing it, and when you are doing it. The Resident (aka Lori Harfenist) explores the issue.
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Top National Security Experts:Spying Program Doesn’t Make Us

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sat Jun 15, 2013 12:16 am

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Top National Security Experts: Spying Program Doesn’t Make Us Safer, and Spying Leaks Don’t Harm America

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By Washington's Blog
Global Research, June 13, 2013
Washington's Blog
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NSA Leaks Help – Rather than Hurt – the United States

America’s top national security experts say that the NSA’s mass surveillance program doesn’t make us safer … and that whistleblowers revealing the nature and extent of the program don’t harm America.

The top counter-terrorism czar under Presidents Clinton and Bush – Richard Clarke – notes:

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    The just-revealed surveillance stretches the law to its breaking point and opens the door to future potential abuses.
    I am troubled by the precedent of stretching a law on domestic surveillance almost to the breaking point. On issues so fundamental to our civil liberties, elected leaders should not be so needlessly secretive.
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    The argument that this sweeping search must be kept secret from the terrorists is laughable. Terrorists already assume this sort of thing is being done. Only law-abiding American citizens were blissfully ignorant of what their government was doing.
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    If the government wanted a particular set of records, it could tell the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court why — and then be granted permission to access those records directly from specially maintained company servers. The telephone companies would not have to know what data were being accessed. There are no technical disadvantages to doing it that way, although it might be more expensive.

    Would we, as a nation, be willing to pay a little more for a program designed this way, to avoid a situation in which the government keeps on its own computers a record of every time anyone picks up a telephone? That is a question that should have been openly asked and answered in Congress
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The author of the Patriot Act and chairman on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security, and Investigations – Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner – says:

  • Lawmakers’ and the executive branch’s excuses about recent revelations of NSA activity are “a bunch of bunk”

  • The government has gone far beyond what the Patriot Act intended, and that section 215 of the act “was originally drafted to prevent data mining” on the scale that’s occurred.

  • Whistleblower Edward Snowden is not a traitor, and Sensenbrenner would not have known the extent of abuse by the NSA and the FISA court without Snowden’s disclosures.

  • The Patriot Act needs to be amended to protect Americans’ privacy

The former head of the NSA’s global digital data gathering program, William Binney:


Former FBI counterterrorism agent Tim Clemente confirmed Snowden’s allegations, and told CNN:

  • “Welcome to America. All of that stuff is being captured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not”

  • “No digital communication is secure”

Senator Jon Tester – a member of the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and the Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security – says Snowden didn’t harm national security, and that his leaks were helpful:

    The information that they wrote about was just the fact that NSA was doing broad sweeps of foreign and domestic phone records, metadata. [T]he fact of the matter is is I don’t see how that compromises the security of this country whatsoever.

    And quite frankly, it helps people like me become aware of a situation that I wasn’t aware of before because I don’t sit on that Intelligence Committee.

And Thomas Drake – a former senior NSA executive and a decorated Air Force and Navy veteran – writes:

    What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.

    Like me, he became discomforted by [the NSA's] direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

    The NSAprograms that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA’s lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said:

    “The White House has approved the program; it’s all legal. NSA is the executive agent.”

    It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. “You don’t understand,” I was told. “We just need the data.”

    In the first week of October 2001, President Bush had signed an extraordinary order authorizing blanket dragnet electronic surveillance: Stellar Wind was a highly secret program that, without warrant or any approval from the Fisa court, gave the NSA access to all phone records from the major telephone companies, including US-to-US calls. It correlates precisely with the Verizon order revealed by Snowden; and based on what we know, you have to assume that there are standing orders for the other major telephone companies.
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The supposed oversight, combined with enabling legislation – the Fisa court, the congressional committees – is all a kabuki dance, predicated on the national security claim that we need to find a threat. The reality is, they just want it all, period.

So I was there at the very nascent stages, when the government – wilfully and in deepest secrecy – subverted the constitution. All you need to know about so-called oversight is that the NSA was already in violation of the Patriot Act by the time it was signed into law.

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To the US government today, however, we are all foreigners.

I became an expert on East Germany, which was then the ultimate surveillance state. Their secret police were monstrously efficient: they had a huge paper-based system that held information on virtually everyone in the country – a population of about 16-17 million. The Stasi’s motto was “to know everything”.

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So none of this is new to me. The difference between what the Bush administration was doing in 2001, right after 9/11, and what the Obama administration is doing today is that the system is now under the cover and color of law. Yet, what Snowden has revealed is still the tip of the iceberg what Snowden has revealed is still the tip of the iceberg. [Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez - a member of the Committee on Homeland Security and the Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities confirms this]

General Michael Hayden, who was head of the NSA when I worked there, and then director of the CIA, said, “We need to own the net.” (Background) And that is what they’re implementing here. They have this extraordinary system: in effect, a 24/7 panopticon on a vast scale that it is gazing at you with an all-seeing eye.

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My concern [while working for the NSA] was that we were more than an accessory; this was a crime and we were subverting the constitution.

I differed as a whistleblower to Snowden only in this respect: in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he’s been following this for years: he’s seen what’s happened to other whistleblowers like me.

By following protocol, you get flagged – just for raising issues. You’re identified as someone they don’t like, someone not to be trusted. [Indeed, Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all other presidents combined. And the government threw in jail one telecom executive to refuse the government orders to hand over mass surveillance records on its customers.] I was exposed early on because I was a material witness for two 9/11 congressional investigations. In closed testimony, I told them everything I knew ….

But as I found out later, none of the material evidence I disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation.

I reached a point in early 2006 when I decided I would contact a reporter. I had the same level of security clearance as Snowden. If you look at the indictment from 2010, you can see that I was accused of causing “exceptionally grave damage to US national security“. Despite allegations that I had tippy-top-secret documents, In fact, I had no classified information in my possession, and I disclosed none to the Baltimore Sun journalist during 2006 and 2007. But I got hammered: in November 2007, I was raided by a dozen armed FBI agents, when I was served with a search warrant. The nightmare had only just begun, including extensive physical and electronic surveillance.

In April 2008, in a secret meeting with the FBI, the chief prosecutor from the Department of Justice assigned to lead the prosecution said, “How would you like to spend the rest of your life in jail, Mr Drake?” – unless I co-operated with their multi-year, multimillion-dollar criminal leak investigation, launched in 2005 after the explosive New York Times article revealing for the first time the warrantless wiretapping operation. Two years later, they finally charged me with a ten felony count indictment, including five counts under the Espionage Act. I faced upwards of 35 years in prison.

In July 2011, after the government’s case had collapsed under the weight of truth, I plead to a minor misdemeanor for “exceeding authorized use of a computer” under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – in exchange for the DOJ dropping all ten felony counts. I received as a sentence one year’s probation and 240 hours of community service: I interviewed almost 50 veterans for the Library of Congress veterans history project. This was a rare, almost unprecedented, case of a government prosecution of a whistleblower ending in total defeat and failure.

So, the stakes for whistleblowers are incredibly high. The government has got its knives out: there’s a massive manhunt for Snowden. They will use all their resources to hunt him down and every detail of his life will be turned inside out. They’ll do everything they can to “bring him to justice” – already there are calls for the “traitor” to be “put away for life”.

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Since the government unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11, it has been eating our democracy alive from the inside out. There’s no room in a democracy for this kind of secrecy: it’s anathema to our form of a constitutional republic, which was born out of the struggle to free ourselves from the abuse of such powers, which led to the American revolution.

That is what’s at stake here: to an NSA with these unwarranted powers, we’re all potentially guilty; we’re all potential suspects until we prove otherwise. That is what happens when the government has all the data.

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We are seeing an unprecedented campaign against whistleblowers and truth-tellers: it’s now criminal to expose the crimes of the state.

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Drake also tweets:

  • [People] must get clear & present danger of authoritarian totalitarianism via the Leviathan [National Security] state & surveillance

    And:
  • Snowden chose 2 free darkside NatSec info as magnificent act of selfless civil disobedience 2 protect our liberty.


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Re: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sun Jun 16, 2013 7:44 am

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Edward Snowden: The Asymmetry of Courage

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Published on Thursday, June 13, 2013 by SOURCE
by Robert Shetterly
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One of the ironies of warfare is that an apparently vastly superior force can be defeated by an apparently much weaker one when the weaker force refuses to meet the more powerful on its own terms, play by its rules, square off army to army, submit to punch and counterpunch. A combination of strategy and tactics designed by the weaker force to enervate the morale, confidence and finances of the powerful may prove decisive --- as it did for the American revolutionaries against the British, North Vietnamese & Viet Cong against the U.S., or the Afghanis against the Soviets. In 1975 Andrew Mack first used the term “asymmetric warfare” to describe this phenomenon in an article called Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars. A materially weaker force with higher motivation --- they may be fighting for their own land --- and greater perseverance may prevail. The weaker force may be beleaguered by the horrible and high tech weaponry of exorbitant power --- stealth bombers, napalm, cluster bombs, cruise missiles and drones, depleted uranium, helicopter gun ships and satellite surveillance --- but it manages to dodge and absorb, go underground, patiently wait to strike an exposed weakness.

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I was thinking about asymmetry this week as the story of Edward Snowden unfolded. This story, one young man pitted against our national security state, is an extreme asymmetry, but the disparity is not between lesser and greater violent forces. And, for that reason, it could not properly be called a David versus Goliath confrontation. David was small but armed with sling & stone. Edward’s only “weapons” are courage and truth.

In asymmetric warfare, the powerful say, “Come out and fight on our terms! We’ll show you who’s stronger!” The weaker say, “Not on your life! We plan to win, not commit suicide.”

Conversely, in a contest of asymmetric courage, the lone whistleblower says to the powerful institutions, “Come out and fight on my terms --- ethics, courage, truth, law!” And there is deafening silence from the powerful institutions because with all their secret knowledge and secret money, their special forces and spies, their torture and secret prisons, they have not courage. They have not ethics, truth or law. They are muscled up with conformity, with arrogance, with self-congratulatory winks and nods. They have the power to easily crush the person of courage, to discredit him in the media, to arrest and convict him in a kangaroo court, to torture him, disappear him, force feed him. They have secret protocol and secret policy, the power to change the law to legalize atrocity. But they have no courage. They have the pathetic vanity of a steroid-pumped-up robots flexing in front of a mirror. With satisfied smirks they ask rhetorically, “Who’s the strongest in the world?” But they have no courage.

Thomas Jefferson said, "When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty." He could have been commenting on the situation of Edward Snowden or any one of so many recent whistleblowers. People fear the government when it secretly and lawlessly insinuates itself into the fabric of their lives with the ever present threat that each person could be plucked out of that fabric with no recourse. This is done in the name of security. But a government that spies on its own people actually prefers fear to security. Or, simply, the security of fear. There should be no trade off or balancing act, no compromise, between our freedoms and our security. Our freedoms are our security. Sacrificing our privacy, which is our autonomy as individuals, for the sake of security is like willingly agreeing to be half a slave.

The false dichotomy between security and freedom obscures a more important fact. When we wring our hands and listen to a president pontificate about how to balance this either/or, we are encouraged not to notice that it is our foreign, military and economic policies that are designed to create injustice and insecurity. Imperialism, both soft and hard, fosters anger and insecurity. The obsession with secrecy is absurd. There is no secrecy about this. The only secret worth divining is where the next moral hero will come from to expose the extent of tyranny and inspire more people to act with asymmetric courage. In that action is the hope of democracy. In that “illegal” action is the hope of the rule of law.

Edward Snowden reminds me of Rachel Corrie, who was run over and killed by an armored Israeli bulldozer on March 16, 2003 as she placed herself --- asymmetrically --- between the bulldozer and a Palestinian home she hoped to protect from destruction. The similarity between Rachel and Edward is in the nature of the stand-off --- isolated courage versus brute power. The difference is that no one knew about Rachel’s courage until it was too late. We all know about Edward, and, perhaps, if we can summon a fraction of his courage, we can protect him and thus change the policy.

In early 2003 shortly after arriving in Palestine, in her first email home, Rachel said, “I don’t know if many of the children here have ever existed without tank-shell holes in their walls and the towers of an occupying army surveying them constantly from the near horizons.” She assumed that all Americans would recognize constant surveillance as a prime indicator of tyranny. Like Rachel, Edward attempts to protect an increasingly fragile structure, our Constitution and the democracy it is meant to house. Edward said, "...they [the NSA] are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them." While our national security state has all the ideological arrogance and democratic sensitivity of a bulldozer operated by a storm trooper, it is susceptible to and befuddled by courage. It blusters, it growls, it threatens and backfires. It uses its x-ray vision to spy out the color of our underwear and the temerity of our intention to resist. But, ultimately, it’s a coward.

Edward Snowden’s courage is like a lever the end of which he shoved under the NSA’s enormous dead weight. Whether the weight moves depends on how many of us grab on. Asymmetry can move mountains.

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ImageRobert Shetterly [robert.shetterly@gmail.com] is a writer and artist who lives in Brooksville, Maine. He is the author of Americans Who Tell the Truth. See his website.
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Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower answers reader questions.

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Wed Jun 19, 2013 5:03 am

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Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower answers reader questions
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Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower answers reader questions
The whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history answered your questions about the NSA surveillance revelations
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guardian.co.uk, Monday 17 June 2013 20.31 BST
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Edward Snowden Image & Image


It is the interview the world's media organisations have been chasing for more than a week, but instead Edward Snowden is giving Guardian readers the exclusive.

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The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything.

Snowden, who has fled the US, told the Guardian he "does not expect to see home again", but where he'll end up has yet to be determined.

He will be online today from 11am ET/4pm BST today. An important caveat: the live chat is subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to a secure internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient.

To participate, post your question below and recommend your favorites. As he makes his way through the thread, we'll embed his replies as posts in the live blog. You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSnowden.

We expect the site to experience high demand so we'll re-publish the Q&A in full after the live chat has finished.

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Image GlennGreenwald 17 June 2013 2:11pm

Let's begin with these:

    Image1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities?

    Image2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?

Answer:

    Image1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

    Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.

    2)Image All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.
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Re: NSA whistleblower: The Character of Edward Snowden

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Thu Jun 20, 2013 5:01 am

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The Character of Edward Snowden
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THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
The Character of Edward Snowden
JUNE 11, 2013 by JEFFREY A. TUCKER
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Edward Snowden, age 29 and now temporarily living in Hong Kong, is the overnight sensation who leaked details about the National Security Administration’s (NSA) practice of massive and sweeping surveillance of Americans’ browsing habits. He has also provided a model of what it means to live a principled life, even when it comes at personal expense.

What his leak revealed is truly chilling and even infuriating. He demonstrated that websites and cell phone companies are sharing their databases with the U.S. government in real time—without so much as court orders—and thereby making every one of us a victim of snooping and possibly vulnerable to blackmail for so long as we shall live.

Much more important for any lover of freedom, however, is the manner in which he went about his defiance. He acted peacefully, openly, with total dedication to principle. He took responsibility for speaking the truth. He did it with a clean conscience. He has been willing to face the consequences for his actions.

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It will take millions more like him to give freedom a fighting chance in an age of leviathan State control.
In his life, he had seen enough to make him crippled with fear. But he rejected fear and took a different route. He used the very technologies that he knew to be compromised by government invasion and surveillance in order to speak truth to power. His actions reveal a path forward for the whole cause of human freedom—using every opportunity to act on the courage of our convictions.

By now, everyone knows the story of Edward’s life, just as millions have already seen his interview following his disclosures. Edward was born in 1983 and raised in North Carolina. His enrollment in a community college made up for his poor high school education and allowed him to earn a general education degree.

He signed up with the Army—he hoped to liberate people in Iraq, but was shocked to find that this wasn’t really the goal—and was discharged following leg injuries. He went to work as a security guard for an NSA security facility in Maryland, where he must have revealed his competence in information technology and code. (In some ways, he is an archetype of today’s self-taught but indispensable code “geeks.”)

Soon after that he was snapped up by the talent-hungry CIA. By 2007 he found himself in Geneva, maintaining computer security for the agency. Two years later he was working for the NSA in Japan—the very definition of upward mobility.
Then earlier this year, he landed the dream job. He began working for Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii. This is a private company that collects, analyzes, and disseminates data for the NSA, enjoying billions in contracts from the government. Edward himself was only 29 years old, but he was pulling in $200,000 in a cushy job in a dreamland, living with his girlfriend. In Hawaii!

To appreciate what he has done, you have to put yourself in his position. Would you give that up? Would you be willing to walk away? He was surrounded by people who just took it for granted that every American deserves to be spied on, that government has the full right to everyone’s information.

This was the culture of his firm. The people paying him to manage computer networks all accepted the premise that all this stuff about freedom and democracy, court orders and the Bill of Rights, was just a veneer—just the silly doctrines of the civic religion that we tell our children but don’t really believe. Their real job at Booz was to collect as much information as possible and let the government use it as it sees fit.

Most people in that position would say nothing. Maybe they would even feel a sense of power at being able to wiretap anyone or dig through the email archives of anyone. The financial incentive alone would be enough to keep him quiet. Why risk such a happy life as this? He could have stayed there forever. Most everyone would have done exactly this.

Instead, his well-formed conscience intervened. One day, he and his girlfriend gathered up their things and left. He told his superiors that he was going to get treated for epilepsy. Instead, he flew to Hong Kong and lived in a hotel room. He called up journalist Glenn Greenwald (a man he knew he could trust) and gave him the documents that are rocking the world today.

That’s when the witch-hunt for the leaker began. Official Washington swore vengeance.

But Edward wasn’t finished. Rather than remain in hiding, he took the opposite path. He granted an on-camera interview in which he revealed everything there was to know about him. He put himself on the line, with confidence and grace.
He said:

    I'm no different from anybody else. I don't have special skills. I'm just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what's happening and goes, "This is something that's not our place to decide, the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong."

After the leaks, his former employer denounced him and his “shocking” actions, saying that his revelations are “a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm.” The partisans of the national security state called him evil and Congressman called for his extradition and prosecution.

He had already anticipated this. He knew the risks. He figures he will never go home again. He is now seeking asylum in Iceland, a fact that should give every American pause.

Here is the statement I find so incredible, so compelling, so absolutely on point. He explains why he chose to be a whistleblower rather than continue to live a comfortable but morally compromised life:

    You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk because they're such powerful adversaries. No one can meaningfully oppose them. If they want to get you, they'll get you in time. But at the same time you have to make a determination about what it is that's important to you.

    And if living unfreely but comfortably is something you're willing to accept—and I think many of us are, it's the human nature—you can get up every day, you can go to work, you can collect your large paycheck for relatively little work, against the public interest, and go to sleep at night after watching your shows. (emphasis added)

Millions of people do just this. They choose to live unfreely—but comfortably. It is the habit of nearly everyone—especially in times when the leviathan State is so imposing and threatening—to put up with the immorality and evil around them, to look the other way in the face of fraud and wickedness, to help cover up the unethical deceptions and lies, to pretend like the plunder and surveillance and invasions are just no big deal, rather than come forward.

To choose the security of the known evil—no matter how pressing that evil is, so long as that evil is your personal benefactor—rather than take the risk that comes with improving the world is the pattern and habit of our day. Millions do it. Millions in government. Millions in the private sector. And that is precisely why so much of the world is on its present course.

To break away from that requires something special, something spectacular, something singular in our times. So why take this extraordinary step? As Edward told Greenwald in his interview, it’s because someone has to act in his generation or it will be worse in the next one. The “architecture of oppression” must be exposed now as a way of making the world a better place in the future.

And so he acted. He used technology to speak directly to the whole human family. He bypassed the gatekeepers completely and put to use the technological marvels of our time to make a difference.

He could have done otherwise. He could have sat by, just as tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, do every day. After all, his company employs 25,000 people, most of whom were in a position to do the same thing. But they did not. He did.
What makes the difference? What made him act? He decided not to be part of the system. He decided that he would not live an unprincipled life. He would not be unfree. He would choose truth, and this truth would set him free.

Too often we think of our freedom as something that is either granted or taken away from us by government. This is partially but not completely true. There are ways in our lives that we can choose—right where we are—to embrace or reject freedom. All of us, but especially those who work for government or government contractors, are often faced with the choice of accepting a comfortable lie or taking the risk to live the more difficult truth.

As Snowden seems intuitively to understand, the “architecture of oppression” relies most fundamentally on our own cooperation and complacency. Withdrawing our consent, and doing so with integrity and openness, is probably the single most powerful blow any of us can ever strike for the cause of human freedom and the well-being of future generations.


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JEFFREY A. TUCKER
Jeffrey Tucker is a distinguished fellow at FEE and the executive editor and publisher at Laissez Faire Books.
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WikiLeaks may publish more revelations promised by Snowden –

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Fri Jun 21, 2013 4:03 am

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WikiLeaks may publish more revelations promised by Snowden – Assange
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Published time: June 20, 2013 14:03
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WikiLeaks may publish further revelations promised by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Julian Assange hinted during a conference call with journalists. He reiterated that his legal team is helping Snowden in his quest for asylum in Iceland.

“I feel a great deal of personal sympathy with Mr. Snowden,” the WikiLeaks founder said, adding that he had been in touch with Snowden’s lawyers.

"We are in touch with Mr. Snowden's legal team and have been, are involved, in the process of brokering his asylum in Iceland," he said in a conference call from the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he himself has been fighting his extradition to Sweden for nearly a year.

When asked if he had spoken directly with Snowden, the former CIA contractor who fled to Hong Kong before disclosing the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program, Assange declined to offer further details.

“As a matter of policy, we don’t speak about investigations or upcoming publications,” Assange repeated several times. At the same time, he hinted that “significant material will be published in coming weeks.”

It was reported Tuesday that Snowden is seeking asylum in the Nordic island-nation. The Icelandic government confirmed they had received Snowden’s request through WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson.

Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson confirmed that Snowden’s representative held “informal talks” with government officials to sound out the possibility of the country granting him asylum.

The PM declined to comment further, adding that the asylum request should be filed in Iceland by Snowden himself.

Assange said the US government is likely to charge the NSA leaker with espionage.

    “It is clear to me at this stage that Mr. Snowden . . . is being very aggressively pursued by the US national security sector, and there’s an open question as to whether the journalists, Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, will be in the same position that I will be in in a year’s time,”
he said.

The US has not yet filed a formal request for his extradition from the Chinese territory.

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Obama administration charges NSA whistleblower Snowden with

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sun Jun 23, 2013 3:20 am

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Obama administration charges NSA whistleblower Snowden with espionage
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Published time: June 21, 2013 22:20
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US federal prosecutors have charged whistleblower Edward Snowden with espionage, theft and conversion of government property in a criminal complaint, and asked Hong Kong to detain him ahead of a move to extradite him.

Charges of espionage and theft are based on Snowden’s extraction of classified documents from NSA servers, which led to publication of several articles regarding the NSA’s surveillance programs, including PRISM, which is alleged to harvest private user data through cooperation with a slew of American corporations including Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

The implicated companies have denied granting US intelligence services “direct access” to their servers, though during an online chat on Monday Snowden alleged that they had been purposely deceptive in their responses.

When asked to "define in as much detail as you can what 'direct access’ means," Snowden went into greater technical detail:

"More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want," he said.

The specific details of how Snowden transported the classified NSA documents are somewhat unclear, with The Guardian saying they were extracted using four laptops taken to Hong Kong, though subsequent reports suggested that Snowden simply copied secret files on USB drives. Even though the use of thumb drives is banned in SIPRNET, the Defense Department’s secret network, as a system administrator Snowden had much broader access to data.

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The United States is also preparing to seek Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong.

"Our law enforcement officials are in conversation... with the Hong Kong authorities at this point," outgoing White House National Security Adviser Tom Donilon was quoted as saying by CBS.

Federal prosecutors have now laid the groundwork for Snowden’s extradition back to the US for trial, and have 60 days to file an indictment, Reuters reports quoting own sourses. In order to have Snowden’s extradited, Washington will have to support its charges with sufficient evidence to convince Hong Kong officials that the charges are not based on political offenses, which can be excepted by either side in the terms of the extradition agreement between the US and Hong Kong.

The charges against Snowden represent the seventh instance under the Obama presidency that the Espionage Act of 1917 has been used. During all previous American presidencies, the law has been used in a total of three instances to bring charges.

The 29-year-old former intelligence analyst flew to Hong Kong last month, having been in contact with journalists at The Washington Post and The Guardian newspapers regarding a series of highly classified documents regarding a massive electronic surveillance program run by the US National Security Agency that he had acquired and intended to leak.

Washington has now asked Hong Kong’s government to detain Snowden on a provisional arrest warrant, according to officials who spoke with the Post. Though the territory is considered a “semi-autonomous” region under Chinese sovereignty, it is unclear whether the matter will be handled solely by Hong Kong’s legal system with or without intervention from Beijing.

Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive of Hong Kong, made a brief statement last week regarding Snowden's pending prosecution.

“When the relevant mechanism is activated, the Hong Kong [Special Administrative Region] Government will handle the case of Mr. Snowden in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong,” he said in a statement.

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Speaking to CNN following the news of the criminal complaint filed against Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who worked directly with the whistleblower, called the Obama administration's decision to pursue an espionage charge an overreach. According to Greenwald, though Snowden was aware he was breaking the law by disclosing highly classified documents to the press, the former analyst saw the action as a form of civil disobedience.

“I think this really illustrates how vindictive this president is and how much acrimony he has towards any kind of transparency,” said Greenwald of the indictment.

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Spying on Americans: The Bush and Obama Administrations.....

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:56 am

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Spying on Americans: The Bush and Obama Administrations’ Justification for Mass Surveillance
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By Washington's Blog
Global Research, June 22, 2013
Washington's Blog
Theme: Intelligence, Police State & Civil Rights
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The Government Actually DID Spy On the Bad Guys Before 9/11 … and the Boston Bombing

Preface: The Bush and Obama administrations both claimed that spying on Americans was justified by 9/11. Specifically, they said that they could have caught one of the 9/11 hijackers living in San Diego if they could have spied on phone calls on American soil.

However – as demonstrated below – that claim is totally false.


ProPublica notes:

    In defending the NSA’s sweeping collection of Americans’ phone call records, Obama administration officials have repeatedly pointed out how it could have helped thwart the 9/11 attacks: If only the surveillance program been in place before Sept. 11, 2001, U.S. authorities would have been able to identify one of the future hijackers who was living in San Diego [named Khalid al Mihdhar].

    Last weekend, former Vice President Dick Cheney invoked the same argument.

    ***

    Indeed, the Obama administration’s invocation of the Mihdhar case echoes a nearly identical argument made by the Bush administration eight years ago when it defended the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.

The reality is different.

Initially, an FBI informant hosted and rented a room to Mihdhar and another 9/11 hijacker in 2000.

Investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House.

As the New York Times notes:

    Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

So mass surveillance of Americans isn’t necessary, when the FBI informant should have apprehended the hijackers.

Moreover, the NSA actually did intercept Mihdhar’s phone calls before 9/11.

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WikiLeaks helps Edward Snowden leave Hong Kong and seek asyl

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Tue Jun 25, 2013 4:33 am

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WikiLeaks helps Edward Snowden leave Hong Kong and seek asylum in Ecuador
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By North America correspondent Jane Cowan, wires
Updated Mon Jun 24, 2013 12:45pm AEST

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Edward Snowden, the American man who revealed the extent of the US government's phone and internet surveillance, is seeking asylum in Ecuador.

Frustrating US efforts to extradite him, Snowden caught a commercial flight from Hong Kong to Moscow, apparently accompanied by at least one representative from the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

Hong Kong said it allowed him to leave because of legal problems with the US extradition request.

Hours later, Ecuador confirmed it had received a request for asylum.

It is not clear how the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor has been able to travel, given reports the US had revoked his passport since charging him with espionage and theft of government property.

US officials say they will seek cooperation from law enforcement authorities in any country where Snowden may travel.

A state department official warned Snowden "should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States".

Before announcing the asylum request on Twitter, Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, told journalists his country would study any petition.

"Mr Snowden has informed us, which we were not aware of, that there's a large espionage system that the US has developed," he said.

"We have said that if Mr Snowden petitions our country for asylum, we will study it thoroughly, the way we did with Mr Assange and we are prepared to accept that petition then make a decision."

The chairman of the US House Intelligence Committee, Mike Rogers, says the countries through which Mr Snowden is seeking passage undermine his whistleblower claims.

"Every one of those nations is hostile to the United States. I mean if he could go to North Korea and Iran he could round out his government oppression tour by Snowden. So you think about what he says he wants and what his actions are. It defies logic," he said.

Ecuador has been sheltering WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at its London embassy for the past year.

On its Twitter feed, WikiLeaks said Snowden "is bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisers from WikiLeaks".

"Mr Snowden requested that WikiLeaks use its legal expertise and experience to secure his safety. Once Mr Snowden arrives in Ecuador his request will be formally processed," it added.
The WikiLeaks legal adviser accompanying Snowden is Baltasar Garzon, a former Spanish judge known around the world for ordering the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," Mr Garzon said in a statement.

"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."

Snowden flies to Moscow from Hong Kong

Snowden arrived Sunday in Moscow from Hong Kong, where he first fled with a trove of secrets taken from the NSA.

He was charged with espionage by the US authorities last week.

WikiLeaks gave no details about how it had helped to arrange the escape of one of the America's most wanted men.

Mr Assange, a 41-year-old former computer hacker from Australia, walked into the Ecuador embassy on June 19, 2012 and claimed asylum in a sensational bid to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over alleged sex crimes.

The South American country granted his request, accepting his fears that if sent to Sweden he might be passed on to the US and prosecuted for publishing thousands of classified war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and a cache of diplomatic cables.

Britain has refused to grant him safe passage to Ecuador.

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Ecuador to US: We Won't Be 'Blackmailed' over Snowden

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Fri Jun 28, 2013 2:56 am

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Ecuador to US: We Won't Be 'Blackmailed' over Snowden
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Vowing not to be bullied, nation cancels trade pact preemptively and offers US human rights training
Common Dreams Thursday, June 27, 2013
by- Jon Queally, staff writer
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The clear message from the Ecuadorean government on Thursday is that it would not be bullied or 'blackmailed' by the US government over the possible asylum of Edward Snowden.

At a government press conference held in Quito, officials said the US was employing international economic "blackmail" in its attempts to obtain NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, but that such threats would not work.

Snowden, who remains inside an airport terminal in Russia, has become a flashpoint between Ecuador and the US after confirmation that the 30 year-old intelligence contractor has sought asylum in the Latin American country.

Ecuador indicated its offer of 'human rights assistance' to the US could be used to help address its recent problems with torture, illegal executions, and the attack on the privacy of its citizens.

On Wednesday, led by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ), the US threatened to deny Ecuador preferential trade status if it accepted Snowden's application for political asylum after he leaked a trove of classified documents that revealed details about the NSA's vast surveillance programs in the US and abroad.

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Ecuador indicated its offer of 'human rights assistance' to the US could be used to help address its recent problems with torture, illegal executions, and the attack on the privacy of its citizens.
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“Our government will not reward countries for bad behavior,” Menendez said in a statement from Washington. “If Snowden is granted asylum in Ecuador, I will lead the effort to prevent the renewal of Ecuador’s duty-free access under GSP and will also make sure there is no chance for renewal of the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act. Trade preferences are a privilege granted to nations, not a right.”

But on Thursday, Ecuador nullified the US threats—and made it clear it would not be intimidated by the global superpower—by proactively cancelling the trade agreement.

"Ecuador unilaterally and irrevocably renounces these preferential customs tariff rights," government spokesman Fernando Alvarado said at the news conference.

"Ecuador will not accept pressures or threats from anyone, and it does not traffic in its values or allow them to be subjugated to mercantile interests," he said.

Alvarado, who called threats from the US over trade arrangements a form of "blackmail,” said Ecuador’s government would not only willingly accept the loss of approximately $23 million in trade benefits, but in addition would offer a gift, in the form of an aid package of the same amount, that would be directed to provide human rights training in the United States.

According to reports, Ecuador indicated the money could be used to help the US address its recent problem with torture, illegal executions, and the attacks on the privacy of its citizens.

As Agence France-Presse reports, the trade agreement between Ecuador goes back decades:

    The United States is Ecuador's main trade partner, buying 40 percent of the Andean nation's exports, or the equivalent of $9 billion per year.

    The preferential trade program was set to expire on July 31 unless the US Congress renewed it. The arrangement, which dates back to the early 1990s, originally benefited four Andean nations and Ecuador was the last country still participating in it.

And Reuters adds:

    Never shy of taking on the West, the pugnacious Correa last year granted asylum to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to help him avoid extradition from Great Britain to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over sexual assault accusations.

    The 50-year-old U.S.-trained economist won a landslide re-election in February on generous state spending to improve infrastructure and health services, and his Alianza Pais party holds a majority in the legislature.

    Ecuadorean officials said Washington was unfairly using the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act, which provides customs benefits in exchange for efforts to fight the drug trade, as a political weapon.

The program was set to expire at the end of this month.
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Re: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sat Jun 29, 2013 5:23 am

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AUDIO: Glenn Greenwald first speaking event post NSA/Snowden

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sat Jun 29, 2013 3:30 pm

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Re: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Tue Jul 02, 2013 2:13 am

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Glenn Greenwald on Security & Liberty

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Speaking on NSA stories, Snowden and journalism
29 Jun 2013: Glenn Greenwald: Discussing the implications of the last four week's of articles, revelations and debates
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NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama
27 Jun 2013:
    • Secret program launched by Bush continued 'until 2011'
    • Fisa court renewed collection order every 90 days
    • Current NSA programs still mine US internet metadata
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How the NSA is still harvesting your online data
27 Jun 2013: Files show vast scale of current NSA metadata programs, with one stream alone celebrating 'one trillion records processed'
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The personal side of taking on the NSA: emerging smears
26 Jun 2013: Glenn Greenwald: Distractions about my past and personal life have emerged – an inevitable side effect for those who challenge the US government
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Liberal icon Frank Church on the NSA
25 Jun 2013: Glenn Greenwald: Almost 40 years ago, the Idaho Senator warned of the dangers of allowing the NSA to turn inward
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On the Espionage Act charges against Edward Snowden
22 Jun 2013: Glenn Greenwald: Who is actually bringing 'injury to America': those who are secretly building a massive surveillance system or those who inform citizens that it's being done?
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The top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant
20 Jun 2013: Fisa court submissions show broad scope of procedures governing NSA's surveillance of Americans' communication
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Fisa court oversight: a look inside a secret and empty process
19 Jun 2013: Glenn Greenwald: Obama and other NSA defenders insist there are robust limitations on surveillance but the documents show otherwise
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Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower answers reader questions
17 Jun 2013: The whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history answered your questions about the NSA surveillance revelations
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On Prism, partisanship and propaganda
14 Jun 2013: Glenn Greenwald: Addressing many of the issues arising from last week's NSA stories
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Edward Snowden's worst fear has not been realised – thankfully
14 Jun 2013: Glenn Greenwald: The NSA whistleblower's only concern was that his disclosures would be met with apathy. Instead, they're leading to real reform
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Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations
11 Jun 2013: The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows
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Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data
11 Jun 2013: Revealed: The NSA's powerful tool for cataloguing global surveillance data – including figures on US collection
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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things' – video
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Video (12min 35sec), 9 Jun 2013: The source behind the Guardian's NSA files talks to Glenn Greenwald about his motives for the biggest intelligence leak in a generation
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NSA Prism program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others
7 Jun 2013:
    • Top-secret Prism program claims direct access to servers of firms including Google, Apple and Facebook
    • Companies deny any knowledge of program in operation since 2007
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NSA leak fallout: LIVE UPDATES BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Tue Jul 02, 2013 2:39 am

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NSA leak fallout: LIVE UPDATES
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Published time: June 10, 2013 15:49
Edited time: July 01, 2013 22:36
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NSA leak fallout: LIVE UPDATES
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Edward Snowden's father writes open letter to NSA whistleblo

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Thu Jul 04, 2013 6:27 am

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World news
Tuesday 2 July 2013 21.42 BST
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Edward Snowden's father writes open letter to NSA whistleblower in Moscow
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Lon Snowden pens open letter with his attorney in response to a statement issued by his son Edward Snowden from Moscow

ImageHere is the text of the open letter Lon Snowden, along with his attorney, Bruce Fein, wrote to US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden. The letter was provided to the Associated Press.
July 2, 2013
Edward Joseph Snowden
Moscow

    Dear Edward:
    I, Bruce Fein, am writing this letter in collaboration with your father in response to the statement you issued yesterday in Moscow.

    Thomas Paine, the voice of the American Revolution, trumpeted that a patriot saves his country from his government.
    What you have done and are doing has awakened congressional oversight of the intelligence community from deep slumber; and, has already provoked the introduction of remedial legislation in Congress to curtail spying abuses under section 215 of the Patriot Act and section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. You have forced onto the national agenda the question of whether the American people prefer the right to be left alone from government snooping absent probable cause to believe crime is afoot to vassalage in hopes of a risk-free existence. You are a modern day Paul Revere summoning the American people to confront the growing danger of tyranny and one branch government.

    In contrast to your actions, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper responded last March as follows to an unambiguous question raised by Senator Ron Wyden:

    "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?" Clapper testified, "No sir, it does not." Wyden asked for clarification, and Clapper hedged: "Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly."

    Director Clapper later defended his stupendous mendacity to the Senator as the least untruthful answer possible. President Obama has not publicly rebuked the Director for frustrating the right of the people to know what their government is doing and to force changes if necessary through peaceful democratic processes. That is the meaning of government by the consent of the governed. "We the people" are sovereign under the U.S. Constitution, and government officials are entrusted with stewardship (not destruction) of our liberties.

    We leave it to the American people to decide whether you or Director Clapper is the superior patriot.
    The history of civilization is a history of brave men and women refusing to bow to government wrongdoing or injustice, and exalting knowledge, virtue, wisdom, and selflessness over creature comforts as the North Star of life. We believe your actions fall within that honorable tradition, a conviction we believe is shared by many.

    As regards your reduction to de facto statelessness occasioned by the Executive Branch to penalize your alleged violations of the Espionage Act, the United States Supreme Court lectured in Trop v. Dulles (1958): "The civilized nations of the world are in virtual unanimity that statelessness is not to be imposed as punishment for crime."

    We think you would agree that the final end of the state is to make men and women free to develop their faculties, not to seek planetary domination through force, violence or spying. All Americans should have a fair opportunity to pursue their ambitions. Politics should not be a football game with winners and losers featuring juvenile taunts over fumbles or missteps.
    Irrespective of life's vicissitudes, we will be unflagging in efforts to educate the American people about the impending ruination of the Constitution and the rule of law unless they abandon their complacency or indifference. Your actions are making our challenge easier.

    We encourage you to engage us in regular exchanges of ideas or thoughts about approaches to curing or mitigating the hugely suboptimal political culture of the United States. Nothing less is required to pay homage to Valley Forge, Cemetery Ridge, Omaha Beach, and other places of great sacrifice.

    Very truly yours,
    Bruce Fein

    Counsel for Lon Snowden

    Lon Snowden

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Re: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Mon Jul 08, 2013 3:26 am

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Bush & Cheney Knew About 9/11 Months Before It Happened Says Whistleblower Charged Under Patriot Act
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Published on Jul 2, 2013
July 01, 2013 Russia Today News
http://MOXNews.com

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John Swinton, who worked for the New York Times and in a toast before the prestigious New York Press Club in 1953, made this candid confession: identifying the problem facing mankind in these times, concerning mainstream media.

    "There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job.

    "If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone. The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell the country for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly this is toasting an independent press. We are the tools and vassals of the rich men behind the scenes.

    We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes.

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When the evils of human bondage once before confronted the conscience of United States of America, a courageous writer, William Lloyd Garrison, began publishing a newspaper called THE LIBERATOR ; and in the first issue of this crusading paper, in 1831, he wrote:

    I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not a cause for severity? I will be as harsh as the TRUTH, and as uncompromising as JUSTICE. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen ---- but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present! I am in earnest –- I will not equivocate –- I will not excuse –- I will not retreat a single inch –- and I will be heard”.


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Please share this page with others. If the Rule of Law does not put a halt to the lawlessness of secret government organizations we will all be subjected to a reign of tyranny and terror at the hands of LAWLESS secret government AGENCIES, a MILITARIZED, immoral and unethical POLICE STATE world wide.
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Re: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Thu Jul 18, 2013 4:32 am

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Senator to Snowden: 'You have done the right thing'
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Published time: July 16, 2013 19:55
Edited time: July 17, 2013 08:57

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While some current members of Congress continue to rally for the prosecution of National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, a long-serving United States senator has sent a letter of support to the NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower.

According to correspondence published Tuesday by the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, former two-term senator Gordon Humphrey (R-New Hampshire) wrote the exiled Mr. Snowden to say, “you have done the right thing in exposing what I regard as massive violation of the United States Constitution.”

Snowden, 30, is currently in Russia where he has applied for temporary asylum while he awaits assistance in traveling to one of the Latin American countries that have approved similar requests. He is wanted for espionage and other charges in the US after fleeing in May and providing Greenwald and other journalists with classified NSA documents detailing vast surveillance programs operated by the US government.

The US Department of Justice has asked Russia repeatedly to return Snowden to the US, and his revelations and conduct have caused commotion across Washington and the rest of the world. But while the administration of President Barack Obama continues to insist Snowden is sent back to the US to stand trial, Humphrey has words nowhere near as harsh.

“Having served in the United States Senate for twelve years as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Judiciary Committee, I think I have a good grounding to reach my conclusion,” the former lawmaker wrote.

“I wish you well in your efforts to secure asylum and encourage you to persevere,” Humphrey added.

When contacted by Greenwald for verification, Humphrey wrote a second letter, which has since been shared by the Guardian journalist.

“Yes. It was I who sent the email message to Edward Snowden, thanking him for exposing astonishing violations of the US Constitution and encouraging him to persevere in the search for asylum,” Humphrey wrote Greenwald.

“To my knowledge, Mr. Snowden has disclosed only the existence of a program and not details that would place any person in harm's way. I regard him as a courageous whistleblower,” he continued.

“I object to the monumentally disproportionate campaign being waged by the US government against Edward Snowden, while no effort is being made to identify, remove from office and bring to justice those officials who have abused power, seriously and repeatedly violating the Constitution of the United States and the rights of millions of unsuspecting citizens.”

“Americans concerned about the growing arrogance of our government and its increasingly menacing nature should be working to help Mr. Snowden find asylum. Former Members of Congress, especially, should step forward and speak out,”
he concluded.

In a letter sent in response from Snowden to the former senator, the NSA leaker thanked Humphrey and wrote, “I only wish more of our lawmakers shared your principles,” adding that “the actions I've taken would not have been necessary” had these conversations occurred years earlier on Capitol Hill.

“The media has distorted my actions and intentions to distract from the substance of Constitutional violations and instead focus on personalities,” Snowden wrote. “It seems they believe every modern narrative requires a bad guy. Perhaps it does. Perhaps, in such times, loving one's country means being hated by its government.”

“If history proves that be so, I will not shy from that hatred,” he wrote. “I will not hesitate to wear those charges of villainy for the rest of my life as a civic duty, allowing those governing few who dared not do so themselves to use me as an excuse to right these wrongs.”


Snowden then went on to reaffirm allegations made previously by Greenwald that classified knowledge of government programs will continue to be released should the US or another government attempt to plug up the leaks.

Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives to insure the stories will inevitably be published,” Greenwald told the Daily Beast last month.

“[I]f anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives,” the journalist said.

In his letter to Humphrey, Snowden wrote, “You may rest easy knowing I cannot be coerced into revealing that information, even under torture.”

Although Humphrey’s sentiments aren’t exactly shared en masse in Washington, that isn’t to say the country at large disapproves of Snowden’s actions. A poll conducted by Quinnipiac University released earlier this month found that the majority of Americans perceive Snowden as a man who did the right thing by releasing documents about the NSA programs to the media.

“The verdict that Snowden is not a traitor goes against almost the unified view of the nation’s political establishment,” Peter Brown, assistant director of Quinnipiac’s polling institute, said in a press release.

Humphrey, 72, served in the US Senate until 1990, after which point he attempted twice, unsuccessfully, to run for governor of New Hampshire.

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‘America has no functioning democracy’ – Jimmy Carter on NSA

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Fri Jul 19, 2013 10:03 pm

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Published time: July 18, 2013 12:15
Edited time: July 19, 2013 10:39

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Former US President Jimmy Carter lambasted US intelligence methods as undemocratic and described Edward Snowden’s NSA leak as “beneficial” for the country.

Carter lashed out at the US political system when the issue of the previously top-secret NSA surveillance program was touched upon at the Atlantic Bridge meeting on Tuesday in Atlanta, Georgia.

"America has no functioning democracy at this moment," Carter said, according to Der Spiegel.

He also believes the spying-scandal is undermining democracy around the world, as people become increasingly suspicious of US internet platforms, such as Google and Facebook. While such mediums have normally been associated with freedom of speech and have recently become a major driving force behind emerging democratic movements, fallout from the NSA spying scandal has dented their credibility.

It’s not the first time Carter has criticized US intelligence policies. In a previous interview with
CNN, he said the NSA leaks signified that “the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far." He added that although Snowden violated US law, he may have ultimately done good for the country.

"I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial."

Jimmy Carter was President of the United States from 1977 to 1981. After leaving office, he founded the Carter Center, an NGO advocating human rights. The ex-president’s human rights credentials won him Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.

Carter has frequently criticized his successors in the White House. Last year, he condemned the Obama administration for the use of drone attacks in his article "A Cruel and Unusual Record" published in the New York Times.

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Edward Snowden's Dad "Extremely Angry" With U.S. Government!

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sat Jul 27, 2013 3:17 am

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Edward Snowden's Dad "Extremely Angry" With U.S. Government!
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Published on Jul 26, 2013
July 26, 2013 CNN
http://MOXNews.com
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Edward Snowden: A Portrait of the Leaker as a Young Man

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Sat Jul 27, 2013 4:33 am

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Edward Snowden: A Portrait of the Leaker as a Young Man
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By Norman Solomon
Global Research, July 21, 2013
Common Dreams
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Why have Edward Snowden’s actions resonated so powerfully for so many people?

The huge political impacts of the leaked NSA documents account for just part of the explanation. Snowden’s choice was ultimately personal. He decided to take big risks on behalf of big truths; he showed how easy and hazardous such a step can be. He blew the whistle not only on the NSA’s Big Brother surveillance but also on the fear, constantly in our midst, that routinely induces conformity.

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Like Bradley Manning and other whistleblowers before him, Snowden has massively undermined the standard rationales for obedience to illegitimate authority. Few of us may be in a position to have such enormous impacts by opting for courage over fear and truth over secrecy—but we know that we could be doing more, taking more risks for good reasons—if only we were willing, if only fear of reprisals and other consequences didn’t clear the way for the bandwagon of the military-industrial-surveillance state.

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Painted by Robert Shetterly for his Americans Who Tell The Truth Project. (above)

Near the end of Franz Kafka’s The Trial, the man in a parable spends many years sitting outside an open door till, near death, after becoming too weak to possibly enter, he’s told by the doorkeeper: “Nobody else could have got in this way, as this entrance was meant only for you. Now I’ll go and close it.”

That’s what Martin Luther King Jr. was driving at when he said, in his first high-risk speech denouncing the Vietnam War: “In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity.”

Edward Snowden was not too late. He refused to allow opportunity to be lost. He walked through the entrance meant only for him.

When people say “I am Bradley Manning,” or “I am Edward Snowden,” it can be more than an expression of solidarity. It can also be a statement of aspiration—to take ideals for democracy more seriously and to act on them with more courage.

The artist Robert Shetterly has combined his compelling new portrait of Edward Snowden with words from Snowden that are at the heart of what’s at stake: “The public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the ‘consent of the governed’ is meaningless. . . The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.” Like the painting of Snowden, the quote conveys a deep mix of idealism, vulnerability and determination.

Edward Snowden has taken idealism seriously enough to risk the rest of his life, a choice that is to his eternal credit and to the world’s vast benefit. His decision to resist any and all cynicism is gripping and unsettling. It tells us, personally and politically, to raise our standards, lift our eyes and go higher into our better possibilities.

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Snowden: There’s no chance Russia, China have NSA docs

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Fri Oct 18, 2013 2:33 am

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Snowden: There’s no chance Russia, China have NSA docs
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Home | News | Get Short URL
Published time: October 18, 2013 00:45
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Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden says neither Russia nor China had access to the sensitive documents he retrieved from the spy agency detailing its mass surveillance operations throughout the globe.

Snowden told The New York Times in an interview that he gave the trove of classified documents to journalists upon meeting them in Hong Kong, claiming he did not keep copies of them. He then fled to Russia without any of the files “because it wouldn’t serve the public interest,” he said.

Snowden, who took part in the interview with the Times from Russia via encrypted online communications, said he has confidence that the information was protected from China based on his extensive knowledge and work on Chinese operations, adding that he had even taught a course on the country’s cyber counterintelligence.

“There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,” he said.

His final project as an NSA contractor was on China’s capabilities, he said, adding that he had “access to every target, every active operation” that the NSA levied against the Chinese.

“If that was compromised,” he said, the “NSA would have set the table on fire from slamming it so many times in denouncing the damage it had caused. Yet NSA has not offered a single example of damage from the leaks. They haven’t said boo about it except ‘we think,’ ‘maybe,’ ‘have to assume’ from anonymous and former officials. Not ‘China is going dark.’ Not ‘the Chinese military has shut us out.’ ”

Since the first stories detailing NSA surveillance operations via leaks from Snowden were published on June 6 by the Guardian and The Washington Post, US officials have expressed worry that the two countries had access to the classified information.

Yet Snowden said he believes the NSA knows that he did not cooperate with either country. He is now revealing this information to counter accusations, adding that he did not do so previously to shield the journalists from heightened scrutiny.

“What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward?” he said of any allegations that he took documents to Russia.

Snowden, 30, faces charges under the Espionage Act for leaking an untold number of classified documents to journalists. He said he believed he was acting in the best interest of the US in revealing secret information on NSA dragnet surveillance policies that he hoped would lead to widespread public debate.

“The secret continuance of these programs represents a far greater danger than their disclosure,” he said.

Snowden told the Times that he never considered defecting while in Hong Kong or in Russia, where he has been permitted to remain for a year. He said he currently is free to move around in the country and is not under Russian government control.

He attests that he was mostly concerned that Americans were completely in the dark about the NSA’s operations and reach.

“So long as there’s broad support amongst a people, it can be argued there’s a level of legitimacy even to the most invasive and morally wrong program, as it was an informed and willing decision,” he said. “However, programs that are implemented in secret, out of public oversight, lack that legitimacy, and that’s a problem. It also represents a dangerous normalization of ‘governing in the dark,’ where decisions with enormous public impact occur without any public input.”

Snowden described how his decision to leak the trove developed over time, beginning with his days working for the CIA’s Geneva station, where his contact with superiors convinced him that working within the system to mount complaints or point out flaws would only lead to retribution.

He detailed how while in Geneva working as a telecom information systems officer, he fell into a “petty email spat” when he questioned a manager’s judgment.

Months later, Snowden said he discovered a software flaw in the CIA’s personnel web applications that made it vulnerable to hacking. Upon warning a supervisor, he was told to avoid causing trouble.

He eventually proved the vulnerability existed, to which his supervisor signed off on and sent through the system for correction. However, a more senior manager - the one Snowden quarreled with - was outraged and filed a critical comment in Snowden’s file, he said.

This instance was the subject of a previous Times story that claimed the black mark was a result of official suspicions that he was a threat to access classified material for which he was not authorized to see. Snowden said the report was false, and that the comment came from the exposition of the CIA system vulnerability.

Following the senior manager’s action, Snowden then considered alerting the CIA’s inspector general about what he saw as a retribution for pointing out a system flaw, though he said he’s not sure whether he had gone through with the complaint or not.

He said the incident convinced him that working through the system would only lead to punishment, as he was aware of others - like the NSA’s Thomas Drake - who had suffered reprisals for keeping complaints within the chain of command. Drake was prosecuted for disclosing an NSA contracting abuse to The Baltimore Sun.

He knew of other NSA employees who had been reprimanded for embarrassing an official in emails that included a line referring to the Chinese Army: “Is this the PLA or the NSA?”

“There’s a lot of dissent - palpable with some, even” in the NSA, he said, adding that many were kept in line through “fear and a false image of patriotism” or an “obedience to authority.”

Snowden said that working within the system provided for NSA employees and contractors to file complaints would have “buried forever” his efforts to question NSA surveillance programs. He said that if he had done so, he would “have been discredited and ruined.”

“The system does not work,” he said, in part because “you have to report wrongdoing to those most responsible for it.”

He said that a major point prompting him to act occurred upon his discovery of a classified 2009 inspector general report on the NSA’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program during the Bush administration as part of his work as a systems administrator.

“It was too highly classified to be where it was,” he said of the IG report, which led him to open and read about the program.

“If the highest officials in government can break the law without fearing punishment or even any repercussions at all,” he said, then “secret powers become tremendously dangerous.”

He would not specify when he accessed the report, or the timing of his actions that led to the document leak.

Snowden added that response to the leaks has been larger than he expected and that he had not attempted to control what the journalists reported about the documents. He said he wanted to be “divorced from the decision-making of publication” and that “technical solutions were in place to ensure the work of the journalists couldn’t be interfered with.”

Neither the NSA nor the CIA would comment for the story.


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Re: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Fri Oct 18, 2013 3:11 am

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Home | News | Get Short URL
FIRST VIDEO: Snowden receives Sam Adams Award in Moscow
Published time: October 11, 2013 23:55
Edited time: October 12, 2013 18:09

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The first videos of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have surfaced since he received asylum in Russia. The footage, provided by WikiLeaks, was taken during the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence awards ceremony.

The video fragments of a meeting, attended by the former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, former NSA executive Thomas Andrews Drake and former FBI agent Coleen Rowley, Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, and Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks – all whistleblowers in their own respects – were released by WikiLeaks on Friday.

In the first video appearance since he was granted asylum in Russia, Snowden spoke about US government transparency and dangers to democracy caused by the NSA mass spying programs.

“This is not about any sort of particular program, this is about a trend in the relationship between the governing and the governed in America,”
Snowden said speaking about the government transparency situation in the US. “That is increasingly coming into conflict with what we expect as a free and democratic people. If we can’t understand the policies and the programs of our government, we cannot grant our consent in regulating them.”

“As someone very clever said recently, we don’t have an oversight problem in the US we have an undersight problem.”

The problem has grown up to a point where Americans have “an executive, the Department of Justice, that’s unwilling to prosecute high officials who lied to Congress and the country on camera but they’ll stop at nothing to prosecute someone who told them the truth,” Snowden added.

Snowden has expressed his satisfaction that people around the globe are starting to understand mass surveillance doesn’t increase safety at all.

“People all over the world are realizing that these programs don’t make us more safe, they hurt our economy, they hurt our country they limit our ability to speak and think and live and be creative, to have relationships, to associate freely.”

There is a huge difference between surveillance programs aimed at increasing security and Big Brother mass surveillance, the NSA leaker added.

“There’s a far cry between legal programs, legitimate spying, legitimate law enforcement where it’s targeted, it’s based on reasonable suspicion, an individualized suspicion, and a warranted action – and a sort of dragnet mass surveillance that puts entire populations under a sort of eye that sees everything, even when it’s not needed.”

Although it is known that the ceremony took place in Moscow, the exact location remains a mystery for security reasons. In an exclusive interview with RT Julian Assange said Edward Snowden is safe in Russia, but the fates of journalists who helped him and published his leaks are now of more concern for WikiLeaks.

After a meeting with Snowden, the four whistleblowers – former NSA executive Thomas Andrews Drake, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, former FBI agent Coleen Rowley and Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project – all met in RT’s to share their thoughts on Snowden and tell their stories.

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Of Snowden, Jesselyn Radack said that “he looked great. He seemed very centered and brilliant, smart, funny, very engaged. I thought he looked very well.”

Ray McGovern, called Snowden “an extraordinary person” who has “no regrets” for his actions.

Thomas Andrews Drake is a former NSA senior executive and a whistleblower indicted in 2010 for espionage after leaking documents to the press that alleged that the intelligence organization had committed fraud, waste and abuse against the American people. For his whistleblowing activities, Drake was honored in 2011 with the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence award.

In the studio he recalled his experience being a whistleblower.

“I disclosed high crimes and misdemeanors by the US government while at the National Security Agency (NSA). That involved both secret surveillance and massive fraud, waste and abuse. And no regrets at all in blowing the whistle, recognizing that I paid a very high price,” Drake told RT.

Coleen Rowley is a former FBI agent and whistleblower. In 2002, Rowley testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee revealing problems facing the US intelligence community by highlighting some of the pre 9/11 intelligence lapses.

“When you saw this 180-degree switch to the war paradigm and the use of intelligence rather than judicial process, due process, you know, the law of interrogation – I had to speak out and explain the failures of 9/11.” Rowley told RT.

For her activity TIME magazine chose her as one of three whistleblower persons of the year.


Former ethics adviser to the Department of Justice, Jesselyn Radack, became a whistleblower after she exposed the FBI for committing violations in their interrogation of John Walker Lindh, an alleged Taliban fighter captured in 2001 in Afghanistan, without an attorney present. She also exposed the Department of Justice for allegedly attempting to suppress that information. “The justice department was willing to cut corners to prosecute people,” she told RT.
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Re: NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: BookMark for UPDATES

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Mon Oct 28, 2013 2:07 am

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'US citizen has no right to free speech?' State Dept spokesperson grilled over Snowden
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Published on Jul 16, 2013
Tensions are high as NSA leaker Edward Snowden officially submitted application for temporary asylum in Russia on Tuesday. After Russian and international human rights advocates and lawyers met with Snowden at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport on Friday, the US said it was disappointed in Russia for considering the whistleblowers asylum. During a daily press briefing State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki was given a thorough grilling on the Snowden affair by journalists, including AP's Matthew Lee and CNN's Elise Labott and was left lost for words at almost every turn.

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Before watching this video please consider these fundamental laws

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    The reign of law. Liberty can be enjoyed only when the will and whims of human rulers are replaced by legislative enactments in accordance with accepted fundamental law.


It is imperative that our elected representatives and public servants meet this mandate for Intelligent and trained representation.

    The survival of democracy is dependent on successful representative government; and that is conditioned upon the practice of electing to public offices only those individuals who are technically trained, intellectually competent, socially loyal, and morally fit. Only by such provisions can government of the people, by the people, and for the people be preserved.

    1./ It is the Law that a citizen is presumed innocent until proven guilty in a Court of Law!
    2./ It is the Law that a citizen reports any crime he becomes informed of to the authorities!
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Re: NSA - 65 things we’ve learned about the NSA

Unread postby Paul Kemp » Fri Jan 24, 2014 6:32 pm

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65 things we’ve learned about the NSA

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Repost From follow the money
"It has to start somewhere. It has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?"
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SOURCE


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By Wayne Madsen: National Security Agency Surveillance: Reflections and Revelations 2001-2013

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lots to get through above..all the claims and accusations in one neat and tidy spot thanks to the author..and anyone who knows of wayne madsen knows he does some excellent research..his book would be very entertaining and shocking..the spying has be going on for decades but has increased and exploded in its scope since 9/11..

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