Edward Snowden, American Hero

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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby wetland » Thu Jun 13, 2013 8:52 pm

https://www.adbusters.org/occupyblackbox.html

#OCCUPYBLACKBOX
Edward Snowden inspires a new generation of whistleblowers to turn the light on.

Adbusters 13 June 2013



Here's the question everyone is asking:

“Is Edward Snowden a hero or a criminal, a whistleblower or a traitor?”

But here’s the question they really should be asking:

“Does America still have its original revolutionary backbone, or are we a nation of sheep?”

Conventional opinion says that the CIA will have Snowden extradited and then criminalized, put on trial like Bradley Manning, demonized like Daniel Ellsberg, or even murdered like Garry Webb – that he will spend at least ten years in prison, or life, or worse. This may well happen, but there is another, much more tantalizing possibility that Snowden's courageous action has triggered, something much more momentous – a sudden unexpected shift in the American Psyche – a realization that since 9/11 something has gone terribly wrong in the land of the free and the home of the brave … that the NSA, CIA, FBI are starting to smell like the East German's Stasi, The Russian KGB, The Fascist police states of the 1930’s and 1940’s – that Americans are spying on Americans … that we are being treated like a nation of petrified snitches cowering in the dark … and that the time has come to turn the light on in a darkened America.

Maybe this weekend someone working at NSA headquarters will get fed up, once and for all, with spying on his fellow citizens and turn another light on in that big, black box ... telling us in detail how things really work in there.

And then, maybe the week after, a CIA operative at the Pentagon will suddenly decide to come clean and tell us how the Iraq war really started and provide us with one of those torture videos that were supposedly destroyed.

And then, maybe an army intelligence officer will fill us in on what really happened in Afghanistan, in Pakistan, in Yemen – telling us who our allies really are and what regimes we really support in the deep global state behind the veneer of mainstream media. Then …

Maybe on July 4th someone at The Whitehouse will remember that this nation was built upon revolution … and that the nation's integrity, democracy – hell, the nation's entire future depends upon the existence of people like Snowden who dare to tell us what really goes on behind closed doors, that these otherwise ordinary people continue to summon the courage and humanity to come out of the shadows and take a stand against institutionalized criminality.

Maybe, like at the end of a movie, when the hero finally reveals his true identity and everyone rises to applause, an unstoppable wave of courageous souls will now stand up in solidarity and turn the lights on all over this darkened nation, kicking off a chain reaction of refusal against the military-surveillance complex that President Eisenhower tried to warn us against half a century ago.

So hey all you dreamers, schemers and expectant souls out there, are you ready to turn on the light?

#OCCUPYBLACKBOX
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby Nordic » Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:35 am

HERO/TRAITOR

HERO/TRAITOR

DIVIDE/CONQUER

It's amazing how good they are at this shit.

Dividing.

This should not even be a debate. There is no debate. Yet they CREATE a fucking false debate. HERO/TRAITOR

Let's argue about it for a while, shall we. . Which side are you on?

Because you have to be on a side.

Fuck them.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 14, 2013 7:30 am

The Sickening Snowden Backlash
by Kirsten Powers Jun 14, 2013 4:45 AM EDT
It's appalling to hear the Washington bureaucrats and their media allies trash Edward Snowden as a traitor, when it's our leaders and the NSA who have betrayed us, writes Kirsten Powers.

Hell hath no fury like the Washington establishment scorned.

Since Edward Snowden came forward to identify himself as the leaker of the National Security Agency spying programs, the D.C. mandarins have been working overtime to discredit the man many view as a hero for revealing crucial information the government had wrongfully kept secret. Apparently, if you think hiding information about spying on Americans is bad, you are misguided. The real problem is that Snowden didn’t understand that his role is to sit and be quiet while the “best and the brightest” keep Americans in the dark about government snooping on private citizens.


John Boehner (top left), Edward Snowden and Dianne Feinstein. (Clockwise from top left: Getty (2); AP)

By refusing to play this role, Snowden has been called a "traitor" by House Majority Leader John Boehner. Sen. Dianne Feinstein called the leaks "an act of treason." The fury among the protectors of the status quo is so great that you have longtime Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen smearing Snowden as a “cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood.” The New York Times’s David Brooks lamented that Snowden, who put himself in peril for the greater good, was too “individualistic.” It seems that he wasn’t sufficiently indoctrinated to blindly worship the establishment institutions that have routinely failed us. Brooks argued that “for society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures.”

This is backward. It’s the institutions that need to demonstrate respect for the public they allegedly serve. If Snowden or any other American is skeptical of institutional power, it is not due to any personal failing on their part. The lack of respect is a direct outgrowth of the bad behavior of the nation’s institutions, behavior that has undermined Americans’ trust in them. According to Gallup’s “confidence in institutions” poll, trust is at an historic low, with Congress clocking in at a 13 percent approval rating in 2012. Yes, this is the same Congress that has “oversight” of the government spying programs.

When one major institution (the Washington media establishment) so seamlessly partners with another (the U.S. government) in trashing a whistleblower, it’s not hard to understand why Americans might be jaded. The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin wrote that Snowden is "a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison." MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell complained about Snowden’s naiveté and “maturity level,” as if only a child would believe the government should be transparent about its activity. Politico’s Roger Simon called Snowden “the slacker who came in from the cold,” with “all the qualifications to become a grocery bagger.” That people feel comfortable sneering about grocery workers—a respectable job—and writing off Snowden’s years working as a security guard as sloth tells you a bit about the culture of the nation’s capital, doesn’t it?

But he didn’t finish high school! Actually, Snowden earned a general equivalency diploma (GED), but that hasn’t stopped his detractors from spitting this accusation like an epithet. On Wednesday's Late Show With David Letterman, Tom Brokaw dismissed Snowden as "a high school dropout who is a military washout." On Tuesday, Sen. Susan Collins, mocked the 29-year-old man as “a high school drop-out who had little maturity [and] had not successfully completed anything he had undertaken.” Yes, if only he had gone to Harvard or Yale like our last four presidents, who have done such a bang-up job running the country. By the way, according to Glenn Greenwald, Snowden actually worked as a contractor for four years at the NSA, which suggests some level of specialized skill.

It says something about the lack of a positive case for keeping the NSA spying programs secret that the main line of defense is to attack Snowden for lacking the proper credentials to speak out against the government.


In an interview with George Stephanopoulous, Speaker John Boehner called Edward Snowden a traitor, just one politician to rebuke the whistleblower.
Apparently we are supposed to “respect institutions” so much that we never feel entitled to information about how they operate, even when it involves our private communications. Only because of Snowden do we know that our government is storing records of our phone data that can be mined for God only knows how long. This same government opted to not prosecute its workers who destroyed CIA interrogation records that might have implicated the government in law breaking. Does this seem right?

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper blatantly lied to Congress about the activity of the NSA, and there seems to be no ramifications. Yet the Washington establishment wants to put Snowden in jail and throw away the key for telling the truth. We are told to blindly respect an institution that persecutes whistleblowers for leaks of overclassified government information while watching the Obama administration’s leaking of secret government information to aggrandize the president during his reelection campaign. So, please tell us more about how we should have more respect for our institutions.

Whether one supports or opposes the NSA spying programs, Snowden has done a public service by exposing them and igniting a debate about government surveillance that even the president says he welcomes. There is no reason for the mere existence of either program to have been classified by the Most Transparent Administration in History. The claims that terrorists have been tipped off by these revelations are not credible. Nobody seriously believes that until now terrorists didn’t know the American government is monitoring their email and phone calls. Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) told MSNBC Wednesday, “I don't see how [Snowden’s leaks] compromises the security of this country whatsoever.”

In his 2003 book, Why Societies Need Dissent, liberal law professor Cass Sunstein pointed out that, in society, “a single dissenter or voice of sanity is likely to have a huge impact.” But the problem for dissenters is that they “have little incentive to speak out, because they would gain nothing from dissenting” and in fact might be punished.

Snowden knew this and he did it anyway. He clearly understands something that those screaming "traitor" do not: the allegiance we have as Americans is to the Constitution, not the institution of government. Snowden summed it up best when he told a South China Morning Post reporter this week, “I’m neither a traitor nor a hero. I’m an American.”
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 14, 2013 9:51 am

On partisanship, propaganda and PRISM
Addressing many of the issues arising from last weeks' NSA stories

Glenn Greenwald
guardian.co.uk, Friday 14 June 2013 09.42 EDT

I haven't been able to write this week here because I've been participating in the debate over the fallout from last week's NSA stories, and because we are very busy working on and writing the next series of stories that will begin appearing very shortly. I did, though, want to note a few points, and particularly highlight what Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez said after Congress on Wednesday was given a classified briefing by NSA officials on the agency's previously secret surveillance activities:


"What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today. . . . I can't speak to what we learned in there, and I don't know if there are other leaks, if there's more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it's the tip of the iceberg . . . . I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too."

The Congresswoman is absolutely right: what we have reported thus far is merely "the tip of the iceberg" of what the NSA is doing in spying on Americans and the world. She's also right that when it comes to NSA spying, "there is significantly more than what is out in the media today", and that's exactly what we're working to rectify.

But just consider what she's saying: as a member of Congress, she had no idea how invasive and vast the NSA's surveillance activities are. Sen. Jon Tester, who is a member of the Homeland Security Committee, said the same thing, telling MSNBC about the disclosures that "I don't see how that compromises the security of this country whatsoever" and adding: "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."

How can anyone think that it's remotely healthy in a democracy to have the NSA building a massive spying apparatus about which even members of Congress, including Senators on the Homeland Security Committee, are totally ignorant and find "astounding" when they learn of them? How can anyone claim with a straight face that there is robust oversight when even members of the Senate Intelligence Committee are so constrained in their ability to act that they are reduced to issuing vague, impotent warnings to the public about what they call radical "secret law" enabling domestic spying that would "stun" Americans to learn about it, but are barred to disclose what it is they're so alarmed by? Put another way, how can anyone contest the value and justifiability of the stories that we were able to publish as a result of Edward Snowden's whistleblowing: stories that informed the American public - including even the US Congress - about these incredibly consequential programs? What kind of person would think that it would be preferable to remain in the dark - totally ignorant - about them?

I have a column in the Guardian's newspaper edition tomorrow examining the fallout from these stories. That will be posted here and I won't repeat that now. I will, though, note the following brief items:

(1) Much of US politics, and most of the pundit reaction to the NSA stories, are summarized by this one single visual from Pew:
Image

The most vocal media critics of our NSA reporting, and the most vehement defenders of NSA surveillance, have been, by far, Democratic (especially Obama-loyal) pundits. As I've written many times, one of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of the Bush War on Terror and National Security State into their biggest proponents: exactly what the CIA presciently and excitedly predicted in 2008 would happen with Obama's election.

Some Democrats have tried to distinguish 2006 from 2013 by claiming that the former involved illegal spying while the latter does not. But the claim that current NSA spying is legal is dubious in the extreme: the Obama DOJ has repeatedly thwarted efforts by the ACLU, EFF and others to obtain judicial rulings on their legality and constitutionality by invoking procedural claims of secrecy, immunity and standing. If Democrats are so sure these spying programs are legal, why has the Obama DOJ been so eager to block courts from adjudicating that question?

More to the point, Democratic critiques of Bush's spying were about more than just legality. I know that because I actively participated in the campaign to amplify those critiques. Indeed, by 2006, most of Bush's spying programs - definitely his bulk collection of phone records - were already being conducted under the supervision and with the blessing of the FISA court. Moreover, leading members of Congress - including Nancy Pelosi - were repeatedly briefed on all aspects of Bush's NSA spying program. So the distinctions Democrats are seeking to draw are mostly illusory.

To see how that this is so, just listen to then-Senator Joe Biden in 2006 attack the NSA for collecting phone records: he does criticize the program for lacking FISA supervision, but also claims to be alarmed by just how invasive and privacy-destroying that sort of bulk record collection is. He says he "doesn't think" that the program passes the Fourth Amendment test: how can Bush's bulk collection program be unconstitutional while Obama's program is? But he also rejected Bush's defense (exactly the argument Obama is making now) - that "we're not listening to the phone calls, we're just looking for patterns" - by saying this:

I don't have to listen to your phone calls to know what you're doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I'm able to determine every single person you talked to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive. . . . If it's true that 200 million Americans' phone calls were monitored - in terms of not listening to what they said, but to whom they spoke and who spoke to them - I don't know, the Congress should investigative this."

Is collecting everyone's phone records not "very intrusive" when Democrats are doing it? Just listen to that short segment to see how every defense Obama defenders are making now were the ones Bush defenders made back then. Again, leading members of Congress and the FISA court were both briefed on and participants in the Bush telephone record collection program as well, yet Joe Biden and most Democrats found those programs very alarming and "very intrusive" back then.

(2) Notwithstanding the partisan-driven Democratic support for these programs, and notwithstanding the sustained demonization campaign aimed at Edward Snowden from official Washington, polling data, though mixed, has thus far been surprisingly encouraging.

A Time Magazine poll found that 54% of Americans believe Snowden did "a good thing", while only 30% disagreed. That approval rating is higher than the one enjoyed by both Congress and President Obama. While a majority think he should be nonetheless prosecuted, a plurality of young Americans, who overwhelmingly view Snowden favorably, do not even want to see him charged. Reuters found that more Americans see Snowden as a "patriot" than a "traitor". A Gallup poll this week found that more Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the two NSA spying programs revealed last week by the Guardian.

(3) Thomas Drake, an NSA whistleblower who was unsuccessfully prosecuted by the Obama DOJ, writes in the Guardian that as a long-time NSA official, he saw all of the same things at the NSA that Edward Snowden is now warning Americans about. Drake calls Snowden's acts "an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience." William Binney, the mathematician who resigned after a 30-year career as a senior NSA official in protest of post-9/11 domestic surveillance, said on Democracy Now this week that Snowden's claims about the NSA are absolutely true.

Meanwhile, Daniel Ellsberg, writing in the Guardian, wrote that "there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago." He added: "Snowden did what he did because he recognized the NSA's surveillance programs for what they are: dangerous, unconstitutional activity."

Listen to actual experts and patriots - people who have spent their careers inside the NSA and who risked their liberty for the good of the country - and the truth of Snowden's claims and the justifiability of his acts become manifest.

(4) As we were about to begin publishing these NSA stories, a veteran journalist friend warned me that the tactic used by Democratic partisans would be to cling and endlessly harp on any alleged inaccuracy in any one of the stories we publish as a means of distracting attention away from the revelations and discrediting the entire project. That proved quite prescient, as that is exactly what they have done.

Thus far we have revealed four independent programs: the bulk collection of telephone records, the PRISM program, Obama's implementation of an aggressive foreign and domestic cyber-operations policy, and false claims by NSA officials to Congress. Every one of those articles was vetted by multiple Guardian editors and journalists - not just me. Democratic partisans have raised questions about only one of the stories - the only one that happened to be also published by the Washington Post (and presumably vetted by multiple Post editors and journalists) - in order to claim that an alleged inaccuracy in it means our journalism in general is discredited.

They are wrong. The story was not inaccurate. The Washington Post revised parts of its article, but its reporter, Bart Gellman, stands by its core claims ("From their workstations anywhere in the world, government employees cleared for PRISM access may 'task' the system and receive results from an Internet company without further interaction with the company's staff").

The Guardian has not revised any of our article and has no intention to do so. That's because we did not claim that the NSA document alleging direct collection from the servers was true; we reported - accurately - that the NSA document claims that the program allows direct collection from the companies' servers. Before publishing, we went to the internet companies named in the documents and asked about these claims. When they denied it, we purposely presented the story as one of a major discrepancy between what the NSA document claims and what the internet companies claim, as the headline itself makes indisputably clear:

Image
The NSA document says exactly what we reported. Just read it and judge for yourself (PRISM is "collection directly from the servers of these US service provers"). It's amusingly naive how some people seem to think that because government officials or corporate executives issue carefully crafted denials, this resolves the matter. Read the ACLU's tech expert, Chris Soghoian, explain why the tech companies' denials are far less significant and far more semantic than many are claiming.

Nor do these denials make any sense. If all the tech companies are doing under PRISM is providing what they've always provided to the NSA, but simply doing it by a different technological means, then why would a new program be necessary at all? How can NSA officials claim that a program that does nothing more than change the means for how this data is delivered is vital in stopping terrorist threats? Why does the NSA document hail the program as one that enables new forms of collection? Why would it be "top secret" if all this was were just some new way of transmitting court-ordered data? How is PRISM any different in any meaningful way from how the relationship between the companies and the NSA has always functioned?

As a follow-up to our article, the New York Times reported on extensive secret negotiations between Silicon Valley executives and NSA officials over government access to the companies' data. It's precisely because these arrangements are secret and murky yet incredibly significant that we published our story about these conflicting claims. They ought to be resolved in public, not in secret. The public should know exactly what access the NSA is trying to obtain to the data of these companies, and should know exactly what access these companies is providing. Self-serving, unchecked, lawyer-vetted denials by these companies doesn't remotely resolve these questions.

In a Nation post yesterday, Rick Perlstein falsely accuses me of not having addressed the questions about the PRISM story. I've done at least half-a-dozen television shows in the last week where I was asked about exactly those questions and answered fully with exactly what I've written here (see this appearance with Chris Hayes as just the latest example); the fact that Perlstein couldn't be bothered to use Google doesn't entitled him to falsely claim I haven't addressed these questions. I have repeatedly, and do so here again.

I know that many Democrats want to cling to the belief that, in Perlstein's words, "the powers that be will find it very easy to seize on this one error to discredit [my] NSA revelation, even the ones he nailed dead to rights". Perlstein cleverly writes that "such distraction campaigns are how power does its dirtiest work" as he promotes exactly that.

But that won't happen. The documents and revelations are too powerful. The story isn't me, or Edward Snowden, or the eagerness of Democratic partisans to defend the NSA as a means of defending Preisdent Obama, and try as they might, Democrats won't succeed in making the story be any of those things. The story is the worldwide surveillance apparatus the NSA is constructing in the dark and the way that has grown under Obama, and that's where my focus is going to remain.

(5) NYU Journalism professor Jay Rosen examines complaints that my having strong, candidly acknowledged opinions on surveillance policies somehow means that the journalism I do on those issues is suspect. It is very worth reading what he has to say on this topic as it gets to the heart about several core myths about what journalism is.

(6) Last week, prior to the revelation of our source's identity, I wrote that "ever since the Nixon administration broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychoanalyst's office, the tactic of the US government has been to attack and demonize whistleblowers as a means of distracting attention from their own exposed wrongdoing and destroying the credibility of the messenger so that everyone tunes out the message" and "that attempt will undoubtedly be made here."

The predictable personality assaults on Snowden have begun in full force from official Washington and their media spokespeople. They are only going to intensify. There is nobody who political officials and their supine media class hate more than those who meaningfully dissent from their institutional orthodoxies and shine light on what they do. The hatred for such individuals is boundless.

There are two great columns on this dynamic. This one by Reuters' Jack Shafer explores how elite Washington reveres powerful leakers that glorify political officials, but only hate marginalized and powerless leakers who discredit Washington and its institutions. And perhaps the best column yet on Snowden comes this morning from the Daily Beast's Kirsten Powers: just please take the time to read it all, as it really conveys the political and psychological rot that is driving the attacks on him and on his very carefully vetted disclosures.
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby Belligerent Savant » Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:08 am

Nordic » Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:35 am wrote:HERO/TRAITOR

HERO/TRAITOR

DIVIDE/CONQUER

It's amazing how good they are at this shit.

Dividing.

This should not even be a debate. There is no debate. Yet they CREATE a fucking false debate. HERO/TRAITOR

Let's argue about it for a while, shall we. . Which side are you on?

Because you have to be on a side.

Fuck them.


FUCK THEM, indeed.

And any related attempts to divide and/or create "with us or against us" diversions.
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby barracuda » Fri Jun 14, 2013 12:09 pm

Image

A picture shows Edward Snowden in 2002 pulling down his pants when
he worked as a webmaster and editor for a Japanese anime company
run by friends in Maryland. REUTERS
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 14, 2013 12:45 pm

barracuda » Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:09 am wrote:Image

A picture shows Edward Snowden in 2002 pulling down his pants when
he worked as a webmaster and editor for a Japanese anime company
run by friends in Maryland. REUTERS



yep looks like a treasonist bastard high school drop out, military thrown out 19 year old to me
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby barracuda » Fri Jun 14, 2013 12:50 pm

Actually, I think it's the last bit of evidence I required to deem him a true American Hero.
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 14, 2013 12:52 pm

barracuda » Fri Jun 14, 2013 11:50 am wrote:Actually, I think it's the last bit of evidence I required to deem him a true American Hero.



me too....could be my son in that photo :)

on edit

hey NSA just kidding that's not my son he just looks like my son with his pants hanging down around his knees
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
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Don’t forget that.
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby slimmouse » Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:20 pm

barracuda » 14 Jun 2013 16:50 wrote:Actually, I think it's the last bit of evidence I required to deem him a true American Hero.


Whilst I get your drift Cuda, I'd personally need to extend the American hero label to a much wider caste. There are practically 7 billion of us, and we're almost all in this together.
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby Belligerent Savant » Fri Jun 14, 2013 2:47 pm

.
I loathe the word "hero" -- or at least its use in the current zeitgeist.

[understanding Cuda was being semi tongue-in-cheek]
Last edited by Belligerent Savant on Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby elfismiles » Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:11 pm

at google right now...


Security and privacy are not optional. Stand with a broad coalition to demand that the NSA stop watching us: stopwatching.us



... which leads to a the StopWatching.Us website where you can read...


Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Benjamin Franklin
Stop Watching Us.
The revelations about the National Security Agency's surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA's spying programs.
Read the full letter to US Congress

Dear Members of Congress,

We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.

The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by an intelligence contractor showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.

Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other "identifying information" for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens' right to speak and associate anonymously, guard against unreasonable searches and seizures, and protect their right to privacy.

We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA's and the FBI's data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

* I agree to Mozilla's privacy policy and to having my information presented to US Congress in the form of a letter to be delivered by Fight for the Future (see its privacy policy).
I would like to receive e-mails from Mozilla about this and related issues. The Mozilla privacy policy is available here.

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elfismiles
 
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby Canadian_watcher » Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:17 pm

wasn;t the google guy just at Bilderberg, though?
Satire is a sort of glass, wherein beholders do generally discover everybody's face but their own.-- Jonathan Swift

When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby Nordic » Fri Jun 14, 2013 3:55 pm

I get the same vibe from Google that I get from DARPA.
"He who wounds the ecosphere literally wounds God" -- Philip K. Dick
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Re: Edward Snowden, American Hero

Postby norton ash » Fri Jun 14, 2013 4:14 pm

"Don't be evil' (unless it costs us money, power or government friends.)
Zen horse
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