US spy chief Clapper defends Prism and phone surveillance

[Magda Hassan]

I did notice that Russia offered him asylum....anta:. I'm pretty sure he won't take them up on that....it certainly wouldn't 'look' good!

It been a good place for some people I have known who needed asylum (not Oswald). There is a huge South American population there and Afghani. Any port in a storm.

It might be good for him personally, but would be a propaganda coup of gargantuan proportions for the US National Security State who'd say he was, all along, a Russian spy....and most American's would buy it...and ignore the larger issues he has risked his life, IMO, to expose.

Yes true that. But nothing he does will be okay with 'them' from now on. But why hand it to them on a platter.

[Peter Lemkin]

I did notice that Russia offered him asylum....anta:. I'm pretty sure he won't take them up on that....it certainly wouldn't 'look' good!

It been a good place for some people I have known who needed asylum (not Oswald). There is a huge South American population there and Afghani. Any port in a storm.

It might be good for him personally, but would be a propaganda coup of gargantuan proportions for the US National Security State who'd say he was, all along, a Russian spy....and most American's would buy it...and ignore the larger issues he has risked his life, IMO, to expose.

Yes true that. But nothing he does will be okay with 'them' from now on. But why hand it to them on a platter.

No, nothing is going to go well for him in the future, unless somethings rather miraculous arises. I'm sure a drone with 'his name on it' and Seal Team 6 with instructions to terminate him with extreme prejudice are all in place, just waiting for the 'go ahead'...among other nasty options. And Obama told us he was all about open government and 'change'....HA!

[Magda Hassan]

Sales of George Orwell's '1984' up 6,000% since US surveillance scandal

The disclosure of the American authorities' surveillance programmes has led to a spike in the novel that has become synonymous with government overreach.

SALES OF THE George Orwell classic '1984' have increased by 6,000 per cent in the days since it was revealed that US intelligence services have been conducting widespread surveillance programmes.
The classic 1949 novel tells the story of Winston Smith, a member of the government working for the fictional dictatorship known as Oceania. Dissatisfied with his work, he dreams of rebellion against totalitarianism and his masters in the Ministry of Truth.
The novel has become a byword for government oppressiveness, overreach and surveillance of people with the newly-disclosed PRISM surveillance scheme used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) being itself described as Orwellian'.
Amazon's Movers and Shakers' list has shown the novel jump from 7,636 to 123 in recent days. Penguin, which publishes the novel, told NBC News that it believes the jump in sales is linked to the NSA/PRISM scandal.
Business Insider has a good explainer of what '1984' is all about. The novel became a feature-length movie starring John Hurt which was made in, er, 1984
http://www.thejournal.ie/george-orwell-1...itter_self

[Magda Hassan]

The Mozilla Blog

News, notes and ramblings from the Mozilla project

Mozilla

StopWatching.Us: Mozilla launches massive campaign on digital surveillance

Alex Fowlerhttp://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2013/06/11/.../#comments

JUN112013

Last week, media reports emerged that the US government is requiring vast amounts of data from Internet and phone companies via top secret surveillance programs. The revelations, which confirm many of our worst fears, raise serious questions about individual privacy protections, checks on government power and court orders impacting some of the most popular Web services.
Today Mozilla is launching StopWatching.Us a campaign sponsored by a broad coalition of organizations from across the political and technical spectrum calling on citizens and organizations from around the world to demand a full accounting of the extent to which our online data, communications and interactions are being monitored.
What's at stake
Whenever we share information online, there's an intuitive risk of exposure that someone we didn't intend to share with might access it. That's part of using an open, highly distributed, worldwide communications medium.
But there are various levels of exposure.

• There's using a service where you interact with friends, look for new employment opportunities or just play a game, where these activities are logged by the service.
  
• There's enabling geolocation on a mobile app so it can personalize your experience, thereby providing the app with data on your movements.
  
• There's the unintended consequence of over-sharing on a social network.
  
• Then, there are more serious levels of exposure like governments, law enforcement or intelligence agencies gaining access to our private data stored in the cloud, logs created by our Internet service providers and other companies who track things about us.
  

The first three are pretty well understood and users are able to take some steps to learn about these data practices through their experience using them or by referring to privacy policies and terms of service. Technology has also been getting better at providing additional controls and transparency. Mozilla, for instance, provides tools like Do Not Track,Persona and the Collusion Add-on for Firefox, among others.
However, exposures resulting from government-sponsored online surveillance are entirely separate from whether we choose to share information and what those sites say they will or will not do with our data. That's because, at least in the US, these companies are required to respect a court order to share our information with the government, whether they like it or not. Mozilla hasn't received any such order to date, but it could happen to us as we build new server-based services in the future.
There are a number of problems with this kind of electronic surveillance. First, the Internet is making it much easier to use these powers. There's a lot more data to be had. The legal authority to conduct electronic surveillance has grown over the past few years, because the laws are written broadly. And, as users, we don't have good ways of knowing whether the current system is being abused, because it's all happening behind closed doors.
Get involved
When we look back at the public response to SOPA/PIPA, two Congressional anti-piracy bills, where Mozilla and other organizations asked the public to get involved, we were blown away by the response. Hundreds of thousands of people contacted their representatives with concerns over the potential impact to the Web. We saw the same thing with ACTA in the EU. We need to rekindle that energy more than ever so our elected officials take the necessary actions to illuminate how current surveillance policies are being implemented.
Mozilla believes in an Internet where we do not have to fear that everything we do is being tracked, monitored and logged by either companies or governments. And we believe in a government whose actions are visible, transparent and accountable.
What's unique for Mozilla is that our only commitment is to Internet users who rely on an open Web where content, imagination, trust and innovation can thrive.

We're taking a stand for users. We want every user to take a stand, as well.StopWatching.Us

[Peter Lemkin]

Sales of George Orwell's '1984' up 6,000% since US surveillance scandal

The disclosure of the American authorities' surveillance programmes has led to a spike in the novel that has become synonymous with government overreach.

SALES OF THE George Orwell classic '1984' have increased by 6,000 per cent in the days since it was revealed that US intelligence services have been conducting widespread surveillance programmes.
The classic 1949 novel tells the story of Winston Smith, a member of the government working for the fictional dictatorship known as Oceania. Dissatisfied with his work, he dreams of rebellion against totalitarianism and his masters in the Ministry of Truth.
The novel has become a byword for government oppressiveness, overreach and surveillance of people with the newly-disclosed PRISM surveillance scheme used by the US National Security Agency (NSA) being itself described as Orwellian'.
Amazon's Movers and Shakers' list has shown the novel jump from 7,636 to 123 in recent days. Penguin, which publishes the novel, told NBC News that it believes the jump in sales is linked to the NSA/PRISM scandal.
Business Insider has a good explainer of what '1984' is all about. The novel became a feature-length movie starring John Hurt which was made in, er, 1984
http://www.thejournal.ie/george-orwell-1...itter_self

That's the first really good news I've heard in a long time......

[Adele Edisen]

Yahoo News
Lawsuits over government surveillance languish
By PAUL ELIAS | Associated Press


SAN FRANCISCO (AP) Before there was Edward Snowden and the leak of explosive documents showing widespread government surveillance, there was Mark Klein a telecommunications technician who alleged that AT&T was allowing U.S. spies to siphon vast amounts of customer data without warrants.

Klein's allegations and the news reports about them launched dozens of consumer lawsuits in early 2006 against the government and telecommunications companies. The lawsuits alleged invasion of privacy and targeted the very same provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act that are at the center of the latest public outcry.

That was seven years ago, and the warrantless collection continues, perhaps on an even greater scale, underscoring just how difficult the recently outraged will have in pursuing any new lawsuits, like the one the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the government on Tuesday in New York federal court.

"I warned whoever I could," Klein said in telephone interview from his home in Alameda, a city across the bay from San Francisco. "I was angry then. I'm angrier now."

All the lawsuits prompted by Klein's disclosures were bundled up and shipped to a single San Francisco federal judge to handle. Nearly all the cases were tossed out when Congress in 2008 granted the telecommunications retroactive immunity from legal challenges, a law the U.S. Supreme Court upheld. Congress' action will make it difficult to sue the companies caught up in the latest disclosures.

The only lawsuit left from that bundle is one aimed directly at the government. And that case has been tied up in litigation over the U.S. Justice Department's insistence that airing the case in court would jeopardize national security.

"The United States government under both administrations has been stonewalling us in court," said Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which represents the consumers who filed that lawsuit. EFF has also filed a related lawsuit seeking the Justice Department's legal interpretation of the law that the government is apparently relying on to collect consumers' electronic data without a warrant.

James Clapper, director of national intelligence, personally urged U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White to throw out the remaining lawsuit. Clapper wrote the judge in September that the government risks "exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States" if forced to fight the lawsuit.

But on Friday, federal prosecutors asked the judge to delay making any decision until it can report back to the court on July 12 what the latest disclosures may mean to the lawsuit. Tien and other EFF lawyers are also assessing the newest disclosures to determine if they bolster their case.

Snowden, 29, a former CIA employee who most recently worked as a contractor for the National Security Agency, admitted leaking details of two secret government surveillance programs.

He revealed a top-secret court order issued April 25 by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that granted a three-month renewal for the large-scale collection of American phone records. That program, the same one Klein tried to expose, allows the NSA to gather hundreds of millions of U.S. phone records to search for possible links to terrorists abroad.

Snowden also disclosed another program that allows the government to tap into nine U.S. Internet companies and gather all communications to detect suspicious behavior that begins overseas.

On Tuesday, Klein said that for a number of reasons, Snowden's disclosures sparked more public outrage than his own revelations did more than seven years ago.

For one thing, Klein said, Snowden had direct access to a secret court order and details of the program, while Klein pieced together the government's surveillance through internal AT&T documents and in discussions with colleagues who worked on the project.

"The government painted me as a nobody, a technician who was merely speculating," said Klein, who made his disclosures after he accepted a buyout and retired from AT&T in 2004. "Now we have an actual copy of a FISA court order. There it is in black and white. It's undisputable. They can't deny that."

Klein also said the allegations that the government was accessing social media sites such as Facebook may have gotten the attention of more and younger people who weren't bothered by his initial disclosures.

"Now, the government is intruding in places they go," said Klein, 68. "That probably got their attention."

Adele

[Magda Hassan]

Operation 'troll the NSA' starts up online with plan to jam spy scanners by sending same 'terrorist' message over and over again

• Plan to 'test' system by sending a message full of terrorism words to NSA
  
• Website called 'Operation Troll The NSA' has been created
  
• Words designed to pique interest include 'ricin,' 'bomb' and 'Manhattan'
  

By JILL REILLY
PUBLISHED: 11:32 GMT, 11 June 2013 | UPDATED: 11:49 GMT, 11 June 2013
Plan: An operation to troll the NSA has started up online in a bid to jam the spy scanners

An operation to troll the NSA has started up online in a bid to jam the spy scanners.
The plan is to 'test' the system by sending a message full of terrorist buzz words to the agency Wednesday at 7pm EST.
The website was set up in response to the accusations at the U.S. government is collecting and looking at data from Internet companies like Google, Facebook and Apple through a secretive program codenamed PRISM.
Operation 'Troll The NSA' describes the plan stating: 'If millions of us, all at the exact same time, call or email someone with our keywords-of-terror-filled script, we can give our nation's impressive surveillance system the kind of test it deserves.

'They say they don't read or listen to the contents of our messages. Why not test it out? It'll be fun.'
The creators of the website have written a seemingly innocent email about a bad job and travel plans addressed from a disgruntled employee to a friend.


Operation: The plan is to 'test' the system by sending a message full of terrorist buzz words to the agency Wednesday at 7pm EST.

But words designed to catch the scanner's interest litter the script, including famous American landmarks such as 'Manhattan,' 'Golden Gate Bridge', 'Brooklyn Bridge',' Verrazano Narrows Bridge' and 'Financial District.'
It also included words associated with terrorists such as 'death to millions of Americans,' 'strike at any second' and 'oppressive regime.'
They hope that the scanner will pick up the words and consequently get jammed from the overload.



Server: Words designed to catch the scanner's interest litter the script including famous American landmarks such as 'Manhattan,' 'Golden Gate Bridge', pictured and 'Financial District'

The stunt was set up by two BuzzFeed employees.

Chris Baker and Mike Lacher, creative directors at the news site, say they hope millions of people will take part.

'It would be amazing if we actually did screw with their systems a little bit,' said Baker.
'But the ultimate goal is that the site itself will get enough attention ... that NSA becomes aware of it on some level and gives them a moment to reflect on their duties,' he told the Daily Beast.
Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who leaked the secret information about a classified U.S. government surveillance program is currently on the run in Hong Kong.

Snowden, 29, is a technology expert working for a private firm subcontracted to the US National Security Agency.

Last week he told the Guardian newspaper of a mammoth surveillance operation run by the NSA on telephone and Internet records around the world.

In the US he has been branded a traitor and there is pressure for his extradition from Hong Kong.

However, he has triggered a debate in many countries on whether state snooping goes too far.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...z2VzWPbBgY
[URL="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2339432/Operation-troll-NSA-starts-online-plan-jam-spy-scanners-sending-terrorist-message-over-again.html"]
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...again.html[/URL]

[Magda Hassan]

500,000 contractors can access NSA data hoards

Firms like Booz Allen have army of employees, but only Snowden spoke up

BY NATASHA LENNARD

• As Tim Shorrock pointed out as long ago as 2007 (and reminded us in light of the NSA leaks) "about 70 percent of our national intelligence budgets being spent on the private sector." The APreported Tuesday that nearly 500,000 contractors employees like whistleblower Edward Snowden have access to the government's top secret programs.
  

Of the 4.9 million people with clearance to access "confidential and secret" government information, 1.1 million, or 21 percent, work for outside contractors, according to a report from Clapper's office. Of the 1.4 million who have the higher "top secret" access, 483,000, or 34 percent, work for contractors.

A number of writers like Shorrock have highlighted in the past week the vast government contracts and huge sums that play a formative part in expanding state surveillance. That point has been well made. What I want to stress here is simply that 500,000 employees is a lot of people a lot of people with a lot of access. A lot of people, unlike Snowden, who have chosen to march in step.
For ideologues like David Brooks (whose depiction this week of Ed Snowden as a lonesome, fragile basement-dweller, lacking regard for the apparently necessary hierarchies of "family, neighborhood, religious group, state," is as offensive as it is fatuous) all these thousands of employees do their jobs and, for Brooks, their patriotic duty by acting as "servants." The more troubling aspect of the fact that 500,000 private employees have access to programs like the NSA's PRISM and Blarney is that within those masses the mid-level overseers of our top-down cyberpower nexus only Snowden chose to step out of line and speak out as the surveillance state creeped.
http://www.salon.com/2013/06/11/500000_c...ta_hoards/

[David Guyatt]

Another insightful post from Tyler Durden at Zerohedge

Guest Post: Why The Surveillance State Must Be Erased

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/11/2013 21:18 -0400

• Corruption
  
• Google
  
• Guest Post
  
• Obama Administration
  
• PrISM
  
• Reality
  
• SPY
  
• Switzerland
  
• White House
  

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market blog,
In America today there is a great rushing storm, a swirling hurricane of clashing opinions and ideologies that defy coherent organization and classification. This social tempest has been triggered by certain revelations among the general public on issues which we in the Liberty Movement have long been aware. The fact that our government is bought and paid for by international corporate interests, the fact that our government has positioned itself to spy on ALL Americans without warrant and without probable cause, the fact that our government is instituting policy initiatives that target common citizens as enemy combatants, the fact that every one of our Constitutional rights is being deliberately torn away; these things are not news to us, but to many once ignorant people, they are a shock to the system.
Open corruption on the part of a criminal establishment has a funny way of politicizing everyone, even those people who go out of their way to avoid the bigger picture. In the end, no man or woman gets a pass. Whether you like it or not, one day soon, you will have to choose a side; freedom or tyranny. There is no middle ground. There is no Switzerland.
With all the rationalizations and counter-rationalizations flying around concerning the current avalanche of admissions and data leaks, it is easy to lose track of the root of the overall conflict. It's as if we have been dropped into the heart of an Amazonian swamp, our feet encased in a thick sludge of social inaction as a dark cloud of mindless mosquito-people buzz about us, pecking hungrily at our veins with their warped and uneducated world views. The deafening chorus distracts us from what is truly important.
Here is the reality of our situation:
1) Both the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration supported FISA domestic surveillance legislation. FISA is the legal tool which the federal government now uses to justify the monitoring of journalists and recently exposed mass surveillance programs such as PRISM. Politicians from both the Republican and the Democratic parties have defended the use of FISA and PRISM. Both parties support the destruction of your 4th Amendment rights.
2) The Obama Administration openly admits to the monitoring of journalists phone and email records in an attempt to thwart whistleblowers that might actually bring the truth of what the government is doing into the light of day. Obama of course defends this position by claiming that "national security" is at stake.
3) Part of the motivation for surveillance measures against journalists has clearly been the Benghazi conspiracy, which is a thorn in the side of the establishment that refuses to go away. Like Watergate, or Iran-Contra, the White House has been caught with its pants down and instead of admitting its guilt, has decided to attack the messengers instead.
4) Another motivation was certainly the exposure of the ATF's "Fast And Furious" program, which funneled U.S. firearms into the hands of Mexican drug cartels so that American firearms dealers and owners could be blamed for the escalation of deadly violence south of the border. Again, Obama and his handlers seek to use a suffocating surveillance grid in order to thwart whistleblowers and prevent federal crimes from being aired in public.
5) The use of the IRS as a weapon against the political enemies of the establishment (namely Tea Party groups) verifies that government surveillance without oversight can indeed lead to political profiling and unjustified punishment.
6) The PRISM scandal, leaked by former CIA operative and NSA contractor Edward Snowden, has given the general public a raw naked look at the reality of the FISA spy initiative. In the past, Liberty Movement champions have been derided as "paranoid" for pointing out that there were no limitations to FISA, and that the entire nation might one day be monitored and catalogued like animals in a great technological cage. Today, the public now knows that this concern is concrete and undeniable. EVERYONE is being watched. Reports now estimate that NSA hackers harvest over 2.1 million gigabytes of data on American citizens per hour.
7) Privacy rights have been so debased that the invasion of our electronic communications is the least of our worries. The Supreme Court has ruled in Maryland v. King that police now have the authority to extract DNA samples from any person placed under arrest, without a warrant, and without due process. This means that the second a law enforcement officer places you in cuffs, your genetic materials are no longer your property, even if the charges against you are erroneous, if charges are ever filed at all. The government admits to having at least 10 million people catalogued in their genetic database already.
8) Since 9/11, U.S. cities have added approximately 30 million new CCTV cameras on top of those already in operation. After the Boston Bombing, even more are expected to be installed. There are few places in most major cities where you are not being watched, and even smaller municipalities with miniscule crime rates are beginning to follow suit.
It would seem that our government has somehow overlooked the 4th Amendment of our Constitution, and statist rationalists would do well to study it before defending their actions. Let's read it, shall we?
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Now let's examine the arguments of the establishment in favor of the Surveillance State:
Argument #1: Mass Surveillance Has Been Going On For A Long Time And Is Nothing New
Dianne Feinstein and Lindsey Graham, perhaps the most evil political duo since McCain and Lieberman, have both used the above talking point in order to rationalize the mass surveillance of FISA and PRISM. But let's put this in perspective…
Feinstein and Graham are essentially saying that because the government has criminally trespassed on our privacy for years, we should not complain when we discover that the invasion was a bit more elaborate than we had originally suspected. They are saying that because we allowed them to get away with taking an inch, we might as well allow them to get away with taking a mile. This is the logical fallacy of incrementalism, and tyrants use it in their arguments all the time.
Despotism rarely establishes itself overnight. Rather, it slithers slowly into the midst of a society like a parasite, and carefully entrenches itself under our skin bit-by-bit so that we do not notice until it is buried so deep we fear removing it at all. A line must be drawn in the sand eventually. Past mistakes are not a license for future failures and future regrets, and anyone who claims otherwise is trying to take something away from you.
Argument #2: If You're Not Talking To Terrorists, Then You Have Nothing To Worry About
Another debate point from the bottom feeding Lindsey Graham. First off, our Constitutional rights are not predicated on whether or not we are guilty of "terrorism". Even a so-called terrorist is supposed to be protected under the Bill of Rights. The law is very clear, and this is not a negotiable position. Every American, regardless of government suspicion, has a right to privacy, and is protected from unreasonable search and seizure without probable cause. Period. Graham's argument perpetuates the fallacy that the word "terrorism" is somehow a magical password that allows the federal government to bypass Constitutional barriers. I'm sorry to tell Lindsey that he is greatly mistaken.
Secondly, the very foundation of a free society requires that every person be treated as INNOCENT until proven guilty. Mass surveillance twists this principle, so that all people are treated by the state as guilty until proven innocent. Such a system will inevitably generate a vast rift between the populace and the government because it designates the political elite as the "watchers" and the public as the "watched". As history has shown us, the "watchers" always become the enslavers, and the "watched" always become the enslaved.
I'm not sure why so many people, including U.S. senators, do not seem to grasp this concept.
Argument #3: We Must Trust That The Government Is Using The Surveillance Apparatus For Good
Barack Obama in defense of the leaked PRISM initiative and all encompassing NSA surveillance stated that Americans must simply "trust" that the federal system is using the data they have criminally harvested for the good of the country. That is to say, we should have "faith" in the White House.
I'm sorry, but the Constitution was written exactly because governments are run by men, NOT benevolent gods, and men are notorious for abusing power. The Constitution exists because NO government can be trusted to act in a principled manner. We do not have to "trust" them because tight constitutional restrictions are in place to ensure that they aren't given enough slack to become dangerous. When those restrictions are diminished, we get programs like PRISM…
The checks and balances of due process and warrants are supposed to be absolutely public and transparent so that we can see, with our own eyes, that all is being handled justly and honorably. Mass surveillance in particular is an affront to the 4th Amendment because there is no conceivable way that warrants could ever be issued for the incredible volume of materials gathered, and therefore, there is no conceivable way that any legitimate judicial oversight is being enforced. Secret courts, secret charges, secret programs targeting entire subsections of the population, were expressly forbidden by the Founding Fathers as totalitarian in nature.
In February of this year, Obama boasted during a Google Plus "Fireside Chat" that his was "the most transparent administration in history". The ability of politicians to lie with sociopathic expertise is well documented, hence, my lack of faith.
The government and the Obama White House in particular do not deserve our trust. Trust has to be earned…
Argument #4: Surveillance Programs Are Essential To The Safety Of The Public
At this point I find that anyone who still uses the "safety" position to justify the trampling of our freedoms is a lost cause. Years ago, when the surveillance grid was being put into place through legal chicanery, the common skeptic would insist that such subversive laws had not yet hurt anyone, and that the concerns of the Liberty Movement were "overblown". Today, it's no longer about theory. Our cultural pain is real, people are being targeted, people are suffering, and it's only going to get worse from here on. And, as we warned a long time ago, the concept of "collective safety" would be the primary persuasion technique used to lead America further into oblivion.
In a race to spin the leak of PRISM, lawmakers and establishment shills have come out in droves to suggest that the secret surveillance state has "stopped terrorist attacks" and "saved lives". Of course, because all the details of the program are classified, we'll never see any proof that such claims are true. What a conundrum. Frankly, I know enough about government sponsored terrorism to understand that even if PRISM thwarted an attack, our clandestine alphabet bureaucracy has created far more death and destruction than they have ever prevented.
In the end, I couldn't care less if PRISM stopped a terrorist act. The point is irrelevant. Our civil liberties are not subject to the supposed success of an unconstitutional government action. The promise of safety does not nullify our rights, nor does it give government capital to do whatever it pleases.
Comfort Means Death
I believe the establishment has moved away from the denial of so many abuses because it hopes to convince us that this is the "new normal" of our society. They want us to embrace the surveillance state and become comfortable in its cradling arms. I do not plan to get "comfortable". When political villains no longer fear the exposure of their villainy, it is time to start worrying.
There has been a lot of unrestrained conjecture on the motivations of the suddenly world-famous Edward Snowden. The fact is we still know very little about him, and for now I will reserve judgment; partially because I know that one day people like myself could be accused of "fomenting controlled opposition" or "working for the enemy". Our culture has become so cynical that we refuse to believe that anyone does anything anymore out of a sense of principle.
Whatever Snowden's original intentions, I find his admitted reasons inspiring. When asked why he forced the truth of PRISM into the mainstream, Snowden replied:
"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under…"
"I'm willing to sacrifice all of that [career and former life] because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
"My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which was done in their name and that which is done against them…I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions. I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."
The surveillance machine is the key to control. When each person feels the eyes of the state constantly upon them, dissent and rebellion becomes unthinkable. At the very least, those of us who are aware of the great Orwellian shift before us must take an immovable stand.
The right to privacy is an inherent right of natural law. No individual or government system should be allowed legal precedence to invade my privacy, and all people have the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty rather than guilty until proven innocent. As an individual, I do not owe the collective, or the government, a constant update on whether or not I am a "threat". In fact, I don't owe anyone anything.
If someone continues to treat me as an enemy and constantly tramples my natural right to privacy, I am going to fight them, and I am going to hurt them, perhaps mortally. This is what people who support surveillance society need to understand; there will be consequences for their trespasses against the natural rights of others.
There can be no negotiation. There can be no compromise. The surveillance state must be erased.

It is important to realise that domestic surveillance and control is a chronic problem of western democracies, not just America. Here in the UK we are the most surveilled nation in the world.

[David Guyatt]

My apologies if I am overdoing Tyler Durden posts but the guys has some important insights to make imo.

27 Edward Snowden Quotes About U.S. Government Spying That Should Send A Chill Up Your Spine

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 06/11/2013 18:18 -0400

• China
  
• default
  
• Hong Kong
  
• national security
  
• None
  
• SPY
  

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,
Would you be willing to give up what Edward Snowden has given up? He has given up his high paying job, his home, his girlfriend, his family, his future and his freedom just to expose the monolithic spy machinery that the U.S. government has been secretly building to the world. He says that he does not want to live in a world where there isn't any privacy. He says that he does not want to live in a world where everything that he says and does is recorded. Thanks to Snowden, we now know that the U.S. government has been spying on us to a degree that most people would have never even dared to imagine.
Up until now, the general public has known very little about the U.S. government spy grid that knows almost everything about us. But making this information public is going to cost Edward Snowden everything. Essentially, his previous life is now totally over. And if the U.S. government gets their hands on him, he will be very fortunate if he only has to spend the next several decades rotting in some horrible prison somewhere.
There is a reason why government whistleblowers are so rare. And most Americans are so apathetic that they wouldn't even give up watching their favorite television show for a single evening to do something good for society. Most Americans never even try to make a difference because they do not believe that it will benefit them personally. Meanwhile, our society continues to fall apart all around us. Hopefully the great sacrifice that Edward Snowden has made will not be in vain. Hopefully people will carefully consider what he has tried to share with the world.
The following are 27 quotes from Edward Snowden about U.S. government spying that should send a chill up your spine...
[/url]#1 "The majority of people in developed countries spend at least some time interacting with the Internet, and Governments are abusing that necessity in secret to extend their powers beyond what is necessary and appropriate."
#2 "...I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents."
#3 "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to."
#4 "...I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."
#5 "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything."
#6 "With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards."
#7 "Any analyst at any time can target anyone. Any selector, anywhere... I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President..."
#8 "To do that, the NSA specifically targets the communications of everyone. It ingests them by default. It collects them in its system and it filters them and it analyzes them and it measures them and it stores them for periods of time simply because that's the easiest, most efficient and most valuable way to achieve these ends. So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government, or someone that they suspect of terrorism, they are collecting YOUR communications to do so."
#9 "I believe that when [senator Ron] Wyden and [senator Mark] Udall asked about the scale of this, they [the NSA] said it did not have the tools to provide an answer. We do have the tools and I have maps showing where people have been scrutinized most. We collect more digital communications from America than we do from the Russians."
#10 "...they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them."
#11 "Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded. ...it's getting to the point where you don't have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis, to sort of derive suspicion from an innocent life."
#12 "Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest."
#13 "Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten and they're talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state."
#14 "I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under."
#15 "I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy, and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."
#16 "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong."
#17 "I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act."
#18 "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."
#19 "The great fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. [People] won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things... And in the months ahead, the years ahead, it's only going to get worse. [The NSA will] say that... because of the crisis, the dangers that we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny."
#20 "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."
#21 "You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk."
#22 "I know the media likes to personalize political debates, and I know the government will demonize me."
#23 "We have got a CIA station just up the road the consulate here in Hong Kong and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."
#24 "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end."
#25 "There's no saving me."
#26 "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night."
[url=http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%2327]#27 "I do not expect to see home again."
Would you make the same choice that Edward Snowden made? Most Americans would not. One CNN reporter says that he really admires Snowden because he has tried to get insiders to come forward with details about government spying for years, but none of them were ever willing to...

As a digital technology writer, I have had more than one former student and colleague tell me about digital switchers they have serviced through which calls and data are diverted to government servers or the big data algorithms they've written to be used on our e-mails by intelligence agencies. I always begged them to write about it or to let me do so while protecting their identities. They refused to come forward and believed my efforts to shield them would be futile. "I don't want to lose my security clearance. Or my freedom," one told me.

And if the U.S. government has anything to say about it, Snowden is most definitely going to pay for what he has done. In fact, according to the Daily Beast, a directorate known as "the Q Group" is already hunting Snowden down...

The people who began chasing Snowden work for the Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence, according to former U.S. intelligence officers who spoke on condition of anonymity. The directorate, sometimes known as "the Q Group," is continuing to track Snowden now that he's outed himself as The Guardian's source, according to the intelligence officers.

If Snowden is not already under the protection of some foreign government (such as China), it will just be a matter of time before U.S. government agents get him.
And how will they treat him once they find him? Well, one reporter overheard a group of U.S. intelligence officials talking about how Edward Snowden should be "disappeared". The following is from a Daily Mail article that was posted on Monday...

A group of intelligence officials were overheard yesterday discussing how the National Security Agency worker who leaked sensitive documents to a reporter last week should be 'disappeared.'
Foreign policy analyst and editor at large of The Atlantic, Steve Clemons, tweeted about the 'disturbing' conversation after listening in to four men who were sitting near him as he waited for a flight at Washington's Dulles airport.

'In Dulles UAL lounge listening to 4 US intel officials saying loudly leaker & reporter on #NSAstuff should be disappeared recorded a bit,' he tweeted at 8:42 a.m. on Saturday.
According to Clemons, the men had been attending an event hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.

As an American, I am deeply disturbed that the U.S. government is embarrassing itself in front of the rest of the world like this.
The fact that we are collecting trillions of pieces of information on people all over the planet is a massive embarrassment and the fact that our politicians are defending this practice now that it has been exposed is a massive embarrassment.
If the U.S. government continues to act like a Big Brother police state, then the rest of the world will eventually conclude that is exactly what we are. At that point we become the "bad guy" and we lose all credibility with the rest of the planet.