UPDATES ON THE NSA SCANDAL

Kin Cheung/AP

As Edward Snowden Is Hunted, Wikileaks Founder Praises His ‘Service To Humanity’

By Elizabeth Coady

WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE RELEASED A STATEMENT TODAY calling on the world’s people to “Step forward and stand with Snowden” a day after charges were announced against the NSA whistleblower.

“The US government is spying on each and every one of us, but it is Edward Snowden who is charged with espionage for tipping us off,” Assange said in an impassioned letter to the public praising Snowden as well as Bradley Manning, now on trial for “aiding the enemy. “It is getting to the point where the mark of international distinction and service to humanity is no longer the Nobel Peace Prize, but an espionage indictment from the US Department of Justice.”

INSIDERY THREAT

Credit:AmericanCrossroads

Federal Employees Who Read Salon, The Onion, At ‘High Risk’ For Leaking, Says Defense Source

By Elizabeth Coady

OH, THE IRONY. A story in part about the satirical newspaper The Onion sounds ripped right from its headlines.

In a remarkable report that outs the Obama Administration as Stasi-esque, McClatchy reporters Marisa Taylor and Jonathan S. Landay reveal a new federal initiative that encourages workers to turn in colleagues whom they suspect of being leakers.

WHERE IS ERIC SCHMIDT?

Noam Chomsky Calls Google Glass ‘Orwellian’

By Elizabeth Coady

AS GOOGLE RAMPS UP ITS CHALLENGE TO THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION’S secrecy surrounding FISA warrantless wiretappings, one question still unanswered is how Edward Snowden’s revelations will impact the acceptance of Google Glass.

In the above video, noted MIT linguist Noam Chomsky says the wearable computers will destroy people while enabling users to upload everything they videotape onto the Internet. Chomsky invokes Eric Schmidt’s famous line about privacy in which he stated,”If you’re doing anything that you don’t want to be on the Internet, then you shouldn’t be doing it.”

Interestingly, Schmidt has been silent since the PRISM revelations showed that nine tech giants were allowing the government to tap into their databases. VentureBeat today calls revelation of the PRISM network “officially Google’s worst nightmare.”

CAST YOUR VOTE

Vote For Edward Snowden

By Elizabeth Coady

IN AN EDITORIAL ENTITLED, “WHO VOTED FOR SNOWDEN?,”the Wall Street Journal preposterously argues that the NSA systems analyst’s exposure of the massive U.S. surveillance system thwarts democracy.

“What he himself is doing is profoundly antidemocratic,” rails Joseph Sternberg, “in the contempt it shows for the preferences of millions of fellow citizens expressed at the ballot box—and even for those citizens’ right to have a definitive say in the matter at all.”

The claim is ludicrous — mendacious propaganda — because we expect elected officials to seek public opinion before enacting legislation. Instead, Obama, and Bush before him, at every turn have stymied reporters and criminalized whistleblowers who unveiled the NSA’s chilling surveillance machine.

GOVERNMENT’S LISTENING IN

A Paranoid Lady Liberty

By Elizabeth Coady

LADY LIBERTY LOOKS OVER HER SHOULDER AS A SHADOWY FIGURE holds a satellite to the sky. The political cartoon by Luo Jie appears on today’s China Daily website. A reader comments at the site, ” The US is the biggest data thief in the world. No use blaming China. The truth is now out for everyone to see.”

MANUFACTURING FEAR

Rep. Peter King’s Cozy Relationship With Defense Industry

By Elizabeth Coady

SOME OF THE MOST VOCIFEROUS ATTACKS against whistleblower Edward Snowden have come from Rep. Peter King of New York, who called the former NSA analyst a “treasonous” “defector” who threatens American security.

Yesterday the Congressman from Long Island turned up the hyperbole, falsely accusing Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald of threatening to reveal the names of CIA agents and assets around the world, and demanding that the journalist be charged with a crime.

“It is extraordinarily menacing that he did so based on a complete falsehood, the idea that I ever threatened to [disclose CIA agents],” Greenwald told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Wednesday night.

King’s rabid rhetoric is standard operating procedure for someone who’s congressional career has been spent manufacturing fear to promote the interests of the U.S. intelligence industry.

DEMANDING ANSWERS

Sen. Wyden Calls Out James Clapper For Lying On Spy Details

By Elizabeth C.

AS ELITES IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA YAWN over Edward Snowden’s revelation that U.S. spy agencies are slurping up data on American citizens, and apologists in both parties ratchet up rhetoric against whistleblower Edward Snowden, a few notable public figures have emerged.

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oreg.) has been sounding the alarm about government surveillance. As far back as 2006, he voted against re-authorizing the Patriot Act which has dramatically expanded government’s surveillance programs and spending. Even before Snowden’s revelations of last week, Wyden warned the public that “the American people would be extraordinarily surprised if they could see the difference between what they believe a law says and how it has actually been interpreted in secret.”

Now he’s calling out James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, for lying to him during questioning before the Senate Intelligence Committee last March when Wyden asked him, “Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

Clapper’s response: “No sir.”

“It does not?,” Wyden followed up.

CHILLING REVELATIONS

NSA Whistleblower Speaks: U.S. Is Building Infrastructure For ‘Turnkey Tyranny”

THE WHISTLEBLOWER WHO BLEW THE LID OFF THE U.S. GOVERNMENT’S SECRET SURVEILLANCE apparatus is not hiding behind anonymity.

Edward Snowden, a former CIA technical assistant and defense contractor, gives an interview with The Guardian about what motivated him to speak out. The 29-year-older warns that the government is building the technological infrastructure to create a “turnkey tyranny.”

During the 12-minute interview, the North Carolina native says that “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 if I had a personal email.”

“The extent of their capabilities is horrifying,” he warns. “We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine. You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place.”

GEORGE W. OBAMA

The Best Commentary On The NSA/Prism Revelations

By Elizabeth C.

IF HE HAD A GRAVE, OSAMA BIN LADEN would be rolling over inside it with laughter.

A decade after the Al-Qaeda leader masterminded the devastation of the World Trade Towers, a nation once revered for its human rights and freedoms has become the new world symbol of the authoritarian state.

Even before news broke this week that U.S. spy agencies routinely collected the phone records of millions of Americans, could access citizens’ video, photograph and emails by tapping into the servers of U.S. Internet giants, and could “quite literally… watch your ideas form as you type,” the Obama Administration was manufacturing fear.

BALANCING ACT

Turkish ‘Woman In Red’ Becomes Latest Symbol of Abusive Government Power

ReutersBy Elizabeth C.

THE WOMAN IN RED STANDS with eyes closed, head turned, unbowed as Turkish “riot police” spray her directly in the face with tear gas. Reuters reports she’s become the “leitmotif for female protesters during days of violent anti-government demonstrations in Istanbul.” The image has been shared “endlessly” on social media, according to the news agency, which first published the shot taken by Osman Orsal.

Yet there’s something familiar about the photo: it mimics the same cold-minded assault that the now-notorious “pepper spray cop” showed while spraying Occupy protesters at the University of California-Davis in 2009, as well as the single-minded intent of the New York police who penned in Occupy protesters before spraying them with the crowd controlling chemical.

Three different locations, two different governments, but a singular goal: to quell citizens’ protests against government’s heavy-handed authority.