Tuesday, June 11, 2013

"Without Snowden's act, the public's knowledge of what is being done to them in their own name would be much poorer."












When good does evil in its struggle against evil, it becomes indistinguishable from its enemy." T.S. Elliot


  
"It is part of the moral tragedy with which we are dealing that words like "democracy," "freedom," "rights," "justice," which have so often inspired heroism and have led men to give their lives for things which make life worthwhile, can also become a trap, the means of destroying the very things men desire to uphold." Sir Norman Angell (1874 - 1967), 1956.

"Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens" : Plato : Ancient Greek philosopher (428/427-348/347 B.C.)
























March Against Monsanto organizer to face charges for using amplified sound at a park

Kristin "Krissy" Jones arrested at the
Ann Arbor, Michigan
March Against Monsanto - May 25, 2013
Madison Ruppert
Activist Post

In an apparent case of an organizer of a major protest being targeted by police, Kristen “Krissi” Jones, an organizer of the Ann Arbor, Michigan March Against Monsanto, was arrested for using amplified sound in a public park on May 25, 2013.

Jones maintains that she did no such thing and says that fifteen other people used a bullhorn in Hanover Park that day but were neither harassed nor arrested.

The individuals organizing this particular March Against Monsanto protest – one of many across the country and the world – paid around $1,500 for a permit for the protest but were denied the night before it was scheduled.

Yet the arrest was not made due to the lack of a permit and the protest was not shut down by police.

Read more »


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Senate passes U.S. farm bill; food stamp fight looms in House  



US Officials Start Talks on Arming Syria's Rebels
 
By BRADLEY KLAPPER
 
Moved by the Syrian regime's rapid advance, officials say the administration could approve lethal aid for the rebels in the coming days.
 
 
Pakistan's Prime Minister Declares End to Secret Approval of U.S. Drone Strikes
 
By Tom Hussain
 
"The policy of protesting against drone strikes for public consumption, while working behind the scenes to make them happen, is not on," Sharif said.
 
 
Zionism New Hurdles to Peace
 
By William A. Cook
 
An on-going perpetual nightmare foisted by the Zionist state on the United States and the international community as a mouthing of interest in peace but with a silent intention that all Arabs must be removed from "their" land.
 
 
How Edward Snowden Exposed a "Massive Surveillance Apparatus"
 
Video
 
"There is this massive surveillance apparatus being gradually constructed in the United States that already has extremely invasive capabilities to monitor and store the communications and other forms of behavior not just of tens of millions of Americans, but of hundreds of millions, probably billions of people, around the globe," Greenwald says.
 
 
One American Who Isn't For Sale
 
By Robert Scheer
 
So it's true, as filmmaker Michael Moore once warned us, the Carlyle Group is Big Brother.
 
 
Historic Challenge to Support the Moral Actions of Edward Snowden
 
By Norman Solomon
 
Edward Snowden has given aid and comfort to grassroots efforts for democracy. What we do with his brave gift will be our choice.
 
 
Watch Clapper Lie To Sen. Ron Wyden
Wyden Warns Clapper: Americans Need 'Straight Answers' On Spying
 
By Olivier Knox
 
This may be as close as a sitting U.S. senator comes to publicly calling the director of national intelligence a liar.
 
 
'It Can't Happen Here' Just Did
 
By Gene Healy
 
"Metadata": Allows the government secretly to track who a target communicates with and where he's physically located. That knowledge can be used to unearth who's leaking to reporters, when and where political opponents are meeting -- even who's sleeping with whom.
 
 
What Is The Government's Agenda?
 
By Paul Craig Roberts
 
Germans in the Third Reich and Soviet citizens in the Stalin era had a better idea of their government's agendas than do "freedom and democracy" Americans today.
 
 
'Pardon Edward Snowden' Petition
 
By Deborah Zabarenko
 
A petition to pardon Edward Snowden, who has acknowledged leaking secret documents from the U.S. National Security Agency, attracted more than 22,000 electronic signatures by Monday afternoon, one day after it was posted on the White House website.
 
 
US Lawmakers Call for Review of Patriot Act After NSA Surveillance Revelations
 
By Dan Roberts and Spencer Ackerman in Washington
 
The legislation, which was introduced after the 9/11 attacks, has been cited as the legal basis for the National Security Agency scouring billions of ordinary US telephone records in an effort to combat terrorism.
 
 
Meet the Contractors Analyzing your Private Data
 
By Tim Shorrock
 
Private companies are getting rich probing your personal information for the government. Call it Digital Blackwater.
 
 
Rotten To The Core
State Department Memo Reveals Possible Cover-ups, Halted Investigations
 
By CBS News
 
The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples: A State Department security official in Beirut "engaged in sexual assaults" on foreign nationals. The memo also reveals details about an "underground drug ring" was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and supplied State Department security contractors with drugs.
 




Hard News  
   

60 Shiites killed in Syria as West seeks solution:
Despite Tuesday's attacks, Bashar al-Assad's regime, dominated by his Alawite sect of Shiite Islam, appears to have gained the upper hand against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels, buoyed by military support from its Shiite allies, Hezbollah and Iran.
 
 
Syrian troops kill 35 rebels near Damascus:
As many as 35 rebels were killed by the Syrian troops' ambush Monday in a suburb of the capital Damascus.
 
 
Video: Damascus double suicide attack leaves 14 dead, dozens injured:
At least 14 people were killed and 31 injured in twin blasts caused by explosive devices planted in central Damascus on Tuesday, Syrian state television reported.
 
 
Syrian Rebels Clash With Kurdish Militias:
Renewed clashes between Syrian insurgents and Kurdish groups have erupted in the province of Aleppo and quickly spread to other cities in northern Syria. Several combatants have been killed in fights between Liwa al-Tawhid and its allies and the Kurdish People's Defense Units (YPG) since May 25 in the countryside of northern Aleppo
 
 
Syria army launches attack on Aleppo airbase:
Syria's army launched multiple attacks on rebel positions on Tuesday in the northern province of Aleppo, including insurgent-held areas of a key airbase.
 
 
Obama to decide whether U.S. will send Syrian rebels air power this week:
Moved by the Assad regime's rapid advance, the Obama administration could decide this week to approve lethal aid for the beleaguered Syrian rebels and will weigh the merits of a less likely move to send in U.S. airpower to enforce a no-fly zone over the civil war-wracked nation,
 
 
Aleppo: Syrian rebels execute teenager Mohammad Kattaa in front of his parents, say reports :
"An unidentified Islamist rebel group shot dead a 15-year-old child who worked as a coffee seller in Aleppo, after they accused him of blasphemy," said Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman.
 
 
Saudi Arabia, France agree Qusayr scenario can't be repeated in Aleppo:
The Hezbollah-backed Syrian troops, which defeated the rebels in the strategic town of Qusayr, should not be allowed to repeat the same scenario in province of Aleppo. The two countries expressed their stance after Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, and the kingdom's intelligence head, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, met with French officials.
 
 
France pushes for talks on arming Syria rebels:
The Syrian conflict is at a "turning point" with regime forces gaining ground, France said Tuesday, adding that it was time to review whether to arm the opposition.
 
 
Putin Warns Against Syria Intervention:
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that foreign intervention in the Syrian civil war is unacceptable because it would result in a new source of terror in the region.
 
 
Poll: Americans oppose intervention in Syria:
Asked to pick a response to stop the killing of civilians in Syria, just 15 percent in the poll say they favor U.S. military action, and only 11 percent want to provide arms to the opposition.
 
 
U.S. Blacklists Fund-Raisers for Hezbollah:
Retribution against Hezbollah for helping the Syrian government fight rebels intensified on Tuesday, as the United States blacklisted four fund-raising operatives and warned of further steps to choke the group's financing.
 
 
Eight Rockets from Syria Hit Hermel, One Lebanese Killed:
Rocket attack on HermelEight rockets launched by Syrian militants have fallen in Hermel in eastern Lebanon on Tuesday, the National News Agency reported.
 
 
Putin says Assad could have avoided war, criticizes West:
Pointing to violence in Iraq, Libya, Syria and other states, Putin said: "Why is this happening? Because certain people from outside think that if you shape the whole region
 
 
Austria begins withdrawing peacekeepers from Golan:
Austria has begun withdrawing peacekeepers from the Golan Heights, winding down a four-decade mission due to spillover fighting from the Syrian civil war, the defence ministry said.
 
 
70 killed in relentless Iraq attacks in single day:
Monday's deadliest violence struck the main northern city of Mosul, with a series of five car bombings mostly targeting security forces leaving at least 29 dead and 80 others wounded, officials said.
 
 
Al-Qaeda Gunmen Kidnap over 20 People North of Baghdad, 7 People Executed:
The extremists planted a false checkpoint on the road, stopping for an alleged check the vehicles, where their victims were going. Later the kidnappers took the hostages, which are the natives of the local tribe Zarkush, in the unknown direction.
 
 
Iraq: Abusive Commander Linked to Mosul Killings:
Iraqi authorities should immediately investigate evidence that federal police executed four men and a 15-year-old boy on May 3, 2013, south of Mosul. Witnesses last saw the victims in the custody of the federal police 3rd Division, commanded by Gen. Mehdi Gharawi
 
 
1,000 Iraqi Kurdish soldiers desert army, officials say:
More than 1,000 Kurdish career soldiers in the Iraqi army have deserted and want to be integrated into the Kurdish former rebel peshmerga militia, officials said on Tuesday.
 
 
US calls for resignation of UN's Richard Falk:
Special rapporteur for Palestinian territories said NGO UN Watch should be investigated to ensure it's not controlled by Israel
 
 
Top UN Official Richard Falk Calls for Removing UN Watch:
In a scathing attack on a UN-accredited NGO, top UN Human Rights Council official Richard Falk is publicly calling on the 47-nation body to investigate and potentially expel a watchdog organization after it mobilized world leaders-including his own boss, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon-to condemn his comments blaming the Boston Marathon bombings on "the American global domination project" and "Tel Aviv."
 
 
Ambassador to US backs Power as 'caring deeply' about Israel:
Michael Oren joins growing list of Jewish leaders who've come out in favor of Obama's nominee for UN envoy
 
 
US ally Kuwait gives 11 year jail sentence to woman for tweets against emir:
She was convicted of insulting Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, calling for the overthrow of the regime and misusing her mobile phone, according to a copy of the lower court ruling obtained by the AFP news agency.
 
 
Rafsanjani endorses moderate Rowhani for Iran presidency:
"I consider him to be more suitable (than other candidates) to steer the executive branch," he said referring to the slate of five other hopefuls, most of whom are conservatives.
 
 
19 killed in Nigerian attack:
At least 19 people have been killed in a renewed attack by insurgent group in Nigeria's Maidiguri city, local residents and military sources said
 
 
Bomb found under Italian embassy's car in Libya:
 A home-made bomb was found Tuesday under a car belong to the Italian embassy in Tripoli, capital of unrest-hit Libya, no one was injured, local security and embassy officials told Xinhua, APA reports.
 
 
Egypt warns Ethiopia over Nile dam:
President Morsi says "all options are open" in dealing with dam project that threatens Egypt with a water shortage.
 
 
Suicide blast in Kabul kills 14 near U.S. Embassy:
A suicide car bomber struck outside the Afghan Supreme Court in Kabul on Tuesday, killing at least eight people and wounding 20, police and health officials said.
 
 
7 Taliban killed in Kabul airport attack:
Seven Taliban fighters with rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns launched a rare assault on Nato's operational headquarters at the military section of Kabul's international airport on Monday. All seven militants were killed.
 
 
Five people killed in Nangarhar:
Five "militants" including, three Pakistani nationals were killed, when the Afghan security forces launched a series of counterinsurgents operations in the southern province of Nangarhar, an official said Tuesday
 
 
Polish occupation force soldier killed by mine in Afghanistan:
Platoon leader Jan Kiepura, a Polish soldier serving in Afghanistan, was killed on Monday when a land mine exploded beneath the car he was in while on patrol near Ghazni, the capital of Ghanzi province.
 
 
Taliban attacks show Afghan insurgents' resilience:
Taliban suicide bombers carried out a brazen attack in the Afghan capital on Monday, the second in less than a week and a sign that insurgents are determined to keep fighting despite recent overtures of peace from the U.S. and Afghan government.
 
 
Istanbul warzone: Thousands of protesters try to reclaim Taksim Square:
Riot police have fired volleys of tear gas as thousands of protesters are trying to reclaim Taksim after being forced out in fierce clashes with law enforcement. Thick smoke blankets the square.
 
 
Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald says 'dozens of stories' in the works : Video -
You ain't seen nothing yet. That's the message from the Glenn Greenwald, the journalist who exposed classified US surveillance programs for Britain's Guardian newspaper, who has said much more is to come
 
 
Leaker's Employer Is Paid to Maintain Government Secrets:
Edward J. Snowden's employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, has become one of the largest and most profitable corporations in the United States almost exclusively by serving a single client: the government of the United States.
 
 
Guantánamo: A Betrayal of Our Values, a Human Rights Crisis:
In Guantánamo, 104 men are on hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention. Forty-one are being force-fed through tubes, and four have been hospitalized. and Expensive as Hell: ACLU :
 
 
US activist on hunger strike to close Guantanamo:
Elliott Adams, a longtime activist and well-known anti-war protestor is 26 days into a hunger strike he hopes will help shut down the United States' military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. And his fast couldn't be more timely-or maybe people are just starting to listen:
 
 
Coleen Rowley: Massive spying on Americans is outrageous: Op-Ed:
Secretive spying programs actually harm national security. And arguably worse, they pose, as Snowden stated, "an existential threat to democracy."
 
 
This is how the government lies:
The recent whistleblower revelations have caught Obama administration's Director of National Intelligence in a flat-out lie. But watch how James Clapper tries to weasel out of it. What we would call a lie he calls it 'the least untruthful' answer.
 
 
Obama administration under pressure as US senators demand end to secrecy:
Senator Ron Wyden suggests US intelligence chief James Clapper may have misled him as international pressure builds
 
 
NSA Whistleblower: The Ultimate Insider Attack:
Snowden said that "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 [of the United States] if I had a personal email."
 
 
NSA Leak Highlights Key Role Of Private Contractors:
The U.S. government monitors threats to national security with the help of nearly 500,000 people like Edward Snowden - employees of private firms who have access to the government's most sensitive secrets.
 
 
America's Outsourced Spy Force, by the Numbers:
The weekend's big revelations about the NSA's biggest revealer prompt a natural question: How many Snowden-type spies with top secret security clearance are there?
 
 
Ron Paul: 'Thankful' for Edward Snowden:
Former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas praised NSA leaker Edward Snowden for his part in exposing how much information the government has been collecting from private citizens.
 
 
Glenn Greenwald Gets 'Testy' With 'Morning Joe's' Mika Brzezinski: Video -
Brzezinski repeatedly challenged Greenwald on whether the programs his reporting has detailed - including NSA data-mining and phone surveillance programs - were really "shocking."
 
 
Just Curious ... Why Is Everyone Totally Okay With The Government Spying On 'Foreigners?':
Americans seem to be fine about any kind of U.S. government spying as long as it's focused on "foreigners." They just go crazy when the same tactics are used on Americans.
 
 
Could Bradley Manning help Edward Snowden win political asylum?:
There are two things Snowden has to do, legally speaking, to make a case for asylum once he's landed in the country he wants to shelter him.
 
 
IRS buys spy equipment amid spending scandal:
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), already embroiled in a high-profile scandal over its operations, is looking to acquire surveillance equipment that includes cameras concealed in plants, coffee trays and clock radios.
 
 
Eurozone: three countries have debt-to-income ratios of more than 300%:
Ireland, Greece and Portugal are labouring under debt-to-income ratios of more than 300%, according to figures that expose the indebtedness of eurozone governments in relation to their government revenues.
 
 
New York lays out $20 billion plan to adapt to climate change:
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday announced a $20 billion plan to prepare for rising sea levels and hotter summers expected as a result of climate change in the coming decades.
 
 
Citigroup Facing $7 Billion Hit on Dollar Gain, Peabody Says:
Citigroup Inc. (C) could lose as much as $7 billion on currency swings if Charles Peabody is right, putting the analyst at odds with peers who say the stock will be the best performer among big U.S. banks in the year ahead.
 
 
Seniors in 48 states face serious income shortage:
Only seniors in Nevada and Hawaii have median annual incomes that meet the savings benchmark commonly recommended by financial planners. Typically, planners recommend that retirees save enough to replace at least 70% of their pre-retirement income.




Software News

Microsoft showpiece won't allow travellers to check in for flights

Science News

Posted: 11 Jun 2013 12:17 AM PDT
11 June 2013
 - On a massive scale, Geoengineering will likely result in democide if not stopped completely.
Democide is the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide, and mass murder. Democide does not include soldiers killed in battle. During the 20th Century (1900s) alone, it has been calculated that government power was used to murder approximately 262,000,000 people. It appears that history is repeating itself with improved technology.

Secondary purposes of Geoengineering include controlling the climate/weather for warfare and profits, and destroying the natural world while furthering the transhumanist/synthetic biology agenda.

The evidence indicates that Geoengineering is an essential element of the elite’s Endgame move to depopulate the planet. The pubic must be educated and the stratospheric spraying stopped immediately.















ProPublica / By Justin Elliott, Theodoric Meyer
The NSA Black Hole: 5 Basic Things We Still Don’t Know About the Agency’s Snooping
A lot is still unclear.
June 11, 2013  |  

Last week saw revelations that the FBI and the National Security Agency have been collecting Americans’ phone records en masse and that the agencies have access to data from nine tech companies.

But secrecy around the programs has meant even basic questions are still unanswered. Here’s what we still don’t know:

1. Has the NSA been collecting all Americans’ phone records, and for how long?
It’s not entirely clear.
The Guardian published a court order that directed a Verizon subsidiary to turn over phone metadata -- the time and duration of calls, as well as phone numbers and location data -- to the NSA “on an ongoing daily basis” for a three-month period. Citing unnamed sources, the Wall Street Journal reported the program also covers AT&T and Sprint and that it covers the majority of Americans. And Director of National Intelligence James Clapper himself acknowledged that the “collection” is “broad in scope.”


2. How long has the dragnet has existed? At least seven years, and maybe going back to 2001.  
Senate Intelligence Committee chair Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and vice chair Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., said last week that the NSA has been collecting the records going back to 2006. That’s the same year that USA Today revealed a similar-sounding mass collection of metadata, which the paper said had been taking place since 2001. The relationship between the program we got a glimpse of in the Verizon order and the one revealed by USA Today in 2006 is still not clear: USA Today described a program not authorized by warrants. The program detailed last week does have court approval.
3. What surveillance powers does the government believe it has under the Patriot Act?


That’s classified.
The Verizon court order relies on Section 215 of the Patriot Act. That provision allows the FBI to ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a secret order requiring companies, like Verizon, to produce records – “any tangible things” – as part of a “foreign intelligence” or terrorism investigation. As with any law, exactly what the wording means is a matter for courts to decide. But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s interpretation of Section 215 is secret.
 
As Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman recently wrote, the details of that interpretation matter a lot: “Read narrowly, this language might require that information requested be shown to be important or necessary to the investigation. Read widely, it would include essentially anything even slightly relevant — which is to say, everything.”
In the case of the Verizon order -- signed by a judge who sits on the secret court and requiring the company to hand over “all call detail records" -- it appears that the court is allowing a broad interpretation of the Patriot Act. But we still don’t know the specifics.



4. Has the NSA’s massive collection of metadata thwarted any terrorist attacks?
It depends which senator you ask. And evidence that would help settle the matter is, yes, classified.
Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., told CNN on Sunday, “It's unclear to me that we've developed any intelligence through the metadata program that's led to the disruption of plots that we could [not] have developed through other data and other intelligence.”

He said he could not elaborate on his case “without further declassification.”

Sen. Feinstein told ABC that the collection of phone records described in the Verizon order had been “used” in the case of would-be New York subway bomber Najibullah Zazi. Later in the interview, Feinstein said she couldn’t disclose more because the information is classified. (It’s worth noting that there’s also evidence that old-fashioned police work helped solve the Zazi case — and that other reports suggest the Prism program, not the phone records, helped solve the case.)
How much information, and from whom, is the government sweeping up through Prism?

It’s not clear.

Intelligence director Clapper said in his declassified description that the government can’t get information using Prism unless there is an “appropriate, and documented, foreign intelligence purpose for the acquisition (such as for the prevention of terrorism, hostile cyber activities, or nuclear proliferation) and the foreign target is reasonably believed to be outside the United States.”
One thing we don’t know is how the government determines who is a “foreign target.” The Washington Post reported that NSA analysts use “search terms” to try to achieve “51 percent confidence” in a target’s “foreignness.” How do they do that? Unclear.
 
We’ve also never seen a court order related to Prism -- they are secret -- so we don’t know how broad they are. The Post reported that the court orders can be sweeping, and apply for up to a year. Though Google has maintained it has not "received blanket orders of the kind being discussed in the media."


5. So, how does Prism work?
In his statement Saturday, Clapper described Prism as a computer system that allows the government to collect “foreign intelligence information from electronic communication service providers under court supervision.”

That much seems clear. But the exact role of the tech companies is still murky.
Relying on a leaked PowerPoint presentation, the Washington Post originally described Prism as an FBI and NSA program to tap “directly into the central servers” of nine tech companies including Google and Facebook. Some of the companies denied giving the government “direct access” to their servers. In a later story, published Saturday, the newspaper cited unnamed intelligence sources saying that the description from the PowerPoint was technically inaccurate.

The Post quotes a classified NSA report saying that Prism allows “collection managers [to send] content tasking instructions directly to equipment installed at company-controlled locations,” not the company servers themselves. So what does any of that mean? We don't know.


For more on mass surveillance in America, read our timeline of loosening laws and practices.


Media Advisory
Informing public of government spying 'self-indulgent' and 'grandiose'
6/11/13
Journalism attracts whistleblowers. In fact, some reporters need whistleblowers in order to do their jobs.  But there are plenty of people working in the media who don't have much use for whistleblowers--and they've been having a field day going after NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Washington Post columnist Matt Miller (6/11/13) explained that "what Snowden exposed was not some rogue government-inside-the-government conspiracy. It's a program that’s legal, reviewed by Congress and subject to court oversight."

Or to put it another way, it's a program that's secret, that the nation's top spy lies to Congress about, and the Supreme Court refuses to review--because, being secret, no one can prove they're affected by it.

Miller went on:

Daniel Ellsberg says Snowden is a "hero."  Let me suggest a different prism through which to view that term. Somewhere in the intelligence community is another 29-year-old computer whiz whose name we'll never know. That person joined the government after 9/11 because they felt inspired to serve the nation in its hour of need. For years they’ve sweated to perfect programs that can sort through epic reams of data to identify potential threats. Some Americans are alive today because of her work.

As one security analyst put it this week, to find a needle in a haystack, you need the haystack. If we're going to romanticize a young nerd in the intelligence world, my Unknown Coder trumps the celebrity waiting in Hong Kong for Diane Sawyer’s call any day.

It's hard to imagine seeing Snowden sitting down with Sawyer anytime soon, but Miller's certainly not alone in speculating about Snowden's motives or psyche.

New York Times columnist David Brooks (6/11/13) writes that Snowden "could not successfully work his way through the institution of high school. Then he failed to navigate his way through community college." And he "has not been a regular presence around his mother's house for years." But it's bigger than that; like Miller, Brooks sees a real threat from people who don't respect authority:

For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret NSA documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things.

He elaborated:

He betrayed the cause of open government. Every time there is a leak like this, the powers that be close the circle of trust a little tighter. They limit debate a little more.

He betrayed the privacy of us all. If federal security agencies can’t do vast data sweeps, they will inevitably revert to the older, more intrusive eavesdropping methods.

He betrayed the Constitution. The founders did not create the United States so that some solitary 29-year-old could make unilateral decisions about what should be exposed. Snowden self-indulgently short-circuited the democratic structures of accountability, putting his own preferences above everything else.

By that logic, it's hard to see how anyone could possibly ever divulge anything that the government claims to be secret--which might suit Brooks just fine.

In the Washington Post (6/11/13), Richard Cohen managed to insult both Snowden and columnist Glenn Greenwald, referring to "a remarkably overwrought interview conducted by the vainglorious Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian." In response to Greenwald writing that Snowden wears a red hood when he types passwords into his computer, Cohen inventively sneers that Snowden will "go down as a cross-dressing Little Red Riding Hood."

Cohen doesn't understand the fuss anyway, since private companies like Google have all sorts of intelligence on him. He concludes:

Everything about Edward Snowden is ridiculously cinematic. He is not paranoiac; he is merely narcissistic. He jettisoned a girlfriend, a career and, undoubtedly, his personal freedom to expose programs that were known to our elected officials and could have been deduced by anyone who has ever googled anything. History will not record him as "one of America's most consequential whistleblowers." History is more likely to forget him. Soon, you can google that.

And the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin  (6/10/13) wrote that Snowden is "a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison," and that

any marginally attentive citizen, much less NSA employee or contractor, knows that the entire mission of the agency is to intercept electronic communications.

If you know that an agency intercepts communications, why wouldn't you assume that it intercepts every communication, Toobin seems to be arguing.

Appearing on CNN (6/10/13) , Toobin explained that there's a proper way to blow the whistle, and this sure isn't it: "There are channels for whistleblowers inside agencies, through Congress, through the courts, not through Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian. That's not what you're supposed to do."

What's the right way to inform the public, then? Toobin says:

Well, the public has a right to know, but the way to bring it to public attention is not to commit crimes. And, yes, it is possible he wouldn't get as much attention if he simply went to the senators, like Jeff Merkley, like Senator Udall, who cared deeply about this issue and are doing it the right way. Instead, he just threw this stuff out to newspaper reporters at the Washington Post and the Guardian, who were more responsible than he was, who actually didn't publish everything they get.

Sure--go to a couple of senators who have long warned that they aren't allowed to say what they know about government surveillance programs, and tell them that you want to share top secret NSA documents about those programs. That would have worked--if Snowden's goal was to be arrested immediately.

There were others, like Time's Joe Klein, who didn't go after Snowden like this--he merely argued (6/10/13) that this was all old news: "First of all, we pretty much knew everything that has 'broken' in the past week."

And in the Washington Post, Walter Pincus (6/11/13) sounded the same notes. He ran through the history: USA Today reported a very similar NSA story in 2006 (5/11/06), the Bush administration responded, public opinion polls seemed to support government policies. In 2008, Congress passed amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and last year there were solid reports by veteran reporter James Bamford (Wired, 3/15/12) about the massive NSA storage facility being built in Utah. So, Pincus writes:

Was there any follow-up in the mainstream media to Bamford's disclosure, or anything close to the concerns voiced on Capitol Hill this past week? No.

That’s because the American public at large is more accepting of the government’s involvement in their lives — along with Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple--than is Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old who leaked the highly classified NSA documents. He appears to believe the public is unaware, and, as he told the Guardian, knowing "what's happening, you [meaning the public] should decide whether we should be doing this."

So if media don't pursue a given story, it's because the public has decided it's not interested, or tacitly approves of a government policy of indeterminate scope? It's a surprising revelation that this is how the media decide what stories to report.

As Gawker's Hamilton Nolan writes (6/11/13), journalists "have to acknowledge that Edward Snowden did something quite admirable." He notes, "Without Snowden's act, the public's knowledge of what is being done to them in their own name would be much poorer."

That's true, unless you think the public either already knows all of this--or that they shouldn't.















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