The world has spent the last two weeks digesting Edward Snowden’s disclosures illustrating top secret US domestic communications surveillance and cyber warfare programs. Even though the pundit classes are doing their best to launch an intensive investigation of the messenger rather than the government, people around the world are beginning to ask questions and speak out against these extreme intrusions into basic privacy.
Source: MarketWatch:
Last week, that bought-and-paid-for stock endorsement was a 20-page mailer about Petrosonic Energy PSON -12.52% , supported by an email campaign, featuring Tobin Smith, a money manager who has been a fixture on the television news shows for 15 years and who is a regular on the Fox networks, describing himself on Twitter as a “guest anchor.” According to Fox, he is “a contributing market analyst for Fox News Channel and a regular panelist on ‘Bulls & Bears.’ ” (Fox, like MarketWatch, is owned by News Corp.)
While investors might have ordinarily treated the “special edition” of the new Next Big Thing Investor newsletter — Smith’s latest, just-started investment newsletter — like junk mail or spam, Smith’s name and his smiling, personable countenance had some investors doing a double-take, at least judging from the emails I received on the subject.
The people who contacted me considered buying the stock entirely based on Smith’s say-so, and the credibility he exudes in his Fox appearances. They didn’t appear to read the disclaimers of the campaign; had they bothered, they would have quickly found it was paid advertising for which Smith’s company pocketed $50,000.
CNN:
Skeptics who have long theorized that TWA Flight 800 was brought down by sinister forces will get a fresh surge of energy when a new documentary attempts to disprove that the 1996 crash was accidental.
The twist: It includes six members of the large accident investigation team who, publicists say, will “break their silence” on the cause of the explosion.
They will petition the National Transportation Safety Board to reopen its investigation some 17 years after the B-747 fell in pieces into the waters off of Long Island, New York.
I realize it’s a Republican saying this. But it’s still significant. At the very least we have a major player in the GOP calling the surveillance illegal. His voice must be added to all those from different political stripes questioning the NSA spying program:
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., told Sean Hannity on Monday that what the Obama administration and the National Security Agency did with the Patriot Act was “clearly not within the law.” Referring to the dragnet collection of American citizens’ phone records and Internet information, Sensenbrenner said that “this is clearly beyond the law as I have outlined it, and it’s unfortunate that the Justice Department and the FISA court [which approves surveillance requests] did not follow the law in Justice’s petition to the court and the court approve it.”
We must all stand up to tyranny. The Constitution is the most important thing there is. Without that document we have nothing. There would not be a Google without it:
Google asked the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday to ease long-standing gag orders over data requests it makes, arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it’s forced to give the government.
The legal filing, which cites the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech, is the latest move by the California-based tech giant to protect its reputation in the aftermath of news reports about sweeping National Security Agency surveillance of Internet traffic.
Google, one of nine companies named in NSA documents as providing information to the top-secret PRISM program, has demanded that U.S. officials give it more leeway to describe the company’s relationship with the government. Google and the other companies involved have sought to reassure users that their privacy is being protected from unwarranted intrusions.
Probably another example of idealistic supporters of Obama that realize that he was not one of them. Sadly there are still many millions of Americans who mistakenly continue to believe this President was sincere in the things he said on the campaign trail:
Elijah Zarlin, who worked as a senior email writer at Obama campaign headquarters in 2008, was back in Chicago yesterday—in the First Precinct jail, following a peaceful sit-in in protest of the Keystone XL pipeline.
“It felt strange,” Zarlin said, “to be getting arrested in order to send a message to the President that he needs to make good on his commitment to fight climate change.”
Twenty-two people were detained in front of the Metcalfe Federal Building, where the State Department keeps an office. Protestors ranged in age from a high school student to a grandfather. Many wore t-shirts that read, “If Congress won’t act soon to protect future generations, I will,” a pledge on climate change that Obama made during this year’s State of the Union address.
But action has yet to materialize, and supporters are getting impatient. “The President has said over and over that he wants to do something big on climate,” said Andrew Nazdin, 24, who worked as a deputy training instructor for OFA in Virginia in 2012 and protested yesterday. “The President has a tremendous opportunity to reject this pipeline, since the decision sits with him. But we are going to need to continue to push him.”
Source:
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly launched a stinging rebuke to the federal government’s secret phone and Internet monitoring campaign — and suggested leaker Edward Snowden was right about privacy “abuse.”
“I don’t think it ever should have been made secret,” Kelly said today, breaking ranks with US law-enforcement officials.
…I think if you listen to Snowden, he indicates that there’s some sort of malfeasance, people . . . sitting around and watching the data. So I think the question is: What sort of oversight is there inside the [National Security Agency] NSA to prevent that abuse, if it’s taking place?”
…“He tried to give the impression, it seems to me, that these system administrators had carte blanche to do what they wanted to do,” he said. “I think it’s a problem if that’s in fact what’s happening.”
Today, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) insisted the NSA has not been recording Americans’ phone calls under any surveillance program, and that any claim to the contrary was “misinformation.” Rogers’ comments countered remarks from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who said he was told in a House Judiciary Committee briefing by FBI Director Robert Mueller that private firms contracted by the NSA could listen to phone calls made by American citizens.
He is right. The future does not lie with the new police state in America. Our Constitution, and the American people that support it, will prevail in the end:
The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has warned that the “truth” about the extent of surveillance carried out by US authorities would emerge, even if he is jailed or murdered.
In a live Q&A with Guardian readers from a secret location in Hong Kong, Snowden did not directly answer a question about whether he had more unpublished material. But he said: “All I can say right now is the US government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”
The war on labor rights is a world-wide phenomenon. And we have to fight that war together–peacefully:
Nearly 300 Cambodian garment workers who produce clothing for US sportswear company Nike have been dismissed for taking part in strikes seeking higher pay that turned violent, according to their union and dismissal notices.
Low-cost labour has attracted Western brands to the Southeast Asian country and garments now account for around 75 percent of its exports, but strikes over pay and working conditions have become common.
All Natalie Gunshannon wanted was to be paid a fair wage for her work, she said.
Gunshannon, 27, of Dallas Township, worked at McDonald’s Restaurant on the Dallas Highway from April 24 to May 15. When she received her first paycheck, enclosed was a Chase Bank debit card with instructions on how to use it and the fees attached.
Her future earnings would be deposited into the debit card account and she could access her money from there. Gunshannon never signed the card and when she returned to work she asked her supervisor if she could be paid by check or by direct deposit. She was told the card was the only option.
Gunshannon, a single mother of one daughter, quit her job at McDonald’s and went to see an attorney, Mike Cefalo of West Pittston. A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday in Luzerne County Court by Cefalo on behalf of Gunshannon and other employees, seeking damages, fees and costs.
For the first time in his presidency, the poll also found less than half of respondents believed Obama was honest. Forty-nine percent of those surveyed said he was honest and trustworthy, a drop of 9 points from last month.
“I don’t think there’s any problem with people who want to criticize what he did on the merits, although I think it’s extremely strange that people who call themselves journalists find it more contemptible than almost anything when someone steps forward and brings transparency to what the government is doing,” Greenwald said. “That’s supposed to be their jobs. They should be in the lead cheering for that. But, so be it. If they decide that disclosure and transparency are bad things, I think it’s odd that they call themselves journalists, but they have the right to do that.”
via Greenwald explains how he preempted the Snowden smears and took the media by storm | The Raw Story.
Business Week recently pointed out that 99 percent of Booze Allen Hamilton’s revenues come from government contracts.
Why would we pay a CEO millions, stockholders tens of millions, and workers a small fortune when the same work could and should be done by civil servants?
Even worse, our privatized national security apparatus isn’t just wasteful; it’s contrary to the founding principles of our democratic republic.
Source: The Guardian:
Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
GOLDBERG: Essentially this is a fake election and a fake democracy. Let’s not kid ourselves about what we’re dealing with here. These are hand picked candidates by the supreme leader who are running for president. With that said this guy is a smoother operator, he does seem more moderate in his economic approach, he does seem less confrontational. And remember, the leader of Iran is the supreme leader, I mean they call him supreme leader for a reason right? He’s the supreme leader. He sets national security policy. He sets foreign policy. He sets nuclear policy. So let’s not forget where the power lies in that country.
via Jeffrey Goldberg: Iran Holds ‘Fake Election in a Fake Democracy’ – ABC News.
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