Prometheus Among The Cannibals: The Edward Snowden Story, By Rebecca Solnit

Prometheus Among The Cannibals: The Edward Snowden Story, By Rebecca Solnit

And you, Prometheus, you stole their fire, and you know it. You said, “Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, [Senator Dianne] Feinstein, and [Congressman Peter] King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.” Someday you may be regarded as a Mandela of sorts for the information age, or perhaps a John Brown, someone who refused to fit in, to bow down, to make a system work that shouldn’t work, that should explode. And perhaps we’re watching it explode

Empire Serves No One But Itself: It's Time To Wake Up, By Gary Stamper

Empire Serves No One But Itself: It's Time To Wake Up, By Gary Stamper

How bad is it? According to Ron Tice, who worked as an offensive NSA agent from 2002 to 2005, before becoming a source for this Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times article exposing NSA domestic spying, in the summer of 2004 he saw orders to spy on  Hillary Clinton, Senators John McCain and Diane Feinstein, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, Gen. David Petraeus, and a current Supreme Court Justice. In 2007, the NSA wiretapped a bunch of numbers associated with a forty-some-year-old senator from Illinois. You wouldn’t happen to know where that guy lives now would you? It’s a big White House in Washington D.C. That’s who the NSA went after. That’s the President of the United States now.” Tice went on to say: “The abuse is rampant and everyone is pretending that it’s never happened, and it couldn’t happen. …  I know [there was abuse] because I had my hands on the papers for these sorts of things : They went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of congress — Senate and the House — especially on the intelligence committees and the armed services committees, lawyers, law firms, judges, State Department officials, part of the White House, multinational companies, financial firms, NGOs, civil rights groups …”

Edward Snowden: Hero Or Traitor? It Depends On Who You Are, By Gary Stamper

Edward Snowden: Hero Or Traitor? It Depends On Who You Are, By Gary Stamper

With the continuing release of secret files on the NSA’s spying programs on American citizens, spying programs supported in their entirety by the Obama Administration, it appears that the false illusion of Barack Obama as the reincarnation of Jack Kennedy is finally coming to an abrupt and rude end. It’s being assisted by the multiple stress fractures of the economy, joblessness, divisive politics and the growing distrust of government at all levels, ironically called forth by that very government. There’s also the environment and energy, when combined with the above, provides an opportunity to see the administration’s ineptitude at best, and their callous disregard for the constitution at the worst. Now it’s going to get ugly. It’s already getting ugly.

NSA Taps Into Internet Giants' Systems To Mine User Data, By Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill

NSA Taps Into Internet Giants' Systems To Mine User Data, By Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill

The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants, according to a top secret document obtained by the Guardian. The NSA access is part of a previously undisclosed program called PRISM, which allows officials to collect material including search history, the content of emails, file transfers and live chats, the document says.