The U.S. National Security Agency has been conducting high-level digital and phone surveillance against top French government officials, including the nation’s three most recent presidents, the media outletWikiLeaks has revealed by publishing “top secret” intelligence reports that include targeting information and specific intercepts gathered over the last decade. While indicating the trove of sensitive and potentially embarrassing documents won’t be the last, the …
EDWARD SNOWDEN: VINDICATED BY THE USA FREEDOM ACT? OR MARKED FOR DEATH? – Russ Baker
“Bullshit.” That’s how Hodding Carter III now describes the NSA surveillance program. But in an interview withWhoWhatWhy, the former Carter Administration official recalled how that same word could have just as easily described his initial reaction to Edward Snowden’s whistleblowing revelations in 2013. “I felt like Snowden was giving away the family jewels,” says Carter, his conversation a mix of …
Spy Agency’s Secret Plans to Foster Online “Conformity” and “Obedience” Exposed – Jon Queally
With never-before-seen documents accompanied by new reporting on Monday, The Intercept‘s Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman are offering a more in-depth look than ever into how a secretive unit of the UK’s GCHQ surveillance agency used a host of psychological methods and online subterfuge in order to manipulate the behavior of individuals and groups through the internet and other digital forms of communication. …
Ten Ways Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush Are Basically the Same Presidential Candidate – Jake Anderson
Now that Jeb Bush has officially announced his intention to run for president in 2016, the most corporate-funded presidential election in history is set to begin, headed by two prospective frontrunners with eerily familiar names. It’s Bush versus Clinton—again! With third party candidates certain to be relegated to back alleys, we see, yet again, two of the prized families of …
Possible Pentagon destruction of evidence in NSA leak case probed BY MARISA TAYLOR
Two government watchdog agencies are investigating whether the Pentagon inspector general destroyed evidence improperly during the high-profile leak investigation of former National Security Agency senior official Thomas Drake. The Justice Department acknowledged the probes in a letter last week to a federal magistrate judge who recently received the allegations from Drake’s lawyers. The judge is determining whether she should take further …
Fast Track Down – Lori Wallach
The Fast Track trade authority package was rejected Friday because two years of effort by a vast corporate coalition, the White House and GOP leaders — and weeks of deals swapped for yes votes — could not assuage a majority in the House of Representatives facing constituents’ concerns that more of the same trade policy would kill more jobs, push …
THE SUNDAY TIMES’ SNOWDEN STORY IS JOURNALISM AT ITS WORST — AND FILLED WITH FALSEHOODS BY GLENN GREENWALD
Western journalists claim that the big lesson they learned from their key role in selling the Iraq War to the public is that it’s hideous, corrupt and often dangerous journalism to give anonymity to government officials to let them propagandize the public, then uncritically accept those anonymously voiced claims as Truth. But they’ve learned no such lesson. That tacticcontinues to be …
UK under pressure to respond to latest Edward Snowden claims – Ewen MacAskill and Patrick Wintour
Downing Street and the Home Office are being challenged to answer in public claims that Russia and China have broken into the secret cache of Edward Snowden files and that British agents have had to be withdrawn from live operations as a consequence. The reports first appeared in the Sunday Times, which quoted anonymous senior officials in No 10, the Home Office …
Snowden files ‘read by Russia and China’: five questions for UK government – Ewen MacAskill
The Sunday Times produced what at first sight looked like a startling news story: Russia and China had gained access to the cache of top-secret documents leaked by former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden. Not only that, but as a result, Britain’s overseas intelligence agency, the Secret Intelligence Service, better known as MI6, had been forced “to pull agents out of …
Edward Snowden: Did NSA Leaks Change Politics, Public Opinion About Government Spying, Whistleblowers? By David Sirota
Two years ago this month, a 29-year-old government contractor named Edward Snowden became the Daniel Ellsberg of his generation, delivering to journalists a tranche of secret documents shedding light on the government’s national security apparatus. But while Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers detailing one specific military conflict in Southeast Asia, Snowden released details of the U.S. government’s sprawling surveillance machine …