MUST READ: Patriots Who Exposed COINTELPRO Go Public

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday January 07, 2014 · 6:48 AM PST

2014/01/07 · 06:48

The New York Times' national security Mark Mazzetti deserves credit for his must-read article on the Americans who helped expose Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) spying on political opponents:

They were never caught, and the stolen documents that they mailed anonymously to newspaper reporters were the first trickle of what would become a flood of revelations about extensive spying and dirty-tricks operations by the F.B.I. against dissident groups.

Exposure of the surveillance program (known as COINTELPRO) led to wide-ranging investigation into the government's spying powers (The Church Committee) and massive legal reforms, including the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and creation of the congressional oversight intelligence committees.

Senator Church’s investigation in the mid-1970s revealed still more about the extent of decades of F.B.I. abuses, and led to greater congressional oversight of the F.B.I. and other American intelligence agencies. The Church Committee’s final report about the domestic surveillance was blunt. “Too many people have been spied upon by too many government agencies, and too much information has been collected,” it read.

The patriots who exposed COINTELPRO form an informative historical parallel:

The burglary in Media, Pa., on March 8, 1971, is a historical echo today, as disclosures by the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden have cast another unflattering light on government spying and opened a national debate about the proper limits of government surveillance. The burglars had, until now, maintained a vow of silence about their roles in the operation. They were content in knowing that their actions had dealt the first significant blow to an institution that had amassed enormous power and prestige during J. Edgar Hoover’s lengthy tenure as director.

The decision of the protestors who exposed the FBI's surveillance is especialy timely. Whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations have demonstrated that - as with COINTELPRO - again a government agency is in secret overreaching against Innocent people with political views the government does not like. Read More

New York Times Calls for Clemency: "Edward Snowden, Whistleblower."

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday January 02, 2014 · 6:47 AM PST

2014/01/02 · 06:47

In a strongly-worded editorial deserving of its substantial length entitled "Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower," The New York Times beautifully articulates the simple and infinitely persuasive argument for amnesty for whistleblower Edward Snowden:

When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of the same government.

Considering that both myself and the ACLU's Ben Wizner (whose appearance is a must-watch) got the "amnesty" question on Sunday morning talk shows this past weekend, it seems now that the President's own review panel and two federal courts have questioned the efficacy and legality of NSA's mass surveillance apparatus, freedom for the whistleblower responsible for the debate is on the minds of the powers that be in Washington. Read More

There IS a Third Branch of Government: Judge Rules NSA Spying Program Likely Unconstitutional

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday December 17, 2013 · 7:00 AM PST

2013/12/17 · 07:00

There is is a third branch of government, and United States District Judge Richard Leon's beautiful, well-reasoned Fourth Amendment analysis demonstrates perfectly the result when the courts are allowed to work as intended.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon found that the program appears to violate the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. He also said the Justice Department had failed to demonstrate that collecting the information had helped to head off terrorist attacks. . . .

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying it and analyzing it without judicial approval,” wrote Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush.

Even though it only applies to Klayman plaintiffs and is stayed pending appeal, the significance of Judge Leon's monumental opinion cannot be overstated. It provides a precedential road-map for civil libertarians and privacy advocates and shuts down attorneys from the Bush and Obama administrations alike who have been all too happy to effectively repeal the Fourth Amendment. Judge Leon's opinion reestablishes the Fourth Amendment as the backbone protecting us against unnecessary government intrusion. Read More

NSA's Free Infomercial Courtesy of 60 Minutes: Surveillance State Propaganda

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday December 16, 2013 · 6:59 AM PST

2013/12/16 · 06:59

If you want journalism, read Glenn Greenwald, Jim Risen or Jane Mayer. If you want to hear NSA officials smear a whistleblower and shamelessly fear monger to save face after being caught lying to the Congress, the courts, and the world, watch last night's NSA infomercial that 60 Minutes tried to pass off as journalism.

In exchange for what ex-intelligence official correspondent John Miller pitched as news, 60 Minutes gave NSA Director Kieth Alexander and deputy-directer heir apparent Rick Ledgett prime air time to mislead the public in a pathetic attempt to convince people to ignore the plain, documented facts in the revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday December 11, 2013 · 7:03 AM PST

2013/12/11 · 07:03

Time Magazine made a safe choice in naming Pope Francis "Person of the Year" for 2013, and I do not in any way diminish his significant contributions to global news this year.

It was Time's runner-up National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden whose enormous impact on world news should make him person of the year, and perhaps the decade. The New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan put it in her column "Snowden for Person of the Year:"

Some stories have legs: They just keep coming; they don’t fade away.

Snowden's brave revelations are the reason for the global debate on mass surveillance. Without him, the press coverage Sullivan highlights would not exist, and the public would be in the dark about NSA's unhinged, invasive and wasteful surveillance apparatus.

Time is the second major media outlet to recognize Snowden's contributions. Foreign Policy magazine named him as one of 100 most influential global thinkers. (Foreign Policy has a fantastic infographic feature.) Like other honorees Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the U.S. war on national security whistleblowers and journalists prevents them from traveling and Snowden cannot attend the Global Thinkers dinner tonight.

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday December 05, 2013 · 7:01 AM PST

2013/12/05 · 07:01

Thanks to National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden, no one can have any remaining doubt their cell phone - even when it's not on - is a Geo-locating device. The Washington Post reports that

The National Security Agency is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world . . . The records feed a vast database that stores information about the locations of at least hundreds of millions of devices. . .

Not 5 billion total, or per year, or per month, but per day. That's a number greater than the number of people on the planet with cell phones.

To the "it's only metadata" crowd, Geo-location data IS metadata, and as the Post put it, this spying on hundreds of millions of innocent people,

In scale, scope and potential impact on privacy, the efforts to collect and analyze location data may be unsurpassed among the NSA surveillance programs that have been disclosed since June.

Anonymous government officials unconvincingly claim it is either "awkward" or impossible to determine the number of innocent Americans NSA Geo-locates:

“It’s awkward for us to try to provide any specific numbers,” one intelligence official said in a telephone interview. An NSA spokeswoman who took part in the call cut in to say the agency has no way to calculate such a figure.

First of all, a mathematical calculation cannot be "awkward" and "impossible" at the same time. Secondly, the NSA surely doesn't want the public to know how many Americans' Geo-location call data it ingests, which is understandable considering the number is likely in the hundreds of millions. There are plenty of astronomically large numbers that I don't want to calculate because it would be "awkward" - like the number of calories in the food I ingested on Thanksgivukkah.
Read More

Justice Department Using Reporter Subpoena to Prosecute Whistleblower

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday December 04, 2013 · 6:29 AM PST

2013/12/04 · 06:29

The Obama administration's unprecedented war on national security whistleblowers continues to bleed into a war on journalism. The US often gets high praise for protecting the free press. In recent months, Attorney General Eric Holder has giving verbal assurances that he will not prosecute journalists and revised internal guidelines on subpoenaing reporters.

But Holder's rhetoric does not match the Justice Department's actions in aggressively prosecuting whistleblowers and catching journalists in the cross-hairs. The Justice Department is prosecuting State Department arms expert Steven Kim under the Espionage Act for allegedly telling FOX News that North Korea was planning to respond to a U.N. Security Council resolution by setting off another nuclear test--clearly of public interest to South Korea, China, and the rest of the world--and that was not sensitive.

The Justice Department is insisting on using evidence against Kim that it gathered by searching a reporter's personal e-mail account and accusing the reporter of being a co-conspirator to violate the Espionage Act.

From WaPo:

. . . the guidelines effectively acknowledge that investigators should not have gathered e-mail records for Fox News reporter James Rosen to build their case against Kim. A search warrant for Rosen’s personal e-mails characterized the reporter as a possible criminal “co-conspirator” in the alleged misconduct even though the department has said it had no intention of charging Rosen.
Under the amended guidelines, such a warrant can be obtained only if the reporter is the target of the investigation.

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday November 21, 2013 · 5:37 AM PST

2013/11/21 · 05:37

The Washington Post has an entire story on a new poll on National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden that leads with the statistic that cases Snowden in the most negative light.

Americans increasingly believe that former federal contractor Edward Snowden’s exposure of U.S. surveillance programs damaged national security, even as the programs have sparked widespread privacy concerns, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll has found.

The WaPo poll asked if Snowden harmed national security by "disclosing NSA's intelligence-gathering efforts," rather the asking about what Snowden actually revealed: the NSA's wasteful and illegal conduct.

Moreover, the poll did not ask if NSA harmed national security by spying on entire innocent populations or wasting time invading the constitutionally-protected privacy rights of hundreds of millions of innocent Americans.

Given that the U.S. government has been using its many loud megaphones to announce that Snowden "harmed national security" since June, it is not surprising that too many Americans are swallowing the fear-mongering propaganda. However, despite spending considerable government resources looking for it, none of these outspoken government officials have been able to point to any actual, discernible harm to national security as a result of the Snowden revelations.

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday November 18, 2013 · 7:20 AM PST

2013/11/18 · 07:20

The New York Times ran a powerful editorial in support of press freedom in the UK, crediting UK's The Guardian for its reporting on documents from the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden and sharply criticizing UK government efforts to prosecuted the paper:

The global debate now taking place about intelligence agencies collecting information on the phone calls, emails and Internet use of private citizens owes much to The Guardian’s intrepid journalism. In a free society, the price for printing uncomfortable truths should not be parliamentary and criminal inquisition.

Despite the fact that the U.S. enshrines freedom of the press in the First Amendment, the U.S. is working and in glove with the UK in threatening journalists.

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday November 15, 2013 · 6:34 AM PST

2013/11/15 · 06:34

Hacktivist Jeremy Hammond is set to be sentenced today after pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). From Huffington Post:

Supporters are rallying around convicted hacker and activist Jeremy Hammond as his sentencing date looms, calling him a whistleblower and arguing that his case is part of a larger crackdown on the free flow of information.

While we put hacktivists like Jeremy Hammond, Barrett Brown and Aaron Swartz in a different category than those charged under the Espionage Act like National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Thomas Drake and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) whistleblower John Kiriakou, the government's attacks on all of them represent a war on information in which the government's goal is to deter whistleblowing and silence dissent. While whistleblowers Drake and Kiriakou were prosecuted under the heavy-handed Espionage Act, the laws used against Hammond, Brown and Swartz - such as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), are just as dubious and draconian. The government uses the law not to stop criminals but to deter whistleblowers, hacktivists and journalists and control information. Read More

MSM: NSA Did Not Do a Good Enough Job Protecting Its Lawbreaking

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday November 08, 2013 · 6:27 AM PST

2013/11/08 · 06:27

Since June, the main stream media has been reporting National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations exposing NSA's vast, ineffective, and unconstitutional spying. In the words of former Vice President Al Gore:

[Snowden] has revealed evidence of what appears to be crimes against the Constitution of the United States.

But, the main stream media also takes too many opportunities to cast aside the undeniable public benefit to Snowden's revelations and the far more newsworthy fact that the NSA is violating the privacy rights of hundreds of millions of innocent people, to focus instead on the messenger. As we saw with other NSA whistleblowers, like my client Thomas Drake, there's a regular drumbeat of personal smears and unsubstantiated attacks aimed at discrediting Snowden. Reuters published an anonymously-sourced "exclusive:"

. . .Snowden used log-in credentials and passwords provided unwittingly by colleagues at a base in Hawaii to access some of the classified material he leaked to the media, sources said.

Aside from the "anonymous government officials," who have a clear motivation to trash the whistleblower who exposed NSA's illegal behavior, there is absolutely no evidence that Snowden tricked anyone into giving him information. The government tried out the same false accusation on Thomas Drake - that Drake collecting NSA information from colleagues under false pretenses. The allegation, like 99.9% of what the government said about Drake, turned out to be completely false.

Regardless of whether this latest unverified accusation about Snowden is true - the main stream media's obsession with how Snowden obtained evidence of NSA illegalities diverts attention from where it belongs: on NSA.

The significant story is not how NSA did such a bad job keeping its lawbreaking a secret, but how NSA has been violating statutory law and the Constitution and lying about it to Congress, the American public, and the world.

Jesselyn Radack

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 06, 2013 · 9:39 AM PST

2013/11/06 · 09:39

Wikileaks journalist Sarah Harrison heroically rescued National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden from Hong Kong, helped him obtain asylum in Russia and remained by his side at great personal risk to herself. She is the unsung hero in the harrowing saga of history’s most significant whistleblower who fearlessly and consistently put protecting a whistleblower above protecting herself.

Wikileaks released a powerful, eloquent statement from Harrison revealing that she was able to travel safely to Germany:

As a journalist I have spent the last four months with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and arrived in Germany over the weekend . . .
It should be fanciful to suggest that national security journalism which has the purpose of producing honest government or enforcing basic privacy rights should be called "terrorism", but that is how the UK is choosing to interpret this law. Almost every story published on the GCHQ and NSA bulk spying programs falls under the UK government's interpretation of the word "terrorism". In response, our lawyers have advised me that it is not safe to return home.

The U.S. should be a safe haven for free speech advocates like Harrison, but, to the contrary, the U.S. has launched a war on national security whistleblowers and systematically attacked journalists through harassment, threats of criminal prosecution and surveillance. Read More

Newer
Older

RSS

MUST READ: Patriots Who Exposed COINTELPRO Go Public

New York Times Calls for Clemency: "Edward Snowden, Whistleblower."

There IS a Third Branch of Government: Judge Rules NSA Spying Program Likely Unconstitutional

NSA's Free Infomercial Courtesy of 60 Minutes: Surveillance State Propaganda

Edward Snowden: Time Magazine Person of the Year Runner-Up

NSA Geo-Locating Billions of Cell Phone Records a Day

Justice Department Using Reporter Subpoena to Prosecute Whistleblower

National Security Harm: Real, Imagined or Propaganda

Press Freedom UK - US Style

Jeremy Hammond Sentencing: Deepening the Chill

MSM: NSA Did Not Do a Good Enough Job Protecting Its Lawbreaking

BREAKING: Wikileaks Journalist Sarah Harrison Safe in Germany: “Courage is Contagious.”