Government surveillance

A few thousand people came out to demonstrate in 40 cities Germany on Saturday against US National Security Agency spying and German government complicity with it. They hailed from the Green Party, the Pirate Party, and organizations like “Stop Watching Us!” The biggest demo was in Frankfurt, the financial capital. German Chancellor Angela Merkel (center-right) […]

Domestic Surveillance

What Congress Could do about NSA Spying if It were Serving the People (Brandeisky)

Juan Cole

Kara Brandeisky writes at ProPublica: Although the House defeated a measure that would have defunded the bulk phone metadata collection program, the narrow 205-217 vote showed that there is significant support in Congress to reform NSA surveillance programs. Here are six other legislative proposals on the table. 1) Raise the standard for what records are […]

Domestic Surveillance

Congress betrays vow to Uphold Constitution, abrogates 4th Amendment; Snowden is Better

Juan Cole

The US House of Representatives narrowly declined on Wednesday to deny funding for National Security Agency collection and storage of millions of Americans’ phone records. The requisition of the records of domestic and foreign calls made by Verizon customers was revealed by The Guardian newspaper’s New York operation . The NSA Prism program seems to […]

Domestic Surveillance

Glenn Greenwald: Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden

Juan Cole

In an epic boxing match, we have in one corner 600 pound gorillas like Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), head of the House Intelligence Committee that is determined to abet spying on you in your bedroom, and in the other corner we have 98 pound weaklings like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, who are without Rogers’s […]

CIA

Obama Administration Facing Congressional Rebellion, Civil Suits over NSA Surveillance

Juan Cole

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU, among other important civil society organizations, are suing the Federal government over the National Security Agency’s unconstitutional domestic surveillance. The administration is also facing House hearings on the issue. By the way, the argument made by Homeland Security and other such officials that the NSA’s domestic spying could […]

Domestic Surveillance

The End of Dissidents: The National Security State wants a World without Thoreaus (Engelhardt)

Juan Cole

Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com It’s hard even to know how to take it in. I mean, what’s really happening? An employee of a private contractor working for the National Security Agency makes off with unknown numbers of files about America’s developing global security state on a thumb drive and four laptop computers, and jumps the nearest plane to Hong […]

Domestic Surveillance

Obama Explains his NSA Domestic Spying & Why it differs from Bush’s (Cartoon satire)

Juan Cole

Cartoon satire: “President Obama explains why Americans should not be concerned about the NSA’s secret data collection program and that he is very different from George W. Bush.” The video is here:

Domestic Surveillance

A Century of America’s Imperial Deep State (McCoy)

Juan Cole

Alfred W. McCoy writes at Tomdispatch.com The American surveillance state is now an omnipresent reality, but its deep history is little known and its future little grasped. Edward Snowden’s leaked documents reveal that, in a post-9/11 state of war, the National Security Agency (NSA) was able to create a surveillance system that could secretly monitor […]

Domestic Surveillance

UK’s Channel 4 Schools US Media on How to cover NSA, Snowden

Juan Cole

This report by Channel 4 News in the UK, covering Edward Snowden’s application for asylum in the Russian Federation and his revelations of collaboration between Microsoft and the National Security Agency struck me as everything that US “news” coverage is not. The reporters don’t just parrot the Washington line. They point out that the transit […]