Surveillance

By Juan Cole In his stirring eulogy of Nelson Mandela, South Africa’s first president to be legitimately elected, by the entire South Africa people, President Barack Obama said, “There are too many of us who happily embrace Madiba’s legacy of racial reconciliation, but passionately resist even modest reforms that would challenge chronic poverty and growing […]

Domestic Surveillance

Google, Microsoft, Silicon Valley Giants Demand Rollback of out-of-control NSA Spying

Juan Cole

By Andrea Germanos In an open letter to President Obama and members of Congress, AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter and Yahoo, write: We understand that governments have a duty to protect their citizens. But this summer’s revelations highlighted the urgent need to reform government surveillance practices worldwide. The balance in many countries has […]

Bush

Uygur: Bush Targetting of Juan Cole proves that NSA can’t be trusted with our Personal Data

Juan Cole

Cenk Uygur at Young Turks makes the point that the National Security Agency and other US intelligence (services who are ending up with massive amounts of electronic surveillance information on Americans –whether that is what they were mainly going for or not) keep saying we should trust them with the information. They maintain that they […]

Domestic Surveillance

FBi Laptop Camera Snooping and Orwell’s 1984: Side by Side Comparison

Juan Cole

Jon Schwartz ( @tinyrevolution ) posted this to Twitter. It is a side by side comparison of a passage from “1984” to the news report from a former senior FBI official that the FBI can turn on the laptop cameras of individuals without activating the red light that shows the camera is operating. The Washington […]

Domestic Surveillance

Trashing the Law against warrantless GPS tracking: NSA nabs 5 Billion Phone location Records a Day

Juan Cole

Remember when the National Security Agency officials maintained that they were “only” collecting “metadata” from your cell phones? What they meant by that was that they weren’t listening in on your calls, just noting who you call and when. I said at the time that ‘metadata’ on cell phones inevitably includes information on where you […]

al Qaeda in the Arabian Penisula

Feinstein & Rogers justify NSA Spying with Syrian Rebels (Voted to Arm Syrian Rebels)

Juan Cole

Senator Diane Feinstein and Rep. Mike Rogers took to the airwaves on Sunday to warn that Americans are less safe than two years ago and that al-Qaeda is growing and spreading and that the US is menaced by bombs that can’t be detected by metal detectors. Call me cynical, but those two have been among […]

CIA

Tony Blair let the American NSA Spy on Millions of Britons and Store their Private Data

Juan Cole

The Guardian and Channel 4 News report that Tony Blair allowed the US National Security Agency to spy on millions of Britons, and to record and store their browser history and email. In 2005, the US had gone ahead and initiated the spying without British permission. Subsequent Prime Ministers, including the current one, David Cameron, […]

Domestic Surveillance

American Writers are Self-Censoring to Avoid NSA Scrutiny (McCauley)

Juan Cole

Lauren McCauley writes at Commondreams.org: Recent disclosures of the NSA's widespread dragnet program coupled with its frequent targeting of journalists are having a 'chilling effect' on American writers, stifling their freedom of expression at great detriment to society, says a new report Chilling Effects: NSA Surveillance Drives U.S. Writers to Self Censor. Published Tuesday by […]

Domestic Surveillance

How America’s Global Surveillance Empire made it a Helpless Giant (Engelhardt)

Juan Cole

Tom Engelhardt writes at Tomdispatch.com Given how similar they sound and how easy it is to imagine one leading to the other, confusing omniscience (having total knowledge) with omnipotence (having total power) is easy enough. It’s a reasonable supposition that, before the Snowden revelations hit, America’s spymasters had made just that mistake. If the drip-drip-drip […]