Snowden: US Intelligence Would Have Killed to Stop Me; Greatest Danger to Freedom is our Omniscient State (+video)

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Edward Joseph Snowden, 29, knew full well the risks he had undertaken and the awesome powers that would soon be arrayed to hunt for him… Snowden was spilling some of the most sensitive secrets of a surveillance apparatus he had grown to detest. By late last month, he believed he was already “on the X” — exposure imminent.

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions, and that the return of this information to the public marks my end,” he wrote in early May, before we had our first direct contact. He warned that even journalists who pursued his story were at risk until they published.

The U.S. intelligence community, he wrote, “will most certainly kill you if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this information”…

I asked him, at the risk of estrangement, how he could justify exposing intelligence methods that might benefit U.S. adversaries.

“Perhaps I am naive,” he replied, “but I believe that at this point in history, the greatest danger to our freedom and way of life comes from the reasonable fear of omniscient State powers kept in check by nothing more than policy documents.” The steady expansion of surveillance powers, he wrote, is “such a direct threat to democratic governance that I have risked my life and family for it.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Congressman: IRS Case is Solved; Time to Move On

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Representative Elijah Cummings says based upon everything he has seen, the IRS case is “solved.” He believes it is time to wrap up the case and move on.

Never mind the fact that the DC ringleader of the IRS fiasco has yet to be identified, while lower level agents are being “thrown under the bus.”

And never mind the fact that no one has really been punished for the overt political targeting of conservatives, including Tea Party and Christian groups.

Representative Cummings is the poster child for what Congress has single digit approval ratings among the American public.

Beck: If We Don’t Stop this Right Now, US Will Become the Most Evil Nation the World has Ever Known

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As reports continue to flood in about President Obama’s massive surveillance state, media powerhouse Glenn Beck says, “There wouldn’t be a Jew alive on the planet today if Hitler had this technology.”

Beck made the statement Friday on his radio program while interviewing NSA whistleblower William Binney.

Binney worked at the National Security Agency for nearly four decades, and said the secret surveillance of Americans began in October 2001.

He believes the NSA is storing information on 3 billion phone calls every day.

“I’m telling you, America,” Beck cautioned, “If we don’t stop this right now, we will be remembered as the most evil nation in history of the world. We will dwarf what Germany did. And I’d say that if Mitt Romney were in office and this were happening. I would be saying exactly the same thing.”

Read more from this story HERE.

Edward Snowden: the Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

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Photo Credit: guardian.co.uk

By Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras. The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America’s most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world’s most secretive organisations – the NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: “I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions,” but “I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. “I don’t want public attention because I don’t want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing.” Read more from this story HERE.
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NSA whistleblower donated to Ron Paul’s presidential campaign

By Katie McHugh. National Security Administration whistleblower Edward Snowden, who revealed his identity to The Guardian newspaper on Sunday, was a donor to former Texas Rep. Ron Paul’s presidential campaign.

OpenSecrets.org shows that Snowden twice donated $250 to Paul’s campaign, once on March 18, 2012 from a Maryland address, and a second time on May 6, 2012 from Hawaii. Paul ceased active campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination on May 14, 2012.

In an interview with The Guardian, Snowden said he voted for a third party for president on Election Day last November. Read more from this story HERE.
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Guardian: NSA contractor was source of massive US surveillance leak

By Fox News. The source of the bombshell leaks about the U.S. government gathering information on billions of phone calls and Internet activities was an American employed as a contract worker for the National Security Agency, The Guardian newspaper, which broke the story, said Sunday.

The British newspaper has identified the source as 29-year-old Edward Snowden, who worked for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and was a former technical assistant for the CIA.

The Washington Post followed the Guardian announcement by saying Snowden was the source for its surveillance stories that followed.

If the reports are accurate, Snowden could face many years in prison for releasing classified information if he is successfully extradited from Hong Kong, where he claims to have taken refuge.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment on Snowden’s disclosure, saying the issue has been referred to the Justice Department. Read more from this story HERE.

Liberal Pundit: U.S. Has Become an ‘Authoritarian Surveillance State’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

Paul Krugman, an outspoken liberal economist known for his support of the Obama administration, today said the United States has become an ‘authoritarian surveillance state.’

Part of a panel on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Krugman offered his take on the bombshell NSA spying revelations:

Read more from this story HERE.

What if China, Russia or Iran Hacks the NSA’s Vast Surveillance Database?

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Bradley Manning proved that massive amounts of the government’s most secret data was vulnerable to being dumped on the open Internet. A single individual achieved that unprecedented leak. According to the Washington Post, “An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.” And this week, we learned that the FBI, CIA and NSA were unable to protect some of their most closely held secrets from Glenn Greenwald, Richard Engel, Robert Windrem, Barton Gellman, and Laura Poitras. Those journalists, talented as they are, possess somewhat fewer resources than foreign governments! So I naturally started to think about all the data the NSA is storing.

In the wrong hands, it could enable blackmail on a massive scale, widespread manipulation of U.S. politics, industrial espionage against American businesses;,and other mischief I can’t even imagine.

The plan is apparently to store the data indefinitely, just in case the government needs it for future investigations. Don’t worry, national security officials tell us, we won’t ever look at most of it.

Do you trust the government to keep it secure, forever, if others try to look?

If so, why?

Read more from this story HERE.

Saudi Prince Sues Forbes Over His Rank on Billionaires List

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Photo Credit: Forbes

A Saudi Arabian billionaire prince has sued Forbes magazine in London, accusing the publication of underestimating his wealth in its highly scrutinized annual list of the world’s richest people.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal claims the magazine was “deliberately biased” when ranking him at a lowly 26th place in its 2013 tally of the super wealthy, according to court documents cited by the United Kingdom’s Guardian newspaper.

The magazine pegged his net worth at $20 billion. The prince claims it is closer to $30 billion. The difference? About $9.6 billion, the Guardian reported.

The alleged inaccuracy has the business mogul, who holds a stake in Twitter, reportedly fuming. In addition to the Forbes publisher, Bin Talal also filed suit against its editor and two of its reporters, the Guardian reported.

Forbes may have angered the prince further with an article examining the way he calculates his net worth, deeming it “an alternate reality” driven in part by his need for public validation.

Read more from this story HERE.

RINO Peter King Calls for NSA Whistle-Blower’s Extradition

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Photo Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was condemned by US politicians and threatened with prosecution by the country’s intelligence chief on Sunday after revealing himself as the Guardian’s source for a series of explosive leaks on the NSA and cyber surveillance.

A spokesman for the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said Snowden’s case had been referred to the justice department and US intelligence was assessing the damage caused by the disclosures.

“Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law,” the spokesman, Shawn Turner, said.

Snowden had top-secret clearance to help run the National Security Agency’s computer systems but he was a contractor, hired by the giant US defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. The company issued a statement describing the disclosures as “shocking” and pledging to co-operate with any investigation.

It said: “News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm. We will work closely with our clients and authorities in their investigation of this matter.”

[Editor’s note: It was reported last week that “Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said he will not attend a big Republican fundraising dinner, because although his schedule might have prevented it anyway, once he heard Sen. Ted Cruz was the headliner, it ‘made it easy.'”]

Read more from this story HERE.

Paul Wants to Lead Supreme Court Challenge to Fed’s Tracking of Americans’ Calls, Emails (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday he wants to mount a Supreme Court challenge to the federal government logging Americans’ phone calls and Internet activities.

Paul, R-Ky., a leading voice in the Libertarian movement, told “Fox News Sunday” he wants to get enough signatures to file a class-action lawsuit before the high court and will appeal to younger Americans, who appear to be advancing the cause of less government and civil liberties.

“I’m going to be asking all the Internet providers and all of the phone companies: Ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” he said. “If we get 10 million Americans saying we don’t want our phone records looked at, then maybe someone will wake up and something will change in Washington.”

Paul, a first-term senator and potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said he disagrees with President Obama’s argument that the National Security Agency collecting 3 billion calls daily and other information is a modest invasion of privacy.

“That doesn’t look like a modest invasion of privacy,” he told Fox. “I have no problem if you have probable cause … but we’re talking about trolling through a billion phone records a day.”

Read more from this story HERE.

DoD Stupidity Continues: Airmen Ordered Not to Read Stories About NSA Phone Surveillance

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Photo Credit: WND

WND has received an unclassified NOTAM (Notice to Airmen) that warns airmen not to look at news stories related to the data-mining scandal.

The notice applies to users of the Air Force NIPRNET (Non-classified Internet Protocol Router Network), which is the only way that many troops stationed overseas and on bases in the U.S. are able to access the Internet.

The last line of the executive summary states:

“Users are not to use AF NIPRNET systems to access the Verizon phone records collection and other related news stories because the action could constitute a Classified Message Incident.”

Cindy McGee, the mother of an airman stationed in the UAE, spoke with WND.

“The fact that our government is attempting to censor our service members from the truth of what is happening here at home is truly frightening and disheartening,” said McGee.

Read more from this story HERE.