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NSA Recording US Calls Since at Least 2008: Transformers Actor Tells Jay Leno That FBI Agent Played Phone Recording of Him 5 Years Ago (+video)

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Photo Credit: TIZIANA FABI/AFP/GettyImages

The leaks of previous whistleblowers have been recalled and compared to that of the former government contractor who leaked to the media classified documents of the NSA’s collecting of metadata from phone conversations. But these previous whistleblowers aren’t the only ones who tried to warn of government spying.

Hollywood actor Shia LaBeouf in 2008 during an appearance on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno detailed how he learned phone calls were allegedly being recorded.

Promoting the film “Eagle Eye,” which according to IMDb shows how “technology of everyday life [is used] to track and control,” LaBeouf told Leno that an FBI consultant for the movie said one in five phone calls made are recorded and logged.

“And I laughed at him,” LaBeouf said.

“And then he played back a phone conversation I’d had two years prior to joining the picture,” LaBouf continued.

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Even Law-Abiding Citizens MUST Oppose Federal Surveillance (+video)

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

[W]hy should law-abiding citizens mind federal surveillance? The answer begins with this distressing reality: None of us scrupulously obeys the law. Technically speaking, we’re all criminals.

Federal and state criminal statutes have multiplied like rabbits over the decades, and so now everyone breaks the law, probably every day.

Copy a song to your laptop from a friend’s Beyonce CD? You just violated the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Did you buy some clothes in Delaware because they were tax free? You’re probably evading taxes. Did you give your 20-year-old nephew a glass of wine at dinner? Illegal in many states.

Citizens that the federal government wants to indict, the federal government can indict if it monitors them closely enough. That’s why it’s so disturbing to learn that the federal government doesn’t need to obtain a warrant on us in order to get our emails and phone records.

But these surveillance powers are used only for hunting terrorists, Obama says. Even if you take him at his word, because so far there is no evidence to the contrary, think about the capabilities you give to government when it can snoop on your phone records and emails…

So what’s next?

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Support Grows for Petition to Pardon NSA Leaker Edward Snowden

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Photo Credit: AP Photo/The Guardian

A petition for President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who admitted leaking information on classified government surveillance programs, had collected more than 18,000 signatures on the White House’s website shortly after 1 p.m. Monday.

“Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a full, free and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs,” states the petition, which was created on Sunday.

Mr. Snowden, who is seeking asylum in Hong Kong, said he leaked the information to Britain’s Guardian newspaper because he wanted the public to know the scope of the U.S. government’s surveillance programs. In the past week, he has revealed the government’s collection of millions of citizens’ phone records and a top-secret program known as Prism that monitors data from top Internet companies.

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Glenn Beck’s Passionate Defense of NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden: ‘He has Issued Himself a Death Warrant’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: The Blaze

Glenn Beck on his radio show Monday passionately defended Edward Snowden, the NSA whistleblower who leaked explosive classified information on the federal government’s massive surveillance programs.

“At least what he is doing is an act of heroism,” Beck said of Snowden. “What he is doing, coming out and speaking to the press, he has issued himself a death warrant.”

“He’s at least lost his life, and he may have his life taken from him,” he added.

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Tense: Ed Henry Confronts Jay Carney on Obama Statements During White House Press Conference (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube

White House press secretary Jay Carney clashed with both Fox News Chief White House correspondent Ed Henry and CBS News correspondent Major Garrett during Monday’s afternoon briefing.

Both intense exchanges surrounded the federal government’s data collection of phone and internet records and the administration’s handling of the issue.

Carney’s back-and-forth with Henry was the most notable. The journalist asked a number of pointed questions, especially about Obama’s claim on Friday that “every member of Congress” had been briefed on the NSA’s program involving monitoring of phone calls and Internet service.

“Why then are not just Republicans but Democrats like Keith Ellison saying ‘I’ve heard nothing about this.’?”

Carney responded by saying he couldn’t speak to “individual members,” and then launched into a prepared statement saying that the chair and ranking members had made clear that “every member” had been “advised of this” and “had the opportunity for briefings.”

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Ron Paul: ‘Thankful’ for Edward Snowden (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas praised NSA leaker Edward Snowden for his part in exposing how much information the government has been collecting from private citizens.

“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk,” Paul said in a statement posted on the website of Campaign for Liberty, a nonprofit political organization which focuses on educating about constitutional issues, which he chairs. “They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.”

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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.”

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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.

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?

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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.'”]

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