Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations...

[Ben]

If you live in a surveillance state for long enough, you create a censor in your head

There is a significant psychological price to being constantly aware of the variety of ways in which your activity might be tracked.

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics...nsor-your-head

[martin48]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-23116517

How much did this junior contractor get away with?

[Stavros]

Martin, there are I think, two ways of looking at this. If you take Ben's view, 'we the people' are the hapless pawns of the politics, corporations and the military who get what they want, when they want; the truth is we are all under the microscope.
Or, and I think this is closer to the truth, modern communications technology has reduced the levers of control: this to me is the profound anxiety, imagine some CIA team leader in a Jason Bourke type situation barking at his agents: We are Losing Control, people!

The US and its allies has used the Stuxnet virus against Iran; there are allegations of cyber-spying in US-China relations, the Chinese spying on the US, the US spying on the Chinese.
The anxiety is driven by the diffuse nature of the internet and its multiple and immediate modes of communication beyond the control of Washington, Moscow, Beijing and so on. The days when J Edgar Hoover could change a headline in the Washington Post or the New York Times have gone; and it isn't even about terrorism even if it was the violence of 9/11 that sparked the creation of such a vast network of 'intelligence agents' that a nobody like Snowden could emerge and be described as a 'hero' by some.

Here for example, are some daunting facts:
As Dana Priest and William M. Arkin pointed out in their 2010 Washington Post series "Top Secret America" more than 1,000 government organizations are paired with more than 1,000 private companies in the security labyrinth, all moving about blindly and haphazardly. Almost a million people hold top-secret security clearances, including janitors who manage the waste.

and

The greatest secret being revealed through all of this is that secrets themselves are becoming a thing of the past. How can Edward Snowden and WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning, each from his unimportant place deep in the bureaucracy, yet each wielding the radically unchecked power of the computer, so readily penetrate the most secure of government barriers? Their access shows what an illusion those barriers have become. The crisis here is that responsible governance, including that of a liberal democracy, requires the reasonable management of secrecy. What happens when both responsibility and management become impossible?

In the past, you had to have real, physical access to people and documents -think Guy Burgess, Aldrich Ames -these days, junior clerks have access to 'the crown jewels'.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2...bYP/story.html

[Ben]

Refuge in Russia Will Hurt Edward Snowden's Credibility?

[Ben]

Video: Did the NSA director lie to Congress?

http://hotair.com/archives/2013/06/0...e-to-congress/

[Lovecox]

He's stuck in an airport in Russia ... it's like he's snowed in!

[Ben]

He's stuck in an airport in Russia ... it's like he's snowed in!

Ha ha ha! I made a similar joke to a friend of mine. Well, as the weather cools in Russia, well, he, at some point, could indeed be snowed in...

[Ben]

Noam Chomsky on the NSA, privacy:




Section 215 of the Patriot Act:

http://www.aclu.org/free-speech-nati...ct-section-215

[Ben]

Patriot Act Interpretations Would "Stun" Americans

[Ben]

President Obama embraces openness on day one:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20090121/index.htm

Obama's War on Whistleblowers Finds Another Target:

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1757...r_target/#more