Tag Archives: NSA

Politics, US

Snowden Gives First Interview Since Government Leaks

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Edward Snowden gave his first interview since he leaked NSA documents.

The interview, which was published in the New York Times, was done through encrypted emails and focused on government and the media. Lara Poitras is a filmmaker who won Snowden’s trust many months ago — she served as the intermediary. Snowden said, “Laura was more suspicious of me than I was of her, and I’m famously paranoid.”

As reported by the Daily Mail:

“Snowden, in describing his methods for choosing a reporter to work with while searching for a way to tell the world what he knew, said that basically all emails are possible targets for government surveillance

Those from news organizations, he suggested, are all the more likely to be read.

‘Assume that your adversary is capable of a trillion guesses per second,’ he wrote to Poitras at the start of their work together, a relationship the New York Times documents alongside the Snowden interview.”

“It should be clear that unencrypted journalist-source communication is unforgivably reckless,” Snowden said.

Snowden

The whistleblower asserted that the media does not do an adequate job of holding government accountable. This allows government to remain unchecked and become out-of-control, he argued.

“The most important news outlets in America abdicated their role as a check to power for fear of being seen as unpatriotic and punished in the market during a period of heightened nationalism,” he said. “From a business perspective, this was the obvious strategy, but what benefited the institutions ended up costing the public dearly.”

Snowden, who now has asylum in Russia, said the media often turns a blind eye to government spying. “Any unencrypted message sent over the Internet is being delivered to every intelligence service in the world,” he said.

The whistleblower does have hope for the future, however. He thinks that major media outlets are beginning to recover from what he calls a “cold period” of not holding government accountable. He thinks this period began after the 9/11 attacks.

There is no doubt that Snowden himself has been a wakeup call for journalists who work in the mainstream media, who so rarely question things.

International, Politics, US

FBI Attempts To Use Snowden’s Father As “Emotional Tool” To Lure Son Back To America

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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s father, Lon Snowden, has spoken out.

And let’s just say he’s not too happy with the US government.

Lon said the FBI denied his request to speak to his son. The government agency has instead pressured him to go to Moscow in person to lure his son back to America.

Edward is currently stuck in a Moscow airport while he seeks asylum in Russia.

Lon told the Washington Post, “I was asked if I would consider flying to Moscow. And I said, ‘Yes, but however, I want to know what the objective is and I want to be able to speak to my son to see if there is value, because I’m not going to fly to Moscow to sit on the tarmac to be an emotional tool for you, for the government.'”

Edward Snowden Father

The whistleblower’s father, a former US Coast Guard, fully backs his son. He insisted that Edward is “wholesome,” “patriotic,” and “brilliant.”

Lon called the US press surrounding his son’s actions “propaganda” and said the US government has been “amateurish” trying to handle the situation. He thinks his son is smart not to come back to America. “Where at this point, unless someone’s been living in a cave without a TV, can my son get a fair trial?” he asked.

As reported by the Daily Mail, “Snowden Jr began working in intelligence in 2003, he told the reporter, under the Bush administration; he saw how things evolved, he told the reporter. With the arrival of the Obama administration he hoped that things would change, but Snowden Sr said rather than getting better, things got worse.”

Lon summed it all up best when he said, “[Edward] has chosen to release information at great peril to himself, to expose that people’s constitutional rights are being violated by the government.” 

He is right.

If you care about government overreach, thank Snowden regardless of where he ends up. Because at the end of the day, there is no Snowden “story” — the only thing that really matters is what government is doing to citizens.

International, Politics, US

Is the Stuxnet Leaker A Snowden or a Spy?

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Cathy-ReisenwitzCBS News is reporting that a retired U.S. Marine, Gen. James Cartwright, is being investigated for leaking information regarding the 2010 cyberattack on Iran’s nuclear facilities involving the Stuxnet computer virus, which Wired described as “world’s first real cyberweapon.” But as the Obama administrations continues its war on whistleblowers, it’s time to call into question why informing citizens of what their government is doing is considered a crime.

The Stuxnet virus was created and deployed, most believe by the U.S. and Israel, with the intention of disrupting 1,000 Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

CBS:

The New York Times, and subsequently other newspapers, published extensive details about the attack and the Obama administration acted swiftly, launching a leak investigation to determine who provided the secret information.

Most would agree that the U.S. government has the right to hold some information secret in the name of national security. However, oversight is essential to keeping government activity within its constitutional bounds. This is impossible when no one knows what the government does, including Congress. As the spying scandals revealed by leaker Edward Snowden brought to light, the NSA has repeatedly lied to Congress about the scope of its surveillance.

Some will say, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis. have said of Snowden, that leakers should be prosecuted because they broke the law. But if distributing information considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information is unlawful, all government whistleblowers break the law.

Prosecuting whistleblowers is a massive threat to transparency, and therefore to limited government. As such, the burden of proof should be on the government to demonstrate how revealing the details of Stuxnet, after its release, harmed national security.

*Contributor’s views are those of their own.