Lawless NSA Spying Exposed

Stephen Lendman

Laws are made to be obeyed. Washington acts like they don't exist. Big Brother is official policy.

It's longstanding. It's no secret. It's well known. Now we know more. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) deserves credit. On August 21, it headlined "Intelligence Agency Attorney on How 'Multi-Communication Transactions' Allowed for Domestic Surveillance." EFF filed a FOIA lawsuit. For over a year, it fought for public disclosure. It demanded release of an 86-page FISA court opinion.

In October 2011, it was gotten. It called NSA's so-called "upstream collection" (UC) system illegal and unconstitutional. It violates the FISA Amendments Act. It breaches constitutional provisions. NSA violates the letter and spirit of federal law. Its UC occurs when it "gets a copy of Internet traffic as it flows through major telecommunications hubs, and searches through for 'selectors,' like an email address or a keyword."

Declassified documents show NSA collected 58,000 or more domestic emails. It obtained other US communications. It's done it annually for at least three years. It's likely done it much longer. It constitutes a gross invasion of privacy. It's unconstitutional. It violates Fourth and Fourteenth Amendment provisions. It's unrelated to terrorism.

In February 2006, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts appointed US District Court for the District of Columbia Judge John D. Bates to serve on the FISA court. From May 2009 - February 2013, he was presiding judge. He said (at least) three times over a three-year period, Washington...

..."disclosed a substantial misrepresentation regarding the scope of a major collection program. (T)he volume and nature of the information (NSA's) been collecting is fundamentally different than what the court had been led to believe."


In letter to Obama, Bradley Manning defends exposure of war crimes

David Walsh

US Army Private Bradley Manning, who helped bring to light innumerable crimes of the American government and armed forces, was sentenced to 35 years in military prison Wednesday, a sentence without precedent for the “crime” of whistle-blowing.

At a press conference the same day, Manning’s attorney, David Coombes, read aloud an open letter from the 25-year-old army private to President Barack Obama. The statement will be included in a request to the Secretary of the Army asking Obama to pardon Manning or commute his sentence to time already served.

The letter is an honest, powerful document, which outlines Manning’s motives for leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents. It is unlike the stage-managed “confession” that Manning was obliged to give before his military tribunal in Ft. Meade, Maryland on August 14, during which he apologized for his actions.

In his letter to Obama, Manning first explains that the decision to release the incriminating material was “made out of a concern for my country and the world that we live in.” He adds that he agreed at first with the methods adopted by US authorities following 9/11. Not until Manning was deployed to Iraq and began “reading secret military reports on a daily basis” did he start “to question the morality of what we were doing.”


Max Blumenthal on Anti Semitism, Neo Fascists and Gilad Atzmon (Amusing As Well As Tragic)

Gilad Atzmon

The campaign against me and my work fell apart a while ago. I assume that my Jewish detractors came to realise that I enjoy their attention and use it to affirm my criticism of their tribal and exclusivist identity politics.

But yesterday I had a nostalgic moment reading Max Blumenthal dissing me publicly. When Blumenthal was asked about Israeli critics he ended up talking about the vile ‘anti Semites’, ‘neo Fascists’ and the ‘racists’ in the movements.

Interestingly enough, he failed to remember any name but one – Gilad Atzmon. Atzmon is a “pure anti Semite who believes that all of the problems of Israel flow not from colonialism but from Judaism.” said Blumenthal. Apparently, not buying into the clumsy ‘colonial paradigm’ makes me into a ‘neo Fascist’, ‘anti Semite’ and a ‘racist’.

It is obviously clear that Blumenthal didn’t read a single word by me. I naively believe that if someone insists to criticise my work, he or she better spend some time to read me first. It is an established fact that Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah also called for my disavowal while admitting to Prof. Norton Mezvinsky that he has never read a single word by me. Tragically enough, the fear of intellectual exchange and open discourse is endemic within the Jewish progressive ghetto but also within some quarters of the solidarity movement.


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