Big Banks and Other Corporate Bigwigs Benefit from Illegal Spying - You’ve heard that the government spies on all Americans. But you might not know that the government shares some of that information with big corporations. Reuters reported in 2011 that the NSA shares intelligence with Wall Street banks in the name of “battling hackers.”

NSA Director Keith Alexander, who runs the U.S. military’s cyber operations, told Reuters the agency is currently talking to financial firms about sharing electronic information on malicious software, possibly by expanding a pilot program through which it offers similar data to the defense industry. ■ The NSA’s work with Wall Street marks a milestone in the agency’s efforts to make its cyber intelligence available more broadly to the private sector. ■ Greater cooperation with industry became possible after a deal reached a year ago between the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, allowing NSA to provide cyber expertise to other government agencies and certain private companies.

Gene Healy: The NSA's massive call-records database is [...] a potential treasure trove for bad-faith political actors -- it can be used to ferret out the sort of information that governments have historically used to blackmail and control dissenters. We needn't resort to hyperbolic examples like the East German Stasi to understand the dangers here -- there's a relevant comparison much closer to home. A series of congressional investigations in the 1970s taught Americans shocking lessons about Cold War-era surveillance abuses. In 1976, Church warned that the NSA's technological prowess "at any time could be turned around on the American people ... such is the capability to monitor everything -- telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."

Anonymous: I've got nothing to hide... - We used to think it couldn't happen in America. But guess what? It's starting to happen. I actually get really upset when people say "I don't have anything to hide. Let them read everything." People saying that have no idea what they are bringing down on their own heads. They are naive, and we need to listen to people in other countries who are clearly telling us that this is a horrible horrible sign and it is time to stand up and say no.

■ He does not want to live in a world where there isn't any privacy. He says that he does not want to live in a world where everything that he says and does is recorded. Thanks to Snowden, we now know that the U.S. government has been spying on us to a degree that most people would have never even dared to imagine. Up until now, the general public has known very little about the U.S. government spy grid that knows almost everything about us. But making this information public is going to cost Edward Snowden everything. Essentially, his previous life is now totally over.
■ If Snowden is not already under the protection of some foreign government (such as China), it will just be a matter of time before U.S. government agents get him. And how will they treat him once they find him? Well, one reporter overheard a group of U.S. intelligence officials talking about how Edward Snowden should be "disappeared". The following is from a Daily Mail article that was posted on Monday...As an American, I am deeply disturbed that the U.S. government is embarrassing itself in front of the rest of the world like this. The fact that we are collecting trillions of pieces of information on people all over the planet is a massive embarrassment and the fact that our politicians are defending this practice now that it has been exposed is a massive embarrassment.

MIT Center for Civic Media: The Government Is Profiling You: William Binney (former NSA - NSA Whistleblower William Binney on the United States in 5-10 years: "It's going towards a totalitarian state. We'll have an imperial president, and a dictator. Everyone in Congress is violating the constitution by supporting this [surveillance] activity."

Justin Raimondo: Smear Brigade Goes After Snowden - When whistleblowers expose government wrongdoing and abuses, the procedure is always the same: the regime’s defenders focus on the whistleblower’s alleged personality defects and smear him within an inch of his life. They did it with Dan Ellsberg, they did it with Julian Assange, they did it with Bradley Manning, and that all too familiar modus operandi is unfolding pretty quickly in the case of Edward Snowden, the heroic libertarian who exposed Washington’s massive and unconstitutional spying operation against American citizens. The pundits who take seriously their job as the power elite’s Praetorian Guard are going after Snowden hammer and tongs, and in these dark times their polemics provide a rich source of humor.

Thomas Drake: Snowden saw what I saw: surveillance criminally subverting the constitution
Ivan Eland: NSA Snooping on Americans Is Unconstitutional and Outrageous
The Guardian: Europe warns US: you must respect the privacy of our citizens
EFF: 86 Civil Liberties Groups and Internet Companies Demand an End to NSA Spying
Associated Press: US: No plans to end broad surveillance program

Pepe Escobar: Western politicos love to shed swamps of crocodile tears about "the Syrian people" and congratulate themselves within the "Friends of Syria" framework for defending them from "tyranny". Well, the "Syrian people" have spoken. Roughly 70% support the government of Bashar al-Assad. Another 20% are neutral. And only 10% are aligned with the Western-supported "rebels", including those of the kidnapping, lung-eating, beheading jihadi kind. The data was provided mostly by independent relief organizations working in Syria. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) received a detailed report in late May - but, predictably, was not too keen on releasing it.

Turkish riot police brutally attacked protesters to clear Taksim Square yesterday afternoon in Istanbul, arresting hundreds of protesters, while Washington signaled continuing support for the Islamist regime of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. - This was the first time police returned to Taksim Square since June 1, when mounting protests over the brutal police repression of the occupation of nearby Gezi Park forced Turkish authorities to withdraw police from the area. This movement has become the focus of rising discontent with Erdogan, a key ally of Washington and the European powers in the Middle East, notably in the ongoing proxy war in neighboring Syria. In the early morning, police began attacking thousands of protesters who remained on the square. “The security forces are shooting pepper spray cartridges at everything that moves,” said Özlem Gezer, an editor for Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine reporting from the square. She added that dozens of protesters had suffered head wounds from police fire.

Pope Francis lamented that a “gay lobby” was at work at the Vatican in private remarks to the leadership of a key Latin American church group — a stunning acknowledgment that appears to confirm earlier reports about corruption and dysfunction in the Holy See. - The Latin American and Caribbean Confederation of Religious — the regional organization for priests and nuns of religious orders — confirmed Tuesday that its leaders had written a synthesis of Francis’ remarks after their June 6 audience. The group, known by its Spanish acronym CLAR, said it was greatly distressed that the document had been published and apologized to the pope. In the document, Francis is quoted as saying that while there were many holy people in the Vatican, there was also corruption: “The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there … We need to see what we can do …” the synthesis reads. The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said Tuesday the audience was private and that as a result he had nothing to say.

In March 2006 four US soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division gang raped a 14 year old Iraqi girl and murdered her and her family —including a 5 year old child. An additional soldier was involved in the cover-up. One of the killers, Steven Green, was found guilty on May 07, 2009 in the US District Court of Paducah and is now awaiting sentencing. ■ The leaked Public Affairs Guidance put the 101st media team into a “passive posture” — withholding information where possible. It conceals presence of both child victims, and describes the rape victim, who had just turned 14, as “a young woman”. The US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division did not begin its investigation until three and a half months after the crime, news reports at that time commented. This is not the only grim picture coming out of Iraq U.S. forces being accused of using rape as a war weapon. ■ The release, by CBS News, of the photographs showing the heinous sexual abuse and torture of Iraqi POW’s at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison opened a Pandora’s Box for the Bush regime wrote Ernesto Cienfuegos in La Voz de Aztlan on May 2, 2004. Journalist Cienfuegos further states “Apparently, the suspended US commander of the prison where the worst abuses took place, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, has refused to take the fall by herself and has implicated the CIA, Military Intelligence and private US government contractors in the torturing of POW’s and in the raping of Iraqi women detainees as well.”