Barry Grey: Reports document US slaughter of civilians in drone strikes ■ A series of reports released over the past several days document the killing of thousands of people, including hundreds of non-combatant civilians, in US drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and other countries. The reports, issued by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch on Tuesday and the UN special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions last Friday, expose as lies the claims of President Obama and administration officials that the drone strikes are “surgical” attacks that kill few civilians. ● All three reports suggest that the United States is concealing the extent of the carnage caused by its program of extrajudicial executions and is in violation of international humanitarian law. The reports were timed to coincide with a United Nations General Assembly debate on drone attacks to take place this Friday. ● Amnesty International devoted its report, “Will I be Next?” US Drone Strikes in Pakistan, to the results of an on-the-spot investigation into nine of the 45 reported strikes that occurred in Pakistan’s North Waziristan tribal agency, which borders Afghanistan, between January 2012 and August 2013.

Reuters: U.S. drone strikes killed Pakistani grandmother, laborers: Amnesty
Drone Victims Recount Horror of Follow-Up Strikes Launched Against People Rescuing Wounded
CNN: In Swat Valley, U.S. drone strikes radicalizing a new generation
Jason Ditz: White House Defends Drone Strikes
David Swanson: A New Kind of War Is Being Legalized

Angela Merkel called Barack Obama today to complain against NSA attempts to eavesdrop on her personal phone. Internal investigations done by german intelligence agencies clearly hinted at US attempts to break into her phone. [Source in German]

GigaOm: U.S. may have bugged German chancellor’s mobile phone

Russia Today: ‘Unacceptable’: Merkel calls Obama over suspicion US monitored her cell phone ● German Chancellor Angela Merkel has called President Obama over the German government's suspicions the US could have tapped her mobile phone. Barack Obama assured Merkel that his country is not monitoring her communications. Earlier, the German government spokesman said that Berlin had information the US National Security Agency (NSA) could have been spying on Merkel. “We swiftly sent a request to our American partners asking for an immediate and comprehensive clarification,” Steffen Seibert said in a statement, Reuters cites.

Everyday communications of Italians are also on the watch list of the US National Security Agency, a new report has revealed. While an Italian parliamentary committee seeks clarification of NSA activities, local security sources defend the snooping. ● Italy’s spy watchdog COPASIR has recently learned details of large-scale monitoring of Italians by the US intelligence agency NSA, according to a report published by Corriere della Sera. In order to confirm the snooping on Italians, the committee members had to go to the United States and meet with US intelligence agency directors, as well as with congressional committee chairs. A delegation of parliamentarians from the COPASIR confirmed their concerns regarding the extent of the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program during an official visit to the US three weeks ago, the media said. As part of the program, phone calls and computer communications of “millions of Italians” are reportedly being gathered. Moreover, Corriere della Sera added that the implications extended to “a monitoring network that started years ago and is still active,” of which the Italian government and spy agencies might have been well aware of.

Corriere della Sera: America Snoops on Italian Emails, Text Messages and Conversations
Corriere della Sera: «Siamo tutti ascoltati dal Grande orecchio»

Ronald Bailey: ”The NSA has turned the internet into a giant surveillance platform.” ■ The walls of surveillance secrecy were finally cracked by the June revelations of whistleblower Edward Snowden. Snowden’s files conclusively show that the federal government has been operating a vast spying program that violates the Fourth Amendment rights of tens of millions of ordinary Americans. To justify this surveillance, the government offers tortured legal interpretations of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. ● Section 702 authorizes warrantless surveillance of the communications of foreigners outside of the United States. As Snowden’s documents reveal, the NSA has interpreted Section 702 as a backdoor loophole allowing the agency to retain and comb through the call data and emails of Americans whose communications are “about” a terror suspect or have been “inadvertently” intercepted by the NSA’s PRISM monitoring program. The even more egregious violations of our constitutional rights, Snowden revealed, occurred under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act, which the NSA has used to justify the dragnet collection and retention of the call metadata of essentially all Americans. (Metadata includes the numbers called and the location, date, time, and duration of each call.)

Talk by Ray McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, on "The Real Agenda of the American Empire" recorded October 17, 2013 at the Common Good Cafe at University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle.

Ray McGovern: Edward Snowden’s Brave Integrity