This 2016 video from the USA is called ‘State of Surveillance’ with Edward Snowden and Shane Smith (VICE on HBO: Season 4, Episode 13).
From Avaaz.org:
Hi all,
This 29-year-old just gave up his whole life to blow the whistle on the US’s insane PRISM program — which has hacked all our emails, Skype messages and Facebook posts for years. If millions of us act urgently and get behind him, we can help press the US to crack down on PRISM, not Edward. Let’s stand with him before it’s too late:
This 29 year-old analyst just gave up his whole life — his girlfriend, his job, and his home — to blow the whistle on the US government’s shocking PRISM program — which has been reading and recording our emails, Skype messages, Facebook posts and phone calls for years.
When Bradley Manning passed this kind of data to Wikileaks, the US threw him naked into solitary confinement in conditions that the UN called “cruel, inhumane and degrading”.
The authorities and press are deciding right now how to handle this scandal. If millions of us stand with Edward in the next 48 hours, it will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is, and it should be PRISM, and not Edward, that the US cracks down on:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_prism_global/?bHFhfab&v=25833
PRISM is profoundly disturbing: it gives the US government unlimited access to all of our personal email and social media accounts on Google, Youtube, Facebook, Skype, Hotmail, Yahoo! and much more. They’re recording billions of our messages every month and the CIA can now or in the future use the information to prosecute, persecute, or blackmail us, our friends or our families!
Edward was horrified by this unprecedented violation of individual privacy. So he copied large amounts of files, sent them to the Guardian newspaper for publication and escaped to Hong Kong. His bravery not only exposed PRISM, but has started a domino effect around the world, shining a light on secret spy programs in Canada, the UK and Australia in just days! Now he’s trapped in Hong Kong, waiting to be arrested. A global outcry could save him from extradition to the US, and encourage other countries to grant him asylum.
We can’t let the US do to Edward what they did to Bradley Manning. Let’s urgently stand with him, and against PRISM:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/stop_prism_global/?bHFhfab&v=25833
Sometimes the things our governments do are simply breathtaking. When heroic individuals like Edward have risked their own freedoms to bring scandals of this scale into light, the Avaaz community has come together to demand fair treatment — and won. When half a million of us joined with other organizations and activists calling on the US government to stop its cruel treatment of Bradley Manning, he was relocated to a medium-security prison and taken out of solitary confinement. If we act quickly, we might do better for Edward, and help him win the fight he’s bravely taken on, for all our sakes.
With hope and determination,
Ricken, Emma, Oli, Mia, Allison, Ari, Dalia, Laura and the whole Avaaz team
PS – Many Avaaz campaigns are started by members of our community! Start yours now and win on any issue – local, national or global: http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/start_a_petition/?bgMYedb&v=25795
MORE INFORMATION:
Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelations (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillanceEdward Snowden Contact Glenn Greenwald Should Be ‘Disappeared’, Security Officials ‘Overheard Saying’ (Huffington Post)
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/06/10/nsa-leaker-and-journalist-should-be-disappeared-overheard_n_3414346.html?utm_hp_ref=canada&ir=CanadaNSA PRISM program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/us-tech-giants-nsa-dataPrism scandal: Government program secretly probes Internet servers (Chicago Tribune)
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-nsa-prism-scandal-20130607,0,301166.storyPRISM by the Numbers: A Guide to the Government’s Secret Internet Data-Mining Program (TIME)
http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/06/06/prism-by-the-numbers-a-guide-to-the-governments-secret-internet-data-mining-program/Anger swells after NSA phone records court order revelations (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/06/obama-administration-nsa-verizon-recordsData-collection program got green light from MacKay in 2011 (Globe and Mail)
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/data-collection-program-got-green-light-from-mackay-in-2011/article12444909/Greens unveil plan to require warrant to access phone and internet records (The Guardian)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/11/greens-warrant-phone-internet-records
Do not extradite Edward Snowden, protesters urge Hong Kong: here.
Classified top secret documents submitted to the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court by US Attorney General Eric Holder, published by The Guardian on Thursday, show that US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) judges have approved sweeping general orders authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to monitor US communications data without individual warrants: here.
British government moves to censor media coverage of spying operations: here.
Snowden arrived in Moscow Sunday and is expected to proceed onward to a Latin American country, most likely Ecuador: here.
Related articles
- NSA whistleblower reveals himself: ‘I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things’ (theverge.com)
- NSA leak fallout: LIVE UPDATES (rt.com)
- PRISM whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals himself, reasons for leaking surveillance program (engadget.com)
- FOCUS | Edward Snowden’s Ordeal Is Just Beginning (readersupportednews.org)
- NSA Surveillance Scandal: Snowden In Moscow, Asks Ecuador for Asylum (front.kinja.com)
- Ecuador has received asylum request from NSA whistleblower Snowden – FM Patino (rt.com)
- Aided by WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden leaves Hong Kong seeking asylum (updating live) (theverge.com)
- Assange reveals details of ‘Snowden Op’, slams US ‘war on whistleblowers’ (rt.com)
- Obama’s Stubbornness and the Risk of Snowden (emptywheel.net)
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Take Back Your Privacy
~FirstName~ —
In recent weeks, a steady stream of news stories has emerged detailing the National Security Agency’s (NSA) massive surveillance program. Using this program, the government clearly gathers volumes of information on unsuspecting Americans.
Widespread government surveillance threatens our basic privacy rights. That is why I have reached across the aisle to work with my colleague Congressman Justin Amash (R-MI) to introduce the “Limiting Internet and Blanket Electronic Review of Telecommunications and E-mail Act,” or the LIBERT-E Act for short. Safeguarding our constitutional privacy rights is not a Democratic or Republican value; it is an American value. The LIBERT-E Act is an important reminder to our government of that fact.
Our legislation requires the government to show “specific and articulable facts” that phone records are both related and material to an appropriately authorized foreign intelligence counterterrorism investigation before obtaining the records of a private person. Simply put, the government should not be permitted to engage in dragnet surveillance of the American public.
The bill also compels the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court – the secretive body that authorizes the interception of electronic communications – to provide public summaries of their opinions. The public cannot hold its government accountable if it does not know what the government does in its name. Free societies should not have secret law.
Will you join me in calling for these common sense privacy protections and telling the NSA that enough is enough? Click here to become a citizen co-sponsor of the LIBERT-E Act :
https://services.myngp.com/ngponlineservices/petition.aspx?X=zVHL1rQ20Vo=
We cannot allow these threats to our personal privacy to continue.
Help me put a stop a stop to the NSA’s unwarranted spying by supporting the LIBERT-E Act.
Sign your name here:
https://services.myngp.com/ngponlineservices/petition.aspx?X=zVHL1rQ20Vo=
Thank you for your support in this critical fight.
John Conyers, Jr.
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AlterNet / By John Pilger
There’s a New Fascism on the Rise, and the NSA Leaks Show Us What It Looks Like
The power of truth-tellers like Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media.
June 21, 2013
—————————————————
In his book, Propaganda, published in 1928, Edward Bernays wrote: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
The American nephew of Sigmund Freud, Bernays invented the term “public relations” as a euphemism for state propaganda. He warned that an enduring threat to the invisible government was the truth-teller and an enlightened public.
In 1971, whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg leaked US government files known as The Pentagon Papers, revealing that the invasion of Vietnam was based on systematic lying. Four years later, Frank Church conducted sensational hearings in the US Senate: one of the last flickers of American democracy. These laid bare the full extent of the invisible government: the domestic spying and subversion and warmongering by intelligence and “security” agencies and the backing they received from big business and the media, both conservative and liberal.
Speaking about the National Security Agency (NSA), Senator Church said: “I know that the capacity that there is to make tyranny in America, and we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law … so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.”
On 11 June, following the revelations in the Guardian by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Daniel Ellsberg wrote that the US had now “that abyss”.
Snowden’s revelation that Washington has used Google, Facebook, Apple and other giants of consumer technology to spy on almost everyone, is further evidence of modern form of fascism – that is the “abyss”. Having nurtured old-fashioned fascists around the world – from Latin America to Africa and Indonesia – the genie has risen at home. Understanding this is as important as understanding the criminal abuse of technology.
Fred Branfman, who exposed the “secret” destruction of tiny Laos by the US Air Force in the 1960s and 70s, provides an answer to those who still wonder how a liberal African-American president, a professor of constitutional law, can command such lawlessness. “Under Mr. Obama,” he wrote for AlterNet, “no president has done more to create the infrastructure for a possible future police state.” Why? Because Obama, like George W Bush, understands that his role is not to indulge those who voted for him but to expand “the most powerful institution in the history of the world, one that has killed, wounded or made homeless well over 20 million human beings, mostly civilians, since 1962.”
In the new American cyber-power, only the revolving doors have changed. The director of Google Ideas, Jared Cohen, was adviser to Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state in the Bush administration who lied that Saddam Hussein could attack the US with nuclear weapons. Cohen and Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt – they met in the ruins of Iraq – have co-authored a book, The New Digital Age, endorsed as visionary by the former CIA director Michael Hayden and the war criminals Henry Kissinger and Tony Blair. The authors make no mention of the Prism spying program, revealed by Edward Snowden, that provides the NSA access to all of us who use Google.
Control and dominance are the two words that make sense of this. These are exercised by political, economic and military designs, of which mass surveillance is an essential part, but also by insinuating propaganda in the public consciousness. This was Edward Bernays’s point. His two most successful PR campaigns were convincing Americans they should go to war in 1917 and persuading women to smoke in public; cigarettes were “torches of freedom” that would hasten women’s liberation.
It is in popular culture that the fraudulent “ideal” of America as morally superior, a “leader of the free world”, has been most effective. Yet, even during Hollywood’s most jingoistic periods there were exceptional films, like those of the exile Stanley Kubrick, and adventurous European films would have US distributors. These days, there is no Kubrick, no Strangelove, and the US market is almost closed to foreign films.
When I showed my own film, The War on Democracy, to a major, liberally-minded US distributor, I was handed a laundry list of changes required, to “ensure the movie is acceptable”. His memorable sop to me was: “OK, maybe we could drop in Sean Penn as narrator. Would that satisfy you?” Lately, Katherine Bigelow’s torture-apologizing Zero Dark Thirtyand Alex Gibney’s We Steal Secrets, a cinematic hatchet job on Julian Assange, were made with generous backing by Universal Studios, whose parent company until recently was General Electric. GE manufactures weapons, components for fighter aircraft and advance surveillance technology. The company also has lucrative interests in “liberated” Iraq.
The power of truth-tellers like Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden is that they dispel a whole mythology carefully constructed by the corporate cinema, the corporate academy and the corporate media. WikiLeaks is especially dangerous because it provides truth-tellers with a means to get the truth out. This was achieved by Collateral Damage, the cockpit video of an US Apache helicopter allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning. The impact of this one video marked Manning and Assange for state vengeance. Here were US airmen murdering journalists and maiming children in a Baghdad street, clearly enjoying it, and describing their atrocity as “nice”. Yet, in one vital sense, they did not get away with it; we are witnesses now, and the rest is up to us.#
John Pilger, renowned investigative journalist and documentary film-maker, is one of only two to have twice won British journalism’s top award; his documentaries have won academy awards in both the UK and the US.
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