Glenn Greenwald: Growing Backlash Against NSA Spying Shows Why U.S. Wants to Silence Edward Snowden

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/glenn-greenwald-growing-backlash-against-nsa-spying-shows-why-us-wants-silence-edward-snowden

The following is a transcript of a Democracy Now! segment.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: On Wednesday, lawmakers held the second major public congressional hearing into the NSA’s widespread surveillance programs since they were revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. During a hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, representatives on both sides of the aisle expressed deep concern about the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records and other communications. In a stark contrast to last month’s hearing before the House Intelligence Committee, the bipartisan House panel forcefully questioned senior officials from the NSA, FBI, Justice Department and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Democratic Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the committee’s highest-ranking Democrat, noted that collecting telephone metadata is not covered under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act.

REP. JOHN CONYERS: We never at any point during this debate have approved the type of unchecked, sweeping surveillance of United States citizens employed by our government in the name of fighting the war on terrorism. Section 215 authorized the government to obtain certain business records only if it can show to the FISAcourt that the records are relevant to an ongoing national security investigation. Now, what we think we have here is a situation in which if the government cannot provide a clear, public explanation for how its program is consistent with the statute, then it must stop collecting this information immediately. And so, this metadata problem, to me, has gotten quite far out of hand, even given the seriousness of the problems that surround it and created its need.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: During Wednesday’s hearing, the NSA admitted its analysis of phone records and online behavior far exceeded what it had previously disclosed. NSA Deputy Director John Inglis revealed that analysts can perform what is called a "second or third hop query" in its pursuit of terrorists. The word "hop" is a technical term indicating connections between people. So, a three-hop query means the NSA can look at data not only from a suspected terrorist, but also from everyone that suspected terrorist communicated with and then from everyone those people communicated with, and so on.

Republican Congressmember James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, author of the PATRIOT Act, called on the Obama administration to rein in the scope of its surveillance on Americans’ phone records, saying it would otherwise lack enough votes in the House to renew the provision, which is set to expire in 2015. Sensenbrenner said, quote, "You’re going to lose it entirely."

[liberal N proud]

1. You don't think it's because he is in a foreign land telling them about US agencies?

I guess you can twist it any way you want to support a traitor.

[Le Taz Hot]

3. Speaking of "twist it any way you want . . ."

The Irony is strong in this one . . .

[Swagman]

8. a 'foreign land' ...those pesky Ruskies again

reds under the bed and all that.

[liberal N proud]

10. Any country out side the US borders is foreign

Sorry to break that news to you!

[Android3.14]

13. How does it feel

You've been posting over 13 messages every day, on average, 7/365 for the past 9 years, building credibility as a person who believes in the progressive interpretation of the U.S. Constitution with over 44,000 total posts, and and in a single two week period that effort spirals down the drain along with your credibility as you defend Bush era fascism.
How does that affect your job satisfaction?

[liberal N proud]

15. Are you stalking me?

You seem to think you know more about me than you really do and you are tracking my every move.

What you have failed to do is rationalize that one can be against the program but not support the way it was disclosed or the continued efforts to peddle the information around the world.

You either have not take the time to read my post completely so that you can form this opinion or you are just flat out attacking anyone that doesn't support your view.

That is not very progressive it's self. I am perfectly satisifed with my position.

[caseymoz]

25. I don't think one issue can be split from the other.

One stance undercuts the other. If it wasn't going to be disclosed by someone working in the NSA ranks, how else did you expect it to be uncovered? Plus, the NSA and CIA do their work in the very same way Snowden did his disclosure. Through getting moles and spying. Homeland Security suppressed the Occupy Movement in just that way. Yet, Snowden is the unlawful one?

The main people the NSA program was spying on were US citizens, who had a right to know. And we are not a foreign power to our government.

If the government is turning Fascist and has so much power, our options are limited as to how to scale it back. Snowden is like Daniel Ellsberg, who has praised him, and if liberals such as yourself can't embrace Snowden, then we can call the struggle against fascism lost. Everybody will think twice about stopping it if Liberals are going to adopt the Conservative-fascist "rule of law" meme without question and kick Snowden under the bus.

Android3.14's stalking you? All that information is available publicly here with two clicks of a mouse if you've never noticed. If you're that touchy about surveillance, you should really think twice about what Snowden is doing for you.

[liberal N proud]

30. Providing information to foreign entities is espionage

It has nothing to do with the information he claims to have exposed. Things that most alert americans already knew was happening.

[Comrade Grumpy]

38. If "most alert Americans" already knew about the spying, why wouldn't the Russians?

They can read the news just like anybody else.

And if "most alert Americans" already knew about it, how is Snowden a traitor for revealing something everybody already knew?

Which is it?

A. Snowden is a traitor for revealing closely held secrets?

B. Snowden revealed things "most alert Americans" already knew?

[tom_kelly]

14. I certainly support this "traitor"

He's put the issue on the table and it is being discussed as it should be.

[JoePhilly]

2. Isn't this a dupe thread?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10023288562

[Le Taz Hot]

4. No rules against duplicate threads in GD

as can be evidenced by the "Snowden is a Lying Liar Who Lies" threads.

[liberal N proud]

5. Anything to propel the propaganda

[Le Taz Hot]

7. LOL

I believe you're laboring under a misconception. Is there a trend here?

[liberal N proud]

9. Definitely

The propelling a traitor to hero status

[backscatter712]

18. Or to "catapult the propaganda"

to quote your ideological hero...

[liberal N proud]

20. I have no heroes!

I learned very young to have no heroes, they tend to disappoint. So don't try to pin any hero worship on me.

[grahamhgreen]

26. How do you feel about the right to privacy?

[liberal N proud]

29. My problem with Snowden isn't the fact that he exposed the data collection

which by the way, we all knew was happening anyway.

I just think that running off to another country and peddling information makes him a chicken shit traitor.

[grahamhgreen]

31. Cuz he doesn't want to be tortured or held without trial? Sorry, in my view, he's defending our

Constitution.

[liberal N proud]

34. Defending a Constitution that he will probably never enjoy again?

Don't believe that for a minute.

If he really wanted it to be about the Constitution, he would have stood and fought for it!

[ohheckyeah]

36. Hard to do from prison. n/t

[grahamhgreen]

39. In solitary, with no access to the media or even a trial?

I don't think that's wise.

Hero.

[liberal N proud]

40. You have already convicted him yourself

That is why you support him running, like a fugitive.

[grahamhgreen]

41. No, they have people adjudicated not guilt in Gitmo... Yet they are still imprisoned.

[ohheckyeah]

35. If we all knew it was happening

then there should be no problem with him "exposing" it. How can you expose something everyone knows?

[JoePhilly]

6. I would be not surprised if those who distrust

Snowden have picked up on that tactic.

After all, any reference to a reference to a Glenn Greenwald article becomes its own OP here on DU lately.

Even the thread titles are exactly the same.

[burnodo]

11. Sorry. There are no dupe threads in GD

[JoePhilly]

12. And everyday is Groundhog's day.

[morningfog]

17. Thanks, I recced that one too.

[klook]

16. Thank you, Rep. Conyers!

Thank you for keeping the focus on warrantless dragnet surveillance where it belongs.

Although if the PATRIOT Act expires in 2015 it won't break my heart.

[pmorlan1]

19. I Couldn't Agree More

Greenwald: "What you—the only people at this point who are defending the NSA are the hardcore neocons in the Republican Party, people like Lindsey Graham and John McCain and the like, who see national security as the only value that matters, and the really hardcore Obama loyalists and Democrats, who defend anything the Obama administration does and have become the loudest proponents, ironically, of the massive secret surveillance state and of the government’s power to listen in.

So those two groups—Republican neocons, Democratic Party loyalists—are at this point the only real defenders the NSA has left. And I think you’re seeing a real breakdown of partisan and ideological divisions in support of what Mr. Snowden did, of the reporting that we’ve done, and the need for there to be transparency and light shined on what the government has been doing to our privacy completely in the dark."

[WillyT]

22. + 1,000,000,000 - K & R !!!

[OnyxCollie]

23. +1.

I'm putting all the surveillance state sycophants on ignore.

They're concerned more about Obama's image and insuring the Carlyle Group continues to make $2 billion off of PNAC-led (James Woolsey) Booz Allen Hamilton than the Fourth Amendment.

Fuck 'em. They're no better than Republicans.

[grahamhgreen]

27. Maybe you can post the list

[MisterP]

32. interestingly, that's what the MSM means by "the extremes of left and right":

they just mean extreme bi/partisans: objectively they're both hard-right, but within the tiny cleft that is US party politics we have Bible-thumping viciously-Republican Fox and on the "other" hand MSNBC--who gives lip service to evolution and gay and women's rights, but fundamentally defends policies just as RW as Fox (but only the ones the Dems enact)

[Catherina]

21. Video of the truth-telling

[zeemike]

24. Thanks for posting that

interesting and true.

[matthews]

28. Look who we've got living here under the justification of 'political asylum'

Venezuela Still Wants Posada Carriles Extradited from U.S.

Published: 05/26/2011

The president of Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), Luisa Estela Morales, said on Monday that “the Venezuela judiciary maintains its extradition request of Luis Posada Carriles,” which is supported by the different extradition agreements for terrorist acts signed by Venezuela and the United States.

http://venezuela-us.org/2011/05/26/venezuela-still-wants-posada-carriles-extradited-from-u-s-2/

---

LUIS POSADA CARRILES
THE DECLASSIFIED RECORD
CIA and FBI Documents Detail Career in International Terrorism; Connection to U.S.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB153/
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DIED IN 2011 - BUT WAS HAPPY AS A CLAM LIVING HERE UNTIL THEN:

Orlando Bosch, Cuban Exile, Dies at 84
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: April 27, 2011


Orlando Bosch, a Cuban-American pediatrician and militant Cuban exile leader who was accused, and then acquitted, of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban airliner in which 73 people were killed, died Wednesday in Miami. He was 84.

In a C.I.A. report that was later declassified, Mr. Posada was said to have been overheard saying, “We are going to hit a Cuban airplane” and “Orlando has the details.” And in 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a report quoting an informant in Caracas, Venezuela, as saying that one of the men who had planted the bomb called Mr. Bosch afterward with the message, “A bus with 73 dogs went off a cliff and all got killed.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/28/us/28bosch.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

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[ladjf]

33. The "Wizard" is getting nervous. nt

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

37. Looks like this "manufactured, non-story" isn't going away.