The desperate efforts of Congress to change the public view of Edward Snowden appears to be continuing. This week someone in the Senate attempted to change the description of Snowden as a “dissident” to a “traitor” on Wikipedia. The White House and congressional leaders are clearly alarmed that many view Snowden as a whistleblower. The media groups like NPR previously yielded to pressure not to call Snowden a whistleblower and instead use the less flattering term “leaker.” However, that is not enough because it does not seem to have helped.
Snowden’s disclosures have embarrassed President Obama and congressional democrats, including Democratic members, who have been openly misleading the public about warrantless surveillance. While refusing to push for the prosecution of National Intelligence Chief James Clapper for perjury in earlier testimony, they are demanding that Snowden be tried as a traitor. These are politicians who know that optics are everything when spinning a scandal. It is essential for them to have Snowden referenced in the least flattering ways like “traitor” or “criminal” as opposed to “dissident” or “whistleblower.” The same tactics have been used with regard to Julian Assange. Media outlets have yielded to demands that he never be called a journalist or a whistleblower. He is simply defined as “an Assange.”
The attempt by the person in the Senate to change the description of Snowden was blocked by a keen eye of an editor. The person’s IP address was tracked back to the US Senate and the change was attempted one day after Snowden was granted political asylum in Russia.
In the meantime, Sen. Charles Schumer (D., NY) is calling Putin a “bully” for protecting Snowden. Of course, the United States has been threatening nations to cut off humanitarian aid and trade if they grant asylum to Snowden. It is the U.S. government that has been spying on every citizen without warrants and threatening journalists disclosing such abusive programs. It is the U.S. government who put reporters under surveillance and lied to the public. Schumer has nothing to say about that, but Putin is a bully. The funny thing is that Putin is a bully. A well-documented, unabashed bully. However, Democratic Senators have no moral standing to be denouncing others after their shameless role in the erosion civil liberties in this country. Once the party most associated with fighting for privacy and civil liberties, Democrats like Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi are fighting to reinforce a growing security state apparatus in the country. They are joined by Republicans who followed a similar blind loyalty to George Bush in the prior administration. Even Senators like Al Franken are speaking out in favor of these massive surveillance systems and attacking Snowden.
The problem is that the public is not buying it. They are the subjects of these surveillance systems and polls show that the public is now more fearful of their own government’s attack on privacy than they are terrorists. That is why Snowden has to be mocked and vilified and ultimately tried as a criminal. They know that in the eyes of voters either Snowden is a traitor and a villain, then they are.
Source: Daily Mail
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I have a blog based on the same ideas you discuss and would really like
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my visitors would enjoy your work. If you are even remotely interested, feel free to shoot me an e mail.
Movie Sneakers: No More Secrets!
@bigfatmike & Blouise – I think I can safely say how al Kaka REALLY does it without screwing any pooches. I get this from the MSM, Internet, and a recent movie source (Zero Dark Thirty):
When CIA Seal Team 6 force invaded Abbotabad Pakistan to kill Usama Bin Laden, they found a clever system that he was using to keep al Kaka informed of his plans and strategies. It was cleverly LOW-TECH akin to someone using Morse Code today in this digital world.
What UBL had done was open Notepad on his PC and type up instructions then save it to a 3.5″ diskette. He would have one of his runners leave them at dead drops around town(s).
A dead drop is a secret place to leave a secret message or package for a secret agent to secretly return there to pickup.
Sometimes the messages where straight-forward commands to the al Kaka agent. Other times the agent was instructed to go to a Internet Cafe and log on anonymously to upload the encrypted text to a public server of some sort. Maybe Facebook, MySpace, or some common place. Of course the text file might have been encrypted with PGP or something (I dunno).
In their world there is no “conferencing”. They do not need to brainstorm or ask for consensus of opinion. The LEADER is the ultimate unilateral decision maker. Any brainstorming with his trusted #2 or #3 is done face-to-face not on Skype which has now been TOTALLY crippled by us Americans.
Skype was an invention by some guys from Tallin Estonia. It had a very unique way of operating which used a very ingenious unbreakable method of encryption. The Russians hated it so much they tried to terrorize these Estonians into submission (didn’t work though). The Germans tried their damnedest to break it. The Americans where just confounded. So the Americans devised a different work-around. They PURCHASED the company and inserted “back doors” into the end user software. It would have made the Israeli Stuxnet programmers proud ( i.e. a worm Snowden allegedly “revealed”).
SYKPE is so cludgey now it would be insane to use it in a secret agenda. And then there’s GOOGLE VOICE. Great VOIP program but be suspicious of anything that’s free or that InQTel (aka CIA) helped develop.
Just like in the movie SNEAKERS – No More Secrets? I think we are there now…
@anonymously posted – Dude – turn off JavaScript as I am literally flying now! It may explain how some of our posts go to Nirvana… One of the scripts ID’d itself as BlockList.js, now that’s a bit suspicious?
Folks – FYI – DISABLE JAVASCRIPT when visiting jonathanturley.org. All kinds of JS scripts here (only here) slow down and cripple my connection to this website. So just turn it off for now. Have no idea what the scripts are doing as they aren’t needed to just post WordPress messages.
@bigfatmike – al-Kaka conference call is a red-herring IMO. Either it didn’t happen as it it is a “smoke-em-out” maneuver (run it up the flag pole and see who salutes?) or al-Kaka is getting crafty and feeding US disinformation to get us chasing our tails. Either way it’s good press to feed the BS to MSM so al-Kaka believes that we are falling for it. al-Kaka does not do “conference calls” on VOIP or Skype. That would be uber-insane. They do face-to-face meetings in where we can send in the twins (Predator/Reaper?) to break up the party – so to speak… 🙂
Mr. Lake’s name is familiar to me. I just can’t place it right now…
Anthony Lake is a long time US diplomat and sometime adviser to presidents. ’bout time for him to retire if he has not already.
Don’t know if young, journalist Lake is any relation or not.
@bigfatmike – I thought I’d heard of him before…
Found a problem with JAVASCRIPT disabled. You have to enable it to watch YouTube or log into Yahoo Mail (et al).
You might try noscript an add-on for Firefox and maybe some other browsers.
You can configure it and prevent scripts from running. During use a bar pops up so you can enable various scripts to get the performance you want on the web site you are visiting.
Worthwhile product, but it is no panacea. Sometimes you just cant see much on web pages without running most or all the scripts.
Does anyone else notice that the handling of email has changed?
In the past I never received my comments as email, I actually had to go to the web page if I wanted to read my comment as it appeared at the site.
But this morning when I make a comment, a few minutes late I get an email and can read my comment all over again – deja vu.
Either way is a reasonable configuration of the web site and email system. But someone must be working on the machinery – unless this is one of those mysterious little changes in configuration like the ones that occasionally occur on my machine.
Interdepartmental Information Sharing is NOT “leaking”. The Alphabet Soup can LEGALLY share all sorts of citizen-surveillance-data EXCEPT medical records and IRS tax data. They need special approval for that LEGALLY (i.e. federal magistrate, POTUS EO, or a national emergency). But that’s really easy to get for them (if not ILLEGALLY hacking it). Being a HERO is usually associated with SAVING a life (human or animal). Exactly how has Snowden done that?
Lotsa’ folks are talking about CLAPPER’s lies to Congress. Does anybody feel the same angst over CIA’s Ollie North’s ADMITTED lies to Congress during The Iran Contra hearings? I mean now he’s a “journalist”. You see why it’s hard to call Julian Assange a “journalist”?
In the same vein if Ollie felt he was protecting US NATSEC (but he actually wasn’t) then extend the same courtesy to Clapper… If you don’t have a need to know or can’t handle the truth STFU and enjoy your ostensible freedoms. Or else move to Russia like Snowden and see how “freedoms” are enjoyed there today. Snowden will soon find out about Putin’s Twilight Zone-esque* freedoms are there now.
*or Kafka-esque
@Otteray Scribe – They tried to hire Kevin David Mitnick while under supervised release but he was like an eel. He got away once WHILE under guberment’ supervision. He’s out now for 13 years now. Runs a consultancy at http://mitnicksecurity.com. He’s presently keeping Ecuador’s presidential elections secure.
Mitnick recently said he views Assange as blameless for the leaks.
“Julian Assange was just the receiver of the information, the one who published it. I don’t look at him as criminally culpable…. the whole thing speaks very badly about the US military security,…one of the biggest security wake-up calls of the century.”
This IP address comes back to the US Senate (allegedly) but it’s physical location is Stafford VA some 38 miles south of Washington DC. It is near Qauntico. What OTHER govt agencies there? FBI? US Marines? etc.
The R-E-A-L US Senate Network Ops Center is at 2 MASSACHUSETTS AVENUE, N.E. 6TH FLOOR WASHINGTON DC. They can tell you who this IP address was assigned to that day (to a bonafide reporter or LEO). Their phone number is 202-224-4186 and email is saanoc@saa.senate.gov. But Will the real IP Address please stand up?
However, calling a SPADE a SPADE is not a problem for me. Calling a traitor or leaker in Snowden’s case is ACCURATE in my opinion. He’s certainly not a PATRIOT nor a HERO. He’s an EX-Patriot now. A hero saves lives. Snowden has not done that and may have or will jeopardized some.
Since when is exposing a totally LEGAL monitoring of POIs (persons of interest) ( or targeted) with a SIGINT/ELINT vacuum cleaner considered a “revelation”? Haven’t you heard of ECHELON? What about FBI’s CARNIVORE? All of these systems target BAD GUYS not EVERY US Citizen!
The system broke down once before for getting over-burdened according to ex-NSA Dir Hayden. How in hell can it handle 330,000,000+ concurrent phone calls, emails, and Internet surfing? It doesn’t. It’s aimed at TARGETS or POIs. And it’s not warrant-less. Ever heard of FISA warrants?
Don’t want to be a POI? Stop talking to Ayman al-Zawahiri or reading his Inspire magazine website. CASE CLOSED! 🙂
From the Department of What Could Possibly Go Wrong, we get this headline: US Government War On Hackers Backfires: Now Top Hackers Won’t Work With US Government
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20130805/02354124062/us-government-war-hackers-backfires-now-hackers-wont-work-us-government.shtml
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/03/net-us-usa-security-hacking-ethics-idUSBRE9720A020130803
One more point occurs to me regarding Lake’s comments and his claim that it is important not discuss the method Al Qaeda was using to communicate.
Al Qaeda knows how they communicated with each other.
Now they know we intercepted that call.
How doe refusing to disclose the method of communication intercepted protect our methods so that Al Qaeda dos not suspect that we are listening on their secure communications?
Tonight Erin Bernett CNN had a journalist, Eli Lake I think, as a guest. He had a really big scoop regarding the terrorism alert that has been so much in the news. There were only about three points to the big scoop on CNN. The actual print reports have a little more detail and you can read about it here:
http://outfront.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/07/report-intercepted-al-qaeda-conference-call-prompted-u-s-embassy-closures/>
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/07/al-qaeda-conference-call-intercepted-by-u-s-officials-sparked-alerts.html>
(1) The terrorism alert is based on some kind of conference call among several Al Qaida senior leaders. Bernett asked if the call was on cell phones or maybe Skipe. The Lake, whom Bernett assures us is often right, said he couldn’t really tell us much about how the conference took place because his source did not want that information leaked. But we were left with the clear impression it involved modern electronic communications – like the internet or voip. There was a sentence or two of discussion regarding the changing methods of communication used since Osama was running the show.
(2) They made the point that the leak regarding international spying has absolutely nothing to do with what the NSA is doing in this country.
(3) They mentioned more than once that the leak was completely unauthorized. Really, really important to understand this leak is not authorized.
My comments:
(1) most anyone reading these remarks could probably write with more detail and probably as much accuracy regarding communications among Al Qaeda leaders.
(2) I agree the leak has nothing to do with NSA spying on US citizens in this country. I am just not convinced that the fact that international spying has nothing to do with domestic spying on US citizens by NSA is the intended take away for US citizens.
(3) I will believe this leak was unauthorized when DOJ subpoenas Lake’s and Rogin’s notes and phone records.
Now, according to Hayden, many citizens are terrorists:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/06/nsa-director-cyber-terrorism-snowden
”
The former director of the National Security Agency and the CIA speculated on Tuesday that hackers and transparency groups were likely to respond with cyber-terror attacks if the United States government apprehends whistleblower Edward Snowden.
“If and when our government grabs Edward Snowden, and brings him back here to the United States for trial, what does this group do?” said retired air force general Michael Hayden, who from 1999 to 2009 ran the NSA and then the CIA, referring to “nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years”.
“They may want to come after the US government, but frankly, you know, the dot-mil stuff is about the hardest target in the United States,” Hayden said, using a shorthand for US military networks. “So if they can’t create great harm to dot-mil, who are they going after? Who for them are the World Trade Centers? The World Trade Centers, as they were for al-Qaida.”
Hayden provided his speculation during a speech on cybersecurity to a Washington group, the Bipartisan Policy Center, in which he confessed to being deliberately provocative.
Under Hayden, the NSA began to collect, among other things, the phone records and internet data of Americans without warrants after 9/11, a drastic departure from its traditional mission of collecting foreign intelligence. A variety of technically sophisticated collection and analysis programs, codenamed Stellar Wind, were the genesis of several of the NSA efforts that Snowden disclosed to the Guardian and the Washington Post.
Hayden said that the loose coalition of hacker groups and activists were “less capable” of inflicting actual harm on either US networks or physical infrastructure, but they grow technologically more sophisticated. Echoing years of rhetoric that has described terrorists, Hayden added that their “demands may be unsatisfiable”.
Snowden recently received temporary asylum from Russia, allowing the former NSA contractor to leave the Sheremetyevo airport on Thursday, an act of defiance by Moscow toward the Obama administration.
Asked what he expected a potential cyber-terrorist attack related to Snowden to look like, Hayden clarified that he was being “entirely speculative, not predictive”.
“I’m just trying to illustrate that you’ve got a group of people out there who make demands, whose demands may not be satisfiable, may not be rational, from other points of view, may not be the kinds of things that government can accommodate,” Hayden said.
“But certainly Mr Snowden has created quite a stir among those folks who are very committed to transparency and global transparency and the global web, kind of ungoverned and free. And I don’t know that there’s a logic between trying to [punish] America or American institutions for his arrest, but I hold out the possibility. I can sit here and imagine circumstances and scenarios, but they’re nothing more than imaginative.”
When Clinton was president, conservative talk radio helped me discover that I was a Liberal.
Then when Bush was president, I discovered that I was an Anti-War Socialist.
Now that Obama is president, his administration has turned me into some sort of Anarchist.
Seeing that the NSA is leaking telephone conversations to the DEA, Snowden’s a hero
Diane Feinstein is from the Bay area. She is a Pig without the atLinBay. Why do these Democrats go South on us when they live so far West that all it gets them is a weekend in Mexico? There is a photo of Diane Feinstein under the sink in the marina kitchen here so that the cockroaches will stay away.
WordPress took the Bay off my name. Bay is the Pig Latin part. Onk.
Yeah and Jack Mehoff is running for Congress in New York as a RepubliCon.
We dogs seem to get more gossip than you humanoids. Although we get most of the gossip from humans. Diane Feinstein is a LEAKER. That is with all caps. Word has it that the 80 year old troll wears a diaper because she cannot control the leaks.
Chucky Boy Schumer was gay in college.
Eric Clapper lied to the Priest at Communion.
Germany is the “enemy” referred to in the Sealed Affidavit attached to the Complaint against Snowden the Leaker in the federal district court in Virginia.
The “Secrets” which Snowden is alleged to have revealed to the German enemy state are so secret that they are not alleged in the Complaint or the Sealed Affidavit attached to the Complaint. So these are secret secrets.
Many Democrats are not voting in the next Presidential election. Rand Paul is a favorite in Vegas to win as a renegade RepubliCon. Hilary will come in third as the Demogogue candidate behind Ron Paul the Third Party Candidate. Ayn Rand would run but she is deceased.
This just in: Snowden is a Whistleblower.