Tag Archives: Surveillance
TigerSwan
A SHADOWY INTERNATIONAL mercenary and security firm known as TigerSwan targeted the movement opposed to the Dakota Access Pipeline with military-style counterterrorism measures, collaborating closely with police in at least five states, according to internal documents obtained by The Intercept. The documents provide the first detailed picture of how TigerSwan, which originated as a U.S. military and State Department contractor helping to execute the global war on terror, worked at the behest of its client Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access Pipeline, to respond to the indigenous-led movement that sought to stop the project.
IC vs. Beloved Community
A letter written by the FBI’s William Sullivan which was apparently sent in an effort to encourage Martin Luther King, Jr. to kill himself:
Tube Surveillance (HUM415)
Snowden Interview Part Two
Who is Barrett Brown?
“Those who would come after”
Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow
Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC
One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.
On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.
This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.
For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.
In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.
I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.
Edward Joseph Snowden
Monday 1st July 2013
http://wikileaks.org/Statement-from-Edward-Snowden-in.html?snow
Note also Article 12:
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Remix
from German Nerdcore:
Shepard Fairey’s response (via the LA Times):
“I originally supported Obama vigorously because his proclaimed policy positions aligned with my beliefs. I have never been an unconditional Obama supporter or cheerleader, so I’m pleased to see people subvert my Obama images as a way to critique him and demonstrate the wide gap between some of his promises and actions. Subversion of well known symbols and images for social commentary has long been a technique in my repertoire, so I’m glad to see it in the work of others. I have even subverted my own Obama image in support of Occupy. There are no sacred cows, and I agree that Obama needs to be called out on an NSA program that over-reaches to the extreme and shouldn’t be secret. We live in a remix culture and remix is a valuable form of communication when the re-configuration makes a strong statement.”
Scahill on Mass Surveillance
Note that his more general remarks on the press and its socio-political functions epitomize Enlightenment values.
Timeline
Here is a timeline tracking the development of the exposure of NSA mass surveillance. Currently Edward Snowden has been charged with espionage under a law originally passed in 1917 in order to silence dissent against WWI and destroy political organizations such as the IWW. Given that Snowden was not acting at the behest of another government such chargers are, on their face, ludicrous. But this is what national security states do: they limit as far as possible active and ethically motivated truth-telling about government malfeasance. The issues here are manifold and crucially important. They concern corporate-government collusion, the viability of a free press, privacy rights, and the militarization of the US. Such issues do not fall along a liberal/conservative dividing line. If anything, putative liberals such as Dianne Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi have demonstrated their fealty to invasive government powers under the rubric of an overhyped “war on terror”. Notably, more Americans were killed by toddlers this year than by terrorism.
20 May Edward Snowden, an employee of defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton at the National Security Agency, arrives in Hong Kong from Hawaii. He carries four laptop computers that enable him to gain access to some of the US government’s most highly-classified secrets.
1 June Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill and documentary maker Laura Poitras fly from New York to Hong Kong. They meet Snowden in a Kowloon hotel after he identifies himself with a Rubik’s cube and begin a week of interviews with their source.
5 June The Guardian publishes its first exclusive based on Snowden’s leak, revealing a secret court order showing that the US government had forced the telecoms giant Verizon to hand over the phone records of millions of Americans.
6 June A second story reveals the existence of the previously undisclosed programme Prism, which internal NSA documents claim gives the agency “direct access” to data held by Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants. The tech companies deny that they have set up “back door access” to their systems for the US government.
7 June Barack Obama defends the two programmes, saying they are overseen by the courts and Congress. Insisting that “the right balance” had been struck between security and privacy, he says: “You can’t have 100% security, and also then have 100% privacy and zero inconvenience.”
The Guardian reports that GCHQ has been able to see user communications data from the American internet companies, because it had access to Prism.
8 June Another of Snowden’s leaks reveals the existence of an internal NSA tool – Boundless Informant – that allows it to record and analyse where its data comes from, and raises questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.
9 June Snowden decides to go public. In a video interview he says: “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.”
10 June Snowden checks out of his Hong Kong hotel.
12 June Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post publishes the first interview with Snowden since he revealed his identity. He says he intends to stay in the city until asked to leave and discloses that the NSA has been hacking into Hong Kong and Chinese computers since 2009.
14 June The Home Office instructs airlines not to allow Snowden to board any flights to the UK.
16 June The Guardian reports that GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians’ communications at the 2009 G20 summit.
20 June Top secret documents published by the Guardian show how US judges have signed off on broad orders allowing the NSA to make use of information “inadvertently” collected from domestic US communications without a warrant.
21 June A Guardian exclusive reveals that GCHQ has gained access to the network of cables which carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and is processing vast streams of sensitive personal information it shares with the NSA.
The US files espionage charges against Snowden and requests that Hong Kong detain him for extradition.
23 June Snowden leaves Hong Kong on a flight to Moscow. In a statement, the Hong Kong government says documents submitted by the US did not “fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law” and it had no legal basis to prevent him leaving.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/23/edward-snowden-nsa-files-timeline
analepsis 