Group items tagged

The latest hilarious chapter in the ongoing saga of BBC commentators trying to best Glenn Greenwald in an interview. This time with a stuffed-shirt, pompous type who does an exceedingly poor job of concealing that his is the voice of GCHQ. How many documents do you have? Who else has them? How are they protected? Don't you think that you should give them back to NSA? What makes you think you are qualified to make decisions about what to publish? Haven't you endangered the security of millions of people with your sensational, advocacy journalism. Don't you know that Bob Woodward has severely criticized the way you have handled this?   Greenwald, of course, makes mincemeat of the latest BBC talking head to tackle him without knowing the subject matter and always turns the questions back onto the real story: that government agencies have created an Orwellian surveillance state, that goverrnent can't be trusted to operate in secrecy. Greenwald so thoroughly danced on the fellow's brain that he probably missed that Greenwald had not only demonstrated that the guy was a government stooge but then told him flat out that he was.   When the guy tried the old shouting match trick, Greenwald calmly informed him that if he wanted to filibuster that Greenwald would hang up and let him filibuster to his heart's content but that if he wanted to conduct an interview he would darned well allow Greenwald to answer the questions before changing the subject. All in all, a masterful performance by a U.S. constitutional lawyer, uncowed by the interviewer's highbrow received pronunciation. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation This reminded me of federal District Court Judge Owen Panner's First Law of Trial Conduct: Never try to cross-examine an expert. In my time I've met a very few lawyers capable of doing so but it takes an incredible amount of research and consultation with another expert or five, and the setting of meticulous traps. Glenn Greenwald's latest B

My comments mighty be longer than Diigo allows from the client sidee so I will place them in in a comment following this post. However, do not miss the companion article in The Guardian, at  

Note that when detained, Mr. Miranda was acting in the role of a courier transporting documents on a thumb drive between two of the lead reporters working on the NSA scandal for The Guardian. The police kept the thumb drive and all other electronic devices Mr. Miranda carried, presumably to study their data stores.  Perhaps even more to the point, this was the seizure of leaked NSA documents and reporters' notes about them. I do not know about the UK law on the subject, but the shame of it is that it would be lawful accordng to the U.S. Supreme Court for U.S. Customs officials to do the same thing had Mr. Miranda arrived at an American international airport. Most Americans would be shocked to learn how many of their cherished Constitutional rights disappear at a port or entry or when crossing a border into the U.S. and when traveling within a 100-mile distance from a U.S. border on the U.S. side. But the particular detention of Mr. Miranda and seizure of the reporter's research and NSA document copies was sure from the outset to cause a major media stir. It has also provoked a strong diplomatic protest from Brazil This incident has already provoked not only a strong diplomatic protest from Brazil, but also in the UK, "Labour MP Tom Watson said he was shocked at the news and called for it to be made clear if any ministers were involved in authorising the detention." Also note in The Guardian article that the police were acting under authority of the draconian British Terrorism Act, which does not limit its application to those who are not suspected of being a terrorist. That UK government was willing to endure a public whipping by the media testifies loudly to the desperation of spy agencies - in the U.K., U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and Israel intelligence alliance - to learn what documents Snowden leaked to Glenn Greenwald and the Washington Post so they have a clue about: [i] what hammer blows will hit them in the future so they can get out i

I see that I forgot to paste the link to the companion article in The Guardian. Here 'tis. http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/18/glenn-greenwald-guardian-partner-detained-heathrow

This blog was bookmarked by Marbux a few days ago, and i finally had some time to catch up. It's really extraordinary. The information is an analysis of the ongoing battle between Obama and his illegal NSA spying activities and uber patriot, Edward Snowden; and his media connection Glen Greenwald of the UK Guardian. So far the patriots are winning. So often we hear the facts about an issue; the date, time and places stuff. But rarely do we find insightful analysis where the dots are connected. Naked Capitalism provides exactly that kind of insight. Awesome covergage! Covers Congressman Alan Grayson's unsuccessful attempts to hold a hearing on NSA activities. Grayson has scheduled Greenwald to appear and testify before Congress. excerpt: "Shortly after the vote, Alan Grayson invited members to a session scheduled for the morning of Wednesday, July 31, in which Greenwald would testify via video link. Richard Clarke, the chairman of the Counter-terrorism Security Group and a member of the National Security Group, was also scheduled to participate. Within 24 hours of Grayson announcing the meeting, which got the expected considerable interest from members, Clarke withdrew. He initially claimed to have developed a scheduling conflict, but it became clear he'd gotten the Elizabeth Warren treatment from the Administration, of being offered an undisclosed goodie (not of monetary value, but of participation in an insider process) and he was told that participating in this session would preclude his involvement in the other initiative. But that monkey wrench apparently wasn't sufficient. The prospect of having Greenwald and other whistleblowers develop a direct relationship with members of Congress, who had just barely been kept on the reservation, was too threatening to Obama. Jane Hamsher tells us the denouement: President Obama has historically considered the Hill some lower bardo of hell. One of the major complaints of congressional Democrats has always

Wrong link. Should be http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/obama-starting-to-lose-it-over-snowden.html

Thanks Paul. Not sure how Google News does that. Especially since the link I followed was from your Diigo bookmark! It had nothing to do with Google News! Also, Diigo does not provide a way to edit the URL???? No editing options???? Must be a new crippleware feature.

Glenn Greenwald accused of accepting a bribe from NSA-affiliated PayPal  by respected whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds. 

Lengthy and very interesting biographical article about Glenn Greenwald. My favorite Greenwald quote from the article: "I came to believe if you're smart, skilled, and have the resources, you should use those things to fuck with the powerful."  This is a guy who could have my vote for President. 

Excellent coverage.  Follow the links, they are extraordinary. " Glenn Greenwald revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) is using the so-called "business records" provision of the Patriot Act to secretly collect telephone records of millions of Americans. Although the revelation doesn't surprise privacy advocates, the fact that Greenwald obtained a top secret court order compelling Verizon to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems is the first concrete piece of evidence exposing dragnet domestic surveillance. "

Glenn Greenwald delivers a powerful argument for the hackers of the world to rescue the Internet from NSA and like-minded spy agencies. Plus, "A lot more stories, a lot more documents to come."

The heart of the matter remains to be exposed, the answers to "central questions about *how* surveillance is conducted? We've been inundated with answers to those questions, although I am eager to hear more. But I'm even more interested in learning how we will fix this show-stopper bug in our government. Our fearless leaders in Washington, D.C. have so far taken a giant leap into inaction, with only cosmetic changes gaining traction. Which raises a strong suspicion that there is blackmail afoot on a massive scale, using the fruits of unlawful domestic military surveillance of our elected officials.  

Glenn Greenwald strikes again with hard proof from NSA documents, dissecting procedures used throughout the intelligence establishment from the NSA to the President to Congress, casting severe doubt on what we have been told by those defending the NSA surveillance program. I have highlighted only a few points from this lengthy article. As to Greenwald's discussion of the FISA Court's weaknesses, he omitted one that I believe is incredibly, the lack of an adversarial system with a lawyer opposing what the government asks the Court to authorize. True, search warrants are normally issued in the U.S. with only the government represented in the process. But there is a crucial difference: once someone is charged with a crime, the warrant must be disclosed to the defendant who can ask the court to suppress all evidence unlawfully obtained not only through the warrant but also the fruits of any unlawfully obtained evidence, meaning subsequently discovered evidence that would not have been found absent the unlawfully obtained evidence. The same result can happen if the warrant is found to be invalid for any of a variety of reasons, or the officers exceeded the scope of the search authorized.  So in the normal search warrant process, the participation of an adversary attorney is only delayed; it is not virtually eliminated as it is in the FISA Court. Thus far, only those ordered to disclose records to the NSA have been granted standing to oppose disclosure, not those who have been surveilled. The entire U.S. judicial system is built around the principle of an adversarial process. Judges are expected to be neutral arbiters between two or more sides to a dispute. We do not have an inquisitorial system, as is used for example in some European nations, where the judge is also the investigator. The FISA court is presently composed of 11 federal district court judges who also preside over normal cases in their individual districts. Steeped in the adversarial system and th

Greenwald takes aim at the Washington, D.C. media. 

Glenn Greenwald takes down The Guardian for publishing some seriously fake news. (Let's recall that Greenwald used to work for The Guardian.)

Greenwald asks a very good question about the U.S. government accusing the Chinese government of cyber-espionage and the government's finding that Chinese-manufactured ware pose a security risk. Was that intended to drive people to purchase hardware that comes equipped with NSA backdoors? The flip side, of course, is whether the world should be beating feet to purchase their hardware from the Chinese in order to escape the NSA backdoors. Then there is the question of how those backdoors might have made their way into the hardware devices without the acquiescence of their manufacturers, who surely would have realized that their businesses might take enormous financial hits if knowledge of the backdoors became public? Bribing key staff? The manufacturers named in the Der Spiegel article surely are going to face some hard questions and they may face some very unhappy shareholders if their stock prices take a dive. It would be fun to see a shareholder's derivative class action against one of these companies for having acquiesced to NSA implantation of backdoors, leading to the disclosure and the fall in stock price. Caption the case as Wall Street, Inc. v. National Security Agency, dba Seagate Technology, PLC, then watch the feathers and blood fly.  "Seagate is the company the world trusts to store our lives - our files and photos, our libraries and histories, our science and progress."   Yes, and your stockholders trusted you not to endanger their investment by adding NSA backdoors in your products.