Category: Legislation


 

 

 

Saudi women activists get jail time for helping starving mother locked in home

Published time: June 19, 2013 01:56

AFP Photo / Fayez Nureldine

AFP Photo / Fayez Nureldine

 

 

A Saudi court sentenced two women to ten months in prison, along with a two-year travel ban, after they tried to help a Canadian woman who, with her three children, was denied adequate food and water and was subjected to violence by her Saudi husband.

 

On June 6 2011, the two human rights workers Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Oyouni received a text message from Nathalie Morin, the Canadian woman, saying that her husband had locked the whole family in the house and left for a week-long visit to see relatives in another town while her supplies of food and water were running out, according to Human Rights Watch.

“I cannot help myself and I have no rights in Saudi Arabia. My children are hungry and I cannot do anything to feed them. I’m fighting to get freedom, justice and fairness for my family including myself,” Morin wrote on her blog.

The two bought food and came to Morin’s house, where police were already waiting for them. The women were brought to Damman station for questioning, where police told al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni they believed they were trying to smuggle Morin and her three children to Canada, Human Rights Center reports.

After the women signed a statement pledging to cease all involvement with the case, the police released them. However, more than a year later in July 2012, authorities called in al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni for questioning, after which the government launched a case against them.

The trial continued for another year, and last Saturday presiding judge Fahad al-Gda’a issued a ruling sentencing the two human rights workers to ten months in prison, imposing an additional two-year travel ban on top of the jail time. The charges were “inciting a woman to flee with her children” and “attempting to turn a woman against her husband.” The women were acquitted of charges that they had attempted to smuggle the wife and her three children to the Canadian Embassy in Riyadh.

Al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni plan to challenge the ruling in the Court of Appeals.

The same day the two women issued a statement that when the case was launched, they predicted that the government was trying to punish them for their women’s rights activism in recent years. 

 

Read More  Here

 

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Saudi Arabia: Activists Convicted For Answering Call For Help, Says HRW

June 18, 2013

By Eurasia Review

A Saudi court convicted two Saudi women’s rights activists on June 15, 2013, for trying to help a woman flee the country. Wajeha al-Huwaider and Fawzia al-Oyouni were each sentenced to 10 months in prison and two-year travel bans.

Al-Huwaider, a member of the Human Rights Watch Middle East advisory committee, told Human Rights Watch that she believes authorities pursued this case to punish her for unrelated women’s rights activism over the last 10 years. Al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni said they intend to appeal their convictions.

“Saudi authorities are using the courts to send a message that they won’t tolerate any attempt to alleviate the dismal status of women’s rights in the kingdom,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Saudi authorities should immediately drop this case and stop harassing Saudi women who call for reform.”

Al-Huwaider told Human Rights Watch that her and al-Oyouni’s involvement with the Canadian woman began in 2009, when she received messages from Johanne Durocher, the woman’s mother, who is in Canada, pleading for activists to help her daughter, Natalie Morin. Morin is married to a Saudi citizen, Sa’eed al-Shahrani, and lives with him and their three children in the Eastern Province city of Dammam.

Durocher told them that al-Shahrani, a former police officer, was abusing Morin by locking her in their house and denying her adequate food and water. Durocher had helped draw international media attention to the case in 2009 by lobbying Canadian government officials to intervene and organizing protests over the case in Canada.

Al-Huwaider said that she and al-Oyouni organized several trips by other activists to deliver food and supplies to the woman, but that they did not attempt to visit Morin until the afternoon of June 6, 2011, when they received distressed messages from Morin herself. The messages said that Morin’s husband had left for a week-long visit to see relatives in another town and that her supplies of food and water were running out. When al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni approached the house to offer assistance they were confronted by police who were apparently waiting for them to arrive. The officers immediately arrested them and took them to a Damman police station for questioning.

The police told al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni that they believed they had gone to Morin’s home to help her and her three children, all Canadian citizens, to escape to Canada.

Police released al-Huwaider and al-Oyouni after midnight on June 7, after they signed a statement pledging to cease all involvement with the case and to allow the government-affiliated National Human Rights Commission and Canadian Embassy to investigate. The Damman branch of the National Commission on Human Rights declined to intervene, stating that there was insufficient evidence to conclude that al-Shahrani was mistreating Morin and their children. Canadian government officials have maintained since 2009 that this case is a private matter that must be resolved by Saudi authorities.

 

Read More Here

 

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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH

 

 

Leading Rights Group Shuttered, Harsh Sentences on Politically-Motivated Charges

 

(Beirut) – The harsh sentences against leading Saudi rights advocates and an order to shutter a civil and political rights group are major setbacks for rights in Saudi Arabia. Saudi authorities should release and drop charges against the two leading human rights activists sentenced to long prison terms after a Specialized Criminal Court convicted them on politically-motivated charges on Saturday.

The activists, Mohammed al-Qahtani and Abdulla al-Hamid, are co-founders of the Saudi Civil and Political Rights Association (ACPRA), a rights organization that has called for greater civil rights in the kingdom. They faced charges including “destabilizing security by calling for protests,” “spreading false information to outside sources,” “undermining national unity,” and “setting up an illegal human rights organization.” The two activists have been sentenced solely for their peaceful advocacy of reform and criticism of human rights violations.

“This is simply an outrageous case, which shows the extremes Saudi authorities are prepared to go to silence moderate advocates of reform and greater respect for human rights”, said Eric Goldstein, Deputy Director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch. “The Saudi authorities should immediately release al-Qatani and al-Hamid, drop the charges against them, and end political trials before the Specialized Criminal Court.”

The Specialized Criminal Court began trying the two activists in June 2012. At first, their trials were separate and they were conducted behind closed doors, like most other trials before the Specialized Criminal Court. The judge, however, decided to merge the two cases after their first sessions. The trial continued on camera until the fifth and last session, when the judge finally opened the proceedings and allowed the presence of media, lawyers, and rights activists, who attended in the presence of members of the security forces.

At the final session on Saturday, according to Sabq newspaper, the judge read through the charges at length and likened the activists’ beliefs to those of terrorists, claiming that “calling for a change of the name of the kingdom cannot possibly be reformist.” The newspaper also reported that presiding judge Hammad al-Omar told al-Hamid, after he remarked on the lack of independence of the court, not to question the validity of the sentences, warning him that “judges may add what crimes they deem necessary to the charge list.”

 

 

Read More   Here

 

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VOICE OF AMERICA

Members of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions of Turkey (DISK) take part in a protest in central Ankara, June 17, 2013.

Members of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions of Turkey (DISK) take part in a protest in central Ankara, June 17, 2013.

VOA News

The Turkish government says it may use the army to help stop anti-government protests after nearly three weeks of violent demonstrations in several cities across the country.

People stand in a silent protest in Taksim Square, Istanbul, June 18, 2013.

 

Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said Monday that if police power is not enough, “elements of the Turkish Armed Forces” will assist to maintain order.

His comments came as two major Turkish trade unions held a nationwide strike against the police crackdown on the Gezi Park demonstrators. The unions, which together represent hundreds of thousands of workers, called for police violence to “end immediately.”

 

Anti-government protesters gather on the Galata bridge in Istanbul, June 16, 2013.

 

Most of the strikes were peaceful, but riot police faced off briefly Monday with about 1,000 trade union workers in the capital, Ankara. More marches took place in other cities, despite government warnings they would not be tolerated.

 

Turkish riot police spray water cannon at demonstrators in Kizilay Square in Ankara, Turkey, June 16, 2013.

 

 

Read More and See  Additional Photos  Here

 

 

VOICE OF AMERICA   

 Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen following a security handover ceremony at a military academy outside Kabul, Afghanistan, June 18, 2013.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai speaks during a joint news conference with NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen following a security handover ceremony at a military academy outside Kabul, Afghanistan, June 18, 2013. Sharon Behn

Afghan President Hamid Karzai suddenly announced Wednesday that his government is pulling out of the bilateral talks with the United States. The aim of those talks is to lay out how many U.S. troops will remain in the country after 2014, and what role they will play in Afghanistan.

In a statement, Afghanistan’s National Security Council said the talks were suspended due to the “contradiction between acts and statements” made by the United States regarding the peace process.

Analyst Kate Clark of the Afghanistan Analysts Network says Karzai’s actions likely reflect the

 

Read More Here

glyphosate

Tuesday, June 18, 2013
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com

(NaturalNews) This is an urgent action alert from Natural News and the Health Ranger. Public comments are due by July 1 to object to new EPA regulations which are already in place, allowing glyphosate contamination of food crops, edible oils and waterways at concentrations which are thousands of times higher than the amount needed to cause cancer.

The new regulation, which can be viewed HERE, sets the following regulations regarding glyphosate residues on crops:

• It allows forage and hay teff to contain up to 100 ppm glyphosate (that’s over one million times the concentration needed to cause cancer according to a recent study). See PubMed source here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23756170

• Allows oilseed crops (flax oil, canola oil, soybean oil, olive oil, etc.) to contain up to 40 ppm glyphosate (which is over 100,000 times the concentration needed to cause cancer)

• RAISES the allowable glyphosate contamination level of root crops (such as potatoes) from 200 ppb to 6000 ppb.

• Allows glyphosate contamination of fruits at anywhere from 200 ppb to 500 ppb.

Importantly, the EPA says no one even commented on all this when it was initially filed! “There were no comments received in response to the notice of filing.” Since then, a total of just 396 people have posted a public comment at the time of this story being published.

You can post your comments with the EPA at this page:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-HQ-OPP-2012-0132-00…

EPA declares glyphosate to be perfectly safe

Borrowing a page right out of Monsanto’s quack science playbook, the EPA says:

A chronic feeding/carcinogenicity study in rats found no systemic effects in any of the parameters examined (body weight, food consumption, clinical signs, mortality, clinical pathology, organ weights, and histopathology).

The EPA even offers this utterly absurd, false statement as justification for its allowable contamination levels of glyphosate: “EPA has concluded that glyphosate does not pose a cancer risk to humans. Therefore, a dietary exposure assessment for the purpose of assessing cancer risk is unnecessary.” (SOURCE)

Huh? Do you understand this? The EPA is saying glyphosate is so incredibly safe that it is not even necessary to study its possible carcinogenic effects in humans. No science needed! The EPA simply waves a magic (Monsanto) wand and says, “Shazam! Glyphosate is safe enough to EAT!”

The EPA, of course, is sadly mistaken. It is apparently not aware of two crucial facts to consider in all this:

1) The Seralini study released last year showed an alarming increase in cancer tumors in rats that were fed glyphosate in their drinking water.

2) Monsanto has already been found guilty of committing scientific fraud by altering the results of “scientific” studies in order to trick regulators.

The “scientific” data proving glyphosate to be “safe” has been fabricated! And the EPA is basing its conclusions on fabricated, corporate-quackified junk science that has one purpose: trick regulators into thinking the deadly poison is safe, thereby vastly increasing the usage of the chemical by farmers.

ACTION ITEM: Post your comments to protest the EPA’s glyphosate poisoning of the American people

It is crucial that We the People let the EPA know that raising the allowable levels of glyphosate in foods is unacceptable. This is especially true given the recent studies linking glyphosate to breast cancer, a disease that is ravaging women across America and has reached epidemic levels.

Post your comments in the following ways:

METHOD #1 – POSTING ONLINE

1) Go to this page:

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=EPA-HQ-OPP-2012-0132-00…

2) Click the “Comment Now!” button on the top right.

3) Enter your information and comment, then click “Submit.” Be sure to include reasons WHY you believe the EPA should not allow such high levels of glyphosate in foods, edible oils and animal feed. You can quote pages like GMOevidence.com:

http://gmoevidence.com/location/roundup-evidence/

You can also quote this excellent article from GM Watch which explains why the corporate-controlled media (and industry) so viciously attacked the Seralini rat study, trying to discredit it:

http://gmwatch.org/latest-listing/51-2012/14514

METHOD #2 – MAIL IT IN

1) Write your letter of protest. To ensure proper receipt by EPA, you must identify docket ID number EPA-HQ-OPP-2012-0132 on the first page of your letter.

2) Mail it to: (all mail must be received by July 1st)
OPP Docket
Environmental Protection Agency Docket Center (EPA/DC), (28221T)
1200 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.
Washington, DC 20460–0001

METHOD #3 – EMAIL ANDREW ERTMAN

Please use Method #1 or #2 if you want your comments to actually count. But if you also wish to email or phone the EPA person from the Office of Pesticide Programs, you may contact:

Andrew Ertman, Registration Division, Office of Pesticide Programs, Environmental Protection Agency
Telephone number: (703) 308-9367
Email address: ertman.andrew@epa.gov

Note: If you choose to email Andrew Ertman, please be polite in your email. Do NOT send stupid things like death threats or emails full of profanity. Make your case clearly and politely, and ask him to review the full breadth of the scientific evidence now available instead of just the selected subset Monsanto wants EPA scientists to be aware of.

Over 200 million pounds of glyphosate poison is a chemical attack on America

The following map, compiled by the USDA, shows the use of glyphosate across America:

This is also a map of the mass poisoning of America with a chemical that has been scientifically linked to an increased risk of cancer.

Compare it to this map showing the rates of cancer by state:

By the way, Monsanto has already been caught committing scientific fraud in attempting to fake safety studies on glyphosate. The company also engaged in wildly false advertising, claiming RoundUp was “safer than table salt” (implying that it’s safe to eat in high doses).

Now the EPA is about to allow glyphosate in animal feed at concentrations that are one million times the concentration needed to cause cancer.

At the same time, the EPA continues to allow glyphosate at 700 ppb in public drinking water, too.

We are all being mass poisoned by this deadly chemical, and the EPA is actively conspiring with the chemical industry to downplay the real dangers of glyphosate, pretending it’s safe enough to eat in quantities that are orders of magnitude larger than should be allowed.

Allowing 100 ppm of glyphosate in animal feed is equivalent to allowing 1000 ppm of lead in children’s candy. It’s a deadly poison that inundates our food supply at such high concentrations that it’s guaranteed to cause deadly diseases in huge numbers of people.

EPA document is a blueprint for the mass euthanasia of Americans

This EPA regulation document is a blueprint for billions of dollars in profits for the cancer industry. It’s also a death sentence for America’s soils, farmers and food consumers. And it is insane policies like this that will ultimately lead to the downfall and collapse of modern human civilization… a civilization so stupid that it poisons its own food, water, soils and even its own children… all to make a quarterly profit on the selling of a deadly poison.

Humanity is being mass-euthanized by GMOs and glyphosate, and the EPA is standing by and openly allowing it to happen. This is an agency that did tremendous good back in the 1970′s but has since become nothing more than a corporate sellout and a purveyor of poison.

The EPA wants you to eat glyphosate. There’s no harm, they say. Lick it up!

What concentration of glyphosate should be allowed in foods? No more than 10 ppt

There is no safe level of exposure to glyphosate. The chemical has now been shown to promote cancer cell proliferation at ppt concentrations. This demands that glyphosate be eliminated from being sold in the USA — BANNED for life.

Remember: Glyphosate is the new DDT. But it’s much worse than DDT because its toxic effects kick in at far lower concentrations. If a “safe” level of glyphosate exposure were based on legitimate scientific studies that weren’t faked by Monsanto, it would have to be set no higher than 10 ppt.

In other words, it would need to be virtually undetectable even by the most precise laboratory equipment available today.

Glyphosate has no place in a civilized nation. I call it “Satan’s Molecule” because it is a destroyer of life and a destroyer of worlds.

No wonder it was invented by a scientist working for — guess who? — MonSatan.

Take action today. Comments are due by July 1, and if the EPA doesn’t hear from the People, it’s going to do whatever Monsanto tells it to do. Heck, it will probably do that anyway, but at least if you post a comment, when all of us die from cancer you will know that you did not willfully participate in the mass murder of Americans.

Edward Snowden honored to be called a ‘traitor’ by Dick Cheney

Snowden writes Photo: flickr

FLORIDA, June 18, 2013 — Allegations that renegade government contractor Edward Snowden, who recently leaked a plethora of National Security Agency documents addressing a top-secret and allegedly unconstitutional data mining program known as PRISM, is traitorous have reached new heights.

In a Fox News Sunday appearance, former Vice President Dick Cheney referred to Snowden as a “traitor.” Cheney suspects that the now-world famous whistleblower has less than noble intentions because “he went to China. That’s not a place where you would ordinarily want to go if you are interested in freedom, liberty and so forth. It raises questions whether or not he had that kind of connection before he did this.”


SEE RELATED: Edward Snowden: American hero or supervillain?


Snowden spared little time in issuing a rebuttal.

During a question-and-answer session facilitated by The Guardian, the British newspaper which originally broke the PRISM story, Snowden wrote that “it’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead.”

Snowden’s most quoted line followed immediately after: “Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.”

Prior to addressing Cheney’s statements, Snowden remarked that “(j)ournalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source?”

Read More  Here

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WMD LIES – Bush Cheney Rumsfeld – THE ULTIMATE CLIP (Edited)

bobcrachetkatienanna bobcrachetkatienanna·

Uploaded on Jul 31, 2008

Who buys this stuff? 99% of America doesn’t pay attention to the news enough to know our politicians are akin to actors and actresses. Only they’re not very good at it. They just depend on you not paying attention. So pay attention…

***********************************************************************************************

911 Lies

BBC5tv BBC5tv

Uploaded on Dec 6, 2007

BBC5.tv presents 911 Lies, a comprehensive collage of the lies permeated by the neo-con fascists.

Check out:


http://BBC5.tv/


http://911truthbristol.com/


http://www.myspace.com/bbc5tv


http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid…

***********************************************************************************************

 

 

 

Series: Glenn Greenwald on security and liberty

 

Edward Snowden: NSA whistleblower answers reader questions

The whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history answered your questions about the NSA surveillance revelations

Edward Snowden Hong Kong
The NSA leaker, Edward Snowden, pictured in a Hong Kong hotel. Photograph: The Guardian

9.00am ET

Edward Snowden Q&A

It is the interview the world’s media organisations have been chasing for more than a week, but instead Edward Snowden is giving Guardian readers the exclusive.

The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian’s NSA files coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on why he revealed the NSA’s top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask him anything.

Snowden, who has fled the US, told the Guardian he “does not expect to see home again”, but where he’ll end up has yet to be determined.

He will be online today from 11am ET/4pm BST today. An important caveat: the live chat is subject to Snowden’s security concerns and also his access to a secure internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be patient.

To participate, post your question below and recommend your favorites. As he makes his way through the thread, we’ll embed his replies as posts in the live blog. You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSnowden.

We expect the site to experience high demand so we’ll re-publish the Q&A in full after the live chat has finished.

Updated at 10.03am ET

11.07am ET

Question:

User avatar for GlennGreenwald Guardian staff

Let’s begin with these:

1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities?

2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?

Answer:

1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That’s not justice, and it would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than in it.

Second, let’s be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn’t declared war on the countries – the majority of them are our allies – but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we’re not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the “consent of the governed” is meaningless.

2) All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

11.13am ET

Question:

User avatar for ewenmacaskill Guardian staff

I should have asked you this when I saw you but never got round to it……..Why did you just not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred country for asylum?

Answer:

Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration.

11.17am ET

Question:

You have said HERE that you admire both Ellsberg and Manning, but have argued that there is one important distinction between yourself and the army private…

“I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest,” he said. “There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn’t turn over, because harming people isn’t my goal. Transparency is.”

Are you suggesting that Manning indiscriminately dumped secrets into the hands of Wikileaks and that he intended to harm people?

Answer:

No, I’m not. Wikileaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the argument that “documents were dumped” to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a valid assertion here.

11.20am ET

Question:

Did you lie about your salary? What is the issue there? Why did you tell Glenn Greenwald that your salary was $200,000 a year, when it was only $122,000 (according to the firm that fired you.)

Answer:

I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my “career high” salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I’ve been paid.

11.23am ET

Question:

Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?

Answer:

Obama’s campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.

11.27am ET

Question:

1) Define in as much detail as you can what “direct access” means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

Answer:

1) More detail on how direct NSA’s accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on – it’s all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

Updated at 11.41am ET

11.40am ET

1) Define in as much detail as you can what “direct access” means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

2) NSA likes to use “domestic” as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as “incidental” collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of “warranted” intercept, it’s important to understand the intelligence community doesn’t always deal with what you would consider a “real” warrant like a Police department would have to, the “warrant” is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.

Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say “someone at NSA still has the content of your communications” – what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record of it, or the actual content?

Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time – and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.

11.41am ET

Question:

What are your thoughts on Google’s and Facebook’s denials? Do you think that they’re honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they’re compelled to lie?

Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you’re presented with a secret order that you’re forbidding to reveal the existence of, what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (without revealing the order)?

Answer:

Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we’re finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception.

They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?

11.55am ET

Question:

Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.

Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:

I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a personal email.

Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?

Answer:

Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again, it’s important to understand that policy protection is no protection – policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection – a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the “widest allowable aperture,” and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn’t stop being protected communications just because of the IP they’re tagged with.

More fundamentally, the “US Persons” protection in general is a distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not become okay simply because it’s only victimizing 95% of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal.”

12.04pm ET

Question:

User avatar for Spencer Ackerman Guardian staff

Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum. Have/will you?

Answer:

This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk “RED CHINA!” reaction to anything involving HK or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn’t I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

12.10pm ET     

Question:

Kimberly Dozier Kimberly Dozier @KimberlyDozier

US officials say terrorists already altering TTPs because of your leaks, & calling you traitor. Respond?
http://www.
guardiannews.com 

Answer:

US officials say this every time there’s a public discussion that could limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.

Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we’ve been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

Further, it’s important to bear in mind I’m being called a traitor by men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high school.

Updated at 12.11pm ET

12.12pm ET

Question:

Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance? Id my data protected by standard encryption?

Answer:

Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.

Question:

Jacob Appelbaum Jacob Appelbaum @ioerror

Do you believe that the treatment of Binney, Drake and others influenced your path? Do you feel the “system works” so to speak?

Answer:

Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they’ll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.

This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the dangerous “State Secrets” privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all Presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are excused from scrutiny – they should be setting the example of transparency.

12.28pm ET

Question:

What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?

What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable to listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined court order from FISC?

Answer:

This country is worth dying for.

12.34pm ET

Question:

My question: given the enormity of what you are facing now in terms of repercussions, can you describe the exact moment when you knew you absolutely were going to do this, no matter the fallout, and what it now feels like to be living in a post-revelation world? Or was it a series of moments that culminated in action? I think it might help other people contemplating becoming whistleblowers if they knew what the ah-ha moment was like. Again, thanks for your courage and heroism.

Answer:

I imagine everyone’s experience is different, but for me, there was no single moment. It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress – and therefore the American people – and the realization that that Congress, specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly supported the lies that compelled me to act. Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper – the Director of National Intelligence – baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.

12.37pm ET

Follow-up from the Guardian’s Spencer Ackerman:

Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn’t answer clearly – can you give a flat no?

Answer:

No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.

12.41pm ET

Question:

So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public debate? – tikkamasala

Answer:

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

12.43pm ET

Final question from Glenn Greenwald:

Anything else you’d like to add?

Answer:

Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance.

 

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Snowden defends leaks, denies spying

AP

Banner achievement: A bus drives past a banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Banner achievement: A bus drives past a banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee and NSA contractor who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, in Hong Kong on Tuesday. | AP

A woman holds a placard near the U.S. consulate in Hon Kong during a protest march in support of Edward Snowden.
A woman holds a placard near the U.S. consulate in Hong Kong during a protest march in support of Edward Snowden. | AFP-JIJI PHOTO

Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency leaker, defended his disclosure of top-secret U.S. spying programs in an online chat Monday with The Guardian newspaper and attacked U.S. officials for calling him a traitor.

“The U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me,” he said. He added the government “immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home” by labeling him a traitor, and indicated he will not return to the U.S. voluntarily.

Congressional leaders have called Snowden a traitor for revealing once-secret surveillance programs two weeks ago in The Guardian and The Washington Post. The NSA programs collect records of millions of Americans’ telephone calls and Internet usage as a counterterrorism tool. The disclosures revealed the scope of the collections, which surprised many Americans and have sparked debate about how much privacy the government can take away in the name of national security.

“It would be foolish to volunteer yourself to” possible arrest and criminal charges “if you can do

 

Read More Here

 

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3 Former NSA Employees Praise Edward Snowden, Corroborate Key Claims

The men, all whistleblowers, say he succeeded where they failed.
More

snowdenUSETHIS.banner.reuters.png.png

Reuters

USA Today has published an extraordinary interview with three former NSA employees who praise Edward Snowden’s leaks, corroborate some of his claims, and warn about unlawful government acts.

Thomas Drake, William Binney, and J. Kirk Wiebe each protested the NSA in their own rights. “For years, the three whistle-blowers had told anyone who would listen that the NSA collects huge swaths of communications data from U.S. citizens,” the newspaper reports. “They had spent decades in the top ranks of the agency, designing and managing the very data collection systems they say have been turned against Americans. When they became convinced that fundamental constitutional rights were being violated, they complained first to their superiors, then to federal investigators, congressional oversight committees and, finally, to the news media.”

In other words, they blew the whistle in the way Snowden’s critics suggest he should have done. Their method didn’t get through to the members of Congress who are saying, in the wake of the Snowden leak, that they had no idea what was going on. But they are nonetheless owed thanks.

And among them, they’ve now said all of the following:

 

  • His disclosures did not cause grave damage to national security.
  • What Snowden discovered is “material evidence of an institutional crime.”
  • As a system administrator, Snowden “could go on the network or go into any file or any system and change it or add to it or whatever, just to make sure — because he would be responsible to get it back up and running if, in fact, it failed. So that meant he had access to go in and put anything. That’s why he said, I think, ‘I can even target the president or a judge.’ If he knew their phone numbers or attributes, he could insert them into the target list which would be distributed worldwide. And then it would be collected, yeah, that’s right. As a super-user, he could do that.”

 

Read More Here

 

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WASHINGTON — Edward Snowden, the former U.S. government contractor who leaked secret details of official surveillance programs, pledged Monday to release more information about U.S. intelligence-gathering methods that he described as “nakedly, aggressively criminal.”

“All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me,” Snowden wrote in an online chat hosted by Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.”

Writing from an undisclosed location believed to be in Hong Kong, the former CIA and National Security Agency systems administrator vigorously defended his disclosures about the breadth of U.S. surveillance, including programs that sweep up data about Americans’ telephone calls, emails and Internet use.

U.S. officials have said that under laws governing the surveillance programs, including the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, U.S. citizens are not the targets of the surveillance and their information is “minimized,” or set aside, unless it becomes relevant to a national security investigation.

But Snowden alleged that intelligence agencies keep the information on government computers “for a very long time” and are available for analysts to view as long as they produce a “rubber stamp” warrant.

Read More  and  Watch Video Here

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Snowden hits back against critics of NSA leaks

Mon, Jun 17 2013

By Deborah Charles and Laura MacInnis

WASHINGTON | Mon Jun 17, 2013 6:07pm EDT

(Reuters) – The former National Security Agency contractor who revealed the U.S. government’s top-secret monitoring of Americans’ phone and Internet data fought back against his critics on Monday, saying the government’s “litany of lies” about the programs compelled him to act.

Edward Snowden told an online forum run by Britain’s Guardian newspaper that he considered it an honor to be called a traitor by people like former Vice President Dick Cheney, and he urged President Barack Obama to “return to sanity” and roll back the surveillance effort.

Taking questions from readers and journalists, Snowden talked about his motivations and reaction to the debate raging about the damage or virtue of the leaks. Snowden remains in hiding, reportedly in Hong Kong.

Snowden said disillusionment with Obama contributed to his decision but there was no single event that led him to leak details about the vast monitoring of Americans’ activity.

“It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress – and therefore the American people – and the realization that Congress … wholly supported the lies,” said Snowden, who had worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton before providing the details to the Guardian and Washington Post.

Snowden referred to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s testimony to Congress in March that such a program did not exist, saying that seeing him “baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.”

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Snowden’s actions, and U.S. officials promised last week to hold him accountable for the leaks.

Since Snowden went public in a video released by the Guardian on June 9, many U.S. lawmakers have condemned his actions and intelligence officials have said the leaks will compromise national security.

Some lawmakers have been more restrained. Republican Senator Rand Paul, a Tea Party favorite, has said he is reserving judgment about Snowden’s methods, and separately encouraged Americans to be part of a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. government for the surveillance programs.

Snowden, who traveled to Hong Kong before details of the programs were published, has promised to stay in the China-ruled former British colony and fight extradition.

China made its first substantive comments on Monday regarding Snowden’s revelations. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman said that Washington should explain its surveillance programs to the world, and she rejected a suggestion that Snowden was a spy for China.

Snowden said during the online forum on Monday that he does not believe he can get a fair trial in the United States.

Read More  and  Watch Video Here

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POLITICO

 

 

 

 

The public has no right to examine classified Justice Department legal opinions on the so-called “targeted killing” of Americans and foreigners, even though President Barack Obama recently acknowledged that the U.S. used drones to kill alleged Al Qaeda operative Anwar Al-Awlaki, the Obama Administration argued in a legal brief filed Friday.

 

The brief argues that the official declassification, which also included the acknowledgement that three other American citizens have died in such operations outside active combat zones, “should not affect (or be relevant to)” the appeals court’s review of a district court judge’s ruling that legal memoranda sought by the New York Times and the ACLU were exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

 

In the brief filed with the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (and posted here), Justice Department lawyers do say that the declassification gives them new leeway to describe the relevant DOJ records in general terms.

 

“Given recent acknowledgments by the President and other senior officials of the previously properly classified fact that the United States carried out the targeted strike that killed Anwar al- Awlaki, DOJ has now determined that it can provide some limited additional information about classified documents in its possession that are responsive to the ACLU request,” says the brief submitted under the names of DOJ Civil Division Chief Stuart Delery and U.S. Attorney Preet Bhahara.

 

Read More Here

Blood on your hands: Vladimir Putin’s attack on Prime Minister David Cameron ahead of G8 talks on Syria

Russian President says his country will continue to arm the ‘legitimate government’ in Syria as Cameron’s Coalition allies warn against involving Britain in the conflict

Sunday 16 June 2013

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, rounded on Britain on Sunday, accusing David Cameron of betraying humanitarian values by supporting Syrian rebels with “blood on their hands”.

In harsh and undiplomatic language, Mr Putin accused the UK and other Western powers of attempting to arm rebels who “kill their enemies and eat their organs”. He insisted that Russia would continue to arm what he said was the recognised “legitimate government” in Syria and called on other countries to respect the same rules.

Mr Putin’s comments, ahead of Monday’s G8 summit in Northern Ireland, suggest that earlier British hopes of a softening of Russia’s position on Syria were misplaced. After around an hour of bilateral talks with David Cameron in Downing Street, Mr Putin’s spokesman told The Independent that the two sides remained as far apart as ever.

“There are very serious disagreements in terms of who is guilty and who is to blame,” he said. Asked what the impact of the American decision to arm Syrian rebels would be on potential peace talks, he added: “It makes it harder.”

In a press conference after the talks, Mr Cameron admitted that “President Putin and I have our disagreements on some of the issues”, but insisted the G8 could bring “new momentum and leadership” to start negotiations in Syria.

“What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome differences if we recognise that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people choose who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists,” he said.

“If we leave Syria to be fought over between a murderous dictator and violent extremists we will all pay the price,” he added.

 

Read More Here

 

Related articles

 

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Cameron warned not to even think about military intervention in Syria

Sun Jun 16, 2013 12:18AM GMT

A group of Conservative MPs and retired officers warned the prime minister that his plan to arm foreign-backed terror groups fighting the Syrian government would be the first step down a path that could lead to another British military invasion of the Middle East region.

This comes as the coalition government is sending redundancy notices to 5,300 Army personnel soon as part of its plan to reduce the number of soldiers from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2017.

The cuts are imposed at a time when David Cameron is contemplating to arm terrorists fighting the popular government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

“Here we are yet again with a government reducing our Armed Services and at the same time talking about military intervention of some sort in Syria”, said Richard Drax, the Conservative MP for South Dorset.

“In such an increasingly unstable world, events like Syria and Turkey can develop at any moment and yet here we are cutting our Armed Services to the size of a gendarmerie. Our Navy is now little more than something you put in the bath”, he said.

Earlier this month, 82 Tory MPs wrote to the Prime Minister to demand a parliamentary vote on any decision to equip Syria’s rebels.

Some Conservative MPs fear that any weapons given to the rebels could fall into the hands of some fighters who have links with al-Qaeda terrorist group.

Meanwhile, David Cameron has said that he will make every attempt to convince the Group of Eight (G8) authorities to support US plans to impose a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, when they gather for the G8 summit in Northern Ireland this week.

The push for action comes after US President Barack Obama said he would give “direct military aid” to terrorists in Syria.

Cameron was central to the development of a no-fly zone over Libya in 2011, which resulted in thousands of sorties and strikes against people on the ground.

MOL/HE

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