America finally pays for its hypocrisy

The United States government, which is literally spying on the entire world -- and on its own people with drones, by the FBI's own admission -- has had the audacity to charge Edward Snowden with espionage.

As of this writing, Snowden is sitting in an airport in Moscow, waiting to see whether his request for asylum to Ecuador will be granted. The WikiLeaks legal team says it assisted him in his exit from Hong Kong, where the government said he left legally. The U.S. government had cancelled Snowden's passport the day before, so it remains unclear how he was able to leave, but Hong Kong released a statement after Snowden was in the air, announcing that he'd left. The United States had asked Hong Kong to hold him and allow him to be deported, but Hong Kong said the paperwork wasn't completed properly and needed further information. In the meantime, Snowden slipped away.

It seems pretty clear that Hong Kong thumbed its nose at the United States' demands, especially considering that on top of letting Snowden get away, it told the U.S. that it wanted more information on Snowden's revelation that the U.S. has been spying on the Chinese and hacking computers, including those of civilians. Snowden also said later that the NSA hacks into Chinese mobile-phone operators to steal millions of customers' text messages.

Those revelations, as Beijing's official news agency put it, have "put Washington in a really awkward situation. Washington should come clean about its record first. The United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age."

It's clear that Russia, too, by allowing Snowden on its soil, is telling America to take a flying leap.

Nor are Russia and China the only ones. Many of our European allies are upset over the allegations of spying, but Germany in particular is furious. One lawmaker decried Obama's "American-style Stasi methods" of surveillance. Another said:

The more a society monitors, controls, and observes its citizens, the less free it is. The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored.

When Obama visited Berlin this past week, protestors took to the street to make their feelings known.

And in Ireland, Clare Daly, a member of parliament, ripped Obama during his visit for the G8 summit, calling him a war criminal and a hypocrite.
 

Daly blasted Obama for claiming to stand for peace when he's been arming rebels in the Syrian civil war (on a pretext about as flimsy as the one the Bush administration used to justify war with Iraq, I might add) and has increased drone strikes around the world.

At the G8 summit, Obama was also confronted by British Prime Minister David Cameron regarding the release of British resident Shaker Aamer from Guantanamo. The detainees there are in the midst of a hunger strike, and according to Aamer, the glorious Americans, defenders of all that is right and good, are force-feeding the inmates with "'metal-tipped' feeding tubes, which Aamer said were forced into inmates' stomachs twice a day and caused detainees to vomit over themselves."

It was surely also an awkward moment for Obama at G8 when he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, after the Guardianpaper released another Snowden leak -- this one revealing that the U.S. spied on the top-secret communications of Russia's then-president, Dmitry Medvedev, at the 2009 G20 summit in London. 

The United States has become a laughingstock and an embarrassment. It's been called out for the violent, intolerant bully that it is. And in true form, the bully is going on the attack, with inflammatory rhetoric that proves bringing Snowden home to face a trial isn't about justice -- it's purely about retaliation.

In Congress, Peter King, Dianne Feinstein, and John Boehner all called Snowden a traitor. That's right -- the people who are apparently just fine with an unaccountable spy program that violates the privacy of every American, in blatant violation of the Fourth Amendment, are not traitors. The guy who uncovered and revealed it is.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss says the "bad guys" now know how we're tracking them. Right, by spying on Americans. It's not as if any terrorists are dumb enough to think the U.S. wasn't watching them in the first place.

Sen. Chuck Schumer threw a tantrum over Russia's involvement in the Snowden ordeal: "The bottom line is very simple: Allies are supposed to treat each other in decent ways, and Putin always seems almost eager to put a finger in the eye of the United States." But it's OK if the United States doesn't treat Russia "in decent ways" and spies on its communications at an international summit. Hypocrisy at its ugliest.

NSA director Keith Alexander said Snowden has caused "irreversible and significant damage to our country and to our allies." No, a government that rapes its own Constitution is what causes potentially irreversible damage.

But you don't understand, Alexander whined. Spying on all of you helped us stop 50 terrorist attacks. Sure it did. It really worked on stopping the Boston bombing, didn't it? Furthermore, I don't care if it stopped five hundred attacks. When the program being carried out destroys our own Bill of Rights, the price we all pay is too high. If we're no longer free, then what are we fighting for?

The personal smears are continuing, too. John Kerry mused: "I wonder if Mr. Snowden chose China and Russia as assistants in his flight from justice because they're such powerful bastions of Internet freedom."

Meanwhile, Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, said Snowden's choice of destinations reveals that "his true motive throughout has been to injure the national security of the United States."

What these idiots leave out is that there were very few places Snowden could go without being handed right back over to the United States. It's not about becoming a sympathizer with hard-line countries. It's about escaping and surviving. Kerry and Carney obviously know this, but the character assassination will surely work well on an ignorant public that's easy to inflame when you wave an American flag in their faces.

And if you think going on the run is an unseemly thing to do, consider the story of journalist Michael Hastings, whose expose for Rolling Stone was instrumental in the resignation of Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was then heading U.S. operations in Afghanistan. He's done several other provocative pieces since then. Earlier this month, Hastings sent an e-mail to his colleagues at BuzzFeed, saying "the feds" were interviewing his friends and associates and adding that he might be lying low for a while as he worked on a big story. WikiLeaks said Hastings reached out to one of their lawyers.

The next day, Hastings died in a fiery car accident. His car, traveling at a high rate of speed, slammed into a tree and caught on fire.

Was it sabotage? Richard Clarke, a former chief counterterrorism adviser on the National Security Council, says Hastings' accident was "consistent with a car cyberattack," in which a car with built-in cellular capabilities, can be hacked into:

Clarke said that not only does the technology to hack cars exist, but "there is reason to believe that intelligence agencies for major powers," like the United States, are already equipped to stage such an attack. "What has been revealed as a result of some research at universities is that it's relatively easy to hack your way into the control system of a car, and to do such things as cause acceleration when the driver doesn't want acceleration, to throw on the brakes when the driver doesn't want the brakes on, to launch an air bag," Clarke said. "You can do some really highly destructive things now, through hacking a car, and it’s not that hard."

With the way this administration demonizes whistleblowers of any kind, is it really that much of a stretch to suspect foul play here? And would it be any surprise if Snowden meets with an untimely accident, or is kidnapped by the U.S. government even after he wins asylum somewhere? The government has no problem snatching people out of foreign countries. It's even done so in Ecuador, so even if Snowden wins asylum there, his safety is still far from guaranteed.  

The knee-jerk response to all of this nonsense from the "I have nothing to hide" brigade and the "Snowden sold us out" contingent is that all of the spying Snowden uncovered is perfectly legal, functioning under the supervision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the FISA courts that "oversee" the programs. But the FISA courts have been little more than a rubber stamp for any request the government makes, and there's no external oversight once the NSA gets the go-ahead from the FISA courts to enact whatever new spying program it may have requested. Furthermore, the Obama administration has repeatedly shot down challenges to the constitutionality of the spying programs, invoking the need to keep state secrets -- something Obama criticized the Bush administration for doing -- and making the outrageous claim that the government is immune from litigation over spying. Makes you wonder what the Most Transparent Administration in History is trying to hide.

It should go without saying that just because something is legal, that doesn't make it moral or constitutional. Slavery was once legal. The argument that all the spying is "legal" is a hollow and cowardly cop-out that refuses to engage with the facts.

Russ Feingold, the only senator brave enough to vote against the so-called "Patriot" Act back in 2001, warned that this kind of overreach was going to happen. He said at the time the bill was being debated:

[U]nder this bill, the government can compel the disclosure of the personal records of anyone -- perhaps someone who worked with, or lived next door to, or went to school with, or sat on an airplane with, or has been seen in the company of, or whose phone number was called by -- the target of the investigation. 

[ … ] 

Under this provision, the government can apparently go on a fishing expedition and collect information on virtually anyone. All it has to allege in order to get an order for these records from the court is that the information is sought for an investigation of international terrorism or clandestine intelligence gathering. That's it. On that minimal showing in an ex parte application to a secret court, with no showing even that the information is relevant to the investigation, the government can lawfully compel a doctor or hospital to release medical records, or a library to release circulation records. This is a truly breathtaking expansion of police power.

Even Jim Sensenbrenner, who drafted the "Patriot" Act, says things have gone way too far:

Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations. How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation? 

This is well beyond what the Patriot Act allows. 

President Obama's claim that "this is the most transparent administration in history" has once again proven false. In fact, it appears that no administration has ever peered more closely or intimately into the lives of innocent Americans. The president should immediately direct his administration to stop abusing the U.S. Constitution.

But remember, it's not the programs running in secrecy with no oversight that are the problem here. Oh, goodness, no. The problem is the person who proved that sunlight is the best disinfectant and brought the world's attention to the American government's malfeasance. In fact, D.C. is flipping out so much over having its sins laid bare that Satan himself, Dick Cheney, decided to weigh in and shoot the messenger in grand fashion. Not only is Edward Snowden a traitor, Cheney spat, but he might also be a Chinese spy!

Snowden's retort was legendary:

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.

As for the ludicrous assertion of being a spy:

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.

And as for who the real traitors are, WikiLeaks' Julian Assange had something to say about that in a recent statement:

The word "traitor" has been thrown around a lot in recent days. 

But who is really the traitor here? 

Who was it who promised a generation "hope" and "change," only to betray those promises with dismal misery and stagnation? 

Who took an oath to defend the U.S. constitution, only to feed the invisible beast of secret law devouring it alive from the inside out? 

Who is it that promised to preside over The Most Transparent Administration in history, only to crush whistleblower after whistleblower with the bootheel of espionage charges? 

Who combined in his executive the powers of judge, jury and executioner, and claimed the jurisdiction of the entire earth on which to exercise those powers 

Who arrogates the power to spy on the entire earth -- every single one of us -- and when he is caught red handed, explains to us that "we're going to have to make a choice." 

Who is that person? 

Let's be very careful about who we call "traitor." 

Edward Snowden is one of us. 

Bradley Manning is one of us.

Ron Paul, meanwhile, made a great observation about the government's espionage charge against Snowden:

My understanding is that espionage means giving secret or classified information to the enemy. Since Snowden shared information with the American people, his indictment for espionage could reveal (or confirm) that the U.S. Government views you and me as the enemy.

That might sound over the top, but just look at the culture of paranoia in our government that this incident has exposed. Even before the NSA story blew up, Obama was pushing for a so-called Insider Threat Program that would essentially have federal workers keeping an eye on their co-workers and would press managers to punish anyone who failed to report their suspicions. Watch your neighbor and be a snitch -- this is actually happening in the United States of America.

I imagine the government will double down on projects like that now. There's already talk of a buddy system, whereby another person has to be present when someone is placing data on removable media. So the next Snowden -- and let's hope there are many more -- will unfortunately have a tougher time getting the news to the American people. And it's anyone's guess how much more stringent something like background checks will become before people can go to work for government spy agencies in the future. Snowden left the entire government -- this massive apparatus that we're supposed to trust with our private information -- with egg on its face, with one official claiming that the NSA thinks "he copied so much stuff that almost everything that place does, he has," and with Snowden himself saying he took the contractor position with Booz Allen Hamilton for the express purpose of gathering as much evidence of its surveillance methods as he could. And even if anything happens to him, he's given encoded files to his trove of remaining discoveries to several people around the world.

Now that's bold. 

Snowden, however, said he's been disappointed by the U.S. media's reaction to his leaks:

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.

He's absolutely right. This should be the top story on the news, night after night. The press should be screaming about this. Their virtual silence on the relevant aspects of this story equates to complicity with the government's illegal behavior, and they should all be ashamed to call themselves journalists. 

Even worse, some of these alleged "journalists" think their fellow reporters should be arrested for giving leakers a forum. Do that, and Obama's wildest dreams of shutting down an investigative media come true. Reporters' confidential sources would cease to exist, as would a free press.

But the story isn't being ignored elsewhere on the planet. While the U.S. government threatens and bullies the likes of Russia and China, they aren't taking it sitting down. Quite the contrary:

Aleksei K. Pushkov, chairman of the Russian Parliament's foreign affairs committee, said in a Twitter post early Wednesday that "the U.S. threats toward Russia and China over the Snowden affair will not give results, but only bring Moscow and Beijing together even more strongly."

Blowback rears its head again.

And how could Moscow and Beijing notfight back, when America's Secretary of State comes off sounding like a mafia boss? 

"They are on notice with respect to our desires," Kerry said of Russia. "It would be deeply troubling if they have adequate notice and notwithstanding that they make a willful decision to ignore that and not live within the standards of the law." 

It would be deeply troubling. Or as Luigi "The Claw" Russo might whisper in your ear, "It would be most unfortunate if you were to meet with an untimely accident."

This is America's top diplomat. Using threats, not diplomacy.

But wait. It gets better. 

"But there are standards of behavior between sovereign nations," Kerry said. "There are -- there is common law. There is respect for rule of law. … So we simply call on [Russia] to -- they don't have to enforce the law, but they certainly can allow [Snowden] to be subject to the laws of our land and our Constitution."

Obama said much the same thing a few days later:

[M]y continued expectation is that Russia or other countries that have talked about potentially providing Mr. Snowden asylum recognize that they are part of an international community and that they should be abiding by international law. And we'll continue to press them as hard as we can to make sure that they do so.

Wow. How rich is that? "Respect for rule of law"? Making sure that other countries are "abiding by international law"? This from a government and an administration that:

• Spies on its own citizens in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
• Launches illegal invasions of foreign countries with no input from Congress whatsoever.
• Props up corrupt dictatorships that serve its ends.
• Assassinates its own citizens.
• Has a president who reviews a secret kill list and decides who on the list dies.
• Believes it has the right to detain its own citizens indefinitely without charge or trial.
• Intimidates journalists who dig too deep for its liking.
• Prosecutes whistleblowers at a pace never before seen in American history.
• Uses the IRS to harass and discriminate against groups based on their political beliefs.
• Denies criminal defendants the right to a fair and speedy trial.
• Maintains a series of secret prisons around the world.
• Brutally tortures detainees, in violation of international treaties.
• Drone-bombs women and children.

The brazen hypocrisy is astounding. But it's nothing new for a country that thinks the rules apply to everyone but itself.

Hey, Kerry and Obama, here's a clue: If you want other countries to respect the rule of law, do it yourself.

As for subjecting people to the laws of our Constitution -- again, let's start with the criminal class in Washington. D.C.

Set the example, guys. Do something other than look down your nose at the world when you're pressed regarding what you're going to do about Snowden, the way Obama recently did:

I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.

[ ... ]

I have not called … President Putin personally and the reason is because, number one, I shouldn't have to. 

[ ... ]

Number two, we've got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues.

In other words: This entire discussion is beneath my contempt. Just do what I say and hand Snowden over. I'll be the one to dictate the terms here. I'll be the one to say who has to abide by international law and who doesn't.

The smugness is nauseating.

And please, Washington, spare us any lectures about telling Russia to take the moral high ground and hand Snowden over, when we shelter foreign criminals from their own governments -- including former Bolivian president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, whose security forces opened fire on civilian protestors, killing dozens and injuring hundreds. Or Venezuelan terrorist Luis Posada Carriles, whom we won't turn over because -- get this -- he might be tortured. Only we can torture people! U-S-A! U-S-A!

So here we are, bullying and threatening other nations in our ruthless pursuit of someone whose only crime is telling the truth. In other nations, leaks are met with much less aggressive legal penalties, and those who commit the leaks can sometimes avoid prosecution altogether if it can't be proved that the leaks caused harm. Anywhere else in the world, Snowden would probably walk free. Here, he faces a draconian heavy hand, charged under a law that was designed to suppress free speech during World War I, and whose most severe punishment is the death penalty.

But elsewhere, it seems the world is looking on and finally rising up against the arrogance, hypocrisy, double standards, and evil that are today's American government.  

In response to Kerry's hysterics, for example, Putin said: 

Any accusations against Russia are nonsense and rubbish. … As for extradition, there is no possibility. We can hand over foreign citizens to countries with which we have an appropriate international agreement on the extradition of criminals. We don't have such an agreement with the United States. 

Mr. Snowden is a free man.

And even if there was an extradition agreement between the United States and Russia, Putin didn't make it seem very likely that he'd turn Snowden over: 

Assange and Snowden consider themselves human rights activists and say they are fighting for the spread of information. Ask yourself this: should you hand these people over so they will be put in prison?

China's state-run newspaper People's Daily was even more blistering over the whole affair:

In a sense, the United States has gone from a "model of human rights" to "an eavesdropper on personal privacy," the "manipulator" of the centralized power over the international internet, and the mad "invader" of other countries' networks."  

[ … ] 

The world will remember Edward Snowden. It was his fearlessness that tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask.

Even Ecuador's foreign minister had some choice words for the United States:

Confirming Snowden's asylum request, the Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino on Monday said Snowden was being "persecuted" because he revealed "rights violations," calling it "paradoxical."

"It should be asked, who betrayed whom," said Patino at a press conference in Hanoi, defending the American whistleblower who leaked U.S. intelligence program of monitoring online activities and communications of its people.

"Is this betraying the citizens of the world, or betraying some elites that are in power in a certain country?" asked Patino.

[ … ]

When asked about the possible impact of protecting Snowden, the minister said that the U.S. government in the past had denied the extradition of several Ecuadorian bankers charged in Ecuador.

"The relationship between the U.S. and Ecuador should be based on respect for the sovereignty of both countries and our actions are founded on our principles. We consider the consequences of our decisions, but we act in the name of our principles," said Ricardo. 

Ecuador now wants a written explanation from the United States for why it shouldn't grant asylum to Snowden. In the meantime, it has taken the extraordinary step of breaking a trade pact with the United States, in response to U.S. threats if Ecuador ends up granting Snowden asylum. The Andean Trade Preference Act allows Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru to sell goods to the United States without paying import duties, and Sen. Robert Menendez, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said this week he would block renewal of the pact if Ecuador gave safe haven to Snowden. Says the Guardian:

President Rafael Correa's government said on Thursday it was renouncing the Andean Trade Preference Act to thwart US "blackmail" of Ecuador in the former NSA contractor's asylum request.

Officials, speaking at an early morning press conference, also offered a $23m donation for human rights training in the US, a brash riposte to recent US criticism of Ecuador's own human rights record.

[ ... ]

"Ecuador does not accept pressure or threats from anyone, nor does it trade with principles or submit them to mercantile interests, however important those may be," said Fernando Alvarado, the communications secretary.

"Ecuador gives up, unilaterally and irrevocably, the said customs benefits."

Standing ovation, Ecuador. Bravo.

By ignoring the rule of law for so long, for its tiresome bullying tactics, and because of the revelation of a spy program that reaches to every other corner of the planet, the U.S. is going to find that many countries will be less likely to play along. Knowing America's reputation for torturing people and denying them fair trials, they will certainly be less likely to hand over Snowden. Having loose cannons like Mike Huckabee running around and calling outright for Snowden's execution will give pause to any nation that opposes the death penalty. And the rabid condemnations on Capitol Hill darken the prospect that Snowden would ever get a fair trial.

Even Amnesty International has come out in Snowden's defense. "It appears he is being charged by the U.S. government primarily for revealing its and other governments' unlawful actions that violate human rights," an Amnesty official said.

In short, the U.S. has overplayed its hand one too many times. The arrogant bully is finally getting an embarrassing, humiliating, and long-needed smackdown.

And we owe much of it to Edward Snowden -- a hero, a freedom fighter, and a patriot who's had to go on the run for his service to the American people.

"[T]he U.S. government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," Snowden told the Guardian. "Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped."

As Assange summed it up brilliantly:

It is getting to the point where the mark of international distinction and service to humanity is no longer the Nobel Peace Prize, but an espionage indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice.

May Edward Snowden wear it like a badge of honor.

A wasted sacrifice on an ungrateful people

The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. People will see in the media all of these disclosures. They'll know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society. But they won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests. -- Edward Snowden

Well, the smear campaign against Snowden is in full swing. Predictably, the biggest fascists in Congress, including Dianne Feinstein, have already accused him of treason. Lindsey Graham wants the United States to follow him "to the ends of the Earth to bring him to justice." Charges are already being prepared against him, and the FBI has reportedly launched a worldwide manhunt. Snowden himself, who reappeared after his Guardian interview, says he's still in Hong Kong and claims the U.S. government is trying to bully Hong Kong into extraditing him.

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden said the NSA has been hacking into computers in Hong Kong and greater China since 2009, with hundreds of targets that include civilians. The purpose behind this latest leak, he said, was to lay bare "the hypocrisy of the U.S. government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries."

"Not only does it do so," Snowden said, "but it is so afraid of this being known that it is willing to use any means, such as diplomatic intimidation, to prevent this information from becoming public." In short, he said, the United States wants Snowden back before word of the NSA's activity in China makes its way back into the local public eye.

Hey, if the government has done nothing wrong, then it should have nothing to hide, right? That's what the fools who are OK with the NSA's activities keep telling us. Because once again, that's all this chest-pounding from the halls of Congress is about: an attempt to divert attention away from the government's lawlessness and wrongdoing. It has nothing to do with compromising state secrets, or giving up vital intelligence to an enemy, as the alarmists on Capitol Hill claim. As Glenn Greenwald put it: "[T]his has nothing to do with terrorism. They’re not trying to keep any of this from the terrorists; they’re trying to keep it from the American people."

Indeed, Snowden was careful about what he released and said his goal was not to bring down individual people or threaten American security, but rather to "reveal criminality" by the federal government. As Greenwald pointed out, Snowden could have got rich from selling the information he had. Instead, he sacrificed everything. He got no personal reward, other than alerting the American people of what was being done in the shadows, without their consent, in their name, with their taxpayer dollars.

Greenwald elaborated:

And as far as the documents are concerned, he had access to enormous sums of top-secret documents that would be incredibly harmful. He went through and turned over only a small portion of those documents to us, all of which he read very carefully. And I know that not only because he told me that, but also because the way we got the documents was in extremely detailed folders all divided by content, that you could have only organized them had you carefully read them. And when he gave them to us, he said, "Look, I’m not a journalist. I'm not a high-level government official. I am not saying that everything I gave you should be published. I don't want it all to be published. I want you, as journalists, to go through it and decide what is in the public interest and what will not cause a lot of harm." He invited -- in fact, urged --- us to exercise exactly the kind of journalistic judgment that we have exercised. And so, had it been his intention to harm the United States, he could have just uploaded all these documents to the Internet or found the most damaging ones and caused them to be published. He did the opposite. The NSA and the rest of the country owe him a huge debt of gratitude for all of the work he has done to inform the American public without bringing about any harm to them.

It's fascinating to see who lines up with Snowden and who opposes him on various parts of the political spectrum. Who ever thought Michael Moore and Glenn Beck would be bedfellows? Both have rightly called Snowden a hero.

So has Julian Assange, who suggested Snowden seek asylum in Latin America -- fitting, since Assange himself has been granted asylum by Ecuador. Russia says it would consider an asylum request. But in his South China Morning Post interview, Snowden says he's not leaving Hong Kong unless he's asked to and will take his chances in the courts if it comes to that, because, as he says, "I have faith in HK's rule of law."

He does have his share of supporters in Hong Kong:

"He is a brave man. The authorities cannot use the 'anti-terrorism' excuse to invade people's privacy without boundaries," said Yang Kuang, a prominent Hong Kong activist. "I hope more and more people will stand out and expose such practices."

A rally in Snowden's support is also planned for this coming weekend in Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, the ACLU has sued the Obama administration over the NSA's phone-spying program. A separate class action suit is being readied against the companies involved in the NSA's PRISM project. Rand Paul is looking into filing his own class action lawsuit, against the federal government itself. And Rand's dad, the good doctor, Ron Paul -- whom Snowden supported in the 2012 election -- said Snowden was only "trying to tell the truth about what's going on" and adds, "I don't think for a minute that he is a traitor." Paul fears that Snowden could be targeted by a drone strike and set the record straight about where our outrage should lie:

Everybody is worried about him and what they're going to do and how they're going to convict him of treason and how they're going to kill him. But what about the people who destroy our Constitution? ... What do we think about people who assassinate American citizens without trials and assume that's the law of the land? That's where our problem is.

Greenwald agrees that our blame needs to be directed elsewhere:

The primary point that I think needs to be made from all of these stories, and particularly from the very courageous outing, self-outing, of Ed Snowden, is that there is this massive surveillance apparatus that is being gradually constructed in the United States that already has extremely invasive capabilities to monitor and store the communications and other forms of behavior not just of tens of millions Americans, but of hundreds of millions, probably billions of people, around the globe. And it's one thing to say that we want the United States government to have these capabilities. It's another thing to allow this to be assembled without any public knowledge, without any public debate, and with no real accountability. And what ultimately drove him forward -- and what ultimately is driving our reporting and will continue to drive our reporting -- is the need for a light to be shined on what this incredibly consequential world is all about and the impact that it's having both on our country and our planet.

Even Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed the government's numerous lies regarding the Vietnam War when he leaked the Pentagon Papers to the media in 1971, praised Snowden and hoped that the revelations about the NSA will create a system with oversight, accountability, and constitutional boundaries. "This wholesale invasion of Americans' and foreign citizens' privacy does not contribute to our security; it puts in danger the very liberties we're trying to protect," Ellsberg said.

Chris Hedges was even more direct in a recent Facebook post: "Replicating the data from [Verizon] & AT&T & Google does NOT protect you from Al-Quaeda and it never will. The data can be used to spy on you, Blackmail you. Coerce your neighbors to spy on you, or some political opponent."
 
Sure enough, Snowden's attempts to shine a light on our government have already caused Washington to go into damage-control mode, to the extent that national security officials had to call a meeting with members of the House to explain just what's going on and try to justify it. But what the light of truth has unveiled so far isn't pretty. According to Rep. Loretta Sanchez of California, what House members learned "is significantly more than what is out in the media today."

She elaborated:

I can't speak to what we learned in there, and I don't know if there are other leaks, if there's more information somewhere, if somebody else is going to step up, but I will tell you that I believe it's the tip of the iceberg. ... I think it's just broader than most people even realize, and I think that's, in one way, what astounded most of us, too.

Unfortunately, the likes of Ellsberg, Snowden, Sanchez, and Hedges may all end up being disappointed if they hope for anything to change. Officials have already said the NSA programs will continue as they are. Even worse, most Americans are just fine with all of this. A sickening poll shows that 56% of Americans have no problem with the phone-spying program, and of that group, 45% think the government should be able to intrude even further into all of our personal lives. A full 62% say the government should weigh security over privacy.

What else can you say, except …

I can't decide whether these horrid American opinions are the result of ignorance, apathy, or fear. Maybe a little all of three. But it does make me wonder how many people understand what motivated our Founding Fathers to write the Fourth Amendment in the first place. In colonial times, the king drew up what were essentially blank-check warrants allowing the authorities to go on legal fishing expeditions, snooping through homes and personal belongings without any probable cause. What the NSA is doing today is exactly the kind of abuse of power the Fourth Amendment was written to guard against

Think about the most notorious spy agencies of the 20th century: the Gestapo in Nazi Germany, the KGB in the Soviet Union, the Stasi in East Germany. Those were not nice places to live. Freedom did not exist. People were jailed, tortured, and executed if they stepped out of line. Is history repeating itself? Consider: The U.S. government has surveillance capabilities that, as Ellsberg put it, the Stasi "could scarcely have dreamed of." We also conduct illegal wars and invasions, render people to a network of secret prisons around the world, torture captives in violation of international law, hold people without charges or access to lawyers, drone-bomb innocent children, and even assassinate U.S. citizens without the slightest whiff of due process. On top of that, a new report says Hillary Clinton's State Department covered up its own abuses, including sexual assaults, the hiring of prostitutes, and the existence of a drug ring that contractors in Baghdad used. And don't forget that we have a "Justice" Department targeting journalists, an IRS targeting conservative political groups, and an administration that won't come clean about why four Americans died in Benghazi.

And these are the people that the majority of Americans trust with their private data?

How bad have things gotten? Well, under this administration, merely posting critical opinions about our Dear Leader will land you a "visit" from the Secret Service:

Tom Francois is an outspoken critic of Barack Hussein Obama -- and has a robust Twitter presence. He also likes to dabble with his "paint" program to create funny cartoons. He has never threatened the President in any way, manner or form.

On April 11, 2013, he heard relentless pounding on his door shouts of "Police!" The officers introduced themselves as members of The Secret Service and asked if they could "take a look around."

Since Tom had nothing to hide (and he didn't want any return visits) -- he complied fully with their request. He even signed a consent to search his premises AND an "Authorization To Review Medical and Mental Health Records!"

They asked Tom if he ever left his state or traveled to Washington, D.C.

One Agent asked Tom if he has any intentions of "whacking" the President." To which Tom replied -- "Of course not. I wish him no harm. I disagree with his policies and actions and I make no bones about it. It's my First Amendment Right and I intend to exercise it."

When I spoke to Tom he said, "Yes, I am EXTREMELY critical of Obama in my posts, but I never cross the line and threaten his being. EVER. It's just the idea of Obama's Secret Service intruding on my life when they knew I wasn't really a threat."

The Secret Service had a thick FBI file -- filled with screenshots of hundreds of posts. Said Tom, "I flat out told them 'I have NEVER threatened Obama's life! Yes, I despise him as you can plainly see, but I have that right!' They actually ADMITTED and agreed with me that I hadn't threatened Obama."
They had run a background check and discovered that Tom legally owned two guns -- and they asked to see them. Tom showed them his firearms. They asked, "Are they loaded?" Tom replied in the affirmative. "What good are guns if they aren't loaded?"

So why harass Tom? "The Secret Service officers claimed that "they were concerned that since I have a large Twitter following, and the things I said could be acted upon by some nut case out there! What the hell? They turned my life upside down for THAT?"

Tom didn't refuse the search because they just would have gone and gotten a warrant. "They would have proceeded to tear my house apart. No thanks. I have nothing to hide. They left empty-handed and my house is still intact."

When they left Tom's house, one Secret Service Agent "advised" -- "Keep in mind, if you step over the line, we'll come back for your guns."

After the "visit" to Tom, the Secret Service also visited Tom's 22 year old daughter -- terrifying her and making her fear for her father's safety. She asked them what they were going to do with the information about her Dad. They said they were going to "turn it over to Eric Holder -- he has the last word on what to do, if anything."

Should anyone have any doubt about the veracity of this report, Mr. Francois had the presence of mind to make copies of the Consent To Search (which expressly included computers, hardware, software, recording devices, cell phones, data storage, etc). It also states: "I understand that any contraband or evidence may be used against me in a court of law."

The "Consent To Search" and the "Authorization To Review Medical and Mental Health Records" signed and dated by the special agents of the Secret Service -- were furnished to this reporter.

It's the Gestapo all over again. This is what happens when you say you don't care that the NSA is spying on you, with no oversight, no accountability, and no constitutional restraints.

A free, open, and democratic society does not do this to its own people. This is what tyrannical dictatorships do.

Politicians will tell you they're doing all this to defend our liberties and our way of life. But they're doing just the opposite -- destroying our liberties and our way of life. It is no exaggeration to say that the terrorists have won. If this is what defending America means, then what is there left to defend?

Ellsberg noted that Sen. Frank Church warned that the NSA's surveillance powers "at any time could be turned around on the American people and no American would have any privacy left," with the resulting ability "to make tyranny total in America." Senator Church made that warning in 1975. To think of the greater ease with which the NSA can now collect our data in an Internet-connected world is something that should frighten every American citizen. It should do just the opposite of generating an apathetic response.

In fact, Ellsberg and Snowden both warn that all it would take is one more major public crisis to push us over the edge.

• Ellsberg: "[I]f we suffered one more attack on the scale of 9/11, I fear for our democracy. These powers are extremely dangerous.
• Snowden: "And the months ahead, the years ahead, it's only going to get worse, until eventually there will be a time where policies will change. … [A] new leader will be elected, they'll find the switch, say that 'Because of the crisis, because of the dangers we face in the world, some new and unpredicted threat, we need more authority, we need more power.' And there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it. And it will be turnkey tyranny."

A recent discussion at Reddit, in which the original poster said he was fine with letting the government snoop through all of his personal effects, got a lengthy response from someone who offered a cautionary tale of just where such a careless mindset leads people, and nations:

I live in a country generally assumed to be a dictatorship. One of the Arab spring countries. I have lived through curfews and have seen the outcomes of the sort of surveillance now being revealed in the US. People here talking about curfews aren't realizing what that actually FEELS like. It isn't about having to go inside, and the practicality of that. It's about creating the feeling that everyone, everything is watching. A few points:

1) the purpose of this surveillance from the governments point of view is to control enemies of the state. Not terrorists. People who are coalescing around ideas that would destabilize the status quo. These could be religious ideas. These could be groups like anon who are too good with tech for the governments liking. It makes it very easy to know who these people are. It also makes it very simple to control these people.

Lets say you are a college student and you get in with some people who want to stop farming practices that hurt animals. So you make a plan and go to protest these practices. You get there, and wow, the protest is huge. You never expected this, you were just goofing off. Well now everyone who was there is suspect. Even though you technically had the right to protest, you're now considered a dangerous person.

With this tech in place, the government doesn't have to put you in jail. They can do something more sinister. They can just email you a sexy picture you took with a girlfriend. Or they can email you a note saying that they can prove your dad is cheating on his taxes. Or they can threaten to get your dad fired. All you have to do, the email says, is help them catch your friends in the group. You have to report back every week, or you dad might lose his job. So you do. You turn in your friends and even though they try to keep meetings off grid, you're reporting on them to protect your dad.

2) Let's say number one goes on. The country is a weird place now. Really weird. Pretty soon, a movement springs up like occupy, except its bigger this time. People are really serious, and they are saying they want a government without this power. I guess people are realizing that it is a serious deal. You see on the news that tear gas was fired. Your friend calls you, frantic. They're shooting people. Oh my god. you never signed up for this. You say, fuck it. My dad might lose his job but I won't be responsible for anyone dying. That's going too far. You refuse to report anymore. You just stop going to meetings. You stay at home, and try not to watch the news. Three days later, police come to your door and arrest you. They confiscate your computer and phones, and they beat you up a bit. No one can help you so they all just sit quietly. They know if they say anything they're next. This happened in the country I live in. It is not a joke.

3) Its hard to say how long you were in there. What you saw was horrible. Most of the time, you only heard screams. People begging to be killed. Noises you've never heard before. You, you were lucky. You got kicked every day when they threw your moldy food at you, but no one shocked you. No one used sexual violence on you, at least that you remember. There were some times they gave you pills, and you can't say for sure what happened then. To be honest, sometimes the pills were the best part of your day, because at least then you didn't feel anything. You have scars on you from the way you were treated. You learn in prison that torture is now common. But everyone who uploads videos or pictures of this torture is labeled a leaker. Its considered a threat to national security. Pretty soon, a cut you got on your leg is looking really bad. You think it's infected. There were no doctors in prison, and it was so overcrowded, who knows what got in the cut. You go to the doctor, but he refuses to see you. He knows if he does the government can see the records that he treated you. Even you calling his office prompts a visit from the local police.

You decide to go home and see your parents. Maybe they can help. This leg is getting really bad. You get to their house. They aren't home. You can't reach them no matter how hard you try. A neighbor pulls you aside, and he quickly tells you they were arrested three weeks ago and haven't been seen since. You vaguely remember mentioning to them on the phone you were going to that protest. Even your little brother isn't there.

4) Is this even really happening? You look at the news. Sports scores. Celebrity news. It's like nothing is wrong. What the hell is going on? A stranger smirks at you reading the paper. You lose it. You shout at him "fuck you dude what are you laughing at can't you see I've got a fucking wound on my leg?"

"Sorry," he says. "I just didn't know anyone read the news anymore." There haven't been any real journalists for months. They're all in jail.

Everyone walking around is scared. They can't talk to anyone else because they don't know who is reporting for the government. Hell, at one time YOU were reporting for the government. Maybe they just want their kid to get through school. Maybe they want to keep their job. Maybe they're sick and want to be able to visit the doctor. It's always a simple reason. Good people always do bad things for simple reasons.

You want to protest. You want your family back. You need help for your leg. This is way beyond anything you ever wanted. It started because you just wanted to see fair treatment in farms. Now you're basically considered a terrorist, and everyone around you might be reporting on you. You definitely can't use a phone or email. You can't get a job. You can't even trust people face to face anymore. On every corner, there are people with guns. They are as scared as you are. They just don't want to lose their jobs. They don't want to be labeled as traitors.

This all happened in the country where I live.

You want to know why revolutions happen? Because little by little by little things get worse and worse. But this thing that is happening now is big. This is the key ingredient. This allows them to know everything they need to know to accomplish the above. The fact that they are doing it is proof that they are the sort of people who might use it in the way I described. In the country I live in, they also claimed it was for the safety of the people. Same in Soviet Russia. Same in East Germany. In fact, that is always the excuse that is used to surveil everyone. But it has never ONCE proven to be the reality.

Maybe Obama won't do it. Maybe the next guy won't, or the one after him. Maybe this story isn't about you. Maybe it happens 10 or 20 years from now, when a big war is happening, or after another big attack. Maybe it's about your daughter or your son. We just don't know yet. But what we do know is that right now, in this moment we have a choice. Are we okay with this, or not? Do we want this power to exist, or not?

You know for me, the reason I'm upset is that I grew up in school saying the pledge of allegiance. I was taught that the United States meant "liberty and justice for all." You get older, you learn that in this country we define that phrase based on the constitution. That's what tells us what liberty is and what justice is. Well, the government just violated that ideal. So if they aren't standing for liberty and justice anymore, what are they standing for? Safety?

Ask yourself a question. In the story I told above, does anyone sound safe?

I didn't make anything up. These things happened to people I know. We used to think it couldn't happen in America. But guess what? It's starting to happen.

I actually get really upset when people say "I don't have anything to hide. Let them read everything." People saying that have no idea what they are bringing down on their own heads. They are naive, and we need to listen to people in other countries who are clearly telling us that this is a horrible horrible sign and it is time to stand up and say no.

We stand at a dangerous precipice, and in their apathy and ignorance, most Americans seem just as happy to jump over the edge -- sacrificing the ideals of liberty this nation was founded on in exchange for protection from the terrorist bogeyman.

Ben Franklin would weep.