President Obama assured us on Friday that our phone conversations are not being listened to, but that is not a credible reassurance unless the White House comes up with documents that make what is going on transparent in terms of its protocols and process. There is little “an enemy” can learn from the broad strokes of this secret program, at least as far as we can tell. When it is pretty clear that the US government has the power, and is using it, to conduct sweeping data mining of the Internet (likely including Skype and Google calls) and access phone records – and likely phone calls – what is there that full disclosure would reveal other than that the “Patriot Act” – as many predicted – is being egregiously abused.
Isn’t it pretty clear to anyone that the US government is capturing about all the information it can on anybody it wants to – and then some – so why go through the charade that some mortal wound has been done to our national security because Snowden, like Manning, showed what true patriotism is in protecting our Constitution?
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- How Secrecy Stops Debate on Secrecy (consortiumnews.com)
- Ex-NSA Leaker’s Advice To Snowden: “Always Check Your Six” (zerohedge.com)
- ACLU | It’s Time To End The Secret Surveillance State (tallahasseeo.com)
- Meet Candidate Obama, Surveillance State Skeptic (reason.com)
- Maher and the Liberals Defend NSA Surveillance Grid (informationliberation.com)
- Surveillance State: NSA’s PRISM Spying on Virtually All Americans (news.antiwar.com)
- On Whistleblowers and Government Threats of Investigation (readersupportednews.org)
- Stopwatching.us: Internet companies and civil liberties groups call for investigation into the surveillance state (boingboing.net)