Kämpfer einer noch nicht identifizierten Fraktion der syrischen Rebellen haben einen 15 Jahre alten Jugendlichen in der Stadt Aleppo exekutiert, nachdem sie ihn der „Blasphemie“ beschuldigten wegen einer Äußerung, die er in einem Gespräch mit einem anderen Jugendlichen gemacht hatte.

Ständig die gesamte amerikanische Bevölkerung und darüber hinaus einen großen Teil der Menschheit im Auge zu behalten bedeutet einen Haufen Arbeit, und wenn die allumfassende Überwachungsarbeit der NSA so „lebensnotwendig“ ist, muss sie auch ihre Erfolge aufweisen, nicht wahr?

And Icelandic ambassador to Beijing Kristín Árnadóttir told the South China Morning Post that Snowden needs to be in Iceland in order to apply for asylum.

One man stands up against the Panopticon

Vergangene Woche sahen wir dramatische neue Beweise für die illegale Überwachung unserer Telefongespräche durch die Regierung und über das Eindringen der National Security Agency (NSA – Nationale Sicherheitsbehörde) in amerikanische Firmen wie Facebook und Microsoft, um uns zu bespitzeln. Die Medien schienen schockiert zu sein.

Gerichtspräsident Andreas Voßkuhle und Verfassungsrichter Peter M. Huber werden der vermuteten Rechtsbeugung bezichtigt. Sie sollen Grundrechte missachtet haben.

Snowden‘s whistleblowing gives us a chance to roll back what is tantamount to an ‚executive coup‘ against the US constitution

Yesterday, it was revealed that Ed Snowden was the whistleblower, who exposed some details of NSA surveillance capabilities, often going far beyond what people expected. If you haven‘t yet, you should watch his video interview with Glenn Greenwald where he goes into more detail:

Live coverage of the continued fallout from Edward Snowden‘s revelations in the Guardian that the US National Security Agency‘s Prism programme has direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other internet giants

This is why many of us have been trying to call attention to things like warrantless wiretapping and the FISA Amendments Act and the privacy-destroying immunities of CISPA for years. Because those in power keeping screaming „terrorists!“ to get Congress to pass these laws, and then everyone‘s shocked (shocked!) when the government goes and does what Congress and the courts have specifically allowed.

PM said everything UK intelligence services did was within the law and under a clear framework of accountability

An ex-CIA employee working as a contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency said he was the source who leaked details of a top secret U.S. surveillance program, acting out of conscience to protect „basic liberties for people around the world.“

Commenting on allegations of British access to the US-run Prism programme, William Hague said: ‚If you are a law-abiding citizen of this country going about your business and your personal life you have nothing to fear.‘ Is he right?

As we‘ve noted for a while, the NSA has claimed that it was not possible to determine how many Americans it had data on. In a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper had stated: (..)
But, as Greenwald reveals, the NSA appears to have a program, called Boundless Informant (quite a name, huh) that does exactly that.

Booz Allen can confirm that Edward Snowden, 29, has been an employee of our firm for less than 3 months, assigned to a team in Hawaii.

He says his own concerns about this practice were ignored by the intelligence community, and so he chose to make some information about PRISM public in the hope it will prevent the development of what he calls a “turnkey tyranny”, run by a secretive and unaccountable intelligence bureaucracy.

In our capacity as members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, we have spent years examining the intelligence collection operations that have been secretly authorized under the USA Patriot Act. Based on this experience, we respectfully but firmly disagree with the way that this program has been described by senior administration officials.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a defender of the phone and Internet surveillance programs that have come into public view in recent days, said on Sunday that she would consider holding hearings about them.

The author of the Patriot Act on Sunday continued his criticism of the National Security Agency’s widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens’ phone and digital records.

Lawmakers called on Sunday for a review of the government’s monitoring of phone and Internet activities, and one Democrat urged a reopening of the Patriot Act, the post-September 11, 2001 law that gave intelligence agencies broader surveillance powers.

Sen. Mark Udall, who‘s long called for greater transparency in how the government collects data on Americans, said Sunday the law allowing that monitoring should be reopened for debate after new disclosures about the scope of the intelligence community‘s snooping.

“The fact that every call I make to my friends, my family is noted, where I am, the length of it, the date, that concerns me particularly because Americans didn’t know this,” said Udall on Sunday morning. “That’s why I’m calling for a reopening of the PATRIOT Act, I’m calling for a fulsome debate across the country.“

Das Amerika von heute hat mehr gemein mit Nazideutschland als mit dem Amerika, in dem ich aufgewachsen bin. Die Jungen kennen nicht den Unterschied. Aber die in meinem Alter kommen darauf, dass wir unser Land verloren haben. Dieses Amerika gibt es nicht mehr.

The universal surveillance of citizens who are not even suspected of any wrongdoing has rightly garnered an angry response.

Verax was the name he chose for himself, “truth teller” in Latin. (…)
The U.S. intelligence community, he wrote, “will most certainly kill you if they think you are the single point of failure that could stop this disclosure and make them the sole owner of this information.”

$6bn company that employed the NSA whistleblower is closely connected to US intelligence community and its leaders

The revelation came after days of speculation that the source behind a series of leaks that have transfixed Washington must have been a high-level official at one of America’s spy agencies. Instead, the leaker is a relatively low-level employee of a giant government contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, that has won billions of dollars in secret government contracts over the past decade