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FOCUS | Edward Snowden: 'If I End Up in Chains in Guantanamo, I Can Live With That' |
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Thursday, 17 July 2014 14:15 |
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Excerpt: "The 31-year-old former intelligence analyst discusses whether he is a Russian spy, his likely fate if he returns to the US and the relevance of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in the age of Google."
Edward Snowden in Moscow. (photo: CBC News)
Edward Snowden: 'If I End Up in Chains in Guantanamo, I Can Live With That'
By Alan Rusbridger, Ewen MacAskill, Alex Healey, Richard Sprenger, Mustafa Khalili, Guardian UK
17 July 14
Exclusive: Whistleblower says NSA revelations mean those with duty to protect confidentiality must urgently upgrade security
SEE ALSO: UN: US Government Should Not Prosecute Snowden
 he NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden, has urged lawyers, journalists, doctors, accountants, priests and others with a duty to protect confidentiality to upgrade security in the wake of the spy surveillance revelations.
Snowden said professionals were failing in their obligations to their clients, sources, patients and parishioners in what he described as a new and challenging world.
"What last year's revelations showed us was irrefutable evidence that unencrypted communications on the internet are no longer safe. Any communications should be encrypted by default," he said.
The response of professional bodies has so far been patchy.
A minister at the Home Office in London, James Brokenshire, said during a Commons debate about a new surveillance bill on Tuesday that a code of practice to protect legal professional privilege and others requiring professional secrecy was under review.
Snowden's plea for the professions to tighten security came during an extensive and revealing interview with the Guardian in Moscow.
The former National Security Agency and CIA computer specialist, wanted by the US under the Espionage Act after leaking tens of thousands of top secret documents, has given only a handful of interviews since seeking temporary asylum in Russia a year ago.
During the seven hours of interview, Snowden:
- Said if he ended up in US detention in Guantánamo Bay he could live with it.
- Offered rare glimpses into his daily life in Russia, insisting that, contrary to reports that he is depressed, he is not sad and does not have any regrets. He rejected various conspiracy theories surrounding him, describing as "bullshit" suggestions he is a Russian spy.
- Said that, contrary to a claim he works for a Russian organisation, he was independently secure, living on savings, and money from awards and speeches he has delivered online round the world.
- Made a startling claim that a culture exists within the NSA in which, during surveillance, nude photographs picked up of people in "sexually compromising" situations are routinely passed around.
- Spoke at length about his future, which seems destined to be spent in Russia for the foreseeable future after expressing disappointment over the failure of western European governments to offer him a home.
- Said he was holding out for a jury trial in the US rather a judge-only one, hopeful that it would be hard to find 12 jurors who would convict him if he was charged with an offence to which there was a public interest defence. Negotiations with the US government on a return to his country appear to be stalled.
Snowden, who recognises he is almost certainly kept under surveillance by the Russians and the US, met the Guardian at a hotel within walking distance of Red Square.
The 31-year-old revealed that he works online late into the night; a solitary, digital existence not that dissimilar to his earlier life.
He said he was using part of that time to work on the new focus for his technical skills, designing encryption tools to help professionals such as journalists protect sources and data. He is negotiating foundation funding for the project, a contribution to addressing the problem of professions wanting to protect client or patient data, and in this case journalistic sources.
"An unfortunate side effect of the development of all these new surveillance technologies is that the work of journalism has become immeasurably harder than it ever has been in the past," Snowden said.
"Journalists have to be particularly conscious about any sort of network signalling, any sort of connection, any sort of licence-plate reading device that they pass on their way to a meeting point, any place they use their credit card, any place they take their phone, any email contact they have with the source because that very first contact, before encrypted communications are established, is enough to give it all away."
Journalists had to ensure they made not a single mistake or they would be placing sources at risk. The same duty applied to other professions, he said, calling for training and new standards "to make sure that we have mechanisms to ensure that the average member of our society can have a reasonable measure of faith in the skills of all the members of these professions."
He added: "If we confess something to our priest inside a church that would be private, but is it any different if we send our pastor a private email confessing a crisis that we have in our life?"
The response of professional bodies in the UK to the challenge varies, ranging from calls for legislative changes to build in protection from snooping, to apparent lack of concern.
Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University, said he shared Snowden's concerns about the vulnerability of the professions to surveillance by spy and law enforcement agencies.
"If you think your HIV status is secret from GCHQ, forget it," he said. "The tools are available to protect data and communications but only if you are important enough for your doctor or lawyer to care."
Timothy Hill, technology policy adviser at the Law Society, which represents UK lawyers, said the profession was concerned.
"Legal professional privilege – the right to consult a legal adviser in confidence – is a long established common law right. Its fundamental role in our legal system needs to be reasserted."
The society is pressing to have existing legislation rewritten to include explicit protection for legal professional privilege from government surveillance.
"There needs to be a debate about the implications of the Snowden revelations for professional privilege in the digital age," Hill said. "It is not happening. This is not being debated in parliament."
He said the society was seeking to strengthen law firms' cybersecurity awareness but that a stronger statutory framework was essential.
Michelle Stanistreet, the National Union of Journalists general secretary, echoed the concerns. "For democracy to function, it needs to have a free press and journalists who are able to do their job without fear or hindrance. But this is becoming increasingly under threat."
She added: "Last year's revelations show that unencrypted communications can mean that journalists may be unwittingly handing over their contacts, footage or material, against their will."
The General Medical Council provides guidance to UK doctors about protecting information against improper disclosure.
Niall Dickson, the GMC chief executive, said: "Modern communication offers huge benefits for patients in terms of research, access to professionals, as well as speed of care and treatment. But of course it also carries risk, and confidentiality and trust are at the heart of the doctor-patient relationship.
"We recognise that keeping up with advances in technology and its implications for confidentiality are challenging for all healthcare professionals. We do have guidance which explains what doctors need to do if they are concerned about the security of personal information or systems they have been given to use. But in this rapidly changing area, we also need to keep on top of this ourselves, and we do regularly review our guidance to take account of changes in the external environment."
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FOCUS | Paul Krugman: Why the Real Story About Obamacare Is Not Being Told |
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Thursday, 17 July 2014 11:36 |
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Allon writes: "Paul Krugman proposes an interesting theory in today's column about why the success of Obamacare is a story that is mostly being ignored by the media, and therefore kept from the American public."
Paul Krugman. (photo: NYT)
Paul Krugman: Why the Real Story About Obamacare Is Not Being Told
By Janet Allon, AlterNet
17 July 14
 n immense policy success is slipping under the radar.
Paul Krugman proposes an interesting theory in today's column about why the success of Obamacare is a story that is mostly being ignored by the media, and therefore kept from the American public. In fact, he suspects the mainstream news media does not even know how successful the Affordable Care Act is proving to be. Not that there is any excuse for that ignorance. How do they manage to stay so ignorant? Krugman thinks it may be because many of the people who work in media—especially the pundit class—are well enough off that they don't need Obamacare, and these media elites seldom cover poor people or even talk to them much.
So, no excuses really. Why has the media been able to get away with getting the health reform story so wrong?
"Think relentless negativity without accountability," Krugman writes:
The Affordable Care Act has faced nonstop attacks from partisans and right-wing media, with mainstream news also tending to harp on the act’s troubles. Many of the attacks have involved predictions of disaster, none of which have come true. But absence of disaster doesn’t make a compelling headline, and the people who falsely predicted doom just keep coming back with dire new warnings.
Consider, in particular, the impact of Obamacare on the number of Americans without health insurance. The initial debacle of the federal website produced much glee on the right and many negative reports from the mainstream press as well; at the beginning of 2014, many reports confidently asserted that first-year enrollments would fall far short of White House projections.
Then came the remarkable late surge in enrollment. Did the pessimists face tough questions about why they got it so wrong? Of course not. Instead, the same people just came out with a mix of conspiracy theories and new predictions of doom. The administration was “cooking the books,” said Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming; people who signed up wouldn’t actually pay their premiums, declared an array of “experts”; more people were losing insurance than gaining it, declared Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.
Of course they did pay up. All of this negativity has been completely proven wrong, and several independent surveys from Gallup, the Urban Institute and the Commonwealth Fund bear out the program's success in getting more uninsured Americans health insurance.
Then there are the desperate attempts to give credit for the success to someone other than Obama, or the policy itself. Some have cited the improving economy.
Demonstrably wrong, Krugman writes. The biggest declines in uninsured residents are in states that took the Medicaid expansion. "It’s not the economy; it’s the policy, stupid," Krugman zings.
Oh, and all that poppycock about subscribers experiencing "rate shock." Wrong. The average premium is around $82 per month.
Ever fairminded, Krugman does concede a point or two to the naysayers:
Yes, there are losers from Obamacare. If you’re young, healthy, and affluent enough that you don’t qualify for a subsidy (and don’t get insurance from your employer), your premium probably did rise. And if you’re rich enough to pay the extra taxes that finance those subsidies, you have taken a financial hit. But it’s telling that even reform’s opponents aren’t trying to highlight these stories. Instead, they keep looking for older, sicker, middle-class victims, and keep failing to find them.
So why, if health reform is going well, does it continue to poll badly? Perhaps, Krugman suggests, because "people in the media — especially elite pundits — may be the last to hear the good news, simply because they’re in a socioeconomic bracket in which people generally have good coverage.
"For the less fortunate, however, the Affordable Care Act has already made a big positive difference. The usual suspects will keep crying failure, but the truth is that health reform is — gasp! — working."
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Here's Why Your Uncle Who Watches Fox Is Crazy |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=11104"><span class="small">Charles Pierce, Esquire</span></a>
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Thursday, 17 July 2014 09:33 |
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Pierce writes: "I don't know a single Democratic politician of note whose default position on the issue is 'unrestricted access to elective abortion.' This is how your uncle gets stupid."
Owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch. (photo: Josh Reynolds/AP)
Here's Why Your Uncle Who Watches Fox Is Crazy
By Charles Pierce, Esquire
17 July 14
here are some Democrats who, in the wake of both the Hobby Lobby and McMullen decisions, have decided that their commitments to a woman's right to choose, and a woman's right to use her ladyparts as she sees fit, should be put into improved legislative form, and that said legislative form also should confront the shenanigans out in the states that have been shredding the protection of these rights in the lives of many women. That the Democrats would do this should come as a shock to absolutely nobody, except the Democrats in the Casey family of Pennsylvania. And, apparently, one Chris Stirewalt of FoxNews.com, who believes that the Democrats are taking themselves over the cliff with this issue, and probably that it is excellent news for John McCain, and who has marshalled a stunning array of bull cookies to feed to the sheep out there.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., is leading a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today on his bill that would override the laws banning late-term abortions and imposing regulations on abortion clinics in an increasing number of states. The bill, which already has the support of nearly two-thirds of Senate Democrats, would eradicate the restrictions in at least a dozen states where abortions have been banned after the start of the sixth month of pregnancy and rules in many more states that regulate the conditions at abortion clinics. The New York Times editorial board is enthused as are others on the left who have seen access to elective abortions restricted in the aftermath of the discovery of a house of horrors at the Philadelphia abortion clinic operated by Dr. Kermit Gosnell. But Blumenthal's anti-anti-Gosnell bill takes Democrats into some very dangerous political territory.
You see here vividly how the bubble works. "Gosnell" is one of those rightwing conjuring words that do not have to be explained to the intimates of the cult. It is a mystical thing. It contains multitudes. They don't need to have what in hell an "anti-anti-Gosnell bill" is any more than I needed to know what was being said in Latin at Mass when I was nine. They don't need to know that the attempt to roll back a woman's right to choose predates the magical incantation, and that it would have happened as it did out in the states after the conservative sweep of 2010 even if Kermit Gosnell never had been born himself.
The Democrats' gynecological approach worked twice before to save the Senate, thanks in part to some self-destructive Republican candidates - most notably former Rep. Todd Akin (who still is out there trying and failing to explain his unorthodox understanding of biology). Having so recently been on these crusades, Democrats still have the battle plan handy and are quick to race into the fray. The fundraising emails were out on the Hobby Lobby case even before reporters had finished reading the opinion and the legislation from vulnerable Senate Democrats was out soon thereafter. But fighting state abortion regulations is something very different than just punking Akin or thinking up some new birth-control hashtags.
No, it's infinitely more important, because there is an assault on constitutional liberties here. Do continue.
Americans got comfortable talking about "the pill" a long time ago, but still find it kind of fun and sexy.
The man needs to get out more.
Abortion, though, is still a raw subject and demands delicate discussion.
Which is why the Supreme Court worked so hard to protect someone's First Amendment right to yell "Slut babykiller!" to a woman on the way into a medical clinic.
It's a topic around which error-prone politicians ought not tread. The majority of Americans favor restrictions on abortion, leaving the Democratic default position on the issue—unrestricted access to elective abortion—increasingly out of step.
Utter bullshit. The link to a Gallup poll shows that "majority" to be meaningless. Even Roe contained "restrictions." I don't know a single Democratic politician of note whose default position on the issue is "unrestricted access to elective abortion."This is how your uncle gets stupid.
It's great to say you think ladies ought to be able to get the pill, a largely uncontroversial position for 40 years. But how about sharing your view on when life begins? Or whether unborn children feel pain? Where's your hashtag for those?
#mybodymychoice. or #keepyourmythologytoyourself, or #youreacharlatan.
Those are the first ones that come to mind.
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Stiff Sentence for Hancock Drone Protester Does Not Fit the Crime |
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Thursday, 17 July 2014 09:22 |
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O'Neill writes: "There's a saying among lawbreakers: 'If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.' There's also another saying for law-keepers: 'Make the punishment fit the crime.'"
Mary Anne Grady-Flores, in the center, is being walked to the Sheriff transport bus after she was arrested for protesting drones at the Thompson Road entrance to the New York Air National Guard. (photo: Ellen M. Blalock/Syracuse.com)
Stiff Sentence for Hancock Drone Protester Does Not Fit the Crime
By Patrick O'Neill, Syracuse.com
17 July 14
here's a saying among lawbreakers: "If you can't do the time, don't do the crime." There's also another saying for law-keepers: "Make the punishment fit the crime."
The latter was not the case July 10 in the Town of DeWitt where local Judge David S. Gideon handed down a one-year jail sentence to Ithaca grandmother, Mary Anne Grady Flores, stemming from her involvement in an Ash Wednesday anti-drone protest at Hancock Field Air Force Base. Grady Flores' civil disobedience was nonviolent and faith-based.
Her actions were carried out in broad daylight, and in full view of police officers. Acting in the nonviolent tradition of Indian pacifist leader Mohandas K. Gandhi, she joined others who stood opposed to the use of military drones, which are the key component in President Barack Obama's "targeted killing" program.
Grady Flores and her family are among a cadre of some of the nation's best-known anti-war activists who have maintained a regular presence at Hancock to say to no to violence and war. With the "war on terrorism" raging and nuclear weapons proliferation always expanding, there has never been a time when humanity has been more imperiled by the folly of war.
Grady Flores is following a noble U.S. abolitionist tradition in which people of conscience take a stand, risk personal freedom and subject themselves to arrest in order to challenge unjust government policies. In past eras, civil disobedience has been successfully employed to oppose British tyranny (the Boston Tea Party); to stop slavery and segregation, to gain suffrage for women. to stop child labor and in opposition to the Vietnam War.
Those who are war abolitionists believe modern weapons represent the pre-eminent threat to human survival. Preventing war is the life's work of many of those arrested at Hancock. These are good people who devote their lives to warning the rest of us about the moral imperative of disarmament and peace.
While most readers likely believe some form of punishment is in order for the Hancock protesters, it is also critical that said punishment be reasonable in light of the offense. The response of the Hancock officials, and enforced by Judge Gideon, was unreasonable. Gideon imposed an overly punitive sentence on Grady Flores for what was a minor transgression of the law. As a mother of four, grandmother of three, Grady Flores will miss Thanksgiving, Christmas and numerous birthdays with her family in the coming year because of Gideon's harsh sentence.
Democracies function best when a system of checks and balances is in place to hold governments and political leaders accountable when they fail to uphold democratic principles or when the excesses of government needs to be checked. While the three U.S. branches of government often function as a system of checks and balances, that is not always the case. Since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, all three branches of government have essentially marched in lock step in support of the seemingly endless war on terrorism, the torture of prisoners and the use of drones for extra judicial killings of even our own citizens. Reports also confirm the devastating lose of civilian life from U.S. drone attacks.
That's why it's important for nonviolent citizens of conscience, like Grady Flores, to step up and take prophetic action to address the reckless policies of the government. Gideon obviously thinks it was important to impose a stiff sentence on Grady Flores as a deterrent to both her and others who may be inclined to join her. Gideon has also sent other protesters to jail, although for far less than a year. Rather than concern himself with deterrence, Gideon would have better served society if he had recognized the important role the Hancock protesters play in keeping a check on the U.S. military-industrial complex. Our democracy needs people like Grady Flores and her cohorts, who resist violence and war by placing their bodies on the line. Why deter them? Grady Flores and the other Hancock protesters are good people of conscience who are doing the time for the rest of us. We deter them at our own peril.
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ulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas put a prominent, public face on the immigration crisis this week when he was detained by the U.S. Border Patrol in McAllen, Texas. After a number of hours and a national outcry, he was released. He first revealed his status as an undocumented immigrant three years ago in a New York Times Magazine article, and has since made changing U.S. immigration policy his primary work. Vargas was in Texas to support the thousands of undocumented immigrant children currently detained there by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
