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Snowden: NSA Spied On Human Rights Workers
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes: "The Guardian reports that according to Edward Snowden, the NSA has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. 'The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organizations including domestically within the borders of the United States.' Snowden, addressing the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, said he did not believe the NSA was engaged in 'nightmare scenarios,' such as the active compilation of a list of homosexuals 'to round them up and send them into camps.' But he did say that the infrastructure allowing this to happen had been built.
Snowden made clear that he believed in legitimate intelligence operations but said the NSA should abandon its electronic surveillance of entire civilian populations. Instead, Snowden said, it should go back to the traditional model of eavesdropping against specific targets, such as 'North Korea, terrorists, cyber-actors, or anyone else.' Snowden also urged members of the Council of Europe to encrypt their personal communications and said that encryption, used properly, could still withstand 'brute force attacks' from powerful spy agencies and others. 'Properly implemented algorithms backed up by truly random keys of significant length all require more energy to decrypt than exists in the universe.'"
Snowden made clear that he believed in legitimate intelligence operations but said the NSA should abandon its electronic surveillance of entire civilian populations. Instead, Snowden said, it should go back to the traditional model of eavesdropping against specific targets, such as 'North Korea, terrorists, cyber-actors, or anyone else.' Snowden also urged members of the Council of Europe to encrypt their personal communications and said that encryption, used properly, could still withstand 'brute force attacks' from powerful spy agencies and others. 'Properly implemented algorithms backed up by truly random keys of significant length all require more energy to decrypt than exists in the universe.'"
Does that dickhead talk as if he is forgiven for being a spy himself and the worst kind of spy at that? The kind that turns in his comrades and runs like hell to America's enemies for asylum..
Imagine being able to spread out headlines for the next decade:
"NSA keeps a list of KKK members"
"NSA following the actions of NRA members and directors"
"NSA spied on the NAACP leaders"
"NSA monitored phone records of the Republican leadership of the House"
"NSA monitored phone records of the Democratic leadership of the Senate"
"NSA has database on transactions related to CEO offshore accounts"
"NSA is actively invovled in cataloging grandmothers knitting groups - was your grandma targetted?"
We all *know* the NSA does this - they've been doing it since inception. But Ed Snowden needs a way to make a living outside of being an IT admin, so it pays for him to string this out as long as the tinfoil-hat* money keeps flowing.
*it's not paranoia if they really are watching you, but most people really don't give a shit, and the only people who do care are those with actual (or future) power who are justifiably afraid that someone will get in and use this info politically and the ones wearing tin foil hats who have a wildly inflated view of their importance.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Ed isn't the naive one - he's playing the naive ones for all the cash in their pockets.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
No, it's because the people who marched in the streets against the perceived abuses of George Bush, have no principle and are sitting there preening themselves and basking in the warm glow of totalitarianism.
I don't know, I can't fathom it I'm wildly advancing theories to explain how the USA achieved the USSR's wet dream of surveillance and it has less impact on policy than if a pop star got naked on prime time television.
You don't suppose it could be because the USSR used surveillance information to send people interested in democratic reform to be drugged up in psychiatric units, and people that made jokes about the Chairman of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to 10 years of hard labor in a prison camp above the artic circle while the US warehouses partial phone bills for 5 years in case it needs to do an investigation of someone discovered to be part of an Al Qaida bomb plot or a spy and doesn't send people to prison for making Bush or Obama jokes? That is kind of a meaningful difference.
Look! Still not in prison despite this: Best of Jay Leno's Obama Jokes in 2013
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell