Slashdot Mirror
Edward Snowden Says a Report Critical To an NSA Lawsuit Is Authentic (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: An unexpected declaration by whistleblower Edward Snowden filed in court [last] week adds a new twist in a long-running lawsuit against the NSA's surveillance programs. The case, filed by the EFF a decade ago, seeks to challenge the government's alleged illegal and unconstitutional surveillance of Americans, who are largely covered under the Fourth Amendment's protections against warrantless searches and seizures. It's a big step forward for the case, which had stalled largely because the government refused to confirm that a leaked document was authentic or accurate. News of the surveillance broke in 2006 when an AT&T technician Mark Klein revealed that the NSA was tapping into AT&T's network backbone. He alleged that a secret, locked room -- dubbed Room 641A -- in an AT&T facility in San Francisco where he worked was one of many around the U.S. used by the government to monitor communications -- domestic and overseas. President George W. Bush authorized the NSA to secretly wiretap Americans' communications shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
Much of the EFF's complaint relied on Klein's testimony until 2013, when Snowden, a former NSA contractor, came forward with new revelations that described and detailed the vast scope of the U.S. government's surveillance capabilities, which included participation from other phone giants -- including Verizon (TechCrunch's parent company). Snowden's signed declaration, filed on October 31, confirms that one of the documents he leaked, which the EFF relied heavily on for its case, is an authentic draft document written by the then-NSA inspector general in 2009, which exposed concerns about the legality of the Bush's warrantless surveillance program -- Stellar Wind -- particularly the collection of bulk email records on Americans. "I read its contents carefully during my employment," he said in his declaration. "I have a specific and strong recollection of this document because it indicated to me that the government had been conducting illegal surveillance."
Much of the EFF's complaint relied on Klein's testimony until 2013, when Snowden, a former NSA contractor, came forward with new revelations that described and detailed the vast scope of the U.S. government's surveillance capabilities, which included participation from other phone giants -- including Verizon (TechCrunch's parent company). Snowden's signed declaration, filed on October 31, confirms that one of the documents he leaked, which the EFF relied heavily on for its case, is an authentic draft document written by the then-NSA inspector general in 2009, which exposed concerns about the legality of the Bush's warrantless surveillance program -- Stellar Wind -- particularly the collection of bulk email records on Americans. "I read its contents carefully during my employment," he said in his declaration. "I have a specific and strong recollection of this document because it indicated to me that the government had been conducting illegal surveillance."
Snowden should be pardoned and welcomed home for the good deeds he did for us.
He broke the law because the law was being abused, and he revealed the ways that our government was boldfacedly betraying all of us and lying to us. He didn't weaken national security, he gave us the evidence we needed to call our government on their treachery.
It is the nature of governance that it corrupts. No government can ever be kept free of corruption, it's impossible.
The only thing we can do is keep it accountable. The more public their actions, the better behaved they are. Public accountability is the only thing we have that works.
Tools that allow us to sneak around unseen may help us to do things of which they disapprove (including completely legal things such as honest journalism and so forth), but it won't stop them from being corrupt nor from harming us with their corruption. A shadow state is not a free state; it is merely an anarchic one (which, as we all know, is inherently unstable and vulnerable to malicious criminal elements). There can be no "final victory" over corruption, not by means of encryption, not by any other means.
Apply political pressure towards the goal of keeping our leaders' actions visible and accountable. That is how we keep their evil in check, and endure.