Tag Archives: Edward Snowden

Snowden and Controlled Opposition, by Mr. E

Posted on January 5, 2023 | 3 comments

Many people regard Edward Snowden as a hero, and SLL will regard him as such until its proven otherwise. However, the author makes some disturbing points which raise the possibility that he’s not all he’s cracked up to be. From Mr. E at bombthrower.com:

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For nearly ten years, the US government has been legally enabled to disseminate misinformation and propaganda domestically. They’ve been doing it for centuries internationally, and of late this criminal organization has taken a very clear stance that its own population is now its greatest enemy.

Of course, this has been going on illegally for much longer. If we define misinformation as the telling of half-truths or outright lies to the public, then we’ve just accurately characterized what every politician, bureaucrat and military officer who ever appeared in the mass media does.

Shortly after the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act of 1987 were neutralized, a savior appeared. Risking life and limb, a former CIA and NSA technical contractor leaked classified materials giving Americans an updated look at just how pervasive the US surveillance state had gotten. I say ‘updated’ because, to most in the know, it was no surprise at all. It’s been common knowledge since before the days of Echelon that mass domestic electronic spying (“Sigint”) was going on.

Snowden was paraded around the world by mainstream media outlets to tell his story. He set up a Twitter account to continue his revelations and further cultivate his image. Not one, but two films (fiction and non-fiction alike) were produced. He even published a book to explain why he did it. All the while Senators, Congressmen and intelligence officials would call for his head – but for some reason seemed powerless to do anything about this one, lone man. How can that be so? The US government has clearly demonstrated it has no problem murdering American citizens and their children, without due process of law, for far less, wherever they may be.

And therein lay the problem.

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Snowden Didn’t Flee to Russia: Obama Trapped Him There, by Brian McGlinchey

Posted on October 2, 2022 | Leave a comment

When Snowden originally went to Russia it was supposed to be a layover. From Brian McGlinchey at startrealities.substack.com:

Putin’s grant of citizenship prompts reiterations of a widely-embraced falsehood

Edward Snowden speaks with journalist Glenn Greenwald in a Hong Kong hotel room (The Guardian)

When Russian President Vladimir Putin granted citizenship to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden on Monday, the news revived a long-simmering debate about the propriety of his revelations of U.S. government secrets. At the same time, it prompted reiterations of a widely-embraced falsehood: that Snowden “fled to Russia.”

That disinformation-trafficking wasn’t limited to random people on social media. Among others, The New York Times, The Guardian, ABC, Christian Science Monitor and Canada’s CBC all asserted in the past week that Snowden “fled to Russia” in 2013 after revealing that the United States government had created a mass surveillance regime targeting its own citizens, in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Fourth Amendment.

What many people don’t realize — and what some people both inside the government and out of it purposefully ignore — is that Snowden wasn’t traveling to Russia, but merely through it.

When he left Hong Kong after meeting with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras and turning over hundreds of thousands of stolen files, Snowden’s ultimate destination was Quito, Ecuador.

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An American in Moscow, by Andrew P. Napolitano

Posted on September 29, 2022 | Leave a comment

That Edward Snowden had to flee the U.S., take refuge in Russia, and become a citizen of that country for telling the truth about the government’s surveillance of ordinary Americans is a stain on the U.S. that will never fade. From Andrew P. Napolitano at lewrockwell.com:

When the Trump administration obtained an indictment of Edward Snowden for violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, many of us who believe that the Fourth Amendment means what it says were deeply critical of the government, and we remain so today. This week, retaining his American citizenship, Snowden became a Russian citizen.

Snowden is the former CIA and National Security Agency operative — he was a CIA agent and was later employed by a contractor for the NSA — who blew the whistle on NSA and FBI mass undifferentiated warrantless spying on all persons in America.

The spying consisted of capturing all fiber-optic data that was transmitted into, out of and within the United States. As no warrants were sought or obtained and no targets were named — hence, the spying was undifferentiated — it captured the communications of everyone. The government did not bother to seek out evidence and target those as to whom it found probable cause, as the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution requires.

The Fourth Amendment was written to keep the government out of our private affairs and off our backs and to force the government to stay in the lane of probable cause of crime. Thus, with the requirement of probable cause — evidence that (a) a crime was committed and (b) it is more likely than not that execution of the warrant will produce more evidence of that crime — the Fourth Amendment explicitly outlaws general warrants that permit the bearer to search wherever he wishes and seize whatever he finds. The amendment requires every warrant to describe specifically the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized.

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Breaking News: Edward Snowden Granted Russian Citizenship, by Paul Craig Roberts

Posted on September 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

It says nothing good about America that truth teller Edward Snowden sought citizenship in Russia. From Paul Craig Roberts at paulcraigroberts.org:

Today Edward Snowden was granted Russian citizenship. Snowden had to flee his country, because he released information that proved that the NSA was, and still is, illegally spying on US citizens.  The presstitutes will use Snowden’s grant of citizenship as proof that he was a Russian spy, not a patriotic whistleblower trying to alert his countrymen to their danger.

I would like to give some background. Edward Snowden was the second American who blew the whistle about illegal NSA spying on American citizens.

William Binney was the first.  Binney was a Russian specialist with the National Security Agency.  He developed the spy program that was supposed to be used against America’s enemies, but was illegally used against the American population.  Binney, despite being the NSA Geopolitical World Technical Director, a high position, blew the whistle on the illegal activity, comparing it to activities of the KGB, Stasi, Gestapo, and SS.

As a consequence the US government decided to destroy him.  In July 2007 a dozen heavily armed FBI Gestapo broke into his home and arrested him while he was taking a shower.  His economic livelihood was destroyed, and the government attempted to prosecute him.

However, Binney exposed the illegal spying internally through the official whistleblower program, and he did not take any documents as proof of the illegal spying on US citizens. As a result of these precautions, Binney could not be prosecuted, and the information that the US government was illegally spying on its own citizens did not get out.

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Video Transcript: The Semi-Inside Story of Why Trump Refused to Pardon Snowden and Assange, by Glenn Greenwald

Posted on January 8, 2022 | 1 comment

Trump blew it on Assange and Snowden and he blew it on the vaccines. He’ll have to give better answers than the ones he’s given so far if he expects to run in 2024. From Glenn Greenwald at greenwald.substack.com:

For months, Trump indicated that he was strongly considering pardoning NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and considering a pardon for Assange as well. Yet he never did. Why?
In an interview at Mar-a-Logo, Candace Owens presses Donald Trump on why he did not pardon either Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, Dec. 29, 2021

When Donald Trump vacated the White House on January 20, 2021, it became clear that he had refused to issue two pardons which many of his most ardent supporters were advocating and even expecting: one for the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, who has spent eight years in exile in Russia for revealing to American citizens that the Obama-era NSA was secretly and unconstitutionally spying en masse on their communications and other online activities, and Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder whose reporting in 2010 on grave crimes by the U.S. and its allies and in 2016 on the Clinton campaign were among the most consequential journalism stories of the last two decades.

Trump’s failure to pardon either of them fostered disappointment and anger in many circles — “Trump left the White House about as weak, cucked, and submissive as it’s possible for a grown adult to scamper away,” I tweeted on that day, with an obviously considerable mix of each sentiment. That reaction was due to the fact that Trump himself had raised the possibility that he might pardon Snowden — infuriating everyone from Susan Rice to Liz Cheney — and was also actively considering a pardon for Assange. Given that it is virtually impossible to imagine any other U.S. president even remotely considering such a move, Trump seemed to be not just the best but the last chance for either of these two courageous dissidents to finally earn their freedom and be able to go home. That many of Trump’s most trusted Congressional allies [such as Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL)] were strongly advocating for a pardon of one or both, and because Trump himself harbored so many valid personal reasons for wanting to confront these security state agencies — he had, as much as anyone, seen first-hand how pernicious and sinister these agencies can be, and what grave menaces they pose for American democracy — it was difficult for many people to understand why he did not pardon one or both of them.

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Snowden Grills WaPo for ‘Embarrassingly Weak’ Reaction to NSO Spyware Scandal, Says it’s Untrue Pegasus Can’t Target US Phones, by RT News

Posted on July 22, 2021 | Leave a comment

The Washington Post demonstrates the mainstream media’s see, hear, and speak no evil approach to Israel. From RT News at rt.com:

Snowden grills WaPo for ‘embarrassingly weak’ reaction to NSO spyware scandal, says it’s untrue Pegasus can’t target US phones
©  REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

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Reporters Once Challenged the Spy State. Now, They’re Agents of It, by Matt Taibbi

Posted on May 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

The mainstream press in this country can’t even be called the press. It’s better termed a public relations agency for the government and the Democratic party. From Matt Taibbi at taibbi.substack.com:

News companies are pioneering a new brand of vigilante reporting, partnering with the spy agencies they once oversaw
Former CIA director John Brennan was a media villain, now he’s media himself.

What a difference a decade makes.

Just over ten years ago, on July 25, 2010, Wikileaks released 75,000 secret U.S. military reports involving the war in Afghanistan. The New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel helped release the documents, which were devastating to America’s intelligence community and military, revealing systemic abuses that included civilian massacres and an assassination squad, TF 373, whose existence the United States kept “protected” even from its allies.

The Afghan War logs came out at the beginning of a historic stretch of true oppositional journalism, when outlets like Le Monde, El Pais, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, The New York Times, and others partnered with sites like Wikileaks. Official secrets were exposed on a scale not seen since the Church Committee hearings of the seventies, as reporters pored through 250,000 American diplomatic cables, secret files about every detainee at Guantanamo Bay, and hundreds of thousands of additional documents about everything from the Iraq war to coverups of environmental catastrophes, among other things helping trigger the “Arab Spring.”

There was an attempt at a response — companies like Amazon, Master Card, Visa, and Paypal shut Wikileaks off, and the Pentagon flooded the site with a “denial of service” attack — but leaks continued. One person inspired by the revelations was former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who came forward to unveil an illegal domestic surveillance program, a story that won an Oscar and a Pulitzer Prize for documentarian Laura Poitras and reporters Glenn Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill. By 2014, members of Congress in both parties were calling for the resignations of CIA chief John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, both of whom had been caught lying to congress.

The culmination of this period came when billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar launched The Intercept in February 2014. The outlet was devoted to sifting through Snowden’s archive of leaked secrets, and its first story described how the NSA and CIA frequently made errors using geolocation to identify and assassinate drone targets. A few months later, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden admitted, “We kill people based on metadata.”

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“Did You Agree To This? Everybody’s Locked Up”: Ed Snowden On Power Of Silicon Valley Amid COVID Lockdowns, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 2, 2021 | Leave a comment

Who made the social media moguls overlords of the entire world? From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

A new video montage of recent interviews with former NSA contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden exposes how the global COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns – which have been particularly severe and far-reaching in Western countries like the UK, Canada, and in a number of major US cities – coupled with the already immense power of Silicon Valley and its allies in the national security state, has served to keep individuals and entire populations ‘gated off’ from one another. “This is just the beginning,” Snowden warns of these unprecedented times. “All of these things today have consequences which we are not informed about.”

“I would say this is sort of unusual… we’re all spread all over the world in different rooms, everybody’s locked up… but for me this is how I’ve always lived.” He narrates that so much of our life is “intermediated by the screens.” Increasingly our lives are “intermediated by these screens. We spend less time outside and more and more time staring into glass or through glass to connect with that larger world – something beyond ourselves.”

Ultimately he poses the following questions as a warning in the video entitled, “Edward Snowden 2021: The Most VICIOUS HONEST 10 Minutes of your LIFE!”… “Increasingly it feels something distinct from us, something apart from us – something that we are witnessing rather than participating in. Ask yourself: Is this your will? Is this what you want? Did you agree to this? Is this consistent with the vision of the future you want to see?

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A Pardoning Time of Year, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on December 29, 2020 | Leave a comment

Trump would win absolution for any sins he’s committed in his four years in office by pardoning Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. From Philip Giraldi at unz.com:

The resistance to the apparent election of Joe Biden as President of the United States is continuing to play out. Current President Donald Trump is continuing to fight against the presumed results of the November national election with his final card appearing to be a vote in Congress when it reconvenes on January 6th to throw out the results due to fraud in certain key states. Many have noted how the registration and electoral processes in the United States, varying as they do from state to state, were and are vulnerable to fraud. That, plus some eyewitness testimony and technical analysis, suggests that possibly systematic fraud did take place but it is far from clear whether it was decisive. This is particularly true of the vote by mail option, which was promoted by leading Democrats and which empowered literally millions of new voters with only limited attempts made to validate whether citizens or even real people were voting.

Vote by mail is now one of several options that are appearing to be weaponized by the cash-rich Democrats in the state of Georgia, where two Senate races will be up for grabs in runoff elections on January 5th. If the Democrats obtain both, they will control the Senate through the Vice President’s role in presiding over the upper chamber where she has the tie breaking vote. That will mean that we the voters can expect some dramatic changes as the Democrats respond to their various constituencies with their well enunciated grievances.

In what may be its last weeks in office, the Trump Administration is also exploiting its executive power to pardon to reverse perceived injustices and to protect remaining allies, to include some family members. Trump is already on track to pardon more individuals than any preceding president with 90 pardons issued as of Christmas Eve and many more expected. One of his initial pardons was a notable example of a miscarriage of justice in the case of presidential national security advisor designate Michael Flynn, who was wrongly accused of collaborating with Russia. If anything, he was actually cooperating with a request that came from Israel, which Congress and the media apparently do not regard as wrongdoing.

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Hero or Traitor? by John Stossel

Posted on December 16, 2020 | 1 comment

John Stossel was able to interview Edward Snowden recently via a Zoom call. As always, Snowden had things to say to which attention should be paid. From Stossel at theburningplatform.com:

Hero or Traitor?

President Donald Trump should pardon Edward Snowden.

Who?

I know, it’s embarrassing — Assange, Manning, Snowden… Who did what?

I got them confused before I researched this topic. National security isn’t my beat. I finally educated myself this month because I got a chance to interview Snowden, the CIA/NSA employee who told the world that our government spied on us but lied to Congress about it.

Now Snowden hides from American authorities.

We talked via Zoom.

Fourteen years ago, when Snowden worked for the CIA, and then the NSA, he signed agreements saying he would not talk about what he did. I confronted him about breaking his promise.

“What changed me,” he answers, “was the realization that what our government actually does was very different than the public representation of it.”

The NSA’s mass surveillance program was meant to find foreign terrorists. When congressmen asked NSA officials if, without warrants, they collected data on Americans, they lied and said, “No.”

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