Why the Snowden revelations enraged the US government

Computer security expert Bruce Schneier says that the allegations that the Russians and Chinese have access to the documents that are in the trove that Snowden took may well be true but that is not because they got them from Snowden, as was the charge made by the smear article in the Sunday Times. Instead it is likely because the US, Russian, and Chinese governments have each penetrated each other’s networks because “while cryptography is strong, computer security is weak”.
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Happy Anniversary, Edward Snowden!

On June 5, 2013, the first of the stories based on Edward Snowden’s documents were published, creating a firestorm of attention around what had been a vast secret data-gathering operation conducted y the NSA under the maxim of ‘collect it all’, where they sought to gather up everyone’s communications. I went back to my own archives to see what I had written then on June 6, June 6, June 7, and June 8 and it was clear from the very beginning that this was a major scandal. Snowden revealed his identity on June 9, surprising everyone by being a young, soft-spoken person with deep principles..
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Snowden vindicated again

After much manufactured drama, the USA Freedom Act (which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Fulfilling Rights and Ending Eavesdropping, Dragnet-collection and Online Monitoring) has been signed into law by president Obama, modifying key provisions of the USA Patriot Act (which stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism).

As I have said before, you know that any legislation that has such contrived and tortured acronyms has to be a piece of rubbish intended to either hide something truly noxious or is utterly useless and is meant to provide window dressing to hide inaction.
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Update on the status of the USA Patriot Act

Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept interviewed the ACLU’s Deputy Legal Director, Jameel Jaffer about the maneuvering behind the USA Patriot Act whose provisions under section 215 will expire because of sunset provisions on June 1 unless Congress acts to pass something. The House has passed something known as the USA Freedom Act that revised some key provisions of section but that failed to pass in the Senate.
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Edward Snowden vs. Mitch McConnell

You may have been following the intricate and arcane maneuvering in the US senate where the fate of key data gathering provisions of the USA Patriot Act are due to expire on June 1 unless Congress takes action before then. Dan Froomkin gives us the current state of play on the debate over the NSA’s blanket collection of data. Froomkin says that currently there are just two options available:
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Appeals Court rules against NSA’s bulk collections of metadata

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled unanimously in the case of ACLU et. al, vs. Clapper et. al. that one aspect of the NSA’s bulk collection of metadata (one of the secret programs revealed by Edward Snowden) “exceeds the scope of what Congress has authorized” under section 215 of the USA Patriot Act. (You can read the opinion here.) The issue was whether the NSA’s collection of metadata was legal. A lower court had dismissed the ACLU’s claim but the Appeals Court overturned it and sent it back to the district court to be dealt with accordingly. Because they found it illegal under the law, they did not venture to decide on its constitutionality.
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The song is the same, only the names change

John Oliver’s interview with Edward Snowden about the abuses by the US government has been viewed over 4.3 million times and so of course the apologists for the national security state in the media and politics have come out of the woodwork to smear him yet again because they fear that his exposure of widespread government surveillance in pursuance of ways to control the population and suppress dissent will enable those seeking to curb those excesses to gain traction. These people may say they fear terrorism but what they really fear is transparency and democracy.
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