Glenn Greenwald has confirmed to the British Sunday Times what I speculated about, that the big Snowden finale to appear soon will be the names of Americans who have been spied upon by the NSA and that this will appear on The Intercept.
His plan to publish names will further unnerve an American intelligence establishment already reeling from 11 months of revelations about US government surveillance activities.
…“One of the big questions when it comes to domestic spying is, ‘Who have been the NSA’s specific targets?’,” he said.
“Are they political critics and dissidents and activists? Are they genuinely people we’d regard as terrorists?”
These sound to me like rhetorical questions. Clearly there are going to be well-known figures among the names and they are going to be people whom we would not remotely connect with terrorism, shooting down the myth once and for all that these programs were designed and implemented solely for the purpose of ‘saving us from terrorists’.
He says that there will be further stories, especially involving the British spy agency the GCHQ, saying of them, “The British are more unrestrained and vicious in their surveillance mindset than even the US.”
Greenwald also says that he refused to engage with the usual pleasantries when he debated Michael Hayden in Toronto recently, saying “I think that’s he’s a war criminal and belong in the Hague. And so to shake his hand or chat with him at a cocktail party is something really unpleasant to me.”
I wonder if it’s just going to be US citizens, or include citizens of other countries.
My biggest concern with the NSA isn’t the so-called “right to privacy,” which is pretty much moribund anyway nowadays due to corporations like Google, Yahoo, and Facebook + “Big Data.”
My biggest concern is that J. Edgar Hoover was using the FBI to research politicians for blackmail material, to advance his own political agenda, and I see no particular reason to believe that they’ve ever stopped. NO branch of government should have that much power — ESPECIALLY a branch with such pathetic “oversight” from elected officials as the intelligence community gets.
@1: Since the NSA’s job is to spy on non-US citizens, it would hardly be a shock or a surprise to find Prince Harry’s name on the list. Or any other non-US citizen. We spy on them, they spy on us. It’s what spies do.
But since the NSA is specifically prohibited by law and by the US Constitution from spying on fellow citizens (without a warrant), I suspect that the names to be released will be US citizens.
Look for names like Keith Ellison (the Muslim US Congressman) to be on the list. Along with whackaloons like Terry Jones. And ordinary schmoes like you and me.
What will be interesting to see is what type of political critics and activists these are. I suspect they will be overwhelmingly on the Left -- antimilitarists, opponents of US hostility to leftwing governments in Latin America, environmentalists, animal liberation activists, leaders of poor people’s and labor movements, antiracists, Occupy, anarchists, immigration activists, challengers of government surveillance itself,…
Well, that’s a clue. 🙂
Good morning,
I remember when the Nixon Enemies List went public and there were a lot of people pissed that they weren’t on the list. I wonder if something similar might occur with the Snowden list.
Do all you can to make today a good day,
Jeff
@Jeff,
Paul Newman said that he considered being on Nixon’s list to be his greatest accomplishment. Art Buchwald had a hilarious column where he blasted the Nixon administration for not putting him on the list. As a result he said his social standing had plummeted and he was now considered a nobody. Head waiters would seat him at the worst tables. He stopped being invited to the fanciest parties. People would no longer return his calls. He said nobody hated the Nixon administration more than him and he fumed, “What kind of incompetent administration does not know who its real enemies are?”
@Mano,
Definitely one of those thing that makes you go hmmmm…
Enjoy your conference, I’m sure Baxter will miss you (maybe you could have someone shoot one of those returning warriors and their dogs videos).
Jeff
It will also be interesting to see if journalists and politicians have been targeted, and if any change their tune about Snowden.
Hee. Apparently, the NSA was spying on him.
Re SC @ #9
CBS newscaster Dan Rather is also apparently not on the list. He was reputed to be the media man who Nixon most despised.