Police state intimidation: British authorities detain Glenn Greenwald's partner at Heathrow Airport

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Honestly, the surveillance state apologists all across the spectrum, on both sides of the Atlantic and around the world, can go fuck themselves.

Because this is how their beloved "democratic" governments operate, this is what they do when you dare challenge their undemocratic rule, their regime of secrecy and surveillance:

The partner of the Guardian journalist who has written a series of stories revealing mass surveillance programmes by the US National Security Agency was held for almost nine hours on Sunday by UK authorities as he passed through London's Heathrow airport on his way home to Rio de Janeiro.

David Miranda, who lives with Glenn Greenwald, was returning from a trip to Berlin when he was stopped by officers at 8.05am and informed that he was to be questioned under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. The controversial law, which applies only at airports, ports and border areas, allows officers to stop, search, question and detain individuals.

The 28-year-old was held for nine hours, the maximum the law allows before officers must release or formally arrest the individual. According to official figures, most examinations under schedule 7 – over 97% – last less than an hour, and only one in 2,000 people detained are kept for more than six hours.

Miranda was released, but officials confiscated electronics equipment including his mobile phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and games consoles.

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"This is a profound attack on press freedoms and the news gathering process," Greenwald said. "To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.

"But the last thing it will do is intimidate or deter us in any way from doing our job as journalists. Quite the contrary: it will only embolden us more to continue to report aggressively."

It is indeed such a profound attack, and I hope that Greenwald and others, undeterred and indeed strengthened by this appalling incident, continue to expose the illegal and/or at the very least deeply troubling activities that in the U.S., the U.K., and elsewhere are corroding the core elements of a free society, undermining the democratic principles that are the essence of enlightened self-governance, and eating away in very real terms at the basic rights that we all supposedly hold so dear and for which, over the centuries, so much blood was spilled.

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Greenwald is right about the Beltway media's shameless shilling for the surveillance state

By Michael J.W. Stickings

CBS News's Bob Schieffer is generally held up as a paragon of unblemished journalistic virtue, an objective newsman from the disappearing old school, a presence of insurmountable repute, a host / moderator version of the dean of the Beltway media elite itself, David Broder. Something like that. Whatever the details of the honor, he is widely seen as objectivity personified, and so to be revered, and not questioned, for he is eternally above the partisan fray.

What a bunch of fucking bullshit.

Schieffer is hardly the worst of the bunch, and perhaps he's ultimately better than many -- which is faint praise, to be sure -- but he's hardly objective (as if anyone really is), and often it's all too clear which side he's on: the side of the center-right establishment, generally friendly to Republicans and their agenda.

Case in point: His three guests yesterday on Face the Nation for a discussion of NSA surveillance? I'll let Glenn Greenwald explain:

Schieffer led another NSA discussion and invited on three of the most pro-NSA individuals in the country: [former CIA/NSA head Michael] Hayden, GOP Rep. Peter King, and Democratic Rep. Charles "Dutch" Ruppersberger, whose district includes the NSA and who is the second-largest recipient in Congress of cash from the defense and intelligence industries. No criticisms of the NSA were heard. Instead, Schieffer repeatedly pushed even Hayden to go further in his defense of the NSA and in his attacks on Snowden than Hayden wanted to...

This on top of his previous attacks on Snowden:

Two weeks ago, Schieffer interviewed NSA critic Sen. Mark Udall and told him that his concerns were invalid. "We have laws and all that sort of thing. So the fact that they would have this ability, there's nothing to suggest that they are doing this. And there seem to be a lot of safeguards to prevent them from doing that," Schieffer said. The TV host added: "Fifty-six terror plots here and abroad have been thwarted by the NASA [sic] program. So what's wrong with it, then, if it's managed to stop 56 terrorist attacks? That sounds like a pretty good record." (Schieffer's claims were all false: see, for instance, here, here, and here).

Bob Schieffer pushing the establishment (in this case, Obama Administration) line and getting a lot wrong in the process? Nothing new there.

Such is what passes for objectivity -- for fairness and balance -- in Washington.

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American hypocrisy on extradition

By Frank Moraes 

Glenn Greenwald wrote a very insightful article the other day on the hypocrisy of the United States government and and media. It circled around this business of Obama calling off the summit with Vladimir Putin. The White House gave a number of reasons for this including the fact that Russia is persecuting homosexuals. But everyone excepts the fact that it is just that Russia was given Edward Snowden temporary asylum.

Since when did the United States government give a flying fuck about the treatment of the powerless anywhere, even in the United States. After all, it was only last year that Obama "evolved" on the issue of gay marriage. As it is, Obama is perfectly fine with locking up cannabis and cocaine users for decades at a time -- even though he has quite publicly admitting to doing the same thing himself. So it's all about Snowden, because if there is one thing that the administration does care about, it is punishing whistleblowers, or as Obama calls them, "people involved in espionage."

Greenwald noted that the United States and Russian do not have an extradition treaty. So Putin isn't doing anything unusual, much less illegal. But guess who the United States does have an extradition treaty with? Italy. And yet, our great nation of laws broke its treaty when the Italian government asked for the extradition of Robert Lady and other CIA operatives who were convicted in absentia of kidnapping for the purpose of torture. And last year, the United States refused to extradite Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada to face genocide charges in Bolivia. And a couple of years before that, we wouldn't extradite terrorist Luis Posada Carriles to Venezuela.

But we need to have our priorities. These three examples are only kidnapping for the purpose of torture, genocide, and terrorism. Snowden is accused to leaking potentially embarrassing documents. And let us not forget, these three men only harmed poor and weak people. Snowden annoyed some very powerful people. That's the kind of crime that must be punished!

Meanwhile, the press is right there to stoke anger at Russia without providing any context. Even last night's The Daily Show was on it. But more generally, the media have gone out of their way to attack Snowden and put what he's done in the worst possible light. Check out this great argument between Greenwald and James Risen against the entirely typical mainstream apologetics of Jeffrey Toobin. Note how Toobin's arguments devolve into, "You gotta be kidding me!" Because all right-thinking journalists know that the government is always right. And notice also that Piers Morgan is only one tiny step more reasonable than Toobin:


So we continue on with the United States government acting like the corrupt super power that it is. Meanwhile the media spew out their usual happy talk about how we are all good and the evil Russian government just won't follow the law. I grew up during the Cold War. One of the things that we celebrated was that we had a free press whereas the Soviet Union had the government run Pravda. But even then, our press provided one-sided news that rarely came close to the truth. It is the same now -- at least if you get your "news" from the television. 

Afterword 

Jeffrey Toobin's claim is that it is great that we are talking about all of this stuff. Additionally, he admits that we are only discussing this stuff because of Edward Snowden. But he thinks that Snowden is a criminal who shouldn't have leaked the documents. James Risen counted him (and most in the mainstream press), "That's the thing I don't understand about the climate in Washington these days. People want to have debates on television and elsewhere. But then you want to throw the people who start the debates in jail." Morgan bails out Toobin by immediately pushing a straw man, "Is there no limit?!"

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Edward Snowden and U.S. hypocrisy

By Frank Moraes

Glenn Greenwald mentioned an interesting bit of American hypocrisy over the weekend that relates directly to what is going on with Edward Snowden. In 2001, Muslim cleric Abu Omar was granted asylum by Italy because he was being persecuted by the Mubarak government in Egypt. Then, two years later, a group of CIA agents kidnapped him off the street in broad daylight. They took him back to Egypt, where he spent four years in prison being tortured. He was originally charged with belonging to an illegal group, but the charges were ultimately dropped.

In February of this year, four members of the Italian secret service were convicted of complicity in this kidnapping and were given six to ten years in prison. What about the American CIA operatives? In 2009, the Italian government indicted 23 of them, including Milan station chief Robert Lady. The United States would not cooperate (justice is for the little people and foreigners) so the Italian government had to convict them in absentia. Greenwald made three points about this at the time. First, such convictions would never happen in our country; government officials have done far worse and we just ignore it. Second, our government did everything it could to interfere with the Italian judicial process. And third, our lack of accountability is an indication that we don't have a truly independent court system. The article is very good and well worth reading in full.

Since retiring, Robert Lady has lived in Latin America. Last week, while crossing the boarder into Panama, Lady was arrested at the request of Italy who wanted to extradite him to serve his sentence for the kidnapping. But on Friday, he was released following some negotiations with the U.S. State Department. And that is probably as it should be. I think that countries ought to look out for their citizens, although as in this case, the United States has far too much power in this regard.

The problem is how hypocritical the United States is. When it comes to Edward Snowden the government and the supposedly independent media have been screaming about China and Russian not turning him over to the United States. Not only has Snowden not been convicted of anything, the charges against him are so trumped up as to make the government's case against him look like nothing other than political crimes (which is what they are). What's more, there are countries who want to give Snowden asylum. But they can't because the United States government has effectively made him into a man without a country. Much the same thing has happened to Julian Assange.

It is one thing for all the different countries to position themselves and try to enact policies that they want. I don't blame any of them for trying to do that. But the United States acts in a lawless fashion in its attempts, but then screams loudly when any other countries don't follow the letter of their treaties (as the U.S. sees it) in its interactions. What makes it far worse (and far easier for the government to get away with it) is our complicit media. That allows the public to not only think that we are the most powerful nation on earth, but also the most true and good. The reality is quite different. We use our power to make our misdeeds go unpunished and to punish anyone we don't like. We should not be proud. 

Update

Dean Baker wrote an excellent article discussing this very issue. He noted that the U.S. government could make France refuse its air space to Bolivia President Evo Morales because he might have been carrying Edward Snowden (he wasn't). Yet somehow the U.S. government is impotent to do anything about the Cayman Islands' use as a tax haven. It is laughable, of course. But it makes sense. Snowden is a little person who embarrassed the government. Those using tax havens are the big people who run the government.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Your privacy is not their concern: Microsoft, the NSA, and the rise of the surveillance state

By Michael J.W. Stickings

This isn't quite the military-industrial complex, but it's something similar, and similarly nefarious, and it shows just how the national security state operates, the government enlisting the support of corporations in its quest for universal surveillance, your civil liberties be damned:

Microsoft has collaborated closely with US intelligence services to allow users' communications to be intercepted, including helping the National Security Agency to circumvent the company's own encryption, according to top-secret documents obtained by the Guardian.

The files provided by Edward Snowden illustrate the scale of co-operation between Silicon Valley and the intelligence agencies over the last three years. They also shed new light on the workings of the top-secret Prism program, which was disclosed by the Guardian and the Washington Post last month.

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Microsoft's latest marketing campaign, launched in April, emphasizes its commitment to privacy with the slogan: "Your privacy is our priority."

Similarly, Skype's privacy policy states: "Skype is committed to respecting your privacy and the confidentiality of your personal data, traffic data and communications content."

But internal NSA newsletters, marked top secret, suggest the co-operation between the intelligence community and the companies is deep and ongoing.

But Snowden and Glenn Greenwald are the bad guys, right? Because knowing about what's going on is apparently worse than what's actually going on.

Seriously, where's the fucking outrage?

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The myth of objective journalism

By Frank Moraes 

The primary difference between Fox News and MSNBC is not ideology; it is that Fox pretends to be objective. Yes, in general, MSNBC does a better job of reporting actual facts and doesn't go out of its way to mislead. But they are both advocacy groups: one for the Republican Party and the other for the Democratic Party. But no one ever claims that MSNBC provides the Truth that the other networks don't want the people to know.

Other than this fact, I have no problem with Fox News. I believe strongly that news organizations should have an explicit political inclination because they all have an implicit inclination. But even worse than that Fox who any reasonable person can see is just GOP-TV, I'm concerned about the middle-of-the-road media outlets. I'm visiting my sister and I just overheard some reporting on the TV from a local station, KTVU. They were covering information about the company that did Edward Snowden's background check. It was anything but objective. The coverage was akin to the coverage of the Julius and Ethel Rosenberg trial.

This has long been a thorn in my side: the idea that centrists are not ideological. They are -- every bit as ideological as those of us on the left and the right. It is just that their ideologies are usually incoherent. Let's think about my favorite centrist example: Nazis. On one side you have the Nazis who want to kill all the Jews, on the other you have people who don't want to harm any Jews, and in the middle you have those who just want to give all Jews life in prison. It's clear than the centrist position is ideological.

Similarly with Edward Snowden, the centrist position that he did something dangerous that put us all in danger is just as ideological as my position that he did the American people a great favor that did not put us in any danger. Matt Taibbi wrote an excellent article yesterday about this issue, "Hey, MSM: All Journalism is Advocacy Journalism." It is basically a defense of Glenn Greenwald.


Greenwald is explicitly an advocate. Andrew Ross Sorkin is not; he's an advocate, but he isn't upfront about it. Recently, he got into trouble by saying that he would "almost arrest" (whatever that means) Glenn Greenwald for publishing the Snowden revelations. But Taibbi highlights a more important passage from that same article:

I feel like, A, we've screwed this up, even letting him get to Russia. B, clearly the Chinese hate us to even let him out of the country.

Whatever happened to a press that was an adversary of the government's attempt to hide things? This is right out of Pravda: we've screwed up by letting Snowden get to Russia? In that sentence, he indicates not that he's an American (I do that all the time) but that he is an arm of the government. Clearly, he is advocating -- and in a way that is dangerous to democracy because he isn't explicit about what it is he's doing. In fact it is worse: he's claiming to be an objective journalist.

The hidden assumptions are always the ones that harm us. That is why I would rather discuss politics with a right-wing extremist than a centrist. Most centrists really have convinced themselves that they aren't ideological just because most people they know agree with them. But that's just silly. If everyone you know thinks that Man of Steel is the best movie ever, it doesn't mean that it is objectively the greatest movie ever; it means that you don't know a very diverse group of people. With silly superhero movies, it hardly matters. When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, it does.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Glenn Greenwald is a pornographer!

By Frank Moraes 

It looks like a couple of newspapers are interested in Glenn Greenwald's past. In particular, they want to know about his history as a pornographer. This is the kind of thing that makes me want to say, "You can't make this stuff up." But that's not true. This is exactly the kind of thing that I write: the intrepid journalist breaks a major story and all anyone cares about is the fact that he once was co-owner of a business that distributed adult movies. If I wrote it, I would set it in the future where pornography was illegal to set up the tragicomic ending where a prostitute is lionized for murdering him to get money for a fix.

Anyway, the whole thing is nonsense. I am an admirer of Glenn Greenwald and regardless of anything else, I am grateful to Edward Snowden for the revelations. But when did this story become about them? There is a real story that few in the media seem particularly interested in. Maybe it is just that it's a lot easier to dig into Greenwald's decades-old business dealings or Snowden's chatroom musings about the gold standard. Looking into the NSA is hard. Of course, that's why people should be so grateful to Greenwald and Snowden.

In another Greenwald column, he discussed the Espionage Act. That law goes back to the bad days of World War I. It was what Oliver Wendell Holmes was defending when he said that one couldn't shout "fire in a crowded theater." That law was never about espionage and always about silencing critics of United States foreign policy.

I hadn't given it too much thought, but it is remarkable that until Obama -- over 91 years -- the Espionage Act had only been used three times total and in the last 4+ years, Obama has used it 7 times. I've heard the stat before, of course. But given that I didn't have much hope for Obama anyway, I didn't think much about it. But it is important to put this into context. James Goodale recently said, "President Obama will surely pass President Richard Nixon as the worst president ever on issues of national security and press freedom." Obama might want to think about that. In the long run, his great legacy may not be Obamacare but rather a major move backwards in government transparency and individual privacy.

It seems to me that the forces of darkness are winning. I'm sure that to some extent, this is just an indication of my frame of mind. But it does seem that Obama is winning in those areas where he is wrong and the conservatives are winning in all the other areas. I will not give up the fight, but it weighs heavily on me. And the consolation prizes like same-sex marriage aren't nearly enough.

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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Another Republican, Obama?

By Frank Moraes 

I have had major problems with the nomination of James Comey to head the FBI. But now I'm not sure. You see, today Glenn Greewald wrote, "James Comey is far from the worst choice to lead the FBI." That's probably about equivalent to most people saying, "James Comey is the best person we could realistically get."

Of course, Greenwald wrote that after an article blasting Comey for two very troubling actions while working for George W. Bush. The biggest one is that Comey was the guy who signed off on the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. You probably remember that. It was big among liberals at the time. I was outraged. Of course, the Obama administration has been no better. In fact, the Obama administration followed the Bush lead by giving all of the phone companies immunity. Well, it was Comey who signed off on that, claiming that it was legal.

Also of concern: Comey signed off on the use of torture. Of course, he was against it and repeatedly said so. But in the end, he did it. That doesn't exactly speak to the mainstream narrative that he's a guy who stands up for principle. I'm sure you know the story of him fighting with Alberto Gonzales over something that was so illegal even Comey disagreed with it. If not, here is Rachel Maddow the other night gushing about it:

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But my problem with James Comey doesn't have to do with any of this. I figure Comey probably isn't a bad choice for the job. But just like with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, "Is no Democrat good enough?" I understand that as often as not these days, Republican bureaucrats are more liberal than Democrats. But I don't like the optics. And I especially don't like them with regards to security and military positions. It makes it look like Republicans really are better at these things than Democrats. In a fundamental sense, this means that Obama really doesn't care about his party. And that's a bad thing at a time when Republican politicians care only about theirs. 

(Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

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