Glenn Greenwald: As Obama Makes "False" Surveillance Claims, Snowden Risks Life to Spark NSA Debate This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form. AARON MATÉ: We turn now to the latest news in the NSA surveillance scandal. On Monday, both President Obama and whistleblower Edward Snowden gave extensive interviews on the surveillance programs Snowden exposed and Obama is now being forced to defend. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails. CHARLIE ROSE: And have not. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And have not. AARON MATÉ: Obama’s comments came as new poll numbers showed his approval rating has dipped 8 percent since the NSA disclosures emerged nearly two weeks ago. AMY GOODMAN: Well, after going public as the source behind the NSA disclosures just over a week ago, Edward Snowden remerged on Monday after several days of quiet. Snowden indicated he remains in Hong Kong after arriving there last month, but wouldn’t confirm his exact location. [break]
Rep. Peter King Lies About Glenn Greenwald, Uses Those Lies To Say Greenwald Should Be Arrested & Prosecuted We already mentioned how terrorist supporter Rep. Pete King has said that journalists reporting on government leaks exposing blatant abuse of power should be prosecuted, and rather than admit that he misspoke, he appears to be doubling down... by flat out lying. He went on Fox News to specifically call out Glenn Greenwald and claim that legal action should be taken against him, mainly based on the entirely false claim that Greenwald is threatening to reveal the names of CIA agents and assets. The problem is this is not true. Greenwald has made no such threats or even suggested anything like that. But King bases his entire attack on Greenwald on these false claims. According to the summary at TPM: "I'm talking about Greenwald. Later on in the interview, King is asked about whether Greenwald's existing leaks should lead to prosecution, and King says yes, that this is clearly being done to "hurt Americans." Fox News: Well, Glenn Greenwald will say he's trying to help America. Hmm.
Greenwald’s long battle against the surveillance state The series of revelations last week that the National Security Agency (NSA) was daily hoarding data on every phone and online communication inside and coming from the U.S. were the finest examples of Glenn Greenwald’s bold journalistic work in shining light on the troubling operations of government. Greenwald’s illuminations on the surveillance state are not new, however. Throughout his career and time at Salon, he argued against the expanding surveillance dragnet, the government agencies, private contractors and political ideologies upholding it. During a speech at the Socialism 2012 conference, Greenwald called the creeping surveillance state — with the expansive NSA hoarding complex at its center — an impediment to any efforts to meaningfully challenge the political status quo: At the time, Church also said: “I don’t want to see this country ever go across the bridge.
NYT Gives Damning-With-Faintest-Praise-Possible Profile of Glenn Greenwald After Surveillance Scoops The Grey Lady roused itself to profile Glenn Greenwald after his blockbuster stories of the last two days: the first on a secret court order now in effect for Verizon to provide the NSA on all telephone records in its systems, the second on the PRISM program, which has given the NSA direct access to servers of information giants including Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, since 2007. But the piece is mean-spirited, underplaying Greenwald’s credentials and coming too close for comfort to character sniping. Start with first impressions: the headline, the opening paragraph, and the picture: “Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate“: After writing intensely, even obsessively, for years about government surveillance and the prosecution of journalists, Glenn Greenwald has suddenly put himself directly at the intersection of those two issues, and perhaps in the cross hairs of federal prosecutors. So where do we start with this? Mr. Mr. Ah, the British “unsound” treatment.
Sunday Shows meet Glenn Greenwald! Welcome to your recap of this week’s “Sunday shows,” where the hot topic is how the government has access to everyone’s phone and Facebook and video sex chats all the time, EVERYONE FREAK OUT, NOW. We’ll be watching ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS’ “Face the Nation,” and yes, in that priority order. “This Week” promises to be a grand old time, as some producer has let civil liberties reporter and commentator Glenn”zilla” Greenwald on national television again to scorch the earth. Greenwald, of course, has been the lead reporter behind a number of top-secret leak reports this week. “You are really on a roll,” George Stephanopoulos congratulates Greenwald, of “the Guardian newspaper.” (Full disclosure: I am a contributor to the Guardian U.S.) But, Mr. Stephanopoulos pushes Greenwald on whether the government has “direct access” to these tech companies’ servers, as he and the Washington Post originally reported. Greenwald is asked whether he’s been called by the FBI yet.
Glenn Greenwald is "Aiding and Abetting" Democracy Imagine if the Sunday morning talk shows had existed in 1776. Surely, they would have welcomed the most widely-read and provocative journalist of that historic year. Perhaps the hosts would have asked Tom Paine if he felt that, by penning articles calling out the hypocrisy of colonial officials – and incendiary pamphlets such as “Common Sense” – he was “aiding and abetting” the revolutionaries that King George III imagined to be “traitors.” An intimidating question, to be sure. Too intimidating, determined the founders of the American experiment. After Paine’s compatriots prevailed in their revolutionary endeavor, they wrote into the Bill of Rights a protection of the ability of a free press to speak truth to power, to call out and challenge the machinations of those in government. Unfortunately, this history is sometimes lost on contemporary Washington. NBC's David Gregory initially asked Greenwald to discuss the whereabouts of Edward Snowden, a source of the leaks. © 2013 The Nation
On Whistleblowers and Government Threats of Investigation James Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, who called the Guardian's revelations 'reprehensible'. (Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA) We followed Wednesday's story about the NSA's bulk telephone record-gathering with one yesterday about the agency's direct access to the servers of the world's largest internet companies. I don't have time at the moment to address all of the fallout because - to borrow someone else's phrase - I'm Looking Forward to future revelations that are coming (and coming shortly), not Looking Backward to ones that have already come. "The people who do [create accountability for those in power]are heroes. They are the embodiment of heroism. They do it knowing exactly what is likely to be done to them by the planet's most powerful government, but they do it regardless." But I do want to make two points. They could easily enrich themselves by selling those documents for huge sums of money to foreign intelligence services. That isn't going to work.
GLENN GREENWALD Smear Name NSA Won't Stop Me When I made the choice to report aggressively on top-secret NSA programs, I knew that I would inevitably be the target of all sorts of personal attacks and smears. You don't challenge the most powerful state on earth and expect to do so without being attacked. As a superb Guardian editorial noted today: "Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared. One of the greatest honors I've had in my years of writing about politics is the opportunity to work with and befriend my long-time political hero, Daniel Ellsberg. When I asked Ellsberg about that several years ago, he explained that the state uses those tactics against anyone who dissents from or challenges it simply to distract from the revelations and personally smear the person with whatever they can find to make people uncomfortable with the disclosures. So I've been fully expecting those kinds of attacks since I began my work on these NSA leaks.