Facebook reveals that as many as 87 million people may have had their data stolen by Cambridge Analytica.

Seriously, what in the hell would make you trust me?

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Facebook on Wednesday said that the data of up to 87 million users may have been improperly shared with a political consulting firm connected to President Trump during the 2016 election — a figure far higher than the estimate of 50 million that had been widely cited since the leak was reported last month.

Facebook had not previously disclosed how many accounts had been harvested by Cambridge Analytica, the firm connected to the Trump campaign. It has also been reluctant to disclose how it was used by Russian-backed actors to influence the 2016 presidential election. 

Among Facebook’s acknowledgments on Wednesday was the disclosure of a vulnerability in its search and account recovery functions that it said could have exposed “most” of its 2 billion users to having their public profile information harvested.

So to be clear this 87 million number STILL may not prove accurate, as essentially every Facebook user's information could have been "harvested," which sounds like a fancy word for "stolen."

So now Zuckerberg is claiming that Facebook will now provide the tools for users to better control who accesses their information, but keep in mind that they have known about this for years and only started to give a shit when journalists reported on the multiple breaches.

At least least Tom Anderson of MySpace pretended to be our friend.

Facebook stocks plunge as the FTC launches investigation into data sharing practices. Update!

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Shares of Facebook cratered as much as 6 percent Monday after the Federal Trade Commission announced it is investigating the company's data practices in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica leak of 50 million users' information. 

"The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices," the agency said in a statement. 

The FTC declined to confirm last week that it was investigating Facebook, including whether it violated a consent decree the tech company signed with the agency in 2011. 

The decree required that Facebook notify users and receive explicit permission before sharing personal data beyond their specified privacy settings. 

A violation of the consent decree could carry a penalty of $40,000 per violation.

Well we all know that they certainly violated that consent decree, and at $40,000 a pop that might well bankrupt Facebook.

But before you feel too bad for this multi billion dollar company, perhaps you ought to read this article from a guy who found out that Facebook had collected every phone number in his contact list:

This is not the most startling example of Facebook's data collection. At least one user has reported that all of his text messages from an Android phone have somehow ended up being stored by Mark Zuckerberg's company. 

Even if Facebook users agree to share this data, their friends whose numbers or text messages are being collected almost certainly have not. And even if those people have never joined Facebook - or have decided to delete their accounts - it looks as though some of their data will stay with the social network as long as the people who provided it remain.

And if you are now wondering how that kind of data could be misused, well this next article gives a pretty good example.

Courtesy of Fortune: 

Cambridge Analytica isn’t the only entity using Facebook data for its own ends. 

The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has relied on Facebook data to find and track immigrants suspected of being in the U.S. illegally, according to a new report by The Intercept. 

The report tells of one instance in which ICE used backend Facebook data to determine when the account of the person in question was accessed, as well as the IP addresses corresponding to each login. The agents reportedly combined this data with other routinely used records, such as phone records, to pinpoint his location.

This is all perfectly legal, and of course most of us are probably okay with law enforcement using these techniques to catch the bad guys, but under the Trump Administration the label "bad guys" could now pertain to people who just a year ago were considered upstanding members of the community.

Update: Zuckerberg has now agreed to testify before Congress.

I hope they hold his damn feet to the fire.

FBI admits that no major acts of terrorism have been prevented by the Patriot Act.

Courtesy of The Washington Times:  

FBI agents can’t point to any major terrorism cases they’ve cracked thanks to the key snooping powers in the Patriot Act, the Justice Department’s inspector general said in a report Thursday that could complicate efforts to keep key parts of the law operating. 

Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz said that between 2004 and 2009, the FBI tripled its use of bulk collection under Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which allows government agents to compel businesses to turn over records and documents, and increasingly scooped up records of Americans who had no ties to official terrorism investigations. 

The FBI did finally come up with procedures to try to minimize the information it was gathering on nontargets, but it took far too long, Mr. Horowitz said in the 77-page report, which comes just as Congress is trying to decide whether to extend, rewrite or entirely nix Section 215. 

Backers say the Patriot Act powers are critical and must be kept intact, particularly with the spread of the threat from terrorists. But opponents have doubted the efficacy of Section 215, particularly when it’s used to justify bulk data collection such as in the case of the National Security Agency’s phone metadata program, revealed in leaks from former government contractor Edward Snowden. 

Clearly it is time to do away with the program completely or  modify it in such as way that every single American citizen is not treated as a potential terrorist.

But it is equally clear that most likely neither of those two things will ever happen.

President Obama seeks end to the NSA's bulk data mining.

President Obama in Hague.

Courtesy of Fox Politics:  

President Obama is calling on Congress to pass new legislation that would prevent the National Security Agency from collecting and holding vast amounts of data on Americans' phone calls. 

The president discussed the plans during a press conference at The Hague in The Netherlands. Previewing his proposal, he claimed it would address concerns about how the bulk data collection could be exploited. 

"I'm confident that [the proposal] allows us to do what is necessary in order to deal with the dangers of a terrorist threat but does so in a way that addresses some of the concerns that people have raised," Obama said. 

The New York Times first reported late Monday that the administration was expected to propose that Congress overhaul the electronic surveillance program by having phone companies hold onto the call records, according to a government official briefed on the proposal. 

The proposal would require that phone companies only keep the records for the 18 months currently required by federal law and allow the government to see certain records when the request is approved by a federal judge. Currently, the government holds onto those phone records for five years so the numbers can be searched for national security purposes. 

A senior administration official told Fox News that the president would present "a sound approach to ensuring the government no longer collects or holds this data, but still ensures that the government has access to the information it needs to meet the national security needs his team has identified." The official also said that until the legislation is passed by Congress "the president has directed his administration to renew the current program, as modified substantially by the president in his January speech."

Yeah I know this is Fox but I watched the President say this in his press conference, and of course there is the New York times story, so it is verified.

Of course this is not enough to put every American's fears to rest, but it is certainly a necessary step in the right direction.

Of course leaving it up to Congress to pass legislation on this may be akin to dropping a container of Lego's amidst a pack of wild dogs and asking them to build you a house. And let's ask ourselves, do the Republicans in the House REALLY want to take away some of the NSA's powers?

Hmm, does anybody else smell a potential trap?

President Obama's holiday reading indicates that there may well be big changes coming to the NSA.

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:  

Before he left for Hawaii, the president was sending signals that government surveillance programs need an overhaul to restore the public’s faith on issues of national security. 

Before President Obama left for his 17-day vacation in Hawaii, White House officials made it clear that his holiday reading would consist of a lot more than beach novels to escape the stresses of Washington. He’d also be studying a 300-page report on how to rein in the government’s controversial surveillance programs that had just been delivered to him by a high-level panel of experts. 

Sure, Obama has gotten in plenty of rounds of golf with his presidential posse, as well as impromptu trips to shave ice joints and leisurely strolls along the islands’ stunning beaches with his family. But weighing on him throughout the winter getaway has been one of the most consequential national security decisions of his presidency: whether to adopt a set of recommendations that would represent the most dramatic curbing of the intelligence community’s eavesdropping powers since the Vietnam War. 

Many will believe that this is just for show and that Obama has no intention of limiting the NSA's ability to gather information.  After all now President reduces his power, or ability to gather information.

However those people have not been paying attention.

Obama’s willingness to go back and reform his own counterterrorism policies sometimes has led him to give up power or place it under tighter constraints, an unusual characteristic, given that most presidents try to enhance executive authority, especially in the national security arena. Obama, on the contrary, ordered a policy review toward the end of his first term that eventually placed greater restraints on his targeted killing program, resulting in fewer strikes. 

His trajectory on surveillance fits the pattern. As a senator and as a presidential candidate during the 2008 campaign, Obama harshly criticized the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. But shortly after taking office, he was persuaded by officials that the programs had been placed on a firmer legal foundation and were necessary. He had been briefed on occasional compliance lapses so serious that the secret court overseeing the surveillance programs had threatened to shut them down. But each time he was reassured that no harm was done.

After the Snowden revelations the President was far less easy to  convince of the necessity of the data gathering operation. 

It was only after Snowden’s revelations and the uproar over the disclosures that Obama began seriously to probe his own administration’s policies. Even then, he publicly backed the programs and said they were essential tools in the fight against terrorism. But behind the scenes, Obama was showing some irritation with the intelligence leadership that had pressed for these capabilities and repeatedly vouched for their value. 

One story that rocketed around the intelligence community involved a meeting between the president and NSA Director Keith Alexander. Alexander, who holds advanced degrees in physics and electronic warfare, was trying to explain certain aspects of one of the surveillance programs to Obama. As his highly technical and jargon-laden presentation rambled on, Obama was beginning to lose patience. When Alexander finished, the president thanked him and then icily asked if he could do it over again, “but this time in English.”

So will Obama act on the findings of this report and actually rein in America's intelligence gathering capabilities?

There are indications that he will. 

A number of panel members, speaking anonymously, said they had the clear impression that Obama was personally inclined to back their proposals on ending the metadata program, as well as many of the other recommendations that would rein in the NSA’s surveillance capabilities. “The question is whether he will be able to resist whatever pushback comes from the intelligence community,” said one panel member.

The Republicans would have you believe that the thing most damaging to the President's approval ratings is Obamacare. However I disagree with that, I think what is most damaging are the Snowden revelations about our metadata programs, and that if he seriously addresses our concerns about that it will dramatically improve his poll ratings and overall support from the American people. Especially the YOUNG American people.

Bill Maher's final New Rule from last night: "If Ben Franklin writes something smart, but Sarah Palin tweets it twice and puts it on Facebook, THAT cancels it out!"

He makes some very good, and humorous, points.

By the way, you can see the entire program by clicking here.

The tide of public opinion has turned on Edward Snowden.

Courtesy of Business Insider: 

The American public's views of National Security Agency leak source Edward Snowden have flipped in the past month, according to one poll — and now most support him being charged with a crime. 

According to the ABC-Washington Post poll, 53% say that Snowden should be charged with a crime after exposing a trove of NSA secrets, compared with 36% who disagree. That's a sharp turn from the point immediately after his revelations in June, when Americans opposed him being charged by a 48-43 margin. 

According to the ABC-WaPo poll, 57% of Americans believe that it is more important for the NSA to "investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy" — the Obama administration's justification for the programs. Only 39% think it's more important for the government not to intrude on personal privacy, "even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats." 

You know I am one who was very upset to learn that the Bush era domestic surveillance had not only continued but that it had expanded. However Snowden was never a sympathetic figure in my mind, and I was always suspicious of his motivations.

Now that he is hiding from the authorities in Vladimir Putin's Russia I have nothing but disdain for him and believe that if he ever DID have a crack at heroism he pissed it away the day he landed in that Moscow airport. Or perhaps even earlier when he landed in the Hong Kong airport.

If Snowden had really wanted to become a martyr that people would rally around he needed to stay in America and make sure the details of the American NSA program were made public to Americans, and NOT make them vulnerable to America's enemies.

I am not a nationalist but this to me is treason, and may NOT have been considered so if he had made it a top priority to protect his country as well as the sensitive information of its citizens.

Believe me I have a completely different emotional response to learning that MY country is scooping up my data then I do if I find out that Russia is now capable of doing so as well.

Among documents stolen by Edward Snowden is the detailed blueprint for how the NSA works. Uh oh!

Courtesy of Boston.com: 

Edward Snowden has very sensitive ‘‘blueprints’’ detailing how the National Security Agency operates that would allow someone who read them to evade or even duplicate NSA surveillance, a journalist close to the intelligence leaker said Sunday. 

Glenn Greenwald, a columnist with The Guardian newspaper who closely communicates with Snowden and first reported on his intelligence leaks, told The Associated Press that the former NSA systems analyst has ‘‘literally thousands of documents’’ that constitute ‘‘basically the instruction manual for how the NSA is built.’’ ‘

‘In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do,’’ Greenwald said in Brazil, adding that the interview was taking place about four hours after his last interaction with Snowden.

I swear in my nine years of writing for this blog I have NEVER run across a story for which it was so difficult to form a definite opinion. Is Edward Snowden a champion for the rights of citizens to resist the government's efforts to spy on them? Or is he a traitor to the country and ultimately a dangerous threat to our security?

The article up above certainly reinforces the latter interpretation. Clearly if this "blueprint" falls into the hands of those who wish us harm, or simply want to find a way around our defenses, they would now have the means to do both.

And Greenwald's assurances that the data is encrypted does not exactly put my mind at ease.

Like I said yesterday, and for which I received aggressive blowback from some, IF Snowden's actions result in the end of the NSA data mining programs, or some modifications and assurances that it was no longer scooping up EVERYTHING we post or email online, he could well be ultimately considered a heroic champion for individual privacy.

However if these "blueprints" fall into the wrong hands, and there is some controversial information that it has already happened, then Snowden would rank right up there with Benedict Arnold and Aldrich Ames.

What is clear is that this is a story that is not yet finished, therefore making it impossible to determine how the final chapter will play itself out.

For those who view Snowden as a criminal, there is ample evidence to support that contention.

However there are those on the other side who view him as a hero. In fact heroic enough to have already been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Okay if this happens, and it is verifiable, then I will hail Edward Snowden as a hero from now on. I promise.

Courtesy of RT:  

In the wake of NSA leaker Edward Snowden’s recent revelations, the Obama administration may be willing to backtrack on some of its more notorious surveillance policies, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) told reporters. 

The long-time member of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Thursday that privacy and civil liberties advocates could be on the verge of “making a comeback” due to the blowback caused by recent leaked national security documents. 

Speaking to the New York Times this week on the effect leaked documents attributed to former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden have had on the United States, Sen. Wyden said he imagines the White House is willing to reconsider the current surveillance policies in place that have sparked widespread protest and criticism in recent weeks.

Now before we all get excited let's consider the possibility of this actually taking place. 

If I were the President, and realized that with everybody knowing about it the effectiveness was now limited, while also knowing that virtually every other country was doing the exact same thing, I would probably make a big announcement that we were putting a stop to the NSA program.

And then once I had picked the confetti out of my hair from the parade they would throw in my honor, I would secretly reinstate the program, only THIS time making damn sure that there were no more leaks.

That may sound unnecessarily conspiratorial, but think about it for a minute. NO President gives up power unless forced to do so. If America decided to suddenly do away with their spying program, while every other country went whole hog in spying on their citizens and ours, it would put us at an incredible disadvantage.

So yes I have my doubts.

But let's say my tinfoil hat is on too tight and they DO dismantle the data gathering of ALL Americans information portion of the program at least, and put in serious legal protections for our citizens.

If THAT much happened, then yes Edward Snowden would deserve our undying gratitude and he would be somewhat redeemed in the eyes of many.

However I cannot help but equate this to a man promising his wife he will stop looking at porn.

As far as she knows he did. As far as SHE knows.

Sean Hannity's epic flip flop on the NSA spying program. Must be seen to be believed.

Well of course this is easy for conservatives to explain away.

George Bush did it to protect Americans from dangerous terrorists, so it was good then.

But Obama is obviously using it to spy on God fearing Tea Party patriots, to hopefully take away their gun rights, so it is bad.

Protestors use Fourth of July holiday to voice their concerns over domestic spying by NSA. Update!

Courtesy of CNET:

About 500 people met in Union Square to listen to a number of privacy advocates and civil liberties groups discuss Fourth Amendment rights as they stand today, in light of recent revelations about the U.S. government's spying capability. 

According to the organizers, Independence Day is a poignant day to protest in support of citizens' constitutional rights for protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, which they claim have been eroded under both the Bush and Obama administrations.

You know I have been against this whole program since the Bush administration first pushed through the Patriot Act after 9/11.

However I have to say that as much as it bothers me to know that my e-mails and phone records are being cataloged by the government for use against me should I do something that for some reason makes me a "person of interest," the fact that the same types of programs are being used around the world puts things in a somewhat different perspective for me.

Recently we learned that France has its own massive data gathering program as well, just like many of its European neighbors.

So living with that reality I am not sure how America could NOT be carefully monitoring communications coming in and out of the country.

And in fact that appears to be the attitude of most Americans:

One month after the Guardian’s first story, which revealed an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing the NSA to collect the phone records of every Verizon customer, there has been no public movement in Washington to stop the court from issuing another such order. Congress has no intelligence reform bill that would rein in the phone-tracking, or Internet monitoring, or cyberattack-planning, or any of the other secret government workings that Snowden’s disclosures have revealed. 

And as for the protests which inspired this post? Well I am not so sure how serious they are about  this issue either.

And of course my favorite.

Somehow I think that both his privacy and his penis are safe.

As of right now I have to admit that I am less concerned about what information the government is gathering, and MORE concerned about the information contained on those laptops (or hard drives if you prefer) that Snowden spirited out of the country with him.

I would like to see him back here in America, along with that stolen information, so that the government can start doing some damage assessments (Since we KNOW that both China and Russia have every bit of data that Snowden brought to their countries) and putting in safeguards to make sure another security leak like this does not happen in the future.

(Photos courtesy of Buzzfeed.)

Update: By the way, if you re concerned with what information the government has  gathered about you specifically, there is a way for you to find out.

Edward Snowden might find himself stranded as Ecuador cools to the idea of allowing him into the country. Update!

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

President Rafael Correa halted an effort to help Snowden leave Russia amid concern Assange was usurping the role of the Ecuadoran government, according to leaked diplomatic correspondence published on Friday. 

Amid signs Quito was cooling with Snowden and irritated with Assange, Correa declared invalid a temporary travel document which could have helped extract Snowden from his reported location in Moscow. 

Correa declared that the safe conduct pass issued by Ecuador's London consul – in collaboration with Assange – was unauthorised, after other Ecuadorean diplomats privately said the WikiLeaks founder could be perceived as "running the show". 

According to the correspondence, which was obtained by the Spanish-language broadcaster Univision and shared with the Wall Street Journal, divisions over Assange have roiled Ecuador's government.

Currently it is reported that Snowden is currently stuck in the transit center in Russia, with no viable visa, and not a lot of opportunities open to him.

And while this is happening Greenwald is writing new articles based on the information provided to him by Snowden, and attacking the Obama administration for continuing the Bush era NSA program, though they may have missed a more importna point.

This from The Daily Banter:  

Greenwald’s new ‘bombshell’ article about the NSA essentially details how the NSA collected email metadata beginning shortly after 9/11. 

The screamer headline: “NSA collected US email records in bulk for more than two years under Obama.” 

We already knew about this program. Most recently, Eichenwald has been writing about it for the last week or so. 

But here’s the most revealing part of Greenwald’s article: the program was stopped by the Obama administration in 2011. As Charles Johnson tweeted yesterday, the article’s headline could actually be “Obama discontinued NSA email program started under Bush.” 

Furthermore, Greenwald wrote: “It did not include the content of emails.” The NSA only collected metadata, authorized by bulk FISA court warrants. The program, like everything else, sought overseas communications, and those communications might have inadvertently included some data from US persons connected with the overseas emails. And, again, reminder: any data from US persons that’s inadvertently collected is anonymized, encrypted and destroyed. It’s only decrypted with an individual warrant.

I have said before that I think it is good thing that we know that these programs were continued under President Obama, but it is also important to know that the President ultimately ended the program.

Even more troubling in my mind right now is that Edward Snowden is sitting in an airport with no visa, and fewer and fewer prospects, along with four laptops filled with American secrets.

One has to wonder how long it will be before he starts shopping this information around in exchange for sanctuary and protection? Or if indeed that has already happened?

Update: But then again is Edward Snowden actually even IN Russia?

This from Business Insider:

Many reporters, with purchased plane tickets that have given them access to the area, have spent sleepless nights patrolling the long halls of the transit zone, looking for witnesses among the janitors, cashiers and flight attendants. 

There have also been security personnel on patrol in plain clothes, some of them clearly monitoring the journalists... 

Journalists have spent days searching for Mr. Snowden in lounges and V.I.P. halls and behind locked doors throughout the transit zone, and at 3 a.m. one of them could be seen sitting dejectedly in a glassed-in smoking area. 

So where, exactly, is Snowden? 

I find it impossible to believe that the Russians don't know EXACTLY where Snowden is right now. Now whether of not they are willing to share that information is another thing altogether.

"They should be shot." Edward Snowden's opinion of those that leaked top secret documents to journalists. Nope, no hypocrisy here.

Edward Snowden

Courtesy of The Washington Post: 

When he was working in the intelligence community in 2009, Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency contractor who passed top-secret documents to journalists, appears to have had nothing but disdain for those who leaked classified information, the newspapers that printed their revelations, and his current ally, the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, according to newly disclosed chat logs. 

Snowden, who used the online handle “TheTrueHOOHA,” was particularly upset about a January 2009 New York Times article that reported on a covert program to subvert Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, according to the logs, which were published Wednesday by Ars Technica, a technology news Web site. 

“They’re reporting classified [expletive],” Snowden wrote. “You don’t put that [expletive] in the NEWSPAPER.” 

At the time of the posting, in January 2009, Snowden was 25 years old and stationed in Geneva by the CIA. 

“Are they TRYING to start a war?” he asked of the New York Times. “Jesus christ they’re like wikileaks.”

Um, isn't he currently WORKING with Julian Assange of Wikileaks?

But wait, there's more.

This courtesy of the New York Times:  

“They’re just like WikiLeaks,” Mr. Snowden — or someone identified as him from his screen name, “TheTrueHOOHA,” and other details — wrote in January 2009 about an article in The New York Times on secret exchanges between Israel and the United States about Iran’s nuclear program. 

His unidentified interlocutor replied, “They’re just reporting, dude.” 

But TheTrueHOOHA was not mollified. “They’re reporting classified” material, he wrote, suggesting that both the leak and the article were dangerous to national security. “Those people should be shot” in their private parts.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume he was suggesting that leakers and hackers be shot in the dick.  Which, speaking as a man, is NOT something we guys take lightly.

Now there are some who will suggest that Snowden is not technically a "hacker" as he had access to the information while doing his job. Yeah, you know not so much.

This courtesy of The Daily Beast:

Last week NSA Director Keith Alexander told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that Snowden was able to access files inside the NSA by fabricating digital keys that gave him access to areas he was not allowed to visit as a low-level contractor and systems administrator. One of those areas included a site he visited during his training that Alexander later told reporters contained one of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Court orders published by The Guardian and The Washington Post earlier this month.

At least for me it has become IMPOSSIBLE to support Edward Snowden anymore.

I have to admit I am glad that we know what we know, but I am NOT glad that learned of it in the way that we did.

At this point I believe the US is completely justified in seeking to bring him back to the States and have him face American justice.

Traditional liberal groups are pulling away from President Obama. Update!

This whole NSA surveillance revelation has had the result of making groups that are traditionally liberal to become disenchanted with the President.

Courtesy of the Examiner: 

Under President Obama, the United States is “a nation governed by fear,” the American Civil Liberties Union says in an open letter that echoes the criticisms Obama has made of George W. Bush’s national security policies. 

“[W]e say as Americans that we are tired of seeing liberty sacrificed on the altar of security and having a handful of lawmakers decide what we should and should not know,” the ACLU writes in a statement circulated to grassroots supporters and addressed to Obama. “We are tired of living in a nation governed by fear instead of the principles of freedom and liberty that made this nation great.” 

It’s strange to read in light of Obama’s disavowal of Bush. “[T]oo often — our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight, and all too often trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions,” Obama said in 2009. “Instead of strategically applying our power and our principles, we too often set those principles aside as luxuries that we could no longer afford. And in this season of fear, too many of us — Democrats and Republicans; politicians, journalists and citizens — fell silent.” 

The ACLU is circulating that statement in response to the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute Edward Snowden, who leaked information about the National Security Agency’s data collection programs before fleeing to Hong Kong (and now, Russia).

And they are not alone.

Courtesy of Amnesty International:

The US authorities must not prosecute anyone for disclosing information about the government’s human rights violations, Amnesty International said after Edward Snowden was charged under the Espionage Act. 

 The organization also believes that the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower could be at risk of ill-treatment if extradited to the USA. 

"No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations by the US government. Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression," said Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International. 

"It appears he is being charged by the US government primarily for revealing its and other governments’ unlawful actions that violate human rights.”

The problem with the information  that Snowden revealed is that it hit us in the face with information that most liberals either did not think about or actively hoped was not true. And that was that the apparatus put into place by the Bush administration, the same apparatus that infuriated liberals all over the country, was now being used by an administration that we desperately wanted to trust and support.

Now we can agree that Snowden is no angel, and in fact might even be considered a traitor. But the information that he revealed, well that is another matter altogether.

But here's the thing. We also learned through Snowden's documents, that Britain has a similar program. As does Israel. And I think it goes without saying that China, Russia, most Middle Eastern countries, and possibly the majority of European countries have programs that are quite similar.

So, and I am just playing devil's advocate here, how could America NOT have the NSA program?

AND, if you will indulge me a little further, wouldn't have advertising the fact that we are still doing this placed our allies at risk, and tipped off our potential enemies?

Anybody?

Update: Well it looks like Germany is not one of the countries doing it too:

Overzealous data collectors in the US and Great Britain have no right to investigate German citizens. The German government must protect people from unauthorized access by foreign intelligence agencies, and it must act now. This is a matter of national security.

So it appears that liberal groups are not the only ones pulling away.

Hot mic catches NSA Director telling FBI Deputy Director "Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer." You're NOT helping.

Courtesy of the Daily Mail:  

The director of the National Security Agency was overheard offering a round of beer to the FBI's second-in-command following Tuesday's congressional hearing on the NSA's controversial surveillance programs. 

The three-hour hearing had just wrapped up around 1 p.m. when NSA Director Keith Alexander turned to FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and praised him for his testimony. 

 'Thank you, Sean,' Alexander said, according to a clip of the exchange that was first reported by Ben Doernberg. 

'Tell your boss I owe him another friggin' beer,' he added. 

'Yeah?' Joyce responded. 

 'Yeah,' said Alexander. 

'Tell him to give it to me,' Joyce said. 

Joyce repeatedly praised the programs as 'essential' tools for fighting terrorism in his remarks to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. 

He also described four specific cases where the FBI used data obtained by the NSA programs to thwart terror attacks, including a bomb plot against the New York Stock Exchange and another against the city's subway system. 

Now I don't necessary think that this means the FBI was lying to protect the NSA program, but I will say that this kind of thing is going to provide unending fodder for those who have suspicions about these programs. And yes I am still one of them.

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee says man at center of NSA scandal is lying.

Courtesy of TPM:  

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said Thursday that the man who leaked information about National Security Agency surveillance programs is lying about his access to that information as well as the programs' scope. 

"He was lying," Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI) said after a closed briefing with NSA Director Keith Alexander, as quoted by The Hill. "He clearly has over-inflated his position, he has over-inflated his access and he's even over-inflated what the actually technology of the programs would allow one to do. It's impossible for him to do what he was saying he could do."

Of course this response could simply be categorized as an example of CYA, however there are others who have raised doubts about a number of the "facts" provided by Snowden.

To be honest this is starting to look like about as much of a "scandal" as the one concerning the IRS that is currently blowing up in Darrell Issa's face.

I STILL think we should have more transparency about what our government is doing when it comes to our privacy, but it looks like this is going to be yet another whiff and a miss for those who want to find something with which to smear the President.

In other words I might have been wr....There is a chance I was wro......I might not have been completely correct.

In my opinion this conversation on "Now with Alex Wagner" this morning was the MOST interesting discussion about why, and when, we trust our government with our privacy and why, and when, we don't.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Courtesy of MSNBC:  

In his book, “The Twilight of the Elites: America after Meritocracy,” Hayes divides American thought leaders into two camps, arguing that figures like The New York Times’ Paul Krugman and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange are classic insurrectionists, distrustful of institutional hierarchies, while Krugman’s colleague at The Times, David Brooks, serves as the model institutionalist. 

That prompted Alex to ask Hayes whether 29-year-old Edward Snowden was an insurrectionist bent on tearing down the system or an institutionalist looking to fix it. 

“I think the most dangerous thing for authority are people who were once institutionalists who later became radicalized, and I think a lot of whistle-blowers are that,” Hayes said. 

“The entire national security state constructed post -9/11 has been shrouded behind secrecy, and because it’s shrouded behind secrecy, people’s opinions about how it functions and whether it’s justifiable tend to fall along these polarized lines of how much you, by default, trust authority.” 

“People don’t really have a lot of information to operate on,” Hayes said. “And so what they do is they take cues from people they trust.” It was easier for Democrats to be more skeptical of the national security state when they were not running it.”

I found this conversation incredibly riveting this morning, and in fact was unable to complete my morning routine until it was over,  because it seemed to answer a question I have had since this Snowden thing first burst into our public consciousness.

As all of you know I got very upset at early reports and predicted this would damage the President, in part because I believed that it should.

That assertion was met by irritation from a number of you for my perceived  attacks against the President, and defensiveness over the fact that this was different because now the "good guys" are doing it.

However the question that we have to ask ourselves is should we be relaxed about this situation now because we perceive the people in charge of this as being on our side, and if we are relaxed about this now do we have the right to be indignant about it when the Republicans are once again in charge? After all THAT is how those on the Right are responding now, even though they were the most aggressive defenders of the program when Bush first started it.

For the record I am still pretty uncomfortable with this. Sadly it looks like I will just have to live with it, as the genie is out of the bottle and clearly has NO intention of ever returning,

Too soon?

Well it made me laugh. And if we are going to lose our privacy we might as well hang on to our sense of humor.

Sarah Palin suddenly VERY concerned about data gathering, now that a black man is in charge of it.

"Look there's a bandwagon I can jump onto to get some attention."

Courtesy of the Tin-hatted Twit's Facebook page:

Boot-stomping govt claims citizen spying never happened then pouts Congress knew all along; Congress denies. Our obtuseness = their strength... 

Palin then links to a page on Breitbart which discusses the upcoming opening of the new Utah Data Center, and refers to it as "Obama's Bat Cave."

You can read about it, without the hyperbole, here.

As I have mentioned before I am none too happy about all of this data gathering either, however I resent like hell idiots and Right Wingers (Is there a difference?) like Sarah Palin jumping onto this issue now, when they were completely silent about it when George Bush started rounding up our data in the first place.

In fact Palin's running mate, John McCain, reversed his initial discomfort with the program back in May of 2008, and gave the Foreign Intelligence and Surveillance Act his wholehearted endorsement.

I don't remember VP candidate Palin bitching about our privacy back then, Does anybody else?

To be clear these Right Wing hypocrites, of which Sarah Palin may be the best example, do not give a shit about our privacy, or domestic spying, or the NSA. All that they care about is that this is another opportunity to attack the President and conveniently ignore the fact that he only inherited a program that one of their own secretly put into place back in 2002.

Let's face it, if these facts were coming out during a second McCain term, or (Heaven forbid) a Sarah Palin term in office, or even a Mitt Romney first term, there would not be ONE Right wing conservative Republican that would say a damn thing about it. Not one!

If anybody should be upset right now it is those of us on the Left who hoped that by electing Barack Obama we would see an end to some of these programs, not the Right who were all for phone taps and data mining. You know back when they thought a white guy was going to be doing it.

Rachel Maddow takes a deep dive into our lack of privacy, the government's domestic spying program, and why we should or should not be upset by it. Update!

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

A whole lot of you were upset yesterday by my post yesterday suggesting that in a summer of scandals drummed up by the Republican in order to damage the President that the NSA spying one was the most likely to hurt the President far more than the Benghazi "scandal." the IRS "scandal," or the "he's actually a foreign born gay Muslim scandal."

And the reason for that was NOT because President Obama was doing anything worse than the previous administration, but because he was doing things almost exactly LIKE the previous administration.

My point, and I think a whole lot of people missed it, was that this NSA thing had been largely ignored by most of the American people because they were so terrified of terrorist attack they were willing to allow the CIA to bug their phones, monitor their movements, and possibly hide under their beds if it were deemed necessary.

However THIS  President was supposed to change all of that.

He was going to respect the Constitution far more than George W. Bush ever did, and he was only going to use his powers for good. However we have seen him punish whistle blowers at an alarming rate, use drones to kill targets in Pakistan who were very possibly innocent, and now engage in the kind of draconian overreach of powers here in the United States that angered us so much when the Bush administration utilized them.

So yes I am both happy that we know that this is still going on, and saddened that we know this is still going on. And I want the President, his administration, and the Congress that okays this kind of overreach to answer for it.

Which means, just speaking for myself here, that I want this "scandal" to stick.  I want it to have real consequences, and hopefully those consequences will be a reduction of this kind of data mining, or at least stricter guidelines for its use.

Look the President is no longer a candidate, so this cannot hurt any reelection chances, and Hillary is too far removed for it to damage her in any way. And I certainly don't think it will place the President in danger of impeachment, the Republicans have too many domestic spying skeletons in their closet for that ever to happen.

So going forward I see this as an opportunity for the kind of transparency that a certain candidate for President in 2007 promised all of us. And I only see that as a good thing.

Update: The President just addressed this issue and I actually feel pretty good about his response. 

He said he welcomes the questions, thinks it is a good idea that we are questioning these policies, and kind of wonders where everybody has been on this issue.

He also made sure to spread the responsibility around including both the Congress and the FISA court in the decision making process.

When I get the video I will post it.