The propaganda onslaught conducted by agents of the rogue state against former government contractor turned NSA whistleblower today hit some unexpected headwinds when the New York Times published an editorial calling for clemency. The Times, which is far too often decried as a liberal newspaper (when it isn’t pushing government lies to promote Middle East wars) is the first national media source to finally stand up for the acts of Mr. Snowden and his courageous outing of a run amok NSA and its unconstitutional actions. Somewhere today uber-fascist Mike Rogers, head of the House Intelligence Committee must be having an aneurysm having come out on the Sunday morning government bullshit circuit to decry the paper’s recent feature piece on the bottomless taxpayer money pit of the Benghazi witch hunt. The story on Sunday not only is a fitting bookend to the blatant lies of the now infamous 60 Minutes piece by Lara Logan featuring an entirely fabricated (and quickly retracted) tale of a mercenary Brit’s insider account of what went on on September 11, 2011 when U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stephens was killed by militants. Rogers and partisan hack Darrell Issa have pissed away a fortune on promoting a biased version of the tragedy strictly for political gain so the story must have been tough to swallow but the appeal for Snowden’s clemency is the equivalent of being kicked in the balls which is something that both of those slimy pricks are richly deserving of.
Rogers won’t the the only caterwauling fascist, you can fully expect the criminally inclined former NSA head Michael Hayden to weigh in only days after he traversed the media accusing Snowden of treason. The king and queen of obese fascist pigs, Peter King and Dianne Feinstein have yet to issue their official condemnations but it is still early. The Times plea to Barack Obama should at least give the narcissist in chief pause from adding Snowden to the official kill list and somewhat throws the concerted efforts to ring in the new year with a gaggle of on the payroll media ghouls, corrupt politicians and assorted other fanatics to push for official enemy of the state status. The OpEd, “Edward Snowden, Whistle-Blower” not only comes close to actually calling Obama a liar for his statements about whistle-blower protection that would have been available to Snowden but delivers the goods in stating that “When someone reveals that government officials have routinely and deliberately broken the law, that person should not face life in prison at the hands of that same government”.
The Times then offers up a laundry list of abuses, failures and lies by government officials that Snowden’s leaks have exposed:
The N.S.A. broke federal privacy laws, or exceeded its authority, thousands of times per year, according to the agency’s own internal auditor.
The agency broke into the communications links of major data centers around the world, allowing it to spy on hundreds of millions of user accounts and infuriating the Internet companies that own the centers. Many of those companies are now scrambling to install systems that the N.S.A. cannot yet penetrate.
The N.S.A. systematically undermined the basic encryption systems of the Internet, making it impossible to know if sensitive banking or medical data is truly private, damaging businesses that depended on this trust.
His leaks revealed that James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, lied to Congress when testifying in March that the N.S.A. was not collecting data on millions of Americans. (There has been no discussion of punishment for that lie.)
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court rebuked the N.S.A. for repeatedly providing misleading information about its surveillance practices, according to a ruling made public because of the Snowden documents. One of the practices violated the Constitution, according to the chief judge of the court.
A federal district judge ruled earlier this month that the phone-records-collection program probably violates the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution. He called the program “almost Orwellian” and said there was no evidence that it stopped any imminent act of terror.
While the above list offers up a damning indictment of a rotten to the core agency and the corrupt officials that protect it it is far from complete. The best is yet to come according to journalist Glenn Greenwald and there is already speculation that some of what the NSA was abusing its power for may include the rigging of financial markets, for profit of course. We only recently found out from a Der Spiegel story (not entirely not if Snowden was the sole source) about the elite NSA hacking unit headquartered in San Antonio, TX that “have directly accessed the protected networks of democratically elected leaders of countries” but have exploited the very operating systems of computers using Microsoft software to effectively hijack the function that allows reports of problems to the company in order to gain warrantless access to the machine. It has also been revealed that the elite TAO unit is able to intercept computers ordered by consumers during the delivery period and implant malware/spyware within the machine - all without a warrant and probably directed more at threats to the illicit NSA programs rather than actual terrorism suspects. It is all adding up to be a very ugly exposure that assuredly includes industrial espionage as well as possible blackmail for political purposes, drug money laundering through the banking system and providing intel to extrajudicial paramilitary hit squads.
Edward Snowden is a hero who has done all Americans a service by actually taking a stand and blowing the whistle on these swinish bastards who belong in prison for the rest of their miserable lives for crimes against the republic. It is about damned time to see an influential media source such as the New York Times saying what needs to be said.
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