Snowden: Brit Spying Law Could Have Been Written by NSA

In an exclusive interview with The Guardian former US government contractor turned heroic whistleblower Edward Snowden has commented on British leader David Cameron's new emergency surveillance bill to be rammed through parliament this week much like the USAPATRIOT Act was in the aftermath of 9/11. During the interview, conducted in Moscow to and be made available in its entirety later this week Snowden states that the law is comparable to the 2007 Protect America Act which the Bush administration similarly rushed into law.

According to a The Guardian story entitled "Edward Snowden condemns Britain's emergency surveillance bill":

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian in Moscow, Snowden said it was very unusual for a public body to pass an emergency law such as this in circumstances other than a time of total war. "I mean we don't have bombs falling. We don't have U-boats in the harbour."

Suddenly it is a priority, he said, after the government had ignored it for an entire year. "It defies belief."

He found the urgency with which the British government was moving extraordinary and said it mirrored a similar move in the US in 2007 when the Bush administration was forced to introduce legislation, the Protect America Act, citing the same concerns about terrorist threats and the NSA losing cooperation from telecom and internet companies.

"I mean the NSA could have written this draft," he said. "They passed it under the same sort of emergency justification. They said we would be at risk. They said companies will no longer cooperate with us. We're losing valuable intelligence that puts the nation at risk."

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During the interview, Snowden was taken aback on learning about the speed at which the British government is moving on new legislation and described it as "a significant change". He questioned why it was doing so now, more than a year after his initial revelations about the scale of government surveillance in the US, the UK and elsewhere around the world, a year in which the government had been largely silent.

He also questioned why there had been a move in the aftermath of a ruling by the European court of justice in April that declared some of the existing surveillance measures were invalid.

He said the government was asking for these "new authorities immediately without any debate, just taking their word for it, despite the fact that these exact same authorities were just declared unlawful by the European court of justice".

He added: "Is it really going to be so costly for us to take a few days to debate where the line should be drawn about the authority and what really serves the public interest?

"If these surveillance authorities are so interested, so invasive, the courts are actually saying they violate fundamental rights, do we really want to authorise them on a new, increased and more intrusive scale without any public debate?"

He said there had been government silence for the last year since he had exposed the scale of surveillance by the NSA and its British partner GCHQ. "And yet suddenly we're told there's a brand new bill that looks like it was written by the National Security Agency that has to be passed in the same manner that a surveillance bill in the United States was passed in 2007, and it has to happen now. And we don't have time to debate it, despite the fact that this was not a priority, this was not an issue that needed to be discussed at all, for an entire year. It defies belief."

Cameron of course is invoking as justification for the latest shoring up of the surveillance system of control the big, bad Muslim bogeyman and the impending risk of "terrorist" attacks on jolly old England - Hermann Goering once remarked "it works the same in any country" and at least in terms of using fear to bypass any sort of legitimate legislative process the former Nazi was spot on. While the authorities in The Homeland must tread a bit more carefully the British regime which is rapidly morphing into something that resembles the Norsefire government in the movie V For Vendetta and let's face it, the British people are spineless given their status as subjects of the Queen an the illicit royal family whose only qualification for power is to simply be born. The government there is obviously expecting some sort of uprising as it has been recently revealed that water cannons are being brought in for crowd control although since the word got out the decision has been temporarily delayed.

The US-UK surveillance colossus will not be constrained by anything as quaint as a constitution or the legitimate political process and will continue to consolidate power and increase snooping capabilities on political dissenters, journalists, bloggers, activists and any who threaten their illicit system of control. All of this was made possible when the authoritarian elements hit the jackpot with the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Pandora's Box of scare tactics was thrown open - it will never be closed without a mass uprising but the time for that grows short as the lists of those who would challenge the bastards grows longer. 

British Cohorts of NSA Stasi Decry Reporting on Spying

Across the pond, the British Norsefire government is again on the attack over the revelations of their own surveillance programs over at GCHQ which has renewed threats of an imminent media crackdown.  Sir John Sawers, the head of MI6 (James Bond’s employer) and from the sound of it a real royal assclown channeled Dick Cheney at a public hearing declaring that "the leaks from Snowden have been very damaging. They have put our operations at risk. It is clear our adversaries are rubbing their hands with glee. Al-Qaida is lapping it up." That such horseshit exists outside of the rogue U.S. government is both scary as well as sardonically amusing  the same con is being run down on the queen's subjects. So after years of being subjected to the phony war on terror, a phantom menace ginned up by cynics and criminals out of the ashes of tragedy primarily to enrich well connected military and surveillance firms both foreign and domestic the lies continue. It really takes some set of it takes a set of stones to continue to slap the leather to that dead horse.

The Guardian story that describes the hearings could easily be juxtaposed with tales of the NSA Stasi with only the names and titles changed. It is pretty obvious that GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 received a version of the same NSA talking points that instructed those giving testimony to rely heavily on the 9/11 references, the chosen bread and butter of the American fascist state for years. Andrew Parker, the director of MI5 and just one more lying noxious bastard stated that – “since 2005 and the 7/7 attacks, 34 separate plots had been foiled, including one that would have created mass casualties.” But of course the successful foiling of the plots included the same specific set of details provided by the defenders of U.S. surveillance – none.

The media, especially The Guardian again came under attack by the establishment, specifically this from Sir John:

At Thursday's hearing, Sawers criticised newspapers for claiming they could judge whether disclosures would compromise national security, saying they were not particularly well placed to make such decisions. But pressed to accept that the disclosures had raised issues about the line between secrecy and openness, however, Lobban acknowledged the urgency of the issue, saying: "Clearly with the situation we are in, we are actively considering that with government."

It is the utmost in hypocrisy when the misdeeds of criminals in high places are exposed by what is at least theoretically a free press are the first ones calling for the government to stifle reporting when their schemes are outed. It was just a few weeks ago when top NSA Nazi General Keith Alexander gave an interview where he expressed the sentiment of the U.S. regime to similarly stomp the jackboot of the state down upon the meddlesome press. At least there is reporting in jolly old England that is taken seriously while our own corrupt corporate state press is content to wallow in the panties of Lindsey Lohan and Miley Cyrus while only occasionally paying lip service to holding power accountable.

The war on reporting is rapidly escalating abroad and as the U.S. hits on the Guardian website for real news have the Cameron regime scrambling to get a lid on it, outside of dispatching government goons to supervise the smashing of computer hard drives. Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda who was abducted and detained by thugs at London's Heathrow Airport back in August has been officially labeled as a “terrorist” which does not bode well for the future of Guardian reporting on the NSA/GCHQ activities. Greenwald saw the writing on the wall and got the hell out in time because the crackdown is coming. 

This all must have put a real twist in the queen’s knickers and that mummified old bag cannot be happy seeing the exposure deliver a nice backhand slap across the legendary “stiff upper lip”. It just keeps coming too. According to a paper released by The Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), an influential Brussels based think tank the British are in violation of European law with their spying activities. Seems like James Bond is a hell of a lot less cool now that the U.K. has been exposed as the authoritarian menace to individual freedom that it has always been, they never really gave up the empire and only merged with their fascist American deep state counterparts.

Oh Guy Fawkes Where Art Thou?