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Facebook, Apple, Microsoft Partner With Privacy Groups To Call For NSA Transparency
Posted on July 18, 2013 by Akashma Online News
By Gerry Smith
First Published at The Huffington Post
The Huffington Post is owned by AOL, which also signed the letter and has denied knowledge of the NSA surveillance program.
A coalition of major tech companies and civil liberties groups on Thursday sent a letter to President Barack Obama calling for more transparency around a secret government program that collects private Internet and phone records.
In the letter, the companies argued that Americans “are entitled to have an informed public debate” about surveillance requests. The coalition urged the Obama administration to allow companies to report statistics about the number of national security requests they receive from government agencies for customer data.
The letter said the government should also issue its own regular “transparency report” disclosing that information.
“Basic information about how the government uses its various law enforcement–related investigative authorities has been published for years without any apparent disruption to criminal investigations,” the letter reads. “We seek permission for the same information to be made available regarding the government’s national security–related authorities.”
“This information about how and how often the government is using these legal authorities is important to the American people, who are entitled to have an informed public debate about the appropriateness of those authorities and their use,” the letter continues.
The companies addressed their petition to President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, NSA Director Keith Alexander, Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper and several members of Congress. It was signed by more than 20 tech companies and more than 30 trade associations and privacy groups — including Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, and the American Civil Liberties Union.
Silicon Valley and privacy groups do not always agree over privacy matters, making their partnership for the letter noteworthy. Tech companies have faced widespread criticism in recent weeks over reports that they cooperated with the government’s secret Internet spying program. Many tech giants have expressed frustration that they are prohibited by law from discussing the surveillance orders.
The nation’s largest phone companies, including AT&T and Verizon Wireless, were not part of the coalition that signed the letter and have remained quiet about their participation in the NSA surveillance program, as Time.com noted.
The letter comes amid growing calls for greater disclosure about the NSA’s collection of phone and Internet records and a push from members of Congress to scale back the surveillance program, which was disclosed last month in a series of stories in The Guardian and Washington Post.
Disclosure: The Huffington Post is owned by AOL, which also signed the letter and has denied knowledge of the NSA surveillance program.
Snowden Censored by Craven Media
Posted on June 10, 2013 by Akashma Online News
10 June 2013
Snowden Censored by Craven Media
Mr. Snowden, please send your 41 PRISM slides and other information to less easily cowed and overly coddled commercial outlets than Washington Post and Guardian. Their arm-waving, self-aggrandizing verbosity, after conspiring to obey official demand (below) to censor your information is a pattern well-documented by unfettered disclosure sites. Their piecemealing release is hoary dramatization, diverting cover-up, of failure to deliver untampered material. Your valor is yet to be fully disclosed, do not settle for being seduced by false promises portending being kicked under the bus. Heed this under-bus-kick published today by Secrecy News:
EDWARD SNOWDEN, SOURCE OF NSA LEAKS, STEPS FORWARD… “When you are subverting the power of government– that’s a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.”
“I’m willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity [of these disclosures]. This is the truth. This is what’s happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this,” he said of his disclosures.
In the history of unauthorized disclosures of classified information, a voluntary admission of having committed such disclosures is the exception, not the norm. And it confers a degree of dignity on the action. Yet it stops short of a full acceptance of responsibility. That would entail surrendering to authorities and accepting the legal consequences of “subverting the power of government” and carrying out “a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.”
And two days ago this go-to-prison kick by The Atlantic:
Whistle-blowing is the moral response to immoral activity by those in power. What’s important here are government programs and methods, not data about individuals. I understand I am asking for people to engage in illegal and dangerous behavior. Do it carefully and do it safely, but — and I am talking directly to you, person working on one of these secret and probably illegal programs — do it.
High officers and rhetoricians convene safe at base to wargame, destined by history, to praise and send youngsters into harm’s way to protect high privilege, then crow about leadership, sacrifice, pretending remorse, gloating in amply-pensioned retirement. Bear in mind, fodder for their ambitions is how they see you imprisoned for disobedience, emblazoned in by-lined headlines, warehoused in vet hospitals, or best, flag-draped in coffins disappearing into vote-rigged databanks.
http://www.wect.com/story/22544509/snowdens-cautious-approach-to-post-reporter
To effect his plan, Snowden asked for a guarantee that The Washington Post would publish – within 72 hours – the full text of a PowerPoint presentation describing PRISM, a top-secret surveillance program that gathered intelligence from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley companies. He also asked that The Post publish online a cryptographic key that he could use to prove to a foreign embassy that he was the document’s source.
Gellman told him the Post would not make any guarantee about what the Post published or when. The Post broke the story two weeks later, on Thursday. The Post sought the views of government officials about the potential harm to national security prior to publication and decided to reproduce only four of the 41 slides, Gellman wrote in his story about their communications.
People We Do not Know
We come from different backgrounds, cultures, religions, countries, we speak different languages and even with all these dis similarities we are closer that ever.
But who are “WE”?, people around the globe, “People We Do Not Know”, those strange faces that we encounter in every walk of life, in the coffee shop, the market and like a social disease in the social networks. We are every where, we have different skin colors, different social and economic status, but we do not notice those little almost insignificant details that in our everyday life are so important, but not in here. We can not see them as being an impediment to get together as one, as if we were part of the same family.
One of my closest friends, my new found brother Raja Mujtaba have showed me what real trust and friendship is. He owns an online newspaper
That in short period of time have positioned itself as one of the best sources of real news in the world.
It have been the power of the social networks, the interaction with these people that we do not know, that we talk and make part of our everyday life, that have made this little newspaper to grow and positioned itself as one of the most read newspapers in the world.
For years the world was used to the NEWS, but with the coming of the instant communication corridor, we have realized that the NEWS is not what is given to us in a silver box. No…the news are being made everyday, by all of us..we are interchanging NEWS everyday. The TV stopped offering us the TRUTH. I quote a phrase from his website “His conviction is that there can be no peace without justice thus the root cause to every problem must be identified and addressed. Justice leads to peace that develops love” I m over thrilled with his vision for our world, that with closed eyes I help him in his crusade for justice and peace.
The Free Press: The New Press
The Virtual World: It is the New World Order, where the citizens of the world, are taking the world back.
We do not need to receive “News”, we are making the Real News
Every moment someone somewhere write a new Article, Upload a new picture, and they are as real as the people are.
We are the new Opinion Makers of the World, we don’t need Editors. Because the truth is Raw and should be given as it is without dressing or photoshoping as it is been for quite sometimes.
Be happy, the good news are here.
Welcome to the New World Order of life, where the world is coming together in a credo of brotherhood, raising together our voices for a better life for everyone.
Raising our complains to the leaders that “We Appointed” to represent us and work for us.
The Virtual world welcome you, we are more closer than we ever been, the walls are down, the old school of Media is obsolete now, we are the New Press, the Free Press, we are photographers, video technicians, writers, poets, opinion makers: “Where the Truth is the News, and we are the Opinion Makers”.
During my virtual travels I have had the pleasure to meet beautiful people, specially in Gaza Strip..that little piece of land besieged by Israel Madness, but their people do not give up their hopes for Freedom, for Peace, and their dream to lead a normal life.
Take for example my dear Shady Alassar, a photographer from Gaza, that despite all the instability of his land, he keeps striving for a better future.
He won’t stop trying to leave Gaza at its will, travel out for pleasure or business. Who are those people inside Gaza that we see with different eyes because we been programmed to do so for so many years of propaganda, Gazans are people like you and me, they are people “We do not know”, but only because we do not dare to know them. It is amazing that now, we “chat” to them as our best friends, we treat them as family. Imagine what will “Bush and Company will say”, our brothers and friends live in a Land out of boundaries to the world, but not for us, the “people” of the networks.
The social networks this phenomenon that took us in a wild ride, unexpected. We live every day their economical crisis from far away, we cry with them for them.
What is our role in this drama, we are part of their drama, we were there in that part of his life, recently he was part of an exhibition of Gaza Youth photography, and he made us part of his happy moments.
Do you know him? maybe you have see him in the walls, it might seem not important, but it is important, you are proud with him. Gaza was in the news, and we were part of the news as well, sharing those moments with the world, we wonder what really happen to all of us?…we take pride in their achievement, we suffer their struggles, we are being part of this strange alliance of hope, where we are coming together as a family.
Shady Alassar is a normal guy like your neighbor , like your son or brother ,what make him special? really in this virtual world that we are being part of, we all are specials or we all are ordinary world citizen. It is your perspective of the world what it make it look beautiful or gray.
The Social Networks unleashed “POWER TO THE PEOPLE-FOR THE PEOPLE”, the invisible revolution is unstoppable, you can feel it in the air, in the wires.
The Internet came to stay. Do not allow it to be taken away. It’s our right to fight for a common cause. Peace Worth it, Love Worth it, You Worth it. I Worth it.
Why is this?. we have no specific answer but we connect with ease, we give our phone numbers our emails, we treat each other as we know for long time.
Can somebody really understand why are we doing this?… Nobody really knows, we just “DO IT”, it is as if we have broken the stereotypes, we have broken the imaginary line that kept us apart.
The religious, social, economic, and race stigmatization, and marginalization that have kept us worlds apart it gone, now, we not do see it, we do not feel bounded by those ideas, now we want to explore all religions and cultures, we want to learn and feel their struggles as ours.
The Poet Of Love

We are free now, we feel this freedom to choose to add friends, to share our morning coffee with a complete stranger. The walls that for some people like Germany and Palestine have hold them apart, now “The Walls” are bringing us together.
The “Walls” are keeping us together, they are spaces in the virtual world where we share more than ideas, passions, fashions, love experience, causes for freedom.
We are being part of the world with “People we do not Know”.
These intercontinental connections, long distance calls that few years back would have been impossible, for different reasons; social and economical reasons. We calling to Australia, Tunisia, Gaza, Brussels, Argentina, Afghanistan…the whole world is part of our geographical area, skype and messenger broke the barriers of time and space.
We losing our sleep over “People we do not know”, odd, don’t you think?
What have it changed today? we are comfortable interchanging mobil numbers to a complete strangers, if you want to see us this way. We do not think twice before we type out our “private email”.
We interact few times in the walls, in the channels, the spaces. and we call ourselves friends, brothers, comrades. We go to extreme lengths to fight for your rights, to fight for your country, to fight for your causes.
We stand strong for a reason we do not completely understand, other than doing a social justice to peace and friendship.
What really had happen to all of us?, that suddenly we raise our voices for your flag, for the protection of your individual liberties, your civil rights. Really why is this?
What it is going on in the world? Do we find that we were missing the link to Love? Are we able now to befriend and Love a complete stranger? The connectivity of the Universe is showing us the signs that we were overlooking, love is so easy to find, to expand to hold and express, in a single line on a chat room, you can find your long long waited twin love, or your lost friend or new friend.
Do not be afraid to show your kindness, the sensitive fiber of your heart. Love is at the reach of your finger tips at the end of the keyboard. Expand your conscientiousness, open up your mind to the pureness of Love.
I have found more than friends, I found a new family…brothers, sisters, sons, and dozens of nephews and nieces….there is so much diversity in our cultures, but that is the greatness of these new encounters, that is what it make it so special. The relation is more familiar, because you start knowing their beliefs, ideas and soon..you are part of them and they are part of you. You start loving your new family as if you have always know them. The new faces become your everyday experience, your morning, your breakfast your day goes interacting with them. You miss them, you love them because they become part of you.
The social networks have opened the doors the collective conscientiousness. Love is not inclusive of your close families.
The state of the mind now, have reached the tip of the idea that Love is not a feeling but a state of the mind, balanced ripped to the age.
Welcome to the new era of Universally. The web of ideas finally is at its best. LOVE IS ONE. And we are One. Because we are Love.
Meet me at the “Walls”, I think I already know you, if you are a virtual traveler, you are an enlighten being. We all the same, we suffer from the same pains, the red blood that runs throughout my veins is warm with love, and does not see color, but feel the love that you project to the world.