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Stop Watching US


Stop Watching Us.

Source: Stop Watching Us

The revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance apparatus, if true, represent a stunning abuse of our basic rights. We demand the U.S. Congress reveal the full extent of the NSA’s spying programs.

Dear Members of Congress,

We write to express our concern about recent reports published in the Guardian and the Washington Post, and acknowledged by the Obama Administration, which reveal secret spying by the National Security Agency (NSA) on phone records and Internet activity of people in the United States.

The Washington Post and the Guardian recently published reports based on information provided by a career intelligence officer showing how the NSA and the FBI are gaining broad access to data collected by nine of the leading U.S. Internet companies and sharing this information with foreign governments. As reported, the U.S. government is extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time. As a result, the contents of communications of people both abroad and in the U.S. can be swept in without any suspicion of crime or association with a terrorist organization.

Leaked reports also published by the Guardian and confirmed by the Administration reveal that the NSA is also abusing a controversial section of the PATRIOT Act to collect the call records of millions of Verizon customers. The data collected by the NSA includes every call made, the time of the call, the duration of the call, and other “identifying information” for millions of Verizon customers, including entirely domestic calls, regardless of whether those customers have ever been suspected of a crime. The Wall Street Journal has reported that other major carriers, including AT&T and Sprint, are subject to similar secret orders.

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that protect their right to privacy.

We are calling on Congress to take immediate action to halt this surveillance and provide a full public accounting of the NSA’s and the FBI’s data collection programs. We call on Congress to immediately and publicly:

  1. Enact reform this Congress to Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court;
  2. Create a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying. This committee should create specific recommendations for legal and regulatory reform to end unconstitutional surveillance;
  3. Hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

US Citizens

This letter was accompanied by the launch of StopWatching.us, a global petition calling on Congress to provide a public accounting of the United States’ domestic spying capabilites and to bring an end to illegal surveillance.

Sign your name to the petition to demand the government to stop spying on us

CIA whistleblower Speaks candidly of the right of Information


Posted on June 09, 2013 by Akashma Online News

by Marivel Guzman

Edward Snowden Whistle blower Proud citizen

Laura Poitras, an American documentary film director and producer,  made public her video interview with Edward Snowden CIA leaker of the bomb shell Prims spying program taking place in the US since 2007,  and Anonymous made binpasted a series of documents exposing even further 35 countries spying programs including Gig and Prism.

When people speaks of free speech, we speak passionately about a subject matter, or an issue that interest us.  It is not only about yelling in the street of what I like to say or what I love to do, but about what everyone’s right to say what they like and and defending everyone’s audacity to do thing. The audacity to be let to do what they like. Not necessarily speaking hate language that insult others, or walking naked in the street expressing my willingness to take the world with clean face, with  no makeup, no disguises of any kind. Free speech is more than just that.

Free speech encompasses absolutely everything. No matter how outrageous you think it is. No matter how insulting it sounds for some. No matter how immoral looks like to others. Free speech is about freedom, and freedom has no boundaries. The world of the free. The state of feeling free, the domain of freedom.

When whistle-blowers uncover information that needs to be made public because it is in the best interest of the people, then they are exercising their right of free speech. If this contravene their contract with the agency that contracted them, they have the right to quit, or the agency has the right to terminate the subject that had broken the contract. Should be easier as that.

We live in a free society where censorship is against the law, where spying is against the law, where invasion of privacy is against the law. We live in a free society in all the extent of the word.
So, why is the big deal when a person speaks rightfully his mind?
Why it is a big deal? When a person disclosure information he deems important to the others to know. Should be in the free exercise of his domain of freedom of speech. On this terrain our free society is walking in a thin line of interpretations, a shaky ground of definitions, where laws are interpreted to convenience, where laws are enacted to convenience of certain groups.

Our free society, it is not more free than  a dog in a leash. A dog that has the freedom to eat from its bowl when it choses to, to bark at its pleasure, to drink from his water when thirsty, to enter his mini jail shelter anytime it wants to,  and to walk the three meters around his post.

Is this what free society looks like to you?, hypothetically speaking we have the protection of the constitution of the United States of America. Why when it comes to expose dirty secrets of the people ruling our government, free speech become treasonous act?

Snowden, a former CIA technical assistant, said he had been working at the super-secret NSA as an employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and decided to break his silence after becoming disenchanted with Obama, whom he said had continued the policies of predecessor George W. Bush.

Snowden speaks in a video interview with Glenn Greenwald  from his Hong Kong’s hotel, saying that he chose Hong Kong for being an autonomous territory that is famous for its protests in the street and free speech, he said.

The Guardian and the Washington Post recently published a ‘leaked’ information from a CIA whistleblower, news that went viral around the globe for their controversial content.

In their initial reporting neither of the two newspapers disclosed the source of their information, but three days later a video has emerged with the Self Proclaim CIA leaker, Edward Snowen, a 29 years old former technical assistant for the Central Intelligence Agency being interviewed by Gleen Greenwald for a film by Laura Poitras an American documentary film director and producer.

Snowden said that he came public with this information because he does not want to live this way, he went on to say that when you are in a position of privileged access like a system administrator, you are exposed to disturbing things, and recognized that this things need to be known by the public. National Security Agency takes information from where ever it can, and spying is one way to do it, he says.

I think that the public its own an explanation of the motivation behind the people who makes this disclosure that are outside of the democratic model, when you are subverting the power of the government, that is a fundamentalist dangerous thing to do democracy, Snowden said.

Responding as why he decided to come public as a whistleblower,  that people working for the government, continuously do this things in secret, he said. When the government wants to benefit from a secret action that it took. It is a kind of given to its officials the mandate to tell the press about this, this thing or that thing just to have the public in our side, he said.

He said that he is just another guy without special skills and he thinks that the public is the ones that needs to decide on important issues not the government. He said that he is willing to go in the record to prove the authenticity of these documents.
“I did not change this, I did not modify the story, this is the truth, this is whats happening, you should decide whether we should be doing this”

Also Anonymous posted in Pastebin on Friday a series of documents exposing Gig and Prism programs, both programs saying that 35 countries are spying on their citizens,

Anonymous had obtained and binpasted some documents that “they” do not want you to see, they said, and much to “their” chagrin, we have found them, and are giving them to you, anonymous said.
“These documents prove that the NSA is spying on you, and not just Americans.  They are spying on the citizens of over 35 different countries.
These documents contain information on the companies involved in GiG, and Prism.
Whats GiG you might ask? well…
 The GIG will enable the secure, agile, robust, dependable, interoperable data sharing environment for the Department where warfighter, business, and intelligence users share knowledge on  a global network that facilitates information superiority, accelerates  decision-making, effective operations, and Net-Centric transformation.
Like we said, this is happening in over 35 countries, and done in cooperation with private businesses, and intelligence partners world wide.
We bring this to you, So that you know just how little rights you have.  Your privacy and freedoms are slowly being taken from you, in closed door meetings, in laws buried in
bills, and by people who are supposed to be protecting you.
Download these documents, share them, mirror them, don’t allow them to make them disappear.  Spread them wide and far.  Let these people know, that we will not be silenced, that we will not be taken advantage of, and that we are not happy about this unwarranted, unnecessary, unethical spying of our private lives, for the monetary gain of the 1%.”  Anonymous
Published on Jun 9, 2013
Laura Poitras made the video public in the interest of society. She published it under the Fair Use Notice Act.

 

Copyright © 2013 Praxis Films / Laura Poitras
FAIR USE NOTICE: This video contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material in this video is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

To close this article let me remind you of a guy name Pellicano, is serving a 15 years sentence for wiretapping people in behalf of his clients. Does Mr Pellicano did something worse that our US government did with PRISM Spying Program?… I don’t think so. What do you think?.

“to find me guilty “means just about every other private eye in the country is also a criminal enterprise, And maybe even some of these journalists out there.” Anthony Pellicano in his trial for wiretapping and racketing.

Laura Poitras
Director/Producer/Cinematographer

Laura PoitrasLaura Poitras was nominated for an Academy Award®, an Independent Spirit Award and an Emmy for My Country, My Country (POV 2006). She received a Peabody Award and was nominated for an Emmy and an Independent Spirit Award for Flag Wars (POV 2003), made with Linda Goode Bryant. Poitras is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Media Arts Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation/Tribeca Film Institute. She has attended the Sundance Institute’s Documentary Edit and Story Lab as both a fellow and creative advisor. She is currently working on the third part of a trilogy about America post 9/11. Before making documentaries, Poitras worked as a professional chef. She lives in New York City.

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