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Showing posts with label Social networks. Show all posts

HRW slams Saudi Arabia after 7 ‘tortured’ men jailed for ‘inciting protests’ on Facebook


Reuters / Stringer
Human Rights Watch has slated Saudi Arabia for violating international human rights obligations after it jailed seven people for up to 10 years for ‘inciting protests’ via Facebook. The indicted denied charges and said they were tortured into confession.

The sentencing after a two-month long trial took place on June 24, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW), which it has obtained the court judgment, and revealed the procedure “violates international human rights principles.”

The seven men were arrested between September 23 and 26, 2011. They have been kept in the General Investigations Prison in the capital of Saudi’s Eastern Province, Damman for a year-and-a-half without being charged. They have been tried by Specialized Criminal Court, set up in 2008 to deal with terrorism-related cases. The trial began on April 29.

The charges against the seven vary. However, they all have been accused of joining Facebook pages aiming to “incite protests, illegal gathering, and breaking allegiance with the king” and “of assisting and encouraging these calls are corresponding with the Facebook pages’ followers and concealing them,” the HRW cited the court judgment.

They have been also convicted of violating Article 6 of the Anti-Cyber Crime Law, which bans producing, sending, or storing any material via an information network that “harms public order.”

“Breaking allegiance [with the king] comes by way of arms and it comes by way of protests, marches, and writing articles and publications … the behavior of the [second] course … is sometimes the more dangerous and more malicious method,” the presiding judge concluded in the judgment.

None of the seven was accused of directly participating in protests, nor of using or advocating violence.

Abd al-Hamid al-Amer has got harshest sentence – 10 years in prison for founding two Facebook groups in early 2011 which supported of a prominent Shia sheikh and religious leader Tawfiq al-Amer, arrested for publicly calling for a constitutional monarchy.

Prosecutors said that those pages were used to call for followers “to join the movements” and “gave them ideas and guidance on the important sites in which to protest and set the timing [of the protests].”

All seven accused have admitted they participated in Facebook pages titled “al-Ahsa March 4 Youth Movement” and “The Free Men of al-Ahsa”, but did not know that was unlawful. Therefore, they denied accusations of having intentions to break allegiance with the king or harm public order, but the prosecution produced signed confessions.

During the trial, the accused reported to the court that confessions were signed under torture by the intelligence officers, but the judge overruled the claim as “not acceptable,” due especially to “their inability to prove the allegations of coercion and torture.”

According to one of the seven convicts’ family members, the men had not lawyers as they could not afford them.  Under Saudi Arabia’s Criminal Procedure Law, unlike in many countries, there is no provision for a public defender for those who cannot afford a lawyer, HRW reported.

Moreover, as Saudi Arabia has no written penal code, prosecutors and judges tend to criminalize acts based on their own interpretation of Islamic law.

HRW insists the whole procedure lacks clearness and violates “international human rights principles, such as those that prohibit arbitrary arrest and guarantee fair trials.”

The men intend to appeal their sentences. 

The HRW has stressed that the trial also comes against Article 15 of the Arab Charter on Human Rights, which Saudi Arabia ratified in 2009.

“No crime and no penalty can be established without a prior provision of the law. In all circumstances, the law most favorable to the defendant shall be applied,” the article states. 

The HRW has called on the European Union’s High Representative Catherine Ashton and EU member states’ representatives, who are meeting with their Gulf region counterparts in Bahrain on June 30, to condemn the convictions and publicly “press Saudi Arabia to stop jailing human rights activists and peaceful dissidents.”

“Sending people off to years in prison for peaceful Facebook posts sends a strong message that there’s no safe way to speak out in Saudi Arabia, even on online social networks,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “If the EU doesn’t raise these cases with Saudi officials this weekend, its silence will look like craven compliance with the rights abuses of an authoritarian state.”

The latest conviction of the seven followed a wave of similar cases of convictions of peaceful dissidents and human rights activists in June, according to HRW.
Sunday, 30 June 2013
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Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom mulls legal action over Leaseweb ‘data massacre’

AFP Photo / Getty Images / Rainier Ehrhardt
Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom may be suing server hosting company Leaseweb over a “data massacre." The Dutch company says it deleted files from 630 servers due to lack of interest in them, but Dotcom has revealed letters proving otherwise.
The revelation comes a week after Dotcom accused the US government and Leaseweb of deleting millions of personal files without warning, including “petabytes of pictures, backups, personal & business property.”
Most of the permanently deleted data came from European users, with servers then re-provisioned to other customers – despite the fact that Megaupload had specifically requested that the hosting provider preserve the information.
“They deleted petabytes of data in the face of Megaupload’s data preservation notices. Our legal team asked them multiple times not to delete the data while the US court is deciding the pending cases including the rights of our users,” TorrentFreak quoted Dotcom as saying.
But Leaseweb’s senior regulatory counsel, Alex de Joode, said his company deleted the data and re-provisioned the servers “after a year of nobody showing any interest” in them.
“We did inform Megaupload about our decision to re-provision the servers,” de Joode said in a June 19 statement, thus disputing Dotcom’s accusation that the decision was made "without warning.” De Joode said that Leaseweb received no answer from the Megaupload team, so they “commenced the re-provisioning of the servers in February 2013.”
“To minimize security risks and maximize the privacy of our clients, it is a standard procedure at Leaseweb to completely clean servers before they are offered to any new customer,” he said.
To back up his accusations, Kim Dotcom has published an email which was sent from Megaupload’s legal counsel to Leaseweb in March 2012. The letter allegedly shows that Megaupload did, in fact, request preservation of the files.
"Megaupload continues to request that Leaseweb preserve any and all information, documentation and data related to Megaupload - as destruction by Leaseweb would appear to be in violation of amongst other things the applicable civil litigation data preservation rules and would interfere with evidence in a criminal matter [...]," said the letter. The email is signed by Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken and addressed to Leaseweb’s A.H. Bram de Haas van Dorsser.
The email adds that “the Mega data on the servers at Leaseweb contain private and sensitive customer data and is subject to applicable privacy and data retention laws.”
“Megaupload is negotiating with the United States to discern feasibility of consumer data access and the conditions for the same," Rothken wrote in the letter. 
Megaupload boss Kim Dotcom (AFP Photo / Michael Bradley)
 The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) representing the file-sharing website in court made a similar request to Leaseweb USA in April.
“We now write to formally request that you preserve that material both for purposes of contemplated future litigation and as a matter of obligation and courtesy to the innocent individuals whose materials have unfortunately been swept up into this case,” the EFF letter reads.
According to Dotcom, Megaupload’s legal team is analyzing whether Leaseweb violated the law.
“I can tell you that we are contemplating legal action against Leaseweb,” he told TorrentFreak on Wednesday.
“We believe that Leaseweb acted inappropriately under the circumstances when they destroyed data,” Rothken told the blogging website. “Ultimately we blame the United States who exercised constructive control over Megaupload’s assets and who had the obligation, resources, and ability to preserve all relevant and exonerating evidence including the data located at Leaseweb and failed to do so,” he added.
But Leaseweb claims it done nothing wrong. In a June 26 statement, the company stressed that “the contract between Leaseweb B.V. and Megaupload was governed by Dutch law.”
“This means the termination, and subsequent data retention needs to be valid under Dutch law. As there was no claim from the Dutch authorities on the data, the data was not subject to evidence rules. Also Dutch and European Privacy legislation prohibit giving third parties (i.e. MegaUpload customers, or Instra) direct access to their data,” the statement read.
Dotcom, who made a fortune from his file-sharing service Megaupload, is currently under a federal investigation, launched by the US Department of Justice after police raided his home. He is currently free on bail in New Zealand, with an extradition trial set for August.
The US has charged the Megaupload founder with facilitating copyright fraud on a massive scale, racketeering, and money-laundering, which carries maximum sentence of 20 years in jail.
Authorities claim Megaupload has cost copyright holders upwards of $500 million in lost revenues, due to content being illegally uploaded to its servers. The Department of Justice also believes Dotcom illegally earned $175 million by selling ads and subscriptions on the site.
On the anniversary of his arrest last January, Dotcom launched a new file-hosting site called ‘Mega.’

Facebook denies sharing user information with Turkish govt

AFP Photo / Leon Neal
 Facebook says it has not provided any user data to Turkish authorities in response to protest-related requests. It comes after a Turkish minister said the social media site has been cooperative “for a long time,” and that Twitter will likely comply too.
“Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests,” the company said in a statement. “We reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child.”
Facebook has expressed concerns over a draft bill on social media which would require companies to share data with Turkish authorities. Executives plan on raising the issue during this week’s meeting with Turkish officials in the US.
Earlier on Wednesday, Turkish Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications, Binali Yildirim, said the country’s government was satisfied with Facebook’s assistance.
“Facebook has been working in coordination with the Turkish authorities for a long time. They have a unit in Turkey. We don’t have any problem with them,” Yildirim said. The statement sparked outrage among Turkish social network users.
Turkish protesters stand in Red Crescent square during a 'duranadam' (standing person) protest in Ankara (AFP Photo / AdemM Atlan)
  Yildirim added that Twitter has not shown such “positive approach” despite “necessary warnings” from Turkey. He said that the Turkish government has asked Twitter, along with other social media sites, to set up a representative office inside the country.
“We have told all social media that...if you operate in Turkey you must comply with Turkish law…When information is requested, we want to see someone in Turkey who can provide this...there needs to be an interlocutor we can put our grievance to and who can correct an error if there is one,” he said.
“Twitter will probably comply too. Otherwise, this is a situation that cannot be sustained,” Yildirim stressed. His statement was presumably referring to social media’s role in the country’s recent anti-government protests. He added that the government seeks only to “turn down the volume of the social media,” rather than restricting it.
Another ministry official told Reuters that Turkey has asked Twitter to reveal the identities of users who posted messages which were considered insulting to Prime Minister Erdogan or the Turkish government. It was not immediately clear if Twitter responded.
Prime Minister Erdogan called social networking sites a “nuisance” during the anti-government protests in June, after local media reported that dozens were arrested for “inciting unrest” via social media.
The country's interior minister previously announced that Ankara was working on new regulations that would target so-called "provocateurs" on social media. A source told Reuters that the justice ministry had proposed that any Turk wishing to open a Twitter account would have to enter his or her national identification number. This was reportedly turned down by the transport ministry for being technically infeasible.
Turkey has a long record of legislative moves which rights groups believe fall under internet censorship. Ankara banned YouTube for more than two years in 2008 after a video clip ‘insulted’ the Turkish Republic’s founder, Ataturk.
Wednesday, 26 June 2013
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FB & Twitter threat: Social networks cause $10bn damage to Russian economy

AFP Photo / Alain Jocard
A new study has estimated time wasted on social networks at the Russian workplace costs the economy $10 billion.
Over 57 million Russians are registered on social networks, and according to the SomScore survey, users frequented the sites 25.6 minutes per day, or 12.8 hours per month, including while at work.
The heightened activity of Russians on social networks has spilled over into the workplace, and is reportedly costing the economy $10 billion.
In the past year, the Russian economy has lost between 281.7 and 311.5 billion roubles due to workers distracted by social networks and inefficiency, analysts at FBK, a Moscow-based auditing and consulting firm, estimated.
The range of precisely how much money was lost is large, because data varies on size, wages, and many other company specific details.
"Of course, this is a rough estimate. In order to give exact figures, it is necessary to get detailed audience research of social networks, data on time spent in them, representatives of each segment of the audience, the data on the amount of wages of employees and so on. Nevertheless, our estimate gives an indication of the scale of the losses,” the director of FBK, Igor Nikolaev, told Vedomosti. 
RIA Novosti / Mikhail Fomichev
RIA Novosti / Mikhail Fomichev
According to calculations by FBK, in 2012, each ‘over-active’ social networker wasted 53.1 hours on social sites  instead of work tasks.
According to Nikolaev, some companies, to a degree, pay workers to surf the internet. In some industries there is a heavy overlap between work-related tasks and social media sites in  public relations, journalism, and marketing and advertising, which reach their audience via social media.
If workers take a small break from their task and surf a social media site, they can easily be distracted for up to 20 minutes before returning to their work.
Recreational use of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, at the workplace can be monitored by employers, and there have been cases of dismissal of social media addicted employees who spend more time surfing the internet  rather than working on assignments.
The $10 billion wasted by Russians is only a fraction of the estimated $650 billion wasted in productivity in the US.
An infographic by LearnStuff claims active social media users cost their individual company $4,452 per year. The survey showed Americans are distracted every 10 minutes, and take 20 minutes to get back on track.
The same survey found that Americans spend twice as much time on Facebook than they do exercising.
Monday, 24 June 2013
Posted by Anonymous

Pelosi booed for defending NSA wiretapping

U.S. House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (AFP Photo / Alex Wong)
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was booed and interrupted by a group of liberal activists after defending the NSA’s electronic surveillance program at a conference in Silicon Valley on Saturday. Pelosi condemned National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden for exposing the agency’s controversial data-gathering practices, noting that what he did was illegal.
“He did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents,” Pelosi told attendees of the annual Netroots National conference of liberal Internet activists. “We have to have a balance between security and privacy.” She also said it was unfair to compare the president’s office to President George W. Bush’s “fourth term”, and argued that Obama’s administration increased oversight of the NSA by giving the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) courts a role in approving the agency’s programs. “People on the far right are saying oh, this is the fourth term of President Bush,” Pelosi said. “Absolutely, positively not so.” Pelosi’s comments provoked the crowd, prompting conference attendees to boo and interrupt the lawmaker they previously looked up to. Security guards escorted one activist out of the conference room because he stood up and questioned Pelosi too loudly.
“It’s not a balance. It’s not constitutional!” shouted 57-year-old Marc Perkel from Gilroy, Calif., before being escorted out. “No secret laws!” Several other activists walked out in support of the man, angry at the California Democrat’s remarks. Others shouted comments in support of Perkel, and expressed their opposition to the NSA surveillance program, with some calling the US a police state.
“Leave him alone! Secrets and lies! No secret courts! Protect the First Amendment,” the audience members shouted, according to the San Jose Mercury News. “You suck!” one man yelled at Pelosi. Conference moderator Zerlina Maxwell tried to calm the crowd, telling the activists that they should submit questions via Twitter rather than yelling them out, but Pelosi said she welcomed the shouted questions. After being booed and interrupted, the House Minority Leader continued to discuss the NSA scandal, noting that the problem is the outsourcing of government programs to contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton, which is where Snowden worked. Outside the hall, Perkel told the San Jose Mercury News that he believes Pelosi has good intentions, but simply does not fully understand the NSA's data collection programs. The lawmaker received positive reactions on many of the other issues she discussed, including gay and lesbian workplace rights and bringing more women into positions of power. But regarding the NSA, the liberal activists were largely disappointed in their leader. “We’re listening our progressive leaders who are supposed to be on our side of the team saying it’s OK for us to get targeted for online surveillance,” Jana Thrift of Eugene, Ore., told the San Jose Mercury News. “It’s crazy. I don’t know who Nancy Pelosi really is.”

NSA leaker petition hits 100,000-signature threshold in under 2 weeks

People carrying mobile phones walk past a banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), at Hong Kong's financial Central district June 18, 2013. (Reuters)
A White House petition demanding a full pardon for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has reached over 100,000 signatures since its creation on June 9, meaning the Obama administration has to review the petition’s demands and issue a response. The petition states that: “Edward Snowden is a national hero and should be immediately issued a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes he has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs”
Within just two weeks of the petition being on line – half the time required to collect the 100,000 signatures necessary for a review – the petition managed to attract 101,350, and the number continues to grow by the second.
The White House insisted that it welcomes “appropriate debate” over the Patriot Act in the light of Snowden’s exposure of NSA mass surveillance programs.
However, it emerged on Saturday that Snowden had been charged with violating the Espionage Act.
Snowden leaked top-secret documents to the Washington Post and the Guardian that demonstrated the existence of a US National Security Agency’s extensive spying program called PRISM. The program was designed to collect information about digital communications allowing real-time online surveillance of US citizens.
He is accused of “theft of government property,” “unauthorized communication of national defense information,” and “wilful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person.” The US government has asked Hong Kong to detain him ahead of a possible move to extradite him.

If convicted, Snowden could face up to 30 years behind bars. 
Saturday, 22 June 2013
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‘Anonymous’ search engine sees rocketing growth after NSA revelations

Screenshot from DuckDuckGo.com
An alternative search engine DuckDuckGo has enjoyed a record surge in traffic as NSA scandals spark fears and frighten away Internet users from the more popular Google or Yahoo!. Over the previous week DuckDuckGo, a private search engine, which claims not to collect users' searches or create any personal user profile, has increased its traffic by 26 per cent and passed 3.1 million of direct queries.
A traffic surge hit DuckDuckGo after Edward Snowden’s revelations that NSA obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo and other US technology companies. The scandal over the US’s PRISM program played into the website’s hands, before that direct searches were around 1.6 million a day for the last few months. However, despite impressive results, DuckDuckGo still cannot challenge internet search industry giants. For comparison, Google handles 5,134 million searches a day.
"We always knew people didn't want to be tracked,” said DuckDuckGo CEO Gabriel Weinberg, who launched the alternative search engine in 2008, quoted by CNBC. 
 “But what hadn't happened was reporting on the private alternatives and so it's no surprise that people are making a choice to switch to things that that will give them great results and also have real privacy."
The company pledges not to track users as a search is a unique browser event, unlike on Google or Yahoo! which aggregate the data users are looking for and create the so-called “filter bubble”, to push advertising within search results. Despite DuckDuckGo claims the search is anonymous, it could still be tracked, but infiltrators would not be able to get users’ full profiles. However, the company said  
 “like anyone else” it “will comply with court ordered legal requests”, adding that they “don’t expect any” because “there is nothing useful to give them.”
Thursday, 20 June 2013
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Google demands US government removes gag-orders from surveillance requests


Google filed legal papers with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court on Tuesday in an attempt to provide the American public with more knowledge about the government’s ongoing requests for personal data. Through a provision in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, the federal government can and do routinely compel Internet companies such as Google for the personal data pertaining to its users. Those requests regularly are accompanied with a gag-order, though, making it illegal for Web entities to even express the scope of the surveillance. Last week Google wrote the Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in hopes that Washington will change the rules for those FISA requests in the wake of the surveillance scandal that has plagued the government since former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden released classified National Security Agency documents to The Guardian. Now just one week after that first letter was published, the Washington Post reported that Google took their complaint to court. According to the Post’s Craig Timberg, Google filed legal papers with the downtown Washington, DC FISA court on Tuesday, “arguing that the company has a constitutional right to speak about information it’s forced to give the government.” In the petition, Google asks the court to start allowing them to publish raw figures pertaining to the number of requests filed under the surveillance act. “Greater transparency is needed, so today we have petitioned the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow us to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests, including FISA disclosures, separately,” the company said in a statement obtained by the Post. In the letter to Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller last week, Google said that publishing the numbers “would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide.” Google and other big Web companies regularly publish information about law enforcement requests that compel them for user data, but the FISA rules prohibit them from publically documenting exactly how many of those they really receiving. Yesterday, competitors Yahoo! made a similar, informal request on their website: “Like all companies, Yahoo! cannot lawfully break out FISA request numbers at this time because those numbers are classified; however, we strongly urge the federal government to reconsider its stance on this issue,” they wrote. Days earlier, Microsoft Vice President John Frank wrote on a blog post, "We continue to believe that what we are permitted to publish continues to fall short of what is needed to help the community understand and debate these issues." Along with AOL, Apple, Facebook, PalTalk, Skype and YouTube, Microsoft, Yahoo! and Google have all been linked in documents leaked by Snowden as participating in an ominous NSA surveillance program operated under the name PRISM. Those companies have since attempted to engage full-out damage control, but during an online chat on Monday, Snowden said those denials “were misleading.” "They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Apple (AAPL) refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government would do? Shut them down?" he said. In his first interview with The Guardian, Snowden said, “I’m willing to sacrifice all that because I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people all around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.” Earlier Tuesday, NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said the leaks attributed to Snowden caused “irreversible and significant damage to the US.”
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
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Firefox plug-in warns users of NSA surveillance

AFP Photo / Leon Neal

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day? The government is likely logging even the most mundane day-to-day computer habits of millions of Americans, but there’s a way to stand up against surveillance while also rocking out.
According to leaked NSA documents published by The Guardian last week, the United States National Security Agency is conducting dragnet surveillance of the communications of Americans, regularly receiving phone records for millions of Verizon customers while also being capable of accessing the conversations that occur over Facebook, Google and several other major Internet names through a program called PRISM. Now a 28-year-old artist and developer from Brooklyn, New York has found a fun way of warning computer users about potential government surveillance, and he’s incorporated one of the best-selling rock albums ever in the process.
Justin Blinder released a plugin for the Web browser Firefox this week, and he’s already seeing a positive response in the press if not just based off of the idea alone. His “The Dark Side of the Prism” browser extension alerts Web surfers of possible surveillance by starting up a different song from Pink Floyd’s 1973 classic “The Dark Side of the Moon” each time a questionable site is crossed.

PRISM

Blinder told the Guardian that he built the program over the course of four hours with the hopes he could "create some sort of ambient notification that you are on a site that is being surveiled by the NSA."
"I was really interested in the fact that, although the PRISM leaks were a shock to many of us, we pretty much already kind of know we're being surveiled a lot of the time and giving away so much data," he said.
Upon news of the phone tracking program, even members of Congress said they couldn’t get over how much information was being shared between the telecoms and the government. Walking out of a briefing this Wednesday, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-California) said, "What we learned in there is significantly more than what is out in the media today,” and described her reaction as “astounded.” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said the program “represents an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution,” and the American Civil Liberties Union has sued the government with a similar complaint filed in federal court.
Separate from leaking a document about the NSA’s access to phone records, former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden also gave The Guardian evidence of Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Yahoo, AOL and others sharing private communications of customers with the government. When “The Dark Side of the Prism” is installed, users of those sites will be reminded with one of the most iconic albums of the twentieth century.
"I just Googled 'Prism' and the cover came up," Blinder said. It just so happened that the long-time best-seller also fits the mood for exactly what the programmer was looking for.
"I didn’t want it to be too jarring because a lot of us seem to be giving in to being surveiled on a daily basis. I feel like people already know that. I didn't want it to be alarming,” he said.

Image from pinkfloyd.com

“The Dark Side of the Moon” was Pink Floyd’s eighth studio album and most commercially successfully, selling roughly 50 million copies and landing on the Billboard charts for 741 consecutive weeks. Surveillance, on the other hand, isn’t quite as popular: according to a Post/Washington Post poll released this week, 52 percent of Americans oppose the PRISM program.
With regards to Snowden, the American public is largely polarized on the issue. He’s been labeled as both a traitor and whistleblower and is currently the target of a Department of Justice investigation.
“He’s not a whistleblower, by the way, because a whistleblower actually wants the rule of law to be enforced,” Jeremy Bash, the former chief of staff for then-CIA Director Leon Panetta, told Politics Confidential this week. “He copied documents and he made a run for it. He may be actually aiding our enemies.”
On his part, Snowden said he leaked the documents because, “I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building.”
Earlier this year, Pink Floyd lyricist Roger Waters lent his support to Army Private first class Bradley Manning, who is currently on trial for the largest intelligence leak in US history.
“We need more whistl blowers,” Waters wrote in a statement. “Blowing the whistle on our behalf is not just brave, it is heroic and it is our duty.”

Sunday, 16 June 2013
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