Is Avaaz and public opinion able to avert another USA persecution unto death?


Avaaz: Stand with Edward Snowden

This 29 year-old analyst just gave up his whole life -- his girlfriend, his job, and his home -- to blow the whistle on the US government's shocking PRISM program...

... When Bradley Manning passed this kind of data to Wikileaks, the US threw him naked into solitary confinement in conditions that the UN called "cruel, inhumane and degrading".

The authorities and press are deciding right now how to handle this scandal. If millions of us stand with Edward in the next 48 hours, it will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is, and it should be PRISM, and not Edward, that the US cracks down on.

Check out the Avaaz webpage: Stand with Edward Snowden


Note that this is all more a game of 'politics' rather than anything to do with anything we might call Justice.


All on our one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Only in the USA?...

Everywhere there are governments ...

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Is Avaaz and public opinion able to avert another USA persecution unto death?


Avaaz: Stand with Edward Snowden

This 29 year-old analyst just gave up his whole life -- his girlfriend, his job, and his home -- to blow the whistle on the US government's shocking PRISM program...

Shocking? Nothing shocking about the worst kept secret in history.

... When Bradley Manning passed this kind of data to Wikileaks, the US threw him naked into solitary confinement in conditions that the UN called "cruel, inhumane and degrading".

That's what happens when you wear a uniform and commit espionage. Only professional deniers are the slightest bit surprised at this.

The ... press are deciding right now how to handle this scandal. If millions of us stand with Edward in the next 48 hours, it will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is, and it should be PRISM, and not Edward, that the US cracks down on.

Note that this is all more a game of 'politics' rather than anything to do with anything we might call Justice.

The press is politics. Interesting. Aren't they supposed to be news. Report the facts. I guess they are espionage now.

More than 50% of the US public supports PRISM and by extension Carnivore.

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

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And so it spookily begins:


Edward Snowden 'banned from flying to UK'

... The travel alert with a Home Office letterhead said Mr Snowden "is highly likely to be refused entry to the UK".

The Home Office would not comment. ...

... It said: "If this individual attempts to travel to the UK: Carriers should deny boarding". ...

... BBC Home Affairs correspondent June Kelly said the alert issued against Mr Snowden was unusual, because there was no warrant for his arrest.

Our correspondent said it was those who are suspected of spreading hatred and encouraging illegal activity who are normally subject to the orders.

Is Avaaz and public opinion able to avert another USA persecution unto death?


Avaaz: Stand with Edward Snowden

This 29 year-old analyst just gave up his whole life -- his girlfriend, his job, and his home -- to blow the whistle on the US government's shocking PRISM program...

... When Bradley Manning passed this kind of data to Wikileaks, the US threw him naked into solitary confinement in conditions that the UN called "cruel, inhumane and degrading".

The authorities and press are deciding right now how to handle this scandal. If millions of us stand with Edward in the next 48 hours, it will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is, and it should be PRISM, and not Edward, that the US cracks down on.

Check out the Avaaz webpage: Stand with Edward Snowden


Note that this is all more a game of 'politics' rather than anything to do with anything we might call Justice.

All on our one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

You seem to repeat this maxim ad nauseum.
Almost like Nancy Reagan's "Just say no".

You proffer a so called superior understanding yet offer nothing of substance other than pedantry.

Don't do the crime if you can't do the time.

You seem to repeat this maxim ad nauseum.
Almost like Nancy Reagan's "Just say no".

You proffer a so called superior understanding yet offer nothing of substance other than pedantry.

Extra Extra - Read All About It!
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/14/world/asia/hong-kong-boyce-snowden/
Former criminal tells his story.

Says, "Don't do the crime if you can't do the time."

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Now just Why did he go to Hong Kong?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/14/china-newspaper-says-snowden-could-be-useful-to-china/
I think I smell a wumpus.

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Now just Why did he go to Hong Kong?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/14/china-newspaper-says-snowden-could-be-useful-to-china/
I think I smell a wumpus.

Really?
You want to change the topic to Snowden's personal life.
Are you on a retainer from Fox?
I'm surprised you haven't brought up his YouTube pole dancing girlfriend.

Now just Why did he go to Hong Kong?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/06/14/china-newspaper-says-snowden-could-be-useful-to-china/
I think I smell a wumpus.

Really?

He said he wanted to go to Iceland, but that isn't where he went.

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Are you on a retainer from Fox?

No, but it is obvious you are on a retainer for MSNBC.

Just because Faux

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

doesn't make the story fake.

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The story rolls on. Can Avaaz avert another persecution death? Care enough to try the link:

Is Avaaz and public opinion able to avert another USA persecution unto death?


Avaaz: Stand with Edward Snowden

This 29 year-old analyst just gave up his whole life -- his girlfriend, his job, and his home -- to blow the whistle on the US government's shocking PRISM program...

... When Bradley Manning passed this kind of data to Wikileaks, the US threw him naked into solitary confinement in conditions that the UN called "cruel, inhumane and degrading".

The authorities and press are deciding right now how to handle this scandal. If millions of us stand with Edward in the next 48 hours, it will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is, and it should be PRISM, and not Edward, that the US cracks down on.

Check out the Avaaz webpage: Stand with Edward Snowden


Note that this is all more a game of 'politics' rather than anything to do with anything we might call Justice.

This is the world we are making,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

The story rolls on. Can Avaaz avert another persecution death? Care enough to try the link:

How many times are you going to post this?

Or does this apply:
Albert Einstein wrote:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

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The story rolls on. Can Avaaz avert another persecution death? Care enough to try the link:

Is Avaaz and public opinion able to avert another USA persecution unto death?


Avaaz: Stand with Edward Snowden

[i]This 29 year-old analyst just gave up his whole life -- his girlfriend, his job, and his home -- to blow the whistle on the US government's shocking PRISM program...

[...]

Note that this is all more a game of 'politics' rather than anything to do with anything we might call Justice.

The Avaaz petition is still rolling. Hopefully they may succeed where Wikileaks is being stymied?


This is the world we are making,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

And so it spookily begins:


Edward Snowden 'banned from flying to UK'

... The travel alert with a Home Office letterhead said Mr Snowden "is highly likely to be refused entry to the UK". ...

And so it develops:


US DoJ: Happy b-day, Ed Snowden! You're (not?) charged with capital crimes

Complaint accuses NSA leaker of espionage, theft, and more...

... he has been formally accused of spying by the US government. ...

... If Snowden does eventually stand trial in the US, he could face the harshest penalty. Espionage, of which he has been accused, is one of the relatively small number of crimes for which the federal government is authorized to seek the death penalty. ...

Update... Each of these charges carries a penalty of a fine or up to ten years imprisonment, or both – so, if Snowden were given successive sentences, he could be imprisoned for up to 30 years and required to pay an unspecified fine.

So far, Snowden has not been charged under 18 USC § 794, ... Espionage Act of 1917 that carries a possible death penalty.

The government may yet bring additional charges...


US prosecution of Snowden and Manning exceeds international norms

Many European countries punish leakers, but not for life, and they take into consideration how much harm the leak caused...

Is Edward Snowden, the national security consultant turned leaker, a heroic whistleblower or a traitor? The question has fueled a storm...

... The broad axe of the Espionage Act doesn't recognize these nuances. The attorney general's office, if it is to prosecute at all, should instead use one of the more than 150 laws on the books that criminalize the disclosure of specific and well-defined categories of information... Moreover, to comply with the First Amendment, courts should interpret such laws, some of which expressly so state, to require both a likelihood and an intent to cause significant harm.

We all would be better protected from actual harms if the government would identify the secrets that truly need to be kept, and focus on protecting those.



Bolivia leader's jet diverted 'amid Snowden suspicions'

... France and Portugal reportedly refused to allow the Moscow-Bolivia flight to cross their airspace.

Mr Snowden is reportedly seeking asylum in Bolivia and 20 other countries to avoid extradition to the US. ...

... "This is a hostile act by the United States state department which has used various European governments," Ruben Saavedra said. ...

... "Why are they persecuting him? What has he done? Did he launch a missile and kill someone? Did he rig a bomb and kill someone? No. He is preventing war," he told Reuters news agency. ...



Edward Snowden: a whistleblower, not a spy

... flew out of Hong Kong, apparently en route to Ecuador. For 10 days he has been stalled at Moscow airport, while his passport has been annulled and repeated attempts to continue his journey to sympathetic jurisdictions have failed or been foiled. ...

... This is emphatically not a cold war style national security case; it is a 21st century case about the appropriate balance between the power of the secret state and the rights of free citizens in the internet era. To charge Mr Snowden under America's first world war Espionage Act is inappropriate. We live in a different world from that. America is not at war...



All an overreaction? Another senseless persecution regardless of proportion and justice?

All on our one planet,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

So far, Snowden has not been charged under 18 USC § 794, ... Espionage Act of 1917 that carries a possible death penalty.

And that is where it will stand as the US will have to certify that it will not seek the death penalty to facilitate extradition. (Happens all the time when we have to drag murdering drug gang scum back from Mexico and the US is illegally barred from extracting the full measure of the law.)

If Snowden had not disclosed operational details of sufficient character and nature to allow the enemies of the US to evade detection he would just be a whistle blower.

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If Snowden had not disclosed operational details...

And that's the point... He has merely publicised a presentation of which the general details were already widely known.

The only public surprise of 'anything new' in what was publicized is the sheer industrial scale of the dragnet that is indiscriminately used against everyone...


Really spying in the old cold war sense?

Or a concerned citizen whistleblower now being persecuted beyond all reason to be scapegoated?...


All in our only world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

Here are three contrasting stories of persecution and an arbitrary turning a blind eye... Where is the supposed even handed justice in all this?... Just a game of arbitrary 'official' lynchings?


'Weev' appeals AT&T iPad hack conviction

Bug hunters asked to help data-slurping grey hat hacker's bid for freedom

US cybercrime lawyers have filed an appeal against the conviction and lengthy sentence imposed upon Andrew "Weev" Auernheimer in a high-profile iPad data leak case. ...

... The appeal argues the government's prosecution was flawed in law because it relied on an improper application of the US Computer Fraud & Abuse Act (CFAA).

Auernheimer's co-defendant Daniel Spitler discovered in 2010 that AT&T had configured its servers so that email addresses of early adopter iPad owners were publicly available on the net. Spitler wrote a script that collected roughly 114,000 email addresses as a result of the security snafu. Auernheimer then distributed the list of email addresses to media organisations as proof of the vulnerability, forcing AT&T to acknowledge and fix the security problem.

Auernheimer and Spitler were both charged with identity theft and conspiracy to violate the CFAA — the same law used against internet activist Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide earlier this year while living under the shadow of a looming prosecution. ...

... "Auernheimer was aggressively prosecuted for an act that caused little harm and was intended to be — and ultimately was — in the public interest," the EFF's Hofmann said in a statement on the appeal. "The CFAA's vague language gives prosecutors great latitude to abuse their discretion and throw the book at people they simply don't like. That's as evident here as it was in the prosecution of Aaron Swartz." ...


Edward Snowden's asylum options narrow

... The former intelligence systems analyst is wanted by the US on charges of leaking secrets.

He accuses US President Barack Obama of putting pressure on the countries to which he has applied for asylum. ...

... "The world's conscience should react, the world youth should react, the decent people who want a peaceful world should react, everyone should react and find solidarity with this young man who has denounced and altered the world that they [the US] pretend to control," ...

... Mr Snowden describes himself as "a stateless person", accusing the US government of stopping him from exercising the "basic right...to seek asylum". ...


Snowden speaks from Moscow: 'Obama lies'

... "Yet now it is being reported," he says, "that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

"This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile," Snowden concludes.

The extralegality to which Snowden refers includes the fact that "Although I am convicted of nothing, [the Obama administration] has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person," he writes. ...


Sky News hack of Canoe Man's email in public interest, Ofcom says

Broadcaster's right to expression trumps privacy...

... doesn't change the fact that it would appear to be a breach of the Computer Misuse Act 1990, under which "unauthorised access to computer materials" (under which interception of emails falls) is not permitted.*

Ofcom doesn't really care if the journalist broke the law or not in hacking the email accounts - that's beyond the remit of a media regulator...

... * While public interest is not a defence in this particular law, it is entirely at the discretion of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to decide whether or not to prosecute, and it appears they have chosen not to do so.



All balanced and impartial Justice and fair freedom? Or all a game of arbitrary lynchings?

Not only in America...
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

If Snowden had not disclosed operational details...

And that's the point... He has merely publicised a presentation of which the general details were already widely known.

No that isn't the case. He gave numerous details of precisely where and technically how the the interceptions are made. Such details allow an enemy to evade those locations and methods of collection, they are operational details.

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If Snowden had not disclosed operational details...

And that's the point... He has merely publicised a presentation of which the general details were already widely known.

The only public surprise of 'anything new' in what was publicized is the sheer industrial scale of the dragnet that is indiscriminately used against everyone...


Really spying in the old cold war sense?

Or a concerned citizen whistleblower now being persecuted beyond all reason to be scapegoated?...

All a game of being scapegoated/lynched? Officialdom overreach?...

Judge for yourselves:


Daniel Ellsberg: Edward Snowden Was Right To Leave The U.S.

... Ellsberg has sometimes been held up as an example of everything Snowden is not. ... Yet Ellsberg has steadfastly sided with Snowden, saying that his detractors are wrong to contrast the two of them and calling Snowden's leaks the most important in American history. ...

... Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did," he wrote. "I don't agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago."

Ellsberg said that, after being arrested, he was freed on bail and allowed to continue speaking about his opposition to the Vietnam War. He said it was unlikely Snowden would be afforded the same opportunity...

... He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning's conditions as "cruel, inhuman and degrading." (That realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the United States.) ...


Will Edward Snowden change the data center real estate market?

... while I am still wondering if what Snowden has actually leaked was actually secret in the first place, as much of the intent behind it has been released in public documents like the Patriot Act and FISMA and even PRISM has a Wikipedia page stating its main aim, I am sure he has broken an NDA signed as a contractor to the US government. That in itself is a crime. ...

... “If European cloud customers cannot trust the US government or their assurances, then maybe they won’t trust US cloud providers either,” Kroes said last week.

“That is my guess. And if I am right then there are multi-billion euro consequences for American companies.” ...


So: "Life" in exile or "Life" in solitary confinement for publicizing already public details? And again "Life" in exile or "Life" in solitary confinement for merely breaking an NDA?...

For something supposedly so onerous, why are not the officials who imposed such onerous requirements onto someone so clearly unsuitable also under threat of "Life" in exile or "Life" in solitary confinement for their recklessness?


Only in America!


Who next?

All in our only world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)

So... Persecution into exile, for:


Snowden's Australian 'revelations' are old news

Edward Snowden's leaks have alerted the world to a serious issue: the extent of government spying in societies that supposed themselves to be free. That does not, however, mean that every word he says ... is news.

Behind the star-struck reposting of whatever passes from Snowden ... is a lot of stuff that was already either on the record, or at least strongly suspected. ...


Only in America!


Who next?

All in our only world,
Martin

---

See new freedom: Mageia Linux
Take a look for yourself: Linux Format
The Future is what We all make IT (GPLv3)