A Year of Edward Snowden

Today celebrates a year since Edward Snowden first showed us the beginning of a long, deep hole of NSA spying and lying. From Clapper lying to Congress, and getting away with it, to Obama saying metadata collection isn't a big deal, when we've learned that it clearly is. Check out my first and second articles written almost a year ago talking about the information shared by Snowden and the potential impacts.

Obama Feeling Pressure From The People About The NSA?

So the New York Times reports that President Obama apparently is finally taking a serious look into the NSA's spy and bulk collection program and end it! Whoa! This is huge news. 

Snowden Speaks at Length About Leaks

I just watched this interview with Edward Snowden and the German channel NDR where he goes into depth about his opinions, observations, and reaction to the his leaks. He also explains what the significance of his leaks are.

Video uploaded to LiveLeak December 27, 2013. You can view it here on LiveLink.

Two Thousand and Thirteen or Nineteen Eighty-Four?

A few months ago I had the urge to once again read George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. I was shocked at the staunch parallels with today’s society that I found within. While my head was buried in my book, Edward Snowden began leaking the NSA files he gathered while working as a contractor. The timing was surreal. If you haven't read Nineteen Eighty-Four, or like me, you haven't read it in a long time, let me refresh your memory. You’ve likely heard the concept of Big Brother, the watchful eye of an oppressive government, but that is just a portion of this amazing novel by the author of Animal Farm.

George Orwell wrote Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 and used Stalin controlled Soviet Russia and wartime London as inspiration for a dysfunctional future setting. While his main objective may have been to discredit Communism through metaphor, the similarities to U.S. modern society are still striking.

The book begins with protagonist Winston Smith returning home from work. He describes his stark surroundings and mundane routine. In a state of constant war, all material items are rationed and simple things like coffee and chocolate are luxuries of the past. Buildings with “their sides shored up with balks of timber, their windows patched with cardboard and their roofs with corrugated iron” line the streets of London. The description of London reminds me of the terrible photos of bankrupt Detroit, decrepit and run down.

REVIEW: Unmanned: America's Drone Wars

Drone Home - Illustration by John Gomes

How many stories have you heard about drone warfare? And I don't mean stories on the news or government counts of successful strikes, but stories from victims?

Unmanned: America's Drone Wars takes a hard look at drone warfare through the eyes of its victims, a compelling one hour film which gives faces to the families affected by US drones. Director Robert Greenwald shows interviews from family members and predominate figures within Pakistan, who explain what drone strikes have done to their communities.

The film begins with a US veteran describing how modern drone technology can read the licence plate on a car. He explains how when he was recruited to the army, to help pay off his college debt, the recruiter told him he would be just like Q in a James Bond film. He was told, "we kill people and break things." Some of these operators don't even need to leave US soil when controlling drones because the army has a large facility in Nevada where soldiers can kill people across the globe.

How the GOP Created Obamacare

With the next stages of the Affordable Healthcare Act being implemented and the recent GOP caused government shutdown, once again Republicans are fighting to repeal their much despised Obamacare. What is amazing about the Republican push against Obamacare is that in the 1990s, they were calling for the very system we are currently implementing.

In the 1990s, Hillary Clinton introduced a healthcare plan that sent Republican’s into a frenzy, the Health Security Act of 1993. They attacked Clinton’s proposal, claiming that their system would be better served for all Americans. But, the fight wasn’t against universal health care but how best to implement it.

More Revelations From Edward Snowden

PHOTO: Mad Magazine

Almost four months ago, I wrote an article explaining why it was important to understand who Edward Snowden was and what he had done. At the time, I thought his exposure of NSA secrets would fade in the minds of the general public, much like Chelsea Manning, formerly Bradley Manning, has seemed to do.

While Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian continue to expose more and more astounding disregard for the 1st and 4th Amendment, I thought it was only right to expand on my earlier article and include the new revelations that have since been revealed.

When Snowden’s name first popped up in the news, there was much speculation about whether what he was saying was true, and if so, if it was deemed acceptable by the American public or a gross violation of our basic rights as Americans.

Edward Snowden: Why You Should Know His Name

Sunday, June 9th the Guardian posted yet another article on the ongoing exposure of the overwhelming National Security Administration’s (NSA) PRISM program. This time it was not just a piece about the NSA, but about the whistleblower behind the leak, Edward Snowden.

[Originally published in Ladybud Magazine here: Edward Snowden: Why You Should Know His Name]

Snowden is a 29-year-old infrastructure analyst who, until recently, worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, a contracting company providing the NSA with intelligence. He was exposed to a multitude of information that allowed him to piece together what the NSA was doing in regards to the surveillance of the American people, claiming he could wiretap even the President with access to a personal email address, and with his accumulating knowledge began to feel uncomfortable with what he concluded to be the NSA’s abuse of power.