Oh I am highly interested in this stuff. I watched most of the Tor vid the other day on YouTube and was going to post it but you beat me to it. To me this is more important than any other issue out there(besides "The War on Terror" and the drones). The masses should turn off their idiot boxes and their talking heads on the radio and be more concerned about this. Thanks for the info sir!

Well here's something to think about, since the uselessness of answering these questions which seem so important to yourself, these issues which would simply tend to correct themselves should dumb assess who light-upon them who can't seem to figure it out actually DO something with all their frustration.

There are other more pressing fundamental issues to consider when you think about how real "CHANGE" could come overnight if both fanatics dems and repubs could get their heads out of their own assess.

Most of these issues you are so passionate about and continually abuse the meaningless, "one-team-against-the-other" argument for, are simply diversions to keep you inebriated with (by design) while the rapists and abusers of culture, politics and special interests, military and police, and corporate oligarchies fuck you from behind without lube.

For instance: THIS video offering after 30 hours in the queue has garnered 6 votes. It speaks to one of the many fundamental ass-fucks being perpetrated on the American People and one insidious presidential cunt republican and one equally as sinister mountebank currently in office has created the framework for this egregious violation of rights and culture, but nobody seems to give a fuck.

INSTEAD, people that continually paste these kind of trite news-bobble sound bites of worthless information pitting one party against another seem to be absolutely clueless as to the mechanics of the insidious mechanism keeping them in a state of unconscious somnambulatry hypnotic drunkenness while the entire time, not utilizing the power they have to alter the course of the destiny of the planet-Instead that wasted energy is used to jack off at the mouth.

Simple fix for the so-called drug problem as it relates to criminal cartels (like the FBI, LIKE the CIA, like the "cabal who control government."???

Legalized marijuana, heroin, cocaine, while at the same time criminalizing the machine set-in-place to quote/unquote, "fight the war on drugs"..Fight the war on terrorism", etc. There is no goddamn war except the one for your mind,and from reading this horseshit on this particular post, it seems that more than a few people here have had their minds hi-jacked already.

It's up to you to wake-the-fuck-up. Republicans are no better or worse than democrats, because both are complicit in the hijacking of your lives, your livelihoods, and the work and sweat and blood of your lives as you toil incessantly to continue to promulgate their diseased programs of slavery of both your bodies and minds.

Any and all retort to similar diatribes of my own are predictably met with derision and defensiveness, and a SHITLOAD of passive-aggression in the form of convoluted and meaningless banter.

I fucking detest this charade of pitting conservatives against liberals, one "party" against another.

The only party that exists is the one behind closed doors as they laugh at people like yourselves.

*War on Terror

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i dont pay taxes.
i refused ten years ago and have stuck with that path.
and its been sunshine and rainbows ever since....
ok..not really.my income is severely crippled due to me not paying taxes BUT goddamn does it make me feel good!

i do not pay taxes not to be a cheap ass but rather to protest a system that is so obviously rigged against me.(and you).

as for american libertarianism.
i will say they have the civil rights down.
i totally agree with their philosophy of personal liberty and right to do whatever you want as long as you aint stepping on another blokes shoes.

but when they start with the "free market" sermons i start to look at them as wide-eyed and innocent children.
do they not SEE whats going on?
free market?
what is this free market you speak of?
america is NOT a free market.
it is corporate socialism.
or welfare if you want to troll a bit.

go ahead and de-regulate corporate america.
see what happens.
better yet,just look at some african nations,or former soviet states.
guilded estates with private armies for the uber-wealthy and elite while the majority of the population live in either indentured servitude or total squalor.

i am noticing a disturbing trend here in america.its like they are preparing.
we have a government bought and paid for by corporate america,which does the corporations bidding.
the co-opting of the tea party and the crushing of occupy.
a massive surveillance operation.
militarized police forces across the country.
civil liberties made into mere "suggestions" and no longer inalienable.
executions of american citizens with no due process (bye bye habeas corpus).
a standing army that has been in place for over 60 years and a war on terror that will never end.

it is madness.

so i cannot blame my libertarian friends for calling for smaller government.
because the government has become TOO big and no longer is "for the people,by the people".
it serves its corporate masters.
which is why the "de-regulate" argument truly baffles me.

just as my liberal friends who wish to use the system to correct these imbalances.
what?
the system is utterly BROKEN.
we no longer have a functioning democracy!
why would you even suggest to use a system that threw us all overboard to lick the boots of their masters 30 yrs ago?
the mind..it boggles.

every political philosophy has its flaws.none are perfect.
libertarianism has some very good points while others are a bit...naive in my opinion.

for me the end result is this:
i do not trust power nor authority because i find them to be illegitimate until they prove themselves otherwise.
so i am suspicious when someone tries to force their authority on me based on arbitrary and subjective parameters.(like a cop,or judge or some rich dude).

i am a humanist by nature so my political philosophy flows from that birthplace.
i will never step on you to further my career nor take food out of your mouth.
corporate america has spread a propaganda campaign that is insidious.

capitalism is good.
greed is good.
dog eat dog world out there.
here,buy this,it will make you feel better.
wear that and you will be sexy.
you are lone wolf,against the world,drive this car you lone wolf and be a rebel.

its all bullshit.
human beings feel better when they are co-operating.
when they feel their life has purpose and that they are needed.
not by living in a perpetual 7 yr olds wet dream.

oh
my
god.
you fuckers got me ranting!
i hate you both......
/drops mic

Reminds me of yet another ironic result of our "war against terror"... the gross ignorance, arrogance, blinders-on patriotism, and raging authoritarianist bend of a new species of rightie nutter that has slithered onto dry land since 9/11.

(continued conversation from http://videosift.com/video/Democracy-Now-A-Massive-Surveillance-State-Exposed. Feel free to join in.)

@enoch - Specifically, what new power has the government gained here? (this is not a rhetorical question)

I'm with you on torture, warrantless wiretaps, illegal wars, assassinations (in general, thought I think Al Alakwi was justified considering the body count he had racked up), persecution of whistleblowers, persecution of journalists

The current NSA scandal encompasses none of these things. If they want to record your phone calls, they need a warrant. They didn't under Bush - but they do now - and PRISM can't go after your internet data at all.

Even if they did want to grab everyones' information, can you see how difficult it would be to pull off? How many phone calls are made in a day? (millions?) How many warrants would it take to get access to all those calls? How many man hours would it take to record and listen to all those calls? Even if the NSA were full of villainous mustache twirlers, doesn't that seem like a futile task? 99.9999% of the information would be useless.

I believe that the NSA genuinely works to stop terror attacks. I know there has been much bullshit done in the name of the "war on terror", but I believe there is a genuine need for an Agency that deals with National Security. I would imagine most countries have some kind of similar body.

I don't have a problem with information gained through search warrants. My major complaint is that this stuff is not better explained to the public. I know that there is plenty of specific information that needs to be kept secret in order to not blow the cover of agents who are wiretapping suspects, but I think the broad strokes should be put out there. Here's what we are doing. Here's why. Here are the problems we've had. Here are the successes we've had. How are we doing? How can we improve this?

I also think there would be far less need to monitor if drugs were legalized and the war on terror ended.

Anyway, I think this kind of surveillance is going to become status quo, will not be overly problematic and will be completely uncontroversial in a few decades. As far as abuse goes, you don't need any of these high tech contraptions to listen to people's phone calls and track internet usage. These things can be done fairly easily with comparatively primitive tech that can be bought legally at spy stores.

http://www.spy.th.com/audiocat.html

@criticalthud I don't disagree with what you say. My point is that judge approved wiretaps and internet surveillance should be a legal part of the law enforcement/National Security arsenal. How to do it best is beyond me. I think warrants and constitutional protections are decent checks and balances, but I know they are not infallible. As I mentioned to enoch, if someone wants to listen to your calls, be that person a high ranking government agent or your grumpy neighbor, it can be done easily with low tech. Killing these guidelines would do nothing to protect you from a rogue agent or personal vendetta.

If all this leads to a real discussion on the war on terror or the war on drugs, I'd be thrilled. My prediction is that it will just be used as a politicians electoral bludgeoning device until everyone gets sick of hearing about it and it slides off the radar screen.

@enoch - Specifically, what new power has the government gained here?

I'm with you on torture, warrantless wiretaps, illegal wars, assassinations (in general, thought I think Al Alakwi was justified considering the body count he had racked up), persecution of whistleblowers, persecution of journalists

The current NSA scandal encompasses none of these things. If they want to record your phone calls, they need a warrant. They didn't under Bush - but they do now - and PRISM can't go after your internet data at all.

Even if they did want to grab everyones' information, can you see how difficult it would be to pull off? How many phone calls are made in a day? (millions?) How many warrants would it take to get access to all those calls? How many man hours would it take to record and listen to all those calls? Even if the NSA were full of villainous mustache twirlers, doesn't that seem like a futile task? 99.9999% of the information would be useless.

I believe that the NSA genuinely works to stop terror attacks. I know there has been much bullshit done in the name of the "war on terror", but I believe there is a genuine need for an Agency that deals with National Security. I would imagine most countries have some kind of similar body.

I don't have a problem with information gained with search warrants. My major complaint is that this stuff is not better explained to the public. I know that there is plenty of specific information that needs to be kept secret in order to not blow the cover of agents who are wiretapping suspects, but I think the broad strokes should be put out there. Here's what we are doing. Here's why. Here are the problems we've had. Here are the successes we've had. How are we doing? How can we improve this?

I also think there would be far less need to monitor if drugs were legalized and the war on terror ended.

Anyway, I think this kind of surveillance is going to become status quo and will be completely uncontroversial in a few decades. As far as abuse goes, you don't need any of these high tech contraptions to listen to peoples phone calls and track internet usage. These things can be done fairly easily with comparatively primitive tech that can be bought legally at spy stores.

@criticalthud I don't disagree with what you say. My point is that judge approved wiretaps and internet surveillance should be a legal part of law enforcement/National Security arsenal. How to do it best is beyond me. I think warrants and constitutional protections are decent checks and balances, but I know they are not infallible. As I mentioned to enoch, if someone wants to listen to your calls, be that person a high ranking government agent or your grumpy neighbor, it can be done easily with low tech. Killing these guidelines would do nothing to protect you from a rogue agent or personal vendetta.

If all this leads to a real discussion on the war on terror or on the war on drugs, I'd be thrilled. My prediction is that it will just be used as a politicians electoral weapon until everyone gets sick of hearing about it and it slides off the radar screen.

@Yogi
well said my friend.

ya know.
i was talking with @VoodooV on another thread concerning this topic.
he was of the opinion that this is all about perspective and to look at the bigger picture.

now i actually agree with that, but i think the perspective is on how we approach this subject.

@Yogi and i are not coming from some alex jones 'new world order" premise but rather a historical one.
we do not trust our government because our government has proven over and over they do not deserve our trust.

and as @Yogi alluded to,the list of abuses of power by the US government is massive and extensive.

remember in 2006 when it become public that the telecoms had call system rerouters in data collection?those small rooms?
and remember how the bush administration push forward to give the telecoms retroactive immunity to avoid any civil suits?

my main point is that whenever a government gains a new power or authority they WILL use it.since 9/11 and the "war on terror" (which is just a war on ideology) our government has broadened its power and authority ten fold and it HAS USED that power.

this is not opinion.this is fact.

guess it all comes down to trust.
do you trust this government to obey the law?
i dont because they go out of their way to be creative little monkeys to circumvent the law,or redefine it to suit their purposes.

i know i am going off on a rant here,so let me end with this:
historically empires in their last stages have always become concentrated centers of power and certain criteria have always become evident.
1.the over-reach of empires always culminate with an extreme disparity between rich and poor.
2.they become incredibly militarized.
3.infrastructure and commerce begin to break down.
4.nationalism reaches fever pitch.(see:tea party)
5.those in power (the governing class) tend to become more corrupt and less idealistic and begin to pick the remnants of empire for their own enrichment.hastening the demise of empire.
6.the ruling class becomes extremely paranoid and begins to focus its attention on its own citizens.seeing enemies everywhere.
7.power seeks only to further its own power and it becomes a cycle of cannibalism.

by my statements here i am in no way disregarding or dismissing some of the great achievements that have been won by this country.but those milestones were ALWAYS because of the people and not ONE was ever implemented by a benevolent government.

so while i trust the people i,in no way,trust my government.
because they have proven they do not deserve my trust.

@VoodooV
hmmmm.../taps fingers.
i dont think we are making any progress.
mainly because i dont know if you are directing your commentary towards me or the video itself.

understand i am not trying to impose my opinion on you as sacrosanct.
that is not my intent.
but i also think glossing over these events with generalities that we both are aware of serves nothing for the discussion.

i teach history and governments.

i am also highly distrustful of governments or to be more accurate:power/authority.

so lets change this up a bit.
let me ask you on how YOU perceive the current state of affairs.

1.do you feel,as some other people do,that this data dragnet by the NSA is a fake scandal? that is just hyped partisan politics and the government is only doing what is always has done?
and if so.why?

2.in regards to the estimated 125 million correspondence confiscated,along with the AP reporters emails and phone records.do you feel the US government is justified is mining such information? that the "war on terror" knows no boundaries and the government must be forever vigilant in collecting such information.

3.if you agree that the US government has the right to spy on its citizens then how do you feel about the fourth amendment and how it pertains to "reasonable search and seizure"? would this not be in direct conflict with that amendment and is dealing with its own citizens as 'suspicious"?

4.do you agree with the governments counter-argument that a.what they are doing is legal and b.if your not doing anything wrong then you have nothing to worry about.

i understand you are trying to give a more even-handed and more reasonable perspective concerning this but i truly want to understand how a differing opinion views all this.
my goal is to understand.

because i have been watching this unfold and the more that comes out the more it chills my blood.
historically these things always go in a particular direction and it is not pretty.
power wishes only to retain its power.

All of this so-called war on terror does is allow the gov't to spy on law-abiding citizens. And Obama uses the IRS to target his political enemies.

"Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: We begin with news that the National Security Agency has obtained access to the central servers of nine major Internet companies, including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo! and Facebook. The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed the top secret program on Thursday, codenamed PRISM, after they obtained several slides from a 41-page training presentation for senior intelligence analysts. It explains how PRISM allows them to access emails, documents, audio and video chats, photographs, documents and connection logs that allow them to track a person or trace their connections to others. One slide lists the companies by name and the date when each provider began participating over the past six years. But an Apple spokesperson said it had "never heard" of PRISM and added, quote, "We do not provide any government agency with direct access to our servers and any agency requesting customer data must get a court order," they said. Other companies had similar responses.

Well, for more, we’re joined by Glenn Greenwald, columnist, attorney, and blogger for The Guardian, where he broke his story in—that was headlined "NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal." This comes after he revealed Wednesday in another exclusive story that the "NSA has been collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon customers." According to a new report in The Wall Street Journal, the scope of the NSA phone monitoring includes customers of all three major phone networks—Verizon, AT&T and Sprint—as well as records from Internet service providers and purchase information from credit card providers. Glenn Greenwald is also author of With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful. He’s joining us now via Democracy—video stream.

Glenn, welcome back to Democracy Now! Lay out this latest exclusive that you have just reported in The Guardian.

GLENN GREENWALD: There are top-secret NSA documents that very excitingly describe—excitedly describe, boast about even, how they have created this new program called the PRISM program that actually has been in existence since 2007, that enables them direct access into the servers of all of the major Internet companies which people around the world, hundreds of millions, use to communicate with one another. You mentioned all of those—all those names. And what makes it so extraordinary is that in 2008 the Congress enacted a new law that essentially said that except for conversations involving American citizens talking to one another on U.S. soil, the NSA no longer needs a warrant to grab, eavesdrop on, intercept whatever communications they want. And at the time, when those of us who said that the NSA would be able to obtain whatever they want and abuse that power, the argument was made, "Oh, no, don’t worry. There’s a great check on this. They have to go to the phone companies and go to the Internet companies and ask for whatever it is they want. And that will be a check." And what this program allows is for them, either because the companies have given over access to their servers, as the NSA claims, or apparently the NSA has simply seized it, as the companies now claim—the NSA is able to go in—anyone at a monitor in an NSA facility can go in at any time and either read messages that are stored in Facebook or in real time surveil conversations and chats that take place on Skype and Gmail and all other forms of communication. It’s an incredibly invasive system of surveillance worldwide that has zero checks of any kind.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, there is a chart prepared by the NSA in the top-secret document you obtained that shows the breadth of the data it’s able to obtain—email, video and voice chat, videos, photos, Skype chats, file transfers, social networking details. Talk about what this chart reveals.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think the crucial thing to realize is that hundreds of millions of Americans and hundreds of millions—in fact, billions of people around the world essentially rely on the Internet exclusively to communicate with one another. Very few people use landline phones for much of anything. So when you talk about things like online chats and social media messages and emails, what you’re really talking about is the full extent of human communication. And what the objective of the National Security Agency is, as the stories that we’ve revealed thus far demonstrate and as the stories we’re about to reveal into the future will continue to demonstrate—the objective of the NSA and the U.S. government is nothing less than destroying all remnants of privacy. They want to make sure that every single time human beings interact with one another, things that we say to one another, things we do with one another, places we go, the behavior in which we engage, that they know about it, that they can watch it, and they can store it, and they can access it at any time. And that’s what this program is about. And they’re very explicit about the fact that since most communications are now coming through these Internet companies, it is vital, in their eyes, for them to have full and unfettered access to it. And they do.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, as you reported, the PRISM program—not to be confused with prison, the PRISM program—is run with the assistance of the companies that participate, including Facebook and Apple, but all of those who responded to a Guardian request for comment denied knowledge of any of the program. This is what Google said, quote: "We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege [that] we have created a government 'back door' into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data."

GLENN GREENWALD: Right. Well, first of all, after our story was published, and The Washington Post published more or less simultaneously a similar story, several news outlets, including NBC News, confirmed with government officials that they in fact have exactly the access to the data that we describe. The director of national intelligence confirmed to The New York Times, by name, that the program we identify and the capabilities that we described actually exist. So, you have a situation where somebody seems to be lying. The NSA claims that these companies voluntarily allow them the access; the companies say that they never did.

This is exactly the kind of debate that we ought to have out in the open. What exactly is the government doing in how it spies on us and how it reads our emails and how it intercepts our chats? Let’s have that discussion out in the open. To the extent that these companies and the NSA have a conflict and can’t get their story straight, let them have that conflict resolved in front of us. And then we, as citizens, instead of having this massive surveillance apparatus built completely secretly and in the dark without us knowing anything that’s going on, we can then be informed about what kinds of surveillance the government is engaged in and have a reasoned debate about whether that’s the kind of world in which we want to live.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, on Thursday, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein told reporters in the Senate gallery that the government’s top-secret court order to obtain phone records on millions of Americans is, quote, "lawful."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: As far as I know, this is the exact three-month renewal of what has been the case for the past seven years. This renewal is carried out by the FISA court under the business record section of the PATRIOT Act, therefore it is lawful.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Senator Dianne Feinstein. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: Well, first of all, the fact that something is lawful doesn’t mean that it isn’t dangerous or tyrannical or wrong. You can enact laws that endorse tyrannical behavior. And there’s no question, if you look at what the government has done, from the PATRIOT Act, the Protect America Act, the Military Commissions Act and the FISA Amendments Act, that’s exactly what the war on terror has been about.

But I would just defer to two senators who are her colleagues, who are named Ron Wyden and Mark Udall. They have—are good Democrats. They have spent two years now running around trying to get people to listen to them as they’ve been saying, "Look, what the Obama administration is doing in interpreting the PATRIOT Act is so radical and so distorted and warped that Americans will be stunned to learn" — that’s their words — "what is being done in the name of these legal theories, these secret legal theories, in terms of the powers the Obama administration has claimed for itself in how it can spy on Americans."

When the PATRIOT Act was enacted—and you can go back and look at the debates, as I’ve done this week—nobody thought, even opponents of the PATRIOT Act, that it would ever be used to enable the government to gather up everybody’s telephone records and communication records without regard to whether they’ve done anything wrong. The idea of the PATRIOT Act was that when the government suspects somebody of being involved in terrorism or serious crimes, the standard of proof is lowered for them to be able to get these documents. But the idea that the PATRIOT Act enables bulk collection, mass collection of the records of hundreds of millions of Americans, so that the government can store that and know what it is that we’re doing at all times, even when there’s no reason to believe that we’ve done anything wrong, that is ludicrous, and Democratic senators are the ones saying that it has nothing to do with that law.

AMY GOODMAN: On Thursday, Glenn, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said he stood by what he told Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon in March, when he said that the National Security Agency does "not wittingly" collect data on millions of Americans. Let’s go to that exchange.

SEN. RON WYDEN: Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?

JAMES CLAPPER: No, sir.

SEN. RON WYDEN: It does not?

JAMES CLAPPER: Not wittingly. There are cases where they could inadvertently, perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the questioning of the head of the national intelligence, James Clapper, by Democratic Senator Ron Wyden. Glenn Greenwald?

GLENN GREENWALD: OK. So, we know that to be a lie, not a misleading statement, not something that was sort of parsed in a way that really was a little bit deceitful, but an outright lie. They collect—they collect data and records about the communications activities and other behavioral activities of millions of Americans all the time. That’s what that program is that we exposed on Wednesday. They go to the FISA court every three months, and they get an order compelling telephone companies to turn over the records, that he just denied they collect, with regard to the conversations of every single American who uses these companies to communicate with one another. The same is true for what they’re doing on the Internet with the PRISM program. The same is true for what the NSA does in all sorts of ways.

We are going to do a story, coming up very shortly, about the scope of the NSA’s spying activities domestically, and I think it’s going to shock a lot of people, because the NSA likes to portray itself as interested only in foreign intelligence gathering and only in targeting people who they believe are guilty of terrorism, and yet the opposite is true. It is a massive surveillance state of exactly the kind that the Church Committee warned was being constructed 35 years ago. And we intend to make all those facts available so people can see just how vast it is and how false those kind of statements are.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go back to Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein. Speaking on MSNBC, she said the leak should be investigated and that the U.S. has a, quote, "culture of leaks."

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: There is nothing new in this program. The fact of the matter is that this was a routine three-month approval, under seal, that was leaked.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Should it be—should the leak be investigated?

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN: I think so. I mean, I think we have become a culture of leaks now.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Senate Intelligence Committee chair, Dianne Feinstein, being questioned by MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. Glenn Greenwald, your final response to this? And sum up your findings. They’re talking about you, Glenn.

GLENN GREENWALD: I think Dianne Feinstein may be the most Orwellian political official in Washington. It is hard to imagine having a government more secretive than the United States. Virtually everything that government does, of any significance, is conducted behind an extreme wall of secrecy. The very few leaks that we’ve had over the last decade are basically the only ways that we’ve had to learn what our government is doing.

But look, what she’s doing is simply channeling the way that Washington likes to threaten the people over whom they exercise power, which is, if you expose what it is that we’re doing, if you inform your fellow citizens about all the things that we’re doing in the dark, we will destroy you. This is what their spate of prosecutions of whistleblowers have been about. It’s what trying to threaten journalists, to criminalize what they do, is about. It’s to create a climate of fear so that nobody will bring accountability to them.

It’s not going to work. I think it’s starting to backfire, because it shows their true character and exactly why they can’t be trusted to operate with power in secret. And we’re certainly not going to be deterred by it in any way. The people who are going to be investigated are not the people reporting on this, but are people like Dianne Feinstein and her friends in the National Security Agency, who need investigation and transparency for all the things that they’ve been doing.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, we want to thank you for being with us. Is this threat of you being investigated going to deter you in any way, as you continue to do these exclusives, these exposés?

GLENN GREENWALD: No, it’s actually going to embolden me to pursue these stories even more aggressively.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald, I want to thank you for being with us, columnist and blogger for The Guardian newspaper. We’ll link to your exposés on our website, "NSA Taps in to Internet Giants’ Systems to Mine User Data, Secret Files Reveal", as well as "NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Verizon Customers Daily"." - Democracy Now!

I don't see it that way, in my opinion US citizens are quite capable of using their intellect. The big problem I see is that your government doesn't seem to care anymore what the populace is for or against. Recently there was a new gun law that should be passed by the congress, I think you know which one I am talking about. The one 80% of the people were for and more than half of the congressmen voted for, which still didn't pass. It shows perfectly that the people aren't to blame, it's your out of touch politicians. It seems like there only are 2 principles you can count on from US politicians (or at least these are the reasons they tell the public), one would be the war on terror and the other the economy.

If you are interested in german politics, we are fighting our criminal mastermind-politicians quite effectively. The Bundespräsident (obviously not the Bundeskanzlerin) resigned in 2012 for some minor favors he had (like not having to pay for a hotel he was staying in while he was president). There was a giant out leash from the public and he quickly had to go (http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/17/german-president-christian-wulff-resigns-amid-scandal/).

But even more interesting, just yesterday there was a ruling by the highest german court, if the new terror-file used by our intelligence agency and the police was constitutional. It wasn't, so the judges had to change it. And the decision wasn't driven by the need to stop terror, but by german history. You see the problem is, our police and our intelligence agency are separated for historical reasons. When Hitler was just made chancellor of germany he used the Gestapo as an agency that was police and intelligence in one, to get rid of his political enemies.

I know that was very long, I just wanted to make my point using my own country as the best (or worst, depends on the view ) example there is for the world. Cause the world could still learn a thing or two from us, since we learned a thing or two from our last dictatorship and how to avoid it happening again (at least I really hope so).

Uh and since I love quotes, just recently I read this one "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin.

I will get to what is wrong with strongly denouncing Islam in a second....

As for the article, I hadn't actually read the whole thing but rather had heard coverage about it along with an article on Al Jazeera. Specifically, I take issue with Harris and his stance on the 'war on terror' (and aren't you essentially advocating for religious profiling by condemning Islam and its practitioners? Or is it rather that you identify it as a threat but wish to see no action taken?) I also have problems with Hitchens and his enthusiasm for the invasion of Iraq.

As for the quote I posted, after re-reading it, I think that I saw something that wasn't there. I believe that trying to prove that one religion is more evil than another is pointless. Reading history books, which oddly I have done, will not disprove that belief but rather reinforce it as the tragedy of all religions would be laid bare.

Finally, I would gladly take up your 'snidely', non-issued challenge. As a matter of fact, I've already done it. I lived in Indonesia for a year both in Muslim dominated areas and tribal, animist Christian dominated areas. While I am by no means an atheist activist, I nonetheless lived openly as an atheist and honestly answered the question of my religion (I have none) when it was asked of me. Nothing happened to me. Furthermore, I currently live on the Thai-Burma border in a Buddhist dominated country and do not hide my lack of belief when asked about it.

And that is where I come back to the problem of denouncing Islam. Just last month there were pogroms against Muslims by Buddhists in Burma (a smaller conflict than that which occurred last year against the Rohingya in Rakhine state). The proximate cause of this pogrom was a Muslim jeweler refusing to pay for damaged jewelry of a Buddhist woman. But more generally, it is a result of a campaign of extremist Buddhist monks issuing edicts about the evils of Islam and the dangers it represents to Burmese culture. Unequivocally condemning an entire religion invariably leads to this type of violence, and therein lies my concern.