Revelations that have emerged in the past few months from whistleblower
Edward Snowden and others have painted a disturbing picture
of widespread suspicionless surveillance of American citizens.
We got a wake-up call just recently
NSA snooping includes the interception and collection of call detail records
and Internet traffic including audio video
photographs documents chat logs and emails
Every American is at risk for getting caught up in the NSA
dragnet including average citizens not suspected of a crime.
We have also learned of the large-scale collaboration with Telecom giants,
Internet companies, and service providers. Some concerned email providers have
chosen to shut their doors rather than cave to government
subpoenas to hand over their users' data. We've been
misled. - Does the NSA collected any
type at data at all on millions
or hundreds of millions of America? No sir.
We've seen this story before. -We've had too much secrecy in this country. It has
corrupted the government-
And we decided it was wrong. It was wrong then and it's wrong now
This is a fearful situation. The American people
one of the basic rights is the right to privacy. -Unrestrained
illegal secret intimidation and harassment
of the essential ability of Americans to participate
freely in American political life shall never happen again.
Nixon's crimes predated widespread Internet use by decades
The tools for surveillance have never been more powerful
and the threat to our civil liberties has never been greater
Edward Snowden was not the first. I represent
6 NSA whistleblowers who are being charged with espionage
for telling the truth. -We truly as a nation
are at a crossroads. -I became aware they were sweeping up
everybody's data indiscriminately.
What I was I eye-witness to was a subversion of the Constitution, and that
was when the hair on the back of my neck went up
and so I became a whistle-blower.
This is our information. This is our information.
This is our information. This is our information. It is the digital archive
of our lives, texts of our chats with our families
the backbone everything that we care for, humanitarian causes and things that we
fight for
It is everything you use the Internet for
History tells us we need to watch the watchers
In the surveillance state democracy itself is dead
It makes a mockery of our system of government
which is based on the notion of independent branches of government
including a 4th Estate, the press. -A free society
should not have secret laws. It doesn't have to present
this false trade-off between security or privacy.
We need to bring NSA activity from the shadows into the light of day
We need to end mass suspicionless
surveillance.
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