Snowden Slams NSA Review as 'Cosmetic'

Published on Monday, December 23, 2013 by Common Dreams

"I will never exchange information for asylum and I don't think the Brazilian government would do that either."

- Lauren McCauley, staff writer

(Screenshot from O Globo)The recommendations set forth by an internal government NSA review panel are nothing but "cosmetic changes" staged to "restore public confidence" in the U.S. government's spying activities, charged NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in an email exchange with Brazil's O Globo news station.
Publicized Sunday during O Globo's "Fantastico" program, Snowden reportedly corresponded with reporter Sonia Bridi through his attorney in an effort to prevent interception and disclosure of his location.
"Their job wasn't to protect privacy or deter abuses, it was to restore public confidence in these spying activities. Many of the recommendations they made are cosmetic changes," said Snowden.
"The biggest offense one could commit in the U.S. isn't to damage the government, but rather to embarrass it," he continued. "It's clear that I could not possibly get a fair trial in my country."
The comments followed the publication last week of an open letter by Snowden to the people of Brazil, of which a media blitz falsely reported that Snowden had offered NSA secrets in exchange for asylum in Brazil despite there being no indication of such a plea.
"The price for my speech was my passport, but I would pay it again: I will not be the one to ignore criminality for the sake of political comfort. I would rather be without a state than without a voice," he wrote last week.
During the O Globo broadcast, reporters said Snowden had reiterated his vow saying, "I will never exchange information for asylum and I don't think the Brazilian government would do that either. A grant of asylum should always be a purely humanitarian decision."
Snowden added that U.S. law did not distinguish between a whistleblower revealing illegal programs "and a spy secretly selling documents to terrorists," O Globo reported.
Snowden's statement came as members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced Sunday that a special session was set for January 14 during which the five members of the NSA review panel will discuss the 46 recommendations made by the panel. It will be the committee's first hearing of 2014.
"Momentum is building for real reform," said the committee’s Democratic chairman, Patrick Leahy (Vt.), in a statement announcing the hearing.
Echoing Leahy's statement, appearing on ABC's "This Week" Sunday, Senator Mark Udall (D-Colo.) said, "The arguments for the status quo fell apart this week in Washington."
"It's time now to have real reform, not a veneer of reform," Udall said, and "to rebuild the American people's trust in our intelligence community."

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In the United States the concept that this Nation is in decline is accepted quite reluctantly.

Consequences of U.S. decline

Immanuel Wallerstein
iwallerstein.com

via Sott.net
Fri, 01 Nov 2013 07:58 CDT

© unknown

I have long argued that U.S. decline as a hegemonic power began circa 1970 and that a slow decline became a precipitate one during the presidency of George W. Bush. I first started writing about this in 1980 or so.

At that time the reaction to this argument, from all political camps, was to reject it as absurd. In the 1990s, quite to the contrary, it was widely believed, again on all sides of the political spectrum, that the United States had reached the height of unipolar dominance.

However, after the burst bubble of 2008, opinion of politicians, pundits, and the general public began to change. Today, a large percentage of people (albeit not everyone) accepts the reality of at least some relative decline of U.S. power, prestige, and influence.

In the United States this is accepted quite reluctantly. Politicians and pundits rival each other in recommending how this decline can still be reversed. I believe it is irreversible.

The real question is what the consequences of this decline are. The first is the manifest reduction of U.S. ability to control the world situation, and in particular the loss of trust by the erstwhile closest allies of the United States in its behavior.

In the last month, because of the evidence released by Edward Snowden, it has become public knowledge that the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has been directly spying on the top political leadership of Germany, France, Mexico, and Brazil among others (as well, of course, on countless citizens of these countries).

I am sure the United States engaged in similar activities in 1950. But in 1950, none of these countries would have dared to make a public scandal of their anger, and demand that the United States stop doing this. If they do it today, it is because today the United States needs them more than they need the United States.

These present leaders know that the United States has no choice but to promise, as President Obama just did, to cease these practices (even if the United States doesn't mean it). And the leaders of these four countries all know that their internal position will be strengthened, not weakened, by publically tweaking the nose of the United States.

Insofar as the media discuss U.S. decline, most attention is placed on China as a potential successor hegemon. This too misses the point. China is undoubtedly a country growing in geopolitical strength. But accession to the role of the hegemonic power is a long, arduous process.

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Brazil's Libra oilfield auction goes ahead despite protests

Massive resource deep beneath the Atlantic stays 40% state-owned, with 60% going to Shell, Total and Chinese partners

• Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
• theguardian.com, Monday 21 October 2013 23.20 EDT

Protesters throw rocks from behind a shield outside the Libra oilfield auction in Rio de Janeiro. Photograph: Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty

Brazilian soldiers and national guard troops have fired rubber bullets and teargas at protesters near a luxury beach-side hotel where a multi-billion dollar oil rights auction took place in Rio de Janeiro.
The auction for Libra, a prime deepwater oilfield off the Rio coast which could hold up to 12bn barrels of reserves, has divided opinion in Brazil.
The auction was staged in Barra de Tijuca, an upmarket beachside suburb popular with actors and footballers, and 1,100 members of the security forces were brought in for the event, which eventually took place an hour late.
The auction was won by the only bidder – a consortium of international and state oil companies, including Shell (which got 20%), France's Total (20%) and Chinese state companies CNPC and CNOOC (10% each). They will pay a total of R15bn (£4.27bn) in signing fee alone for the vast field.
Brazil's state-controlled oil company Petrobras will drill the field and keeps ownership of 40%. The country's oil industry has expressed concern it is far too much of a commitment for a company that is already overstretched and heavily in debt.
But many Brazilians feel the country is selling off national riches. "I don't feel secure about it," said Wendell Santana, 40, a taxi driver. "It should have been debated more by the population."
In recent years Brazil has discovered billions of barrels of oil thousands of metres beneath the Atlantic Ocean bed in so-called "subsalt" fields – enough to make the country one of the top half a dozen producers in the world by 2020.

Read More Here

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Clashes ahead of Brazil's Libra oil exploration auction

The BBC's Wyre Davies reports as attempts are made to disperse protesters

 

Brazilian security forces and protesters have clashed in Barra da Tijuca, near Rio de Janeiro, where the Brazilian government is auctioning off exploration rights for a huge oilfield on Monday.

Members of the National Security Force fired tear gas and rubber bullets to try to disperse some 300 protesters.
Several protesters have been injured.
President Dilma Rousseff had ordered tight security after violent demonstrations in Rio last week.

 

With only eight months to go before the World Cup, for the government to order the army onto the streets of Barra de Tijuca (the coastal strip to the west of Rio) is not a decision that will have been taken lightly. They will provide images that Brazilian authorities would frankly rather the world did not see at such a critical moment.”

Local media said a small number of protesters tried to set a car alight while others tried to block cars carrying officials from Brazil's Mining and Energy Ministry from getting to the hotel where the auction is taking place.

"There were bizarre scenes. Riot police firing tear gas and stun grenades, not just against protesters, but also on to the beach, with hundreds of tourists and sun worshippers looking on incredulously," the BBC's Wyre Davies reported from Rio de Janeiro.
Among the protesters are members of various unions representing oil workers, who have been on strike since Thursday at more than 40 oil platforms and refineries.
'Sell-out' The unions accuse the government of "selling off" Brazil's riches.
Eleven international oil companies are said to be interested in the Libra oilfield, and nine of them have so far reportedly paid the required registration fee.
The Libra offshore oilfield is located at a depth of some 5,000m (16,500ft), below a thick layer of salt sediments, which makes its exploration extremely challenging.

The site of the Libra auction is well guarded

Protesters set fire to rubbish bins and overturned the car of a local broadcaster

Read More Here
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Expect new spying revelations "within the next 10 days or so," Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald

Published on Wednesday, August 7, 2013 by Common Dreams

Expect More NSA Revelations Soon, Says Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald gives testimony at senate hearing in Brazil

- Andrea Germanos, staff writer

 

Journalist Glenn Greenwald speaking at a senate hearing in Brazil on Tuesday. (Screenshot via UOL Notícias video)   Expect new spying revelations "within the next 10 days or so," Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald said on Tuesday during testimony at a Brazilian Senate committee hearing.

Telling the group of lawmakers that he had received between 15,000 and 20,00 documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, the Rio-based Greenwald said that the NSA surveillance stories that have been published so far represent just "a small portion" of the revelations. "There will certainly be more revelations on the espionage activities of the US government and allied governments (...) on how they have penetrated the communications systems of Brazil and Latin America" to come, he said.
"The pretext [given by Washington] for the spying is only one thing: terrorism and the need to protect the [American] people," RT quotes Greenwald as saying.  "But the reality is that there are many documents which have nothing to do with terrorism or national security, but have to do with competition with other countries, in the business, industrial and economic fields."
A group of activists came to the public hearing, some carrying Edward Snowden masks.  Some senators showed signs of support for the whistleblower by borrowing the activists' masks.  One senator to do so was Eduardo Suplicy, who is seen at the hearing in this tweet below:

Eduardo Suplicy usa máscara de Edward Snowden durante audiência com jornalista Glenn Greenwald, do @guardian pic.twitter.com/nkc9qRMvzE
— Marcus Bruno (@OMarcusBruno) August 6, 2013

As TechDirt sees it, "Politicians in key countries not just supporting Snowden but wearing masks with his face on it shows just how badly the US government is losing the battle for public perception on this issue."
Greenwald said that “The Brazilian government is showing much more anger in public than it is showing in private discussions with the US government. All governments are doing this, even in Europe,” Euronews reports.
He added that he has communicated almost daily with Snowden, who he reports is doing "very well," and that the whistleblower "is very pleased with the debate that is arising in many countries around the world on internet privacy and U.S. spying. It is exactly the debate he wanted to inform."

Brazilian university students display image of Edward Snowden in Senate Committee hearing on NSA. cc: @ggreenwald pic.twitter.com/Hd7XnT7lcW
— Jimmy Chalk (@JimmyChalk) August 6, 2013

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Brazil Target Of U.S. Spying, Globo Newspaper Reports

Reuters  |  Posted: 07/07/2013 1:25 pm EDT  |  Updated: 07/07/2013 1:54 pm EDT 

RIO DE JANEIRO, July 7 (Reuters) - The U.S. National Security Agency monitored the telephone and email activity of Brazilian companies and individuals in the past decade as part of U.S. espionage activities, the Globo newspaper reported on Sunday, citing documents provided by fugitive Edward Snowden, a former NSA intelligence contractor.
The newspaper did not say how much traffic was monitored by NSA computers and intelligence officials. But the Globo article pointed out that in the Americas, Brazil was second only to the United States in the number of transmissions intercepted.
Brazil was a priority nation for the NSA communications surveillance alongside China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, Globo said.
In the 10-year period, the NSA captured 2.3 billion phone calls and messages in the United States and then used computers to analyze them for signs of suspicious activity, the paper said. In the United States, the NSA used legal but secret warrants to compel communications companies to turn over information about calls and emails for analysis.


Read More Here


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UPDATE 1-Brazil seeks U.S. response to alleged spying on citizens

Sun Jul 7, 2013 8:59pm BST
 

(Reuters) - Brazil will demand an explanation from the United States over report its citizens' electronic communications have been under surveillance by U.S. spy agencies for at least a decade, foreign minister Antonio Patriota said on Sunday.
Patriota's remarks were in response to a report in the Globo daily newspaper on Sunday saying that the U.S. National Security Agency has been monitoring the telephone and e-mail activity of Brazilian companies and individuals as part of U.S. espionage activities.
The report cited documents obtained from U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden, a former NSA intelligence contractor.
Patriota also said his government plans to propose changes to international communications rules administered by the Geneva-based International Telecommunications Union to improve communications secrecy, the statement said. Brazil also plans to present proposals to the United Nations to protect the privacy of electronic communication.
"The Brazilian government is gravely concerned by the news that electronic and telephone communications of Brazilian citizens are the objective of espionage efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies," a foreign ministry statement said.
The Globo report did not say how much traffic was monitored by NSA computers and intelligence officials. But the article pointed out that in the Americas, Brazil was second only to the United States in the number of transmissions intercepted.
Brazil was a priority nation for the NSA communications surveillance alongside China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, Globo said.


Read More Here

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