Tag: Spying

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Potentially Reasonable Words: ARD Interview with Snowden

German broadcaster ARD is streaming an interview with Edward Snowden at 23:05 German time, 5:05 PM EST in the US.

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I’m sure he’ll be asked about the claim that the NSA taps Angela Merkel’s cell phone. Which, as German editorial writer Volker Wagener puts it, if true, is no way to treat a close ally.

 

“The most suitable solution would be a more transparent handling of friendly relations and a retraction of the tentacles of the NSA octopus. This agency has long surpassed the many absurdities practiced by the communist East German State Security apparatus until 1989. And that’s saying something.”

 

My personal hope: Stephen Colbert does a video chat with Snowden for his upcoming key note at the RSA conference!

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Provocative Words: Rebecca Solnit writes to Edward Snowden

To my earlier question, Snowden: Hero or Criminal?, Rebecca says hero, emphatically.

Screen Shot 2013-07-22 at 4.39.05 PMFrom Tom’s Dispatch:

Someday you may be regarded as a Mandela of sorts for the information age, or perhScreen Shot 2013-07-22 at 4.39.47 PMaps a John Brown, someone who refused to fit in, to bow down, to make a system work that shouldn’t work, that should explode. And perhaps we’re watching it explode.

She goes further than many would, but a viewpoint worth considering. For me it’s the “trust us it’s making you safer, but, of course, we can’t tell you just how,” argument that is so unsettling, and it sort of still gets a pass from parts of the left, right, and center.