Defending Edward Snowden: Snowden fears foul trial in USA
(Story of US spying networks)
-DR. ABDUL RUFF COLACHAL
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Liquidation of foes has been a major US-CIA policy pursued for decades now especially after the World War two. While no American officials could be punished for their crimes, their foes do not get a fair chance for explanation- they are just eliminated.
Former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden is facing similar situation when US officials have threatened kill him for revealing the US state secrets about crimes against people.
Fair trials and trust worthy judgments can build up healthy systems.
However, generally, both fair trial and genuine justice are denied to people, resulting in systemic paralysis, leading to distrust in the judiciary and system. .
America, claiming to be the largest democracy on earth is threatening with murder of Edward Snowden for his bold action.
Snowden has leaked intelligence to Russians, thereby committing treason against USA, according to the US officials who now want to just get him killed.
But by doing so, Edward Snowden has done a yeomen service to the humanity as the world today has become fully aware of all hidden agendas of USA even before they perpetrated the Sept-11 crime in order to obtain legitimacy to invade Muslim nations one by one. Snowden has exposed only US crimes on average Americans and people all over the world but could do more shocking revelations in future.
For this very reason, American officials just want to remove him from the world.
The NSA’s mass surveillance program has caused widespread anger after they were leaked by Snowden. The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board advised by a 3-2 majority that the program should end.
Edward Snowden, formerly linked to CIA, left the US in late May after leaking to the media details of extensive internet and phone surveillance by American intelligence. Snowden, who has been granted temporary asylum in Russia, faces espionage charges over his actions.
Two of the charges laid against him by the Obama administration are felony counts under the Espionage Act, which carry the death penalty. And the record of American imperialism in assassinating figures it deems politically undesirable is well established—from the days when the CIA earned the title Murder Inc. to Obama’s drone strikes.
Edward Snowden has said he has “no chance” of a fair trial in the USA and so he has no plans to return there. The 30-year-old has temporary asylum in Russia after leaking details of US electronic surveillance programs. He said that his predicament over not having a fair trial was “especially frustrating”.
In December Snowden delivered an “alternative” Christmas message to Britain’s Channel 4 TV, in which he called for an end to mass surveillance. Earlier an independent US privacy watchdog ruled that the bulk collection of phone call data by US intelligence agencies is illegal and has had only “minimal” benefits in preventing terrorism. Snowden reiterated that the 100-year-old law under which he has been charged “forbids a public interest defense. There’s no way I can come home and make my case to a jury,” he said.
Snowden said:”Returning to the US, I think, is the best resolution for the government, the public, and myself, but it’s unfortunately not possible in the face of current whistleblower protection laws, which, through a failure in law, did not cover national security contractors like me,” he told the “Free Snowden” website. “Maybe when Congress comes together to end the programs… They’ll reform the Whistleblower Protection Act, and we’ll see a mechanism for all Americans, no matter who they work for, to get a fair trial.”
US Attorney General Eric Holder insists that Snowden must accept responsibility for leaking government secrets.
USA, unlike its strategic partners like India that shield their citizens in all possible ways, does not want to defend Snowden.
The Obama regime fears that “a trial could potentially bring further disclosures and—from the government’s point of view —risks galvanizing even more popular support for Snowden.
In an interview yesterday with the German television network ARD, Edward Snowden warned that US “government officials want to kill me. These government officials, have said they would love to put a bullet in my head or poison me when I come out of the supermarket, and then watch as I die in the shower,” Snowden said.
Snowden’s warning that the US government wants him dead to suppress his revelations of illegal NSA spying must be taken with the utmost seriousness. It raises the urgency of developing a mass movement to defend him and oppose the destruction of democratic rights.
It is quite likely that US officials would authorize criminal gangs across the globe to target him, just by casually being poked by a passerby. He would think nothing of it at the time and starts to feel a little woozy and thinks it’s a parasite from the local water. He goes home very innocently and next thing you know he is dead in the shower.”
Washington can justify any official murders as they are entirely consistent with the political gangsterism being employed to prepare Snowden’s liquidation.
The Obama regime, like before him, has already carried out extra-judicial murders not only in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but even of four US citizens with Hellfire missiles.
The desire to end the revelations of US spying on people all over the world quickly is shared by the agents of the NSA, CIA and Pentagon all the way up to the White House.
All of them have got a common stakes.
Clearly, the US government has no intention of offering Snowden a fair trial. Snowden and his attorney have made this clear.
Snowden said that any proceeding against him would be a show trial, with the 1917 Espionage Act employed to preclude his putting up a defense of his actions based on their exposure of a secretive and illegal police state apparatus. Documents supporting his defense would be deemed classified and ruled out as evidence, and he would have no opportunity to appeal to the democratic sensibilities of the jury.
The political witch-hunt that the US establishment is whipping up against Snowden demonstrates that it has no intention of offering any trial.
The deal is merely political cover for the plans of the US government to use extra-judicial means to bring a halt to the exposure of its illegal spying operations.
The proposal that Snowden return to the US and quietly accept imprisonment boils down to the ultimatum: If Snowden were to set foot on US soil, no one would ever see him again.
Snowden is now living as a stateless refugee in Russia, and the threat of state murder is very real whether or not he returns to the USA.
Snowden’s revelations are exposing those in power as the real criminals, making them all the more determined to physically shut him up and make an example of him.
White House has devised, authorized and implemented mass spying programs, a system of total control over the population, in brazen violation of both the law and the fundamental rights spelled out in the US Constitution.
The police state apparatus that has been exposed by Snowden’s revelations has been built up to defend the interests of the financial oligarchy that controls the US government. Its totalitarian operations are aimed not at foiling terrorist plots, but at furthering American capitalism’s predatory aims.
Abroad, these entail preparing wars, also spying on supposed allies and carrying out industrial espionage against rival corporations. At home, they mean spying and collecting dossiers on American working people, who are seen as an increasingly hostile and dangerous enemy.
The corporate media funded by arms lobbies among other gangs, as usual, have smeared Snowden as a traitor and spy.
Polls show mass support for Snowden. There is growing anxiety within the ruling establishment that Snowden’s courageous actions express not just his own opposition to the criminal activities of the government, but sentiments building up among the population at large, and particularly among workers, students and youth. These layers are increasingly fed up with a government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich that destroys democratic rights as it transfers the social wealth to the financial aristocracy and wages wars of aggression.
Edward Snowden must be defended by all means so that democracy is saved and secret diplomacy and polices, police state operations end.
Spy network
As the only super power of the globe, USA now officially controls the world powers. None can challenge or question America.
It is obvious that USA has the largest spy network today, collecting complete information about individuals, groups, organizations, nations and leaders.
Exposure of US spy networks has taken the world by surprise and shock. privacy of individuals, especially the global leaders, has become a major causality of the nefarious spy operations. .
The scandal broke in early June 2013 when the Guardian newspaper reported that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. The paper published the secret court order directing telecommunications company Verizon to hand over all its telephone data to the NSA on an “ongoing daily basis”.
That report was followed by revelations in both the Washington Post and Guardian that the NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Face book, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a surveillance program known as Prism. Britain’s electronic eavesdropping agency GCHQ was also accused of gathering information on the online companies via Prism.
Shortly afterwards, the Guardian revealed that ex-CIA systems analyst Edward Snowden was behind the leaks about the US and UK surveillance programs. He has been charged in the US with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defence information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence.UK spy agency ‘taps fibre-optic cables’
The GCHQ scandal widened on 21 June when the Guardian reported that the UK spy agency was tapping fibre-optic cables that carry global communications and sharing vast amounts of data with the NSA, its US counterpart. GCHQ was able to boast a larger collection of data than the US, tapping in to 200 fibre-optic cables to give it the ability to monitor up to 600 million communications every day, according to the report.
The information from internet and phone use was allegedly stored for up to 30 days to be sifted and analysed.
GCHQ and NSA eavesdropping on Italian phone calls and internet traffic was reported by the Italian weekly L’Espresso on 24 October. The revelations were sourced to Edward Snowden. It is alleged that three undersea cables with terminals in Italy were targeted. Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta called the allegations “inconceivable and unacceptable” and said he wanted to establish the truth. USA ‘hacks China networks’
After fleeing to Hong Kong, Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post that the NSA had led more than 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, including many in Hong Kong and mainland China.
Claims emerged on 29 June that the NSA had also spied on European Union offices in the US and Europe. The US had spied on EU internal computer networks in Washington and at the 27-member bloc’s UN office in New York. One document dated September 2010 explicitly named the EU representation at the UN as a “location target”.
The NSA had also conducted an electronic eavesdropping operation in a building in Brussels, where the EU Council of Ministers and the European Council were located.
The German government summoned the US ambassador on 24 October – a very unusual step – after German media reported that the NSA had eavesdropped on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.
The allegations dominated an EU summit, with Mrs Merkel demanding a full explanation and warning that trust between allies could be undermined. She discussed the matter by phone with US President Barack Obama. He assured her that her calls were not being monitored now and that it would not happen in future. But the White House did not deny bugging her phone in the past.
Past surveillance by secret police – whether Nazi or communist – has made Germans very sensitive about privacy issues. Mrs Merkel grew up in the former East Germany, where the Stasi spied on millions of citizens.
France’s President Francois Hollande meanwhile expressed alarm at reports that millions of French calls had been monitored by the USA. The Guardian later reported that the NSA had monitored the phones of 35 world leaders after being given their numbers by another US government official. Again, Edward Snowden was the source of the report. A total of 38 embassies and missions have been the “targets” of US spying operations, according to a secret file leaked to the Guardian. Countries targeted included France, Italy and Greece, as well as America’s non-European allies such as Japan, South Korea and India, the paper reported on 1 July. EU embassies and missions in New York and Washington were also said to be under surveillance.
The file allegedly detailed “an extraordinary range” of spying methods used to intercept messages, including bugs, specialized antennae and wire taps.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said that activities to protect national security were “not unusual” in international relations. Latin America ‘monitored’
US allies in Latin America were angered by revelations in Brazil’s O Globo newspaper on 10 July that the NSA ran a continent-wide surveillance program.
US agents apparently joined forces with Brazilian telecoms firms to snoop on oil and energy firms, foreign visitors to Brazil, and major players in Mexico’s drug wars. Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and Chile all demanded answers from the US.
But in September more specific claims emerged that emails and phone calls of the presidents of Mexico and Brazil had been intercepted. Also, the US had been spying on Brazil’s state-owned oil firm Petrobras.
Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff cancelled a state visit to the US in the most high-profile diplomatic move since the scandal hit.US spying ‘errors’
Documents leaked to the Washington Post in mid-August suggested the NSA breaks US privacy laws hundreds of times every year.
The papers revealed that US citizens were inadvertently snooped on for reasons including typing mistakes and errors in the system,
Later in August, the Washington Post reported that US spy agencies had a “black budget” for secret operations of almost $53bn in 2013. SMS messages ‘collected and stored’
In January 2014, the Guardian newspaper and Channel Four News reported that the US had collected and stored almost 200 million text messages per day across the globe.
A National Security Agency (NSA) program is said to have extracted and stored data from the SMS messages to gather location information, contacts and financial data.
The documents also revealed that GCHQ had used the NSA database to search for information on people in the UK.
The program, Dishfire, analyses SMS messages to extract information including contacts from missed call alerts, location from roaming and travel alerts, financial information from bank alerts and payments and names from electronic business cards. Through the vast database, which was in use at least as late as 2012, the NSA gained information on those who were not specifically targeted or under suspicion, the report says.
The revelations came on the eve of an expected announcement by President Obama of a response to recommendations by a US panel on ways to change US electronic surveillance programs.
–BY DR. ABDUL RUFF COLACHAL has been an Educationist, Columnist-Commentator on world affairs Expert on Mideast Affairs, Former university Teacher; Editor:INTERNATIONAL OPINION; FOREIGN POLICY ISSUES; Author of books;website: http://abdulruff.wordpress.com/ Phone: 91-8129081217—(Account: No 62310377429 – CIF No: 78215311481- State Bank of Hyderabad, India) abdulruff@gmail.com
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