After Edward Snowden came forward and identified himself as the source of disclosures that had been published by The Guardian on top secret surveillance programs being operated by the National Security Agency, Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman posted his account of his interactions with Snowden. Gellman published a story on the PRISM program, which involves the NSA having [...]

At his request, the source of the NSA disclosures to The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald has been revealed. It is a 29-year-old contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton and a former technical assistant for the CIA. That is according to an interview done over several days and posted by Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill. (Also, a video produced by [...]

As the second week of Bradley Manning’s court martial is set to begin, it might be wise to remember that, just as justice is not always just, so it is that truisms aren’t always true. And the one referenced in the title of this article is, of course, the old adage “It’s what’s on the [...]

On Friday, I participated in one of the better chats or discussions that I have done with others on Bradley Manning, government secrecy, the broken system of classification and the pursuit of whistleblowers or truth-tellers by the Obama administration. The chat also discussed the disclosures a whistleblower in government is now making on the National [...]

Firedoglake’s Kevin Gosztola began his busy summer schedule covering the Bradley Manning court martial two days before the trial even began. On Saturday June 1st, he attended the Manning support march at Fort Meade, MD. The next day he was at the “Manning and the Media” event in Washington, D.C., where a panel discussion featuring Daniel Ellsberg [...]

Back in November 2012, the Washington Post reported on a “secret” presidential directive that President Barack Obama had signed and characterized it as “the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an ‘offensive’ and a ‘defensive’ action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism.” This cybersecurity directive, which was classified [...]

The whistleblower inside government, who is providing The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald with information on top secret government surveillance programs that eight years ago would have been alarming to those in Congress has not only provided the public with information citizens have a right to know. This source has also forced the government to be more transparent [...]

(update 1 & 2 below) National Security Agency whistleblower Thomas Drake on “Democracy Now!” this morning said, “You’ve got to remember, none of this is probable cause. This is simply the ability to collect. And as I was told shortly after 9/11, ‘You don’t understand, Mr. Drake. We just want the data.’ And so, the [...]

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein is passionately defending National Security Agency surveillance and calling for a leak investigation into the source, who provided a copy of a top secret order issued by a United States secret surveillance court, even as whistleblowers repeat warnings about surveillance they have been making for years. On “Andrea Mitchell Reports” on [...]

A court order that was classified as top secret indicates Verizon was ordered by a US secret surveillance court to provide call data of millions of communications of Americans on an “ongoing, daily basis” to the National Security Agency (NSA) from April 25 to July 19. The order authorized by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court [...]