|
Post by auntym on Jul 9, 2014 11:46:02 GMT -6
ufodigest.com/article/phil-schneider-0709July 9, 2014 THE DISTURBING REVELATIONS OF PHIL SCHNEIDER Phil Schneider, a patriot first and foremost as well as a whistleblower.By Doc Vega In one of the last lectures given by Mr. Phil Schneider, a structural engineer who gained notoriety as a whistleblower in the UFO cover-up, and died under horrific circumstances, we owe him a great debt of gratitude. Few have exhibited the courage and willingness to trade their lives for exposure of the evil and secret federal government agenda. Although Phil is best known for witnessing and nearly dying in an underground firefight between US Special Ops soldiers, Green Beret, and Black Ops forces near Dulce, New Mexico, yet, few are aware of many other shocking revelations that he presented at his speaking engagements. More at Groom LakePhil was a patriot like so many others who have selflessly given their lives for their country with the distinction of revealing projects that should never have been allowed to exist in a Constitutional Republic that emphasizes personal freedoms, human rights, and transparency as the present federal government does not. Phil’s tenure as a public servant consisted of 17 years involved in classified aerospace engineering projects involving underground base construction. According to Schneider these secret projects use boring machines that utilize sophisticated lasers to reduce rock to powder while leaving the surrounding perimeter of the tunnel in a glazed molten state that obviates the use of concrete or cement to finish the freshly dug surface. Dumbs (Deep Underground Military Bases)According to Phil there were 14 underground bases located in the vicinity of Area 51 alone, and 1477 underground bases already in service all over the world. In terms of a black budget, Schneider informed the audience that the cost for these Top Secret programs of “Black” projects was 500 billion dollars a year and that was in 1995’s currency. The extent of advanced projects that make all seemingly new technology in our society merely obsolete is staggering. Whereas such aircraft as the SR-71 Blackbird, F-117a Stealth Fighter, and other seemingly advanced platforms were actually old and dated when compared now to new generations of Mach 6 and above high performance and stealthy interceptors, reconnaissance crafts, and invisible bombers. Frightening technologyPhil explained that lasers were now old school compared to new particle beam weapons, spy satellites using advanced infra-red technology that from 150,000 mile orbit can achieve resolution that can spot a dime on a living room floor, and even more staggering forms of advanced surveillance that boggle the mind. Phil openly admitted he was breaking federal law under the aegis of his Level 1 SecurityClearance. He opened the neck of his shirt and showed the audience a bullet wound he had gotten a couple of weeks earlier in an attempt on his life. Schneider admitted that he was willing to give his life for his country so that the general public would know that our government is conducting itself as an arrogant feudal ruler that considers its citizens as serfs, whom it regards with arrogant indifference. Schneider would indeed demonstrate his love of his country in tragic fashion as his widow revealed to the world that he had been brutally assassinated with extreme prejudice via strangulation by piano wire and torture. CONTINUE READING: ufodigest.com/article/phil-schneider-0709
|
|
|
Post by lois on Jul 9, 2014 18:51:45 GMT -6
THe thing about this is who believes him? I do. About seeing a dime on your house floor is a technology these aliens have. They know what room and who is in it. That is how they get to you in broad daylight in your home. No one could understand how I could of been taken in the middle of the room sweeping the floor in my second story home at 12 pm. Where was the ship. Hidden somehow. They could see my son go to his bed when they turned the beam on me. It was not hard to figure out. What else will mankind be able to do just in the next ten years.
Thanks for posting. I did not know about his death. How old was he or did I miss something?
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Jul 31, 2014 13:35:59 GMT -6
ufosightingshotspot.blogspot.com/2014/07/ufos-grey-aliens-military-abduction-and.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+UfoSightingsHotspot+%28UFO+Sightings+Hotspot%29July 31, 2014 UFOs, Grey Aliens, Military Abduction and Mind Control programs are real says Military Whistleblower Niara Isley
Published on Jul 18, 2014 Comment-Like-Subscribe! Visit: www.DarkJournalist.com Join Dark Journalist and former USAF Sergeant Niara Isley for a fascinating in-depth discussion of her terrifying and transformative experiences as a UFO and Military Abductee (MILAB). Together they will recount her earth-shattering encounters with the Grey aliens and their experiments to develop alien/human hybrid children using her as an unconscious vehicle! Also how the military recruited her into a trauma-based mind control program that gave her access to reverse-engineered extraterrestrial craft and a secret off-world space program located on the moon. Niara Isley's journey through the covert world of alien contact and top secret military UFO programs will make you totally reconsider the official reality on the truth about extraterrestrials and the fantastically advanced technology they possess. After listening to this interview and reading her new book "Facing the Shadow Embracing the Light" you may never look at space, aliens and the military the same way again!
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Oct 12, 2014 12:02:32 GMT -6
techcrunch.com/2014/10/11/edward-snowden-new-yorker-festival/ Edward Snowden’s Privacy Tips: “Get Rid Of Dropbox,” Avoid Facebook And Google by Anthony Ha (@anthonyha) October 11, 2014 Edward Snowden
Bio Edward Snowden is an American former technical contractor for the United States National Security Agency (NSA) and a former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who leaked details of several top-secret U.S. and British government mass surveillance programs to the press. Source: Wikipedia According to Edward Snowden, people who care about their privacy should stay away from popular consumer Internet services like Dropbox, Facebook, and Google. Snowden conducted a remote interview today as part of the New Yorker Festival, where he was asked a couple of variants on the question of what we can do to protect our privacy. His first answer called for a reform of government policies. Some people take the position that they “don’t have anything to hide,” but he argued that when you say that, “You’re inverting the model of responsibility for how rights work”: When you say, ‘I have nothing to hide,’ you’re saying, ‘I don’t care about this right.’ You’re saying, ‘I don’t have this right, because I’ve got to the point where I have to justify it.’ The way rights work is, the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights. He added that on an individual level, people should seek out encrypted tools and stop using services that are “hostile to privacy.” For one thing, he said you should “get rid of Dropbox,” because it doesn’t support encryption, and you should consider alternatives like SpiderOak. (Snowden made similar comments over the summer, with Dropbox responding that protecting users’ information is “a top priority.”) [Update: In a June blog post related to Snowden, Dropbox actually says, "All files sent and retrieved from Dropbox are encrypted while traveling between you and our servers," as well as when they're "at rest on our servers," and it points to other security measures that the company is taking. The difference between Dropbox and SpiderOak, as explained elsewhere, is that SpiderOak encrypts the data while it's on your computer, as opposed to only encrypting it "in transit" and on the company's servers.][And here's a more complete Snowden quote, from around 1:04:55 in the video: "We're talking about encryption. We're talking about dropping programs that are hostile to privacy. For example, Dropbox? Get rid of Dropbox, it doesn't support encryption, it doesn't protect your private files. And use competitors like SpiderOak, that do the same exact service but they protect the content of what you're sharing."] He also suggested that while Facebook and Google have improved their security, they remain “dangerous services” that people should avoid. (Somewhat amusingly, anyone watching the interview via Google Hangout or YouTube saw a Google logo above Snowden’s face as he said this.) His final piece of advice on this front: Don’t send unencrypted text messages, but instead use services like RedPhone and Silent Circle. CONTINUE READING: techcrunch.com/2014/10/11/edward-snowden-new-yorker-festival/
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Mar 28, 2015 14:37:13 GMT -6
exopolitics.org/whistleblower-reveals-multiple-secret-space-programs-concerned-about-new-alien-visitors/ Whistleblower reveals multiple secret space programs concerned about new alien visitorsWritten by Dr Michael Salla March 27, 2015. A new whistleblower has appeared who is creating quite a stir in the UFO and exopolitics communities due to his claims of having worked with a number of secret space programs; and, more recently, having become a contactee with a powerful new group of extraterrestrials that have entered our solar system. Using the online pseudonym GoodETxSG, the whistleblower (who announced yesterday that his first name is Corey and that he will soon end his anonymity) has described in interviews and posts on two major online forums his former covert background with a number of secret space programs run by various military, corporate and earlier human civilizations. He says that contrary to widespread perceptions in the UFO research community of a single secret space program belonging to a breakaway civilization, that there are in fact up to ten breakaway civilizations indigenous to Earth. Each of these breakaway civilizations, according to GoodETxSG/Corey has their own secret space program. He says that there are currently three major secret space programs belonging to various national and international entities on Earth. One of these is a large corporate entity similar to what was described in the movie Avatar. The other two are multinational covert space programs that are similar to NATO in their manner of operations and activities. In addition, he says that there are between 5-7 secret space programs belonging to earlier breakaway civilizations on Earth including Nazi Germany, and another dating as far back as an astounding 500,000 years ago! Adding another level of complexity to what is really happening with the various secret space programs, GoodETxSG says that off-world extraterrestrial civilizations interact or collaborate with one or more of these secret space programs. In a comment responding to the claims of another alleged whistleblower from a secret space program, Randy Cramer (aka Captain Kaye), GoodETxSG summarized the complex situation: There are many who have been a part of the 3 Separate Secret Space Programs that are independent of the Secret Earth Governments (One of which is a powerful Interplanetary Corporate Conglomerate that owns most of the Mars Bases). There are also 5-7 “Ancient Earth Break Away Civilizations” that have Bases here on Earth. All of the groups mentioned above are “Allied” with various and different “Off World Entities’ and “UN Type Federations” both with the “Human Like ET’s” and the “Non-Human ET’s” (All with DIFFERENT AGENDA’s). There is also a “Shadow Civil War” going on among some of these Secret Space Programs and their “Off World Allies” to end control of the Secret Earth Governments using the “Babylonian Money Magic Slave System” to control Earth Humanity. A significant point concerning security in GoodETxSG’s postings is that concerning the threat posed by artificial intelligence. According GoodETxSG, artificial intelligence (AI) has been developed by multiple extraterrestrial civilizations that have created synthetic AI humanoids, only to have them turn against their creators in a manner similar to what was depicted in the remake of the television series, Battlestar Galactica. Consequently, all secret space programs have created security procedures to identify individuals displaying evidence of AI influence. As a last resort, individuals trained as intuitive empaths were employed to identify AI influence as well as any form of deception. This was the main job that GoodETxSG says he performed during his 20 year tour of duty. More recently, GoodETxSG claims that up to 100 spherical ships have entered our solar system possessing technology far in advance to anything used by the different secret space programs and their respective extraterrestrial allies. GoodETxSG says that extraterrestrials from this “Sphere Alliance,” have been physically contacting him and other private individuals to disclose information about major new events that will profoundly change life on Earth. He says that this Sphere Alliance is assisting humanity in breaking free of the control exerted by powerful elite organizations on Earth, what he calls the “Babylonian Money Magic Slave System.” GoodETxSG’s claims that he and 70 other private citizens were recently taken to a secret space location for an “Alliance Conference” where along with about 120 others representing the different secret space programs, the “Sphere Alliance” revealed some of their plans. Among the extraterrestrials from this alliance who interacted with the conference delegates, according to GoodETxSG is a “Blue Avian” race up to 8 feet tall, and a taller 10 foot thin golden brown being with triangular head and blue eyes. The Sphere Alliance apparently is intent on helping bring about full disclosure of extraterrestrial life. GoodETxSG has been sharing his information with David Wilcock who apparently vetted GoodETxSG with other confidential sources and found him to be credible. Wilcock has subsequently incorporated GoodETxSG’s testimony into a number of public presentations attempting to outline the full complexity of issues concerning secret space programs and visiting extraterrestrial life. Wilcock is a major proponent of the idea that extraterrestrial disclosure is imminent due to the collapse of the elite control system that has been in place for centuries. He accepts GoodETxSG’s information as validation for his optimistic pro-disclosure position. Before offering my own evaluation of GoodETxSG’s claims, it’s good to review what is known about his recent public activities. GoodETxSG first became widely known because of two audio interviews he did that were initially promoted through the Project Avalon forum in Oct 2014. He previously had been a long time member of Project Avalon where he had shared personal information, but not his covert background in various secret space programs. That changed in Sept 2014 when he consented to do an informal sit down conversation with a Project Avalon member on behalf of the forum’s founder Bill Ryan. The conversation was intended to be used solely for Ryan’s personal research but GoodETxSG was persuaded to have it published on Project Avalon with the proviso that all steps would be taken to keep his identity anonymous. While this introduced a wide audience to GoodETxSG’s experiences with different secret space programs, this ultimately led to his identity being exposed on the forum, and ultimately a break with Ryan and Project Avalon. Currently GoodETxSG’s is posting on a new forum, “The One Truth,” where he is answering questions and informing members of new developments. He also has a website which has much of the information he has shared on the two forums. CONTINUE READING: exopolitics.org/whistleblower-reveals-multiple-secret-space-programs-concerned-about-new-alien-visitors/
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Jun 3, 2015 13:10:23 GMT -6
whatculture.com/offbeat/10-outrageous-claims-by-ufo-whistleblowers.php 10 Outrageous Claims By UFO Whistleblowers by Mitch Nickelson June 2, 2015 People claim to see unidentified flying objects all the time. There are even several reporting agencies, including MUFON and NUFORC, that can log your experiences into a database so the world can share in your experience. However most of these events simply chronicle unexplained lights in the skies. But every now and then someone comes forward to discuss the UFO issue who has far more information to report than a simple sighting. People who work at high levels of government or who are privy to insider information sometimes decide that the knowledge they possess needs to go public. This article is all about those people. The whistleblowers who have told their stories to the world and shocked ufology circles to the core. Some of the claims are more believable than others. All of them are at least a little outrageous. From the experienced astronauts to the anonymous reporters, they all have a story to tell regarding extraterrestrial visitors. Some have personally witnessed alien crafts while others claim that a secretive recruitment effort is ongoing to send humans to settlements on Mars. No reader should proceed in this article expecting to believe everything presented. Some of these accounts are a little convincing but the point is that they are mostly preposterous in nature. Maybe the whistleblowers are 100% telling the truth. If so, this reality is far more twisted than any of us could have ever imagined… CONTINUE READING: whatculture.com/offbeat/10-outrageous-claims-by-ufo-whistleblowers.php
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Jul 18, 2015 12:13:38 GMT -6
ufodigest.com/article/whistleblowers-ufology-nick-pope Whistleblowers and UFOlogyBy Nick Pope July 17, 2015 Ufology is full of whistleblowers. There’s the one who worked on the alien spaceship at Area 51, the one who was involved in a gunfight with extraterrestrials, the one who rescued an alien and was able to send him back home, and the one who went on an exchange trip to an alien planet. Then there’s the one who did an interview in a hotel room, and the one who did an interview in a darkened room, so as to disguise his identity. Oh, and let’s not forget the one who was assassinated by the government. Ufology is full of whistleblowers, right? Wrong! Ufology is not full of whistleblowers. Ufology is full of bogus whistleblowers. At first sight, this may strike some people as being overly-harsh. You might be thinking about leaked government UFO documents that you’ve read, and recalling UFO documentaries or conferences where some of these whistleblowers have appeared. Surely, you might say, a fair proportion of what we know about UFOs comes from various courageous whistleblowers who have taken the decision to violate their secrecy oaths, because they believe they have a higher moral responsibility to the truth. The people have a right to know, as the saying goes. It all sounds great in theory, but the truth is somewhat different, and can be easily demonstrated with a bit of critical thinking. Ask yourself what happens – outside the field of ufology – to people who leak highly classified information. I’m not talking about traitors who pass classified information to foreign powers, but people who have made such information public, citing the public’s right to know. Some well-known names spring to mind: Former CIA employee Edward Snowden and US Army intelligence specialist Chelsea Manning are two such people. In the UK, ex-MI5 officer David Shayler and former MI6 employee Richard Tomlinson are good examples. There are others. Now, ask yourself, what did the government do in all of those cases? The answer is this: they went after the individuals concerned, proactively, aggressively and relentlessly, using the full resources available to them. And no, I don’t mean they tried to kill them, I mean that where the state was able to do so, the full weight of the criminal justice system (police, prosecutors, courts, etc.) was brought to bear upon them. In real life, that’s what happens to people who leak classified information. So why doesn’t this happen with ufology’s whistleblowers? Why would the government leave such people alone? The answer is obvious. Ufology’s so-called whistleblowers aren’t leaking classified information at all. They’re making up stories. If any of these people were genuinely leaking classified information they’d be arrested in an instant. I know this not because of my time on the MoD’s UFO project, but because of a later job that I did in the Directorate of Defence Security, where I had some peripheral involvement with Official Secrets Act cases. That, along with my 21 years in a government department where top secret information is commonplace, taught me a lot about the reality of how allegations of security breaches are handled. Incidentally, at risk of being labelled a government lackey, I don’t approve of whistleblowers anyway, even genuine ones. That’s because such people leak information after deciding that they know better than anyone else whether or not something should be released. However, what I’ve learned from my own work on classified information is that the information owner – usually the subject matter expert – is best-placed to make judgements on whether or not something can safely be declassified. So it’s a mistake for someone else to see such documents pass across their desk and, without knowing the full story, decide for themselves that something should be public knowledge. It’s arrogant and igannant. That’s not to say that there’s no place for responsible whistleblowing in a free, open and democratic society, but that’s a discussion for another day. Returning to UFOs and whistleblowing, what of the verifiable government and military personnel who have spoken out about UFOs? People like Edward Ruppelt, Dr. J. Allen Hynek, myself, Dr. John Alexander, Charles Halt, John Burroughs, Jim Penniston and others? The key point is, they’re not whistleblowers. Such people fall into two categories. Witnesses such as Halt, Burroughs and Penniston are simply describing experiences they’ve had. Unless someone specifically instructed them not to talk about things, they aren’t divulging classified information by describing what they saw and experienced. When I collaborated with Burroughs and Penniston on the bestselling book “Encounter in Rendlesham Forest”, the manuscript was pre-submitted to both the UK MoD and the US DOD, because we treat our respective secrecy oaths seriously. When Charles Halt is asked about nuclear issues, he declines to comment, neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons in any particular location at any particular time (I answer such questions in exactly the same way). As for those of us who aren’t witnesses, but who have genuinely investigated UFOs for the government, we take our secrecy oaths seriously too, and would never release classified information without proper authorisation. We’re not whistleblowers either. When people see me on TV talking about the MoD’s UFO files, I’m discussing material that’s already been declassified and released by the British Government. CONTINUE READING: ufodigest.com/article/whistleblowers-ufology-nick-pope
|
|
|
Post by swamprat on Sept 19, 2015 20:17:06 GMT -6
US Government blocks alien contact with encryption, says SnowdenSignals from alien species could be blocked
By Jamie Smith - September 19, 2015
Alien species may be unable to contact us due to encryption, according to a top NSA whistleblower..
Edward Snowden revealed that encryption techniques are so advanced that signals from extraterrestrial lifeforms may not get through.
Snowden, who is currently living in Moscow, was speaking on the astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast.
He explained that the impact of encryption could mean that incoming messages from alien races may be mistaken for being mere cosmic background radiation.
Snowden’s comments raise the possibility that we may not be alone in the world. Aliens may be trying to reach us, but we would know nothing about it.
“If you look at encrypted communication, if they are properly encrypted, there is no real way to tell that they are encrypted,” Snowden said. “You can’t distinguish a properly encrypted communication from random behaviour.
“So if you have an an alien civilisation trying to listen for other civilisations,” he said, “or our civilisation trying to listen for aliens, there’s only one small period in the development of their society when all their communication will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means.”
Watch discussion here: www.startalkradio.net/show/a-conversation-with-edward-snowden-part-1/
journaltelegraph.com/2015/09/19/edward-snowden-encryption-blocks-communication-with-aliens/
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Sept 22, 2015 12:55:37 GMT -6
heavy.com/news/2015/09/edward-snowden-alien-signals-encrypted-neil-degrasse-tyson-startalk-leaked-iran-nsa-parkes-telescope-hoax-coverup-conspiracy/ Snowden Explains Why We Miss Aliens’ Messages: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know September 19, 2015 By Stephanie Dube Dwilson / heavy.com/author/dube/ Edward Snowden told Neil deGrasse Tyson that he thinks aliens may be trying to communicate with us all the time, but we never heard them because their messages are encrypted. (Getty) Edward Snowden has recently said that encryption is probably the only thing stopping us from talking to aliens. He joined Neil deGrasse Tyson’s StarTalk podcast on Friday and revealed that he thinks aliens might be sending out signals right now, but they’d be impossible to detect. This isn’t the first time Snowden or files that he’s leaked have addressed issues surrounding extraterrestrial life. Here’s what you need to know.1. There’s Only a Small Window in Technological Development When We’d Be Able to Decipher Alien SignalsEdward Snowden told Neil deGrasse Tyson that alien signals are only decipherable during a small window in technological development. (Getty) According to Snowden, there’s only a small period of time when technology is open enough that we’d actually be able to interpret the alien signals, The Week reported. This is during the small window when society sends messages by the most primitive, unprotected means that don’t require decryption. After this window passes, messages are indecipherable. 2. Snowden Said That For the Most Part, We’d Never Recognize Alien Signals Because of EncryptionOnce a society reaches the phase where it starts protecting and encrypting its messages, then messages sent out into space would be indistinguishable from microwave background radiation, Snowden continued. That’s because the alien equivalent of television shows, for example, would be encrypted by default and thus appear completely random, The Guardian reported. He said: So when we think about everything that we’re hearing through our satellites or everything that they’re hearing from our civilization (if there are indeed aliens out there), all of their communications are encrypted by default… Does this mean that a society couldn’t choose to send out a broadcast that was purposefully not encrypted? 3. Iran Claimed Leaked Snowden Documents Showed the U.S. Was Run By AliensEdward Snowden speaks to European officials via videoconference in 2014. An Iran news agency claimed that he leaked documents that showed America is run by aliens. Snowden denied that crazy rumor. (Getty) This isn’t the first time that Snowden has been connected with questions about alien communications, sometimes to an almost comic effect. Last year, Iran’s semi-official news agency, FARS, claimed that it had obtained leaked Snowden documents that revealed the United States government was run by “tall white aliens,” The National Journal reported. The report was almost taken word-for-word from a conspiracy blog. Snowden himself said that he didn’t bring any secret documents to Russia, which is where the Iran agency claimed it obtained the information. The report was heavy on the science fiction, with claims that an Iranian had built a time machine and that 80 species of aliens were on Earth, getting ready to wage interplanetary war. CONTINUE READING: heavy.com/news/2015/09/edward-snowden-alien-signals-encrypted-neil-degrasse-tyson-startalk-leaked-iran-nsa-parkes-telescope-hoax-coverup-conspiracy/
|
|
|
Post by swamprat on Sept 23, 2015 13:13:26 GMT -6
Sigh.... I see Seth Showstop is at it again. He is scared to death someone will say something or find something that will cause him to lose his job......
Eavesdropping on Aliens: Why Edward Snowden Got E.T. Wrongby Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor September 23, 2015
Edward Snowden, the former contractor who leaked National Security Agency secrets publicly in 2013, is now getting attention for an odd subject: aliens.
In a podcast interview with astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, Snowden suggested that alien communications might be encrypted so well that humans trying to eavesdrop on extraterrestrials would have no idea they were hearing anything but noise. There's only a small window in the development of communication in which unencrypted messages are the norm, Snowden said.
"So if you have an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society where all of their communications will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means," he said.
But those holding out hope for contact from extraterrestrials can breathe easy: Humanity's current search for alien intelligence doesn't rely on an intelligible message, say scientists with the SETI Institute, which is dedicated to the search for life in the universe. The real hunt, they say, is for the medium.
"We're not looking for the message," said Seth Shostak, director of the SETI Institute's Center for SETI Research. "We're looking for the signal that tells us that somebody has a transmitter."
Signal received To be fair, Snowden was speaking off-the-cuff about encryption in general; it's not likely he expected to be chatting about aliens or has done an in-depth study of how the search for extraterrestrial intelligence has evolved.
But data encryption is beside the point, Shostak said. So far, most of the hunt for alien signals has used radio waves, based on the theory that radio is a relatively easy and cheap way to send signals a long way through space.
The SETI Institute uses powerful radio telescopes on Earth to search for narrow-band signals, or signals focused at one spot on the radio dial, Shostak said. Lots of natural bodies make radio noise, he said, but the only thing that makes a narrow-band signal, as far as scientists know, is a transmitter. OH? And just how narrow does it need to be to be from an alien's transmitter? "As far as you know"? And just how much do you yet know about the mysteries of the universe?
Thus, a focused band of signal is a waving flag, signaling, "Hey, there's somebody out there who can build a radio transmitter," Shostak said. The message itself might be indistinguishable from noise if it were well encrypted, but it would still, obviously, be a message.
Eavesdropping on aliens In his comments, Snowden went on to suggest that if humans overheard aliens communicating amongst themselves — if humans were to pick up the alien version of a telephone call or television broadcast — it might be so well encrypted that it would be invisible among the radio chatter of the natural universe.
But that's not necessarily the case, Shostak said, because even general broadcast signals would have narrow-band components that humans might notice. Hmm.... "might"?
At the moment, the question is largely moot, said Doug Vakoch, a researcher at the SETI Institute in charge of interstellar message composition. (Yes, this means he's in charge of thinking about how to talk to aliens.) The technology is simply not there to overhear broadcasts not directed at earthlings, Vakoch told Live Science.
"Even our radio and television signals that are streaming off into space would be undetectable by us if they were out at the nearest star system beyond Earth," Vakoch said.
In another few hundred years, technology might develop far enough so that eavesdropping over mind-bendingly long distances might be possible, Vakoch said. In other words, Snowden's conjecture about encryption could pose problems for people searching for alien life hundreds or thousands of years from now.
But encryption isn't the biggest challenge for eavesdropping earthlings.
"If another civilization wants to conceal its identity, it doesn't even have to worry about encryption," Vakoch said. "If you look at telecommunications as it is developing here on Earth, we have been noisy in the past. We had a lot of TV and radio going out into space. Now, as we shift to communication by fiber-optic or by telecommunication satellite, there is less of this leakage going off into space."
Thus, if an advanced civilization is looking for us, it does indeed have a short window to do so — regardless of encryption. That means any alien civilization that overhears earthlings or reaches out to us is likely to have been listening and transmitting for thousands, or even millions, of years, Vakoch said. Otherwise, it's simply too likely that earthlings and aliens will miss each other in the vastness of space and time. For now, the best hope remains searching for direct messages sent deliberately by clever extraterrestrials, Vakoch said. . "It's not impossible that the first discovery of intelligence will be something you didn't expect to find," Shostak said. Ya think?!
Read more: www.livescience.com/52274-snowden-alien-signal-encryption.html
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Sept 23, 2015 13:23:13 GMT -6
i wonder how much the government pays him... ... ohhh...did i just say that... LOL
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Sept 29, 2015 13:48:58 GMT -6
bigstory.ap.org/article/6a46950ab68349c6a67f0f519e85ed38/snowden-joins-twitter-and-follows-nsa#overlay-context= "Can you hear me now?" Snowden joins Twitter, follows NSAFrom Associated Press Sep. 29, 2015 FILE - In this Feb. 14, 2015 file photo, Edward Snowden appears on a live video feed broadcast from... Read more NEW YORK (AP) — Edward Snowden, who has confounded U.S. officials since his abrupt departure from the country two years ago, has just found a new megaphone in Twitter. The former National Security Agency worker, who leaked classified documents about government surveillance, started tweeting Tuesday. He had more than 185,000 followers an hour after his first tweet, "Can you hear me now?" Snowden is following just one account: tweets from the National Security Agency. Like other high-profile people on the messaging service, the account has a blue and white check mark, indicating that it was verified by Twitter. Neither the NSA nor Twitter Inc. immediately responded to requests for comment. Snowden is currently living in exile in Russia. He faces charges in the U.S. that could land him in prison for up to 30 years. Twitter has hosted other controversial figures and groups. Whistleblower website WikiLeaks has a verified Twitter account, as does Kim Dotcom, the founder of illegal download site Megaupload. _____ ONLINE: Edward Snowden's Twitter account: twitter.com/Snowden bigstory.ap.org/article/6a46950ab68349c6a67f0f519e85ed38/snowden-joins-twitter-and-follows-nsa#overlay-context=
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Feb 10, 2016 14:54:56 GMT -6
www.theufochronicles.com/2016/02/astronaut-edgar-mitchell-and-immunity.htmldevoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15464/the-way-of-the-explorer/ Wednesday, February 10, 2016 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell and Immunity For UFO Insiders By Billy Cox De Void 2-9 I first met moonwalker Edgar Mitchell in late 1995, at a restaurant in the back yard of Kennedy Space Center, which was getting ready to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Apollo 14. Given how NASA types tended to treat UFO questions like warlocks and unicorns, De Void was unprepared for Mitchell’s receptivity. No, he insisted, he hadn’t seen evidence of UFOs during his off-planet adventures. “NASA at that time was so sure there were no such things, there was no discussion of it." But he added this: "I would say, however, that if there was knowledge of ET contact existing within the government, and we were sent into space blind and dumb to such information, I think it is a case of criminal culpability." Criminal culpability. Whoa. Thus began a long conversation with one of the old astronaut corps’ unique thinkers. This was a guy who, after admitting he conducted ESP experiments on the moon in 1971, took a lot of crap from colleagues – and he didn’t care. He went onto formalize his curiosity about human consciousness by founding the Institute of Noetic Sciences, which went on to publish papers on everything from meditation to the “Physical effects of collective attention at Burning Man 2013.” Anyhow, the former Navy captain rolled his own tobacco that night, back when you could still smoke indoors, and he talked about one of his even more unusual intrigues. A year or so earlier, during Air Force efforts to resolve General Accounting Office questions about missing records related to the 1947 Roswell controversy, USAF Secretary Sheila Widnall had granted amnesty to potential whistleblowers who might produce leads, but by that time the major players were dead. One year after that, without naming names, Mitchell said he was in discussions with former military or government operatives who wanted to extend immunity to cover even more UFO insiders. "There seems to be more to the universe than random, chaotic, purposeless movement of a collection of molecular particles." -- Dr. Edgar Mitchell /CREDIT: collectspace.com “The purpose of the meeting was not to convince anybody else of their stories,” he said, “but to get people released from their security oaths with regard to these phenomena. Given who they were, and their credentials, I have to tell you, it pushed my confidence level up five notches.” Mitchell said he was shaken by what he was learning. “I am convinced there is a small body of valid (UFO) information, and that there is a body of information ten times as big that is total disinformation put out by the sources to confuse the whole issue.” He described the setup as “a body of semi- or quasi-private organization” operating with black-budget federal funding. “And nobody knows what goes into black budgets. The prime requisite is security first and everything else second.” Without more details, Mitchell’s allegations sounded like something Fox Mulder’s scriptwriters could’ve hatched without really trying. We now know that the sixth man on the moon had, in 1995, begun huddling with “Ambassador to the Universe” Disclosure guru Steven Greer, whose ET outreach tuition now begins at $2,500 a pop. The Mitchell-Greer bond fell apart when Greer began using Mitchell’s name as a witness to promote his Disclosure initiative. Mitchell, in fact, had no first-hand knowledge of Greer’s alleged cloak-and-dagger scenario, and he charged Greer with “overreach(ing) his data continuously.” But in 2008 – and once again, without naming names – Mitchell stoked the embers when he told CNN’s Larry King he had met a high-level Pentagon official pooh-bah who told Mitchell that he – the pooh-bah official – couldn’t get his hands on classified UFO documents because he lacked the proper security clearance. But that was a story Greer had been repeating for years. And that official was Rear Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, former Defense Intelligence Agency director and – at the time of his meeting with Mitchell in 1997 – director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. So De Void got on the horn to Wilson, whose golden parachute had made for a soft-retirement landing with a defense contractor in Minnesota. Wilson definitely remembered Mitchell asking him about pursuing UFO leads. But Wilson also said he had all the security passes he needed. “What is true is that I met with them,” Wilson told De Void in a phoner. “What is not true is that I was denied access to this material, because I didn’t pursue it. I may have left it open with them, but it was not especially compelling, not compelling enough to waste my staff’s time to go looking for it.” Mitchell told De Void he was “shocked” by Wilson’s answer. Ever the gentleman, however, Mitchell declined to argue: “I do not wish to engage him on this matter.” For his part, Greer stood by his Wilson story in an email: “I was there and I know what he said. I was also informed prior to the meeting that, after sending him a secret document with UFO-related code names and numbers, that he located one of the compartments but was specifically denied access to the operation.” And that was that. But so earnestly did Mitchell want to get to the bottom of the mystery that he traveled to Mexico City for the unveiling of what would be the biggest UFO fiasco of 2015 – the Roswell space alien cadaver pix, which were being hyped as a game-changer. Within days, the images were discovered to be Kodak slides of a Native American mummy. De Void didn’t attempt to contact the Apollo veteran for reaction after that. But living in fear of making mistakes would’ve been an untenable prospect for one of only a dozen men to leave bootprints on another world. “The desire to live life to its fullest, to acquire more knowledge, to abandon the economic treadmill,” he wrote in his autobiography The Way of the Explorer, “are all typical reactions to these experiences in altered states of consciousness. The previous fear of death is typically quelled. If the individual generally remains thereafter in the existential state of awareness, the deep internal feeling of eternity is quite profound and unshakable.” After literally expanding the perimeters of human history, what could possibly be intimidating after that? Name-calling? So bon voyage, Dr. Mitchell. And here’s hoping that your greatest wish for those who determine our fates will someday come to pass: “From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say ‘Look at that, you son of a *bleep*.’” devoid.blogs.heraldtribune.com/15464/the-way-of-the-explorer/
|
|
|
Post by swamprat on Feb 15, 2016 21:43:57 GMT -6
Whistleblower about to 'lift lid on 1000s of UFO files' is GENUINE, says ex-MoD man A FORMER US Naval officer who claims his secrecy agreement with the American Government has expired is vowing to lift the lid on thousands of top-secret UFO files he claims to have seen.
By Jon Austin PUBLISHED: Mon, Feb 15, 2016
The man, who says he was a third-class petty officer at the Naval Telecommunications Center within NAS Moffett Field from February 1986 to October 1989, also claims he can shed light on the mysterious mass-UFO sighting involving military personal in 1980.
He has yet to be named, but a former British MoD UFO investigator confirmed to Express.co.uk the man is a genuine source, creatinga flurry of excitement within the UFO disclosure community.
Nick Pope, who was charged by the MoD with investigating baffling UK UFO cases, including the Rendlesham incident, said: "I've actually had some personal communication with this individual, and have no doubts about his background.
"It's clear from the language he uses and the information he has that he's a genuine insider."
But Mr Pope stopped short of encouraging the whistleblower to come outinto the open.
He added: "While my own secrecy oath means I can't encourage anyone to divulge classified information without proper authority, I'm obviously very interested in his story.
"As I conducted the MoD's cold case review of the Rendlesham Forest incident I'm particularly keen to hear about anything that would shed new light on this case."
The man, who has not been publicly named, is claiming the US National Security Agency (NSA) and the UK Government had a going project looking at UFO sightings, including Rendlesham in the 1980s.
He has filed a report to the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) - the world's biggest official alien investigation organisation based in the US, saying he wants to help reach "disclosure".
The disclosure movement among the UFO fraternity, is calling for all world Governments to make public all their top secret files on UFO and flying saucer visitations.
In the report filed on Saturday he said: "I'm not reporting a UFO sighting rather a UFO related experience. "I have copies of my security clearances.
"I personally handled, viewed and delivered thousands of documents involving UFO/ET Projects.
"My secrecy agreement with the US Government expired in October 2014.
"At this point in my life I would like to share my knowledge in hopes that someone will be able to use it effectively towards disclosure."
He said he was given TS SBI/ESI NATO/SIOP Compartmental Security Clearance, which is Top Secret clearance for working in Special Background Investigation, Single Integrated Operation Plan, Exceptionally Sensitive Information and with NATO.
He added: "In addition we had a GS11 employee who was transferred from a Joint US/UK communication station north of London after working at that site for a dozen years.
"He said it was an National Security Agency (NSA)/UK facility tasked with tracking UFO including the Rendalsham Forest Incident.
"He said that UFO/ET were real and that hopefully disclosure would happen in my lifetime since he was in his early 60s at the time."
In the report he said: "I was required to deliver TS Code word designation COSMIC to SRI, ESL/SYLVANIA, LOCKHEED SKUNKWORKS, TRW, RATHEON, BERKELEY LABS, LAWRENCE LIVERMORE LABS, and other think tanks throughout Silicon valley."
Research shows that at the time in question, Moffett Field was a naval air base, but is now a MFA as a restricted federal airfield, run by NASA.*
The Lockheed Martin Skunkworks is a global security and aerospace company based in Bethesda, Maryland.
The Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore laboratories and scientific labs which work closely with NASA in California.
Spelt differently, Raytheon Company is a global technology and innovation firm specialising in defence and cybersecurity.
Roger Marsh, MUFON spokesman, said: "This historical case has been assigned to a field investigator within the Californian MUFON group."
www.express.co.uk/news/weird/644284/Whistleblower-to-blow-lid-on-1000s-of-UFO-files-including-Rendlesham-case
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Feb 17, 2016 19:07:07 GMT -6
alien-ufo-sightings.com/2016/02/another-interesting-leak-a-second-nasa-scientist-tells-us-that-somebody-else-is-on-the-moon/Another Interesting Leak: A Second NASA Scientist Tells Us That ‘Somebody Else’ Is On The MoonWe live in a strange world, and as Neil Armstrong once said, there are “great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of the truth’s protective layers.” (source) thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r103:E20JY4-119: Fast forward to today, and a number of people have become aware of the fact that not all of what goes on behind the scenes is made public. This is precisely why the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was created; it’s a federal freedom of information law that allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the United States government. There are still many obstacles in the way of full transparency, one of which is the use of ‘national security’ to keep information classified and hidden from public viewing. This has become more evident with the revelations of WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden, but the problem goes deeper still. Did you know that the U.S government classifies roughly five hundred million pages of documents every single year? This is a completely separate topic in itself and if you’re interested in learning more about this, you can check out our article about the ‘Black Budget.’ NASA Scientists & What They Say About The Moon Multiple NASA personnel have made some pretty shocking claims about the Moon. George Leonard, a NASA scientist and photo analyst who obtained various official NASA photographs of the Moon, many of which he published in his book titled Somebody Else Is On The Moon, is just one of these personnel. Although the photos are small in size and their resolution is not up to today’s standards, they show details of original prints which were huge. While Leonard published the identifying code numbers of the photos in his works to back up their source, we still can’t say for sure that they were real, and their poor resolution only makes matters worse. Far more compelling than these photos are his statements about what was found on the Moon, along with his verified NASA credentials. Leonard was not the only one with a credible background trying to tell the world the truth regarding the Moon and the photos that were taken from the Apollo missions. “Ladies and gentlemen, my government, NASA, which many of us in the United States say stands for Never A Straight Answer, proceeded to erase 40 rolls of film of the Apollo Program — the flight to the Moon, the flight around the Moon, the landings on the Moon, the walking guys here and there. They erased, for Christ’s sake, 40 rolls of film of those events. Now we’re talking about several thousand individual frames that were taken that the so-called authorities determined that you did not have a right to see. Oh, they were ‘disruptive,’ ‘socially unacceptable,’ ‘politically unacceptable.’ I’ve become furious. I’m a retired Command Sergeant Major. I was never famous for having a lot of patience.” CONTINUE READING: alien-ufo-sightings.com/2016/02/another-interesting-leak-a-second-nasa-scientist-tells-us-that-somebody-else-is-on-the-moon/
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Feb 27, 2016 10:50:12 GMT -6
www.express.co.uk/news/science/608711/Will-NSA-whistleblower-Snowden-release-proof-of-alien-visitations-to-Earth?_ga=1.34606625.1004758355.1452195746 Will NSA whistleblower Snowden release proof of alien visitations to Earth?UFO chasers hope NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden may be on the brink of releasing a string of confidential US files proving the existence of aliens after he talked turkey about extra terrestrials for the first time. By Jon Austin / www.express.co.uk/journalist/122435/Jon-AustinPUBLISHED: Tue, Sep 29, 2015 UFO hunters hope NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden is close to leaking explosive UFO files Hopes have been raised among the "UFO disclosure" community after Snowdon said aliens are probably trying to contact us right now from Russia where he remains in hiding. The American, who is on the run after dishing the dirt on how the US National Security Agency (NSA) keeps tabs on civilians across the globe, made the claims during a scientific podcast called StarTalk hosted by Neil de Grasse. He said even if aliens are sending us electronic messages, we probably can't tell what they are sending us. In short, because of the internet security encryption here on earth, he believes any aliens would likely do the same, and so if they do send anything we won't understand what it is. Secret space programme conspiracy theorist Corey Goode has suggested documents that were taken by Snowden that have "been decrypted" and will "soon be released in a massive document dump". "Finally we hear Snowden talking about UFOs and aliens, its what we have all been waiting for. Snowden is a hero. I hope some of his documents will reveal some alien info soon." Scott C Waring GaianEye posted on UFO Sightings Daily: "Hopefully Corey Goode is correct in saying that the data dumps of UFO docs will be coming from Snowden soon." Snowden earlier said on the podcast: "So if you have an an alien civilisation trying to listen for other civilisations, or our civilisation trying to listen for aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society when all of their communication will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means. "So when we think about everything that we're hearing through our satellites or everything that they're hearing from our civilisation, if there are indeed aliens out there, all of their communications are encrypted by default. "So what we are hearing, that's actually an alien television show or you know a phone call is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation." Snowden's leaks were originally published by the Guardian newspaper in the UK. He went into hiding in 2013 and was granted asylum in Russia. Back home he faces charges of espionage and theft of government property. And if we send any information into the galaxy the aliens may have no idea either. But the mere fact that Snowdon has even entertained the topic has seen alien researchers doing somersaults. Scott C Waring, editor of US website UFO Sightings Daily, said: "Finally we hear Snowden talking about UFOs and aliens, its what we have all been waiting for. "Snowden is a hero. I hope some of his documents will reveal some alien info soon." There is widespread hope among the UFO global community that within Snowdon's stash of NSA files there were reams of documents about the USA's involvement with aliens and so-called secretive "black projects" and "secret space programmes". www.express.co.uk/news/science/608711/Will-NSA-whistleblower-Snowden-release-proof-of-alien-visitations-to-Earth?_ga=1.34606625.1004758355.1452195746
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Feb 27, 2016 13:56:46 GMT -6
www.express.co.uk/news/weird/647476/EXCLUSIVE-Navy-whistleblower-saw-proof-of-aliens-and-UFOs-on-Earth EXCLUSIVE: Navy whistleblower 'saw proof of aliens and UFOs on Earth'A FORMER US naval officer has sensationally claimed to have seen pictures of real aliens and UFOs among top-secret military files.By Jon Austin / www.express.co.uk/journalist/122435/Jon-AustinUPDATED: , Fri, Feb 26, 2016 A former US Navy whistleblower has vowed to reveal evidence for aliens The 49-year-old man's startling revelations in an exclusive interview with Express.co.uk also include claims other whistleblowers have been killed after trying to lift the lid on extraterrestrial activity. We tracked him down after he made an approach to official UFO investigators about wanting to break a 27-year silence on what he saw. The man, who says he was a third-class petty officer at a US Naval telecommunications centre during the 1980s, before more senior posts in the US Army and Navy Seals, claims to have valuable new evidence about the Bizarre Rendlesham UK UFO mass sightings, in Suffolk in 1980. The married man, now living in Ohio, said he was based at NAS Moffett Field, in California, and he was there from February 1986 to October 1989, while also working with contacts in Silicone Valley. He said: "I have never seen a UFO or ET or alien, however I have seen literally tens of thousand of documents confirming they are real and have visited Earth." Asked if the files had included photographs of genuine alien crafts and beings, he said: "Yes, absolutely." The veteran said he was now able to speak because his confidentiality agreement with the US authorities expired in 2014. Asked why he had not removed some of the pictures or other evidence, he said: "Legally, you are not authorised to walk off with classified information. That is treason and treason is a felony. "I do not possess anything other than my testimony and documents that authorise that I legitimately had the individual top-secret security clearances. "I have no smoking gun evidence and no copies of anything I viewed, but my job was working as US Navy radio man in communications and the job had top-secret clearance to handle this stuff." "But this is a rabbit hole that goes very deep. CONTINUE READING: www.express.co.uk/news/weird/647476/EXCLUSIVE-Navy-whistleblower-saw-proof-of-aliens-and-UFOs-on-Earth
|
|
|
Post by swamprat on Feb 27, 2016 14:51:55 GMT -6
"The veteran said he was now able to speak because his confidentiality agreement with the US authorities expired in 2014."
??
Since when does a classified military confidentiality agreement "expire"?! I never heard of such! I thought that was why we've had some "death-bed" confessions, when they could no longer be held accountable?
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Mar 24, 2016 22:20:25 GMT -6
www.salon.com/2016/03/24/snowden_has_done_a_service_former_bush_official_lawrence_wilkerson_applauds_the_whistleblower/ “Snowden has done a service”: Former Bush official Lawrence Wilkerson applauds the whistleblowerWilkerson says Snowden did not threaten U.S. security, and, in a perfect world, the whistleblower would be rewardedby Ben Norton Thursday, Mar 24, 2016 Lawrence Wilkerson, Edward Snowden (Credit: AP/Lawrence Jackson) “I try to stay up with Snowden,” said Lawrence “Larry” Wilkerson. “God, has he revealed a lot,” he laughed. A retired Army colonel who served as the chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell in President George W. Bush’s administration, Wilkerson has established himself as a prominent critic of U.S. foreign policy. He sat down with Salon for an extended interview, discussing a huge range of issues from the war in Syria to climate change, from ISIS to whistle-blower Edward Snowden, of whom Wilkerson spoke quite highly. “I think Snowden has done a service,” Wilkerson explained. “I wouldn’t have had the courage, and maybe not even the intellectual capacity, to do it the way he did it.” Snowden’s reputation in mainstream U.S. politics, to put it lightly, is a negative one. In the summer of 2013, the 29-year-old techno wiz and private contractor for the NSA worked with journalists to expose the global surveillance program run by the U.S. government. His revelations informed the public not only that the NSA was sucking up information on millions of average Americans’ private communications; they also proved that the U.S. government was likely violating international law by spying on dozens of other countries, and even listening to the phone calls of allied heads of state such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who subsequently compared the NSA to the Stasi, East Germany’s secret police. Breaking with establishment political figures, Col. Wilkerson commended Snowden for his work and the way in which he carried it out. “There’s a logic to what he has done that is impressive,” Wilkerson told Salon. “He really has refrained from anything that was truly dangerous, with regard to our security — regardless of what people say.” “He has been circumspect about what he’s released, how he’s released it, who he’s released it to,” he continued. CONTINUE READING: www.salon.com/2016/03/24/snowden_has_done_a_service_former_bush_official_lawrence_wilkerson_applauds_the_whistleblower/
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Apr 27, 2016 18:11:49 GMT -6
can't wait... SNOWDEN - Official TrailerSNOWDEN - Official Trailer Open Road Films Published on Apr 27, 2016 Academy Award®-winning director Oliver Stone, who brought Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street and JFK to the big screen, tackles the most important and fascinating true story of the 21st century. Snowden, the politically-charged, pulse-pounding thriller starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Shailene Woodley, reveals the incredible untold personal story of Edward Snowden, the polarizing figure who exposed shocking illegal surveillance activities by the NSA and became one of the most wanted men in the world. He is considered a hero by some, and a traitor by others. No matter which you believe, the epic story of why he did it, who he left behind, and how he pulled it off makes for one of the most compelling films of the year.
|
|
|
Post by auntym on May 23, 2016 12:33:06 GMT -6
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowersLong before Edward Snowden went public, John Crane was a top Pentagon official fighting to protect NSA whistleblowers. Instead their lives were ruined – and so was his
*Snowden calls for whistleblower shield after claims by Pentagon source *Exclusive: Pentagon source goes on record against whistleblower programby Mark Hertsgaard / www.theguardian.com/profile/mark-hertsgaardSunday 22 May 2016 By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did. He leaked top-secret documents revealing that the National Security Agency was spying on hundreds of millions of people across the world, collecting the phone calls and emails of virtually everyone on Earth who used a mobile phone or the internet. When this newspaper began publishing the NSA documents in June 2013, it ignited a fierce political debate that continues to this day – about government surveillance, but also about the morality, legality and civic value of whistleblowing. But if you want to know why Snowden did it, and the way he did it, you have to know the stories of two other men. The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did. Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising his concerns through official channels. And he got crushed. Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today. Adding insult to injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s surveillance programme were largely ignored. “The government spent many years trying to break me, and the more I resisted, the nastier they got,” Drake told me. Drake’s story has since been told – and in fact, it had a profound impact on Snowden, who told an interviewer in 2015 that: “It’s fair to say that if there hadn’t been a Thomas Drake, there wouldn’t have been an Edward Snowden.” But there is another man whose story has never been told before, who is speaking out publicly for the first time here. His name is John Crane, and he was a senior official in the Department of Defense who fought to provide fair treatment for whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake – until Crane himself was forced out of his job and became a whistleblower as well. His testimony reveals a crucial new chapter in the Snowden story – and Crane’s failed battle to protect earlier whistleblowers should now make it very clear that Snowden had good reasons to go public with his revelations. Advertisement During dozens of hours of interviews, Crane told me how senior Defense Department officials repeatedly broke the law to persecute Drake. First, he alleged, they revealed Drake’s identity to the Justice Department; then they withheld (and perhaps destroyed) evidence after Drake was indicted; finally, they lied about all this to a federal judge. The supreme irony? In their zeal to punish Drake, these Pentagon officials unwittingly taught Snowden how to evade their clutches when the 29-year-old NSA contract employee blew the whistle himself. Snowden was unaware of the hidden machinations inside the Pentagon that undid Drake, but the outcome of those machinations – Drake’s arrest, indictment and persecution – sent an unmistakable message: raising concerns within the system promised doom. “Name one whistleblower from the intelligence community whose disclosures led to real change – overturning laws, ending policies – who didn’t face retaliation as a result. The protections just aren’t there,” Snowden told the Guardian this week. “The sad reality of today’s policies is that going to the inspector general with evidence of truly serious wrongdoing is often a mistake. Going to the press involves serious risks, but at least you’ve got a chance.” Snowden saw what had happened to Drake and other whistleblowers like him. The key to Snowden’s effectiveness, according to Thomas Devine, the legal director of the Government Accountability Project (GAP), was that he practised “civil disobedience” rather than “lawful” whistleblowing. (GAP, a non-profit group in Washington, DC, that defends whistleblowers, has represented Snowden, Drake and Crane.) “None of the lawful whistleblowers who tried to expose the government’s warrantless surveillance – and Drake was far from the only one who tried – had any success,” Devine told me. “They came forward and made their charges, but the government just said, ‘They’re lying, they’re paranoid, we’re not doing those things.’ And the whistleblowers couldn’t prove their case because the government had classified all the evidence. Whereas Snowden took the evidence with him, so when the government issued its usual denials, he could produce document after document showing that they were lying. That is civil disobedience whistleblowing.” The sad reality is that going to the inspector general with evidence of truly serious wrongdoing is often a mistake Edward Snowden Crane, a solidly built Virginia resident with flecks of grey in a neatly trimmed chinstrap beard, understood Snowden’s decision to break the rules – but lamented it. “Someone like Snowden should not have felt the need to harm himself just to do the right thing,” he told me. Crane’s testimony is not simply a clue to Snowden’s motivations and methods: if his allegations are confirmed in court, they could put current and former senior Pentagon officials in jail. (Official investigations are quietly under way.) But Crane’s account has even larger ramifications: it repudiates the position on Snowden taken by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton – who both maintain that Snowden should have raised his concerns through official channels because US whistleblower law would have protected him. y the time Snowden went public in 2013, Crane had spent years fighting a losing battle inside the Pentagon to provide whistleblowers the legal protections to which they were entitled. He took his responsibilities so seriously, and clashed with his superiors so often, that he carried copies of the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989 and the US constitution in his breast pocket and pulled them out during office conflicts. Crane’s attorneys at GAP – who were used to working with all types of government and corporate whistleblowers – were baffled by him: in their experience, most senior government officials cared little for whistleblowers’ rights. So what motivated Crane to keep fighting for the rights of whistleblowers inside the Pentagon, even as his superiors grew increasingly hostile and eventually forced him to resign? To hear Crane tell it, the courage to stand up and fight runs in his family. He never forgot the story he heard as a child, about his own grandfather, a German army officer who once faced down Adolf Hitler at gunpoint – on the night the future Fuhrer first tried to take over Germany. CONTINUE READING: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers
|
|
|
Post by auntym on May 27, 2016 15:00:21 GMT -6
www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/opinion/whistle-blower-beware.html?_r=0 Edward Snowden ✔ @snowden
Today's New York Times: Obama and Clinton are wrong: today's whistleblower protections are "worse than a dead end." Whistle-Blower, BewareBy MARK HERTSGAARD / markhertsgaard.com/?version=meter+at+4&module=meter-Links&pgtype=article&contentId=&mediaId=&referrer=http%3A%2F%2Ftheedgeofreality.proboards.com%2Fthread%2F1293%2Fwhistleblowers%3Fpage%3D2%26scrollTo%3D64406&priority=true&action=click&contentCollection=meter-links-clickMAY 26, 2016 Photo / Credit Topos Graphics SHOULD it be a crime to report a crime? Many top officials in Washington seem to think so, at least in the case of Edward Snowden. June 6 will be the third anniversary of The Guardian’s publication of top-secret documents provided by Mr. Snowden that showed that the National Security Agency was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Outraged by this assault on the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure, Tea Party Republicans and progressive Democrats joined to block reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act’s surveillance provisions last year. Only after the N.S.A. was required to obtain warrants to examine such records was reauthorization approved. But Mr. Snowden, the whistle-blower who set this reform in motion with his disclosures, is persona non grata in the nation’s capital. Democrats and Republicans alike have denounced him as a traitor. President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have also been unyielding. Mr. Snowden, now in Russia, deliberately broke the law and should not “be brought home without facing the music,” Mrs. Clinton said in a Democratic presidential debate. “He could have gotten all of the protections of being a whistle-blower,” she said. “He could have raised all the issues that he has raised. And I think there would have been a positive response to that.” Thomas Drake would disagree. So would John Crane. Their intertwined stories, revealed this week, make clear that Secretary Clinton’s and President Obama’s faith in whistle-blower protections is unfounded, and cast Mr. Snowden’s actions in a different light. Mr. Snowden has expressed his debt to Mr. Drake. “If there hadn’t been a Thomas Drake,” he told Al Jazeera, “there couldn’t have been an Edward Snowden.” Mr. Drake was a senior N.S.A. official who had also complained, 12 years earlier, about warrantless surveillance. As a career military man, he followed the course later advocated by President Obama and Secretary Clinton. Joining others with similar concerns, he went up the chain of command, finally ending up at the Defense Department’s Office of Inspector General. Things did not go well. In 2007, years after he first raised his concerns, F.B.I. agents raided his house brandishing a search warrant alleging an “unlawful disclosure of classified national defense information.” He was forced to resign and was indicted on 10 felony charges arising from an alleged “scheme” to improperly “retain and disclose classified information.” He ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for “exceeding authorized use of a government computer” in exchange for the government’s dropping the other charges. The federal judge who oversaw his case blasted prosecutors for putting Mr. Drake through “four years of hell.” He now works at an Apple store. Mr. Snowden followed the Drake case closely in the news media and drew the obvious conclusion: Going through channels was worse than a dead end. Mr. Crane, a former assistant inspector general in the Defense Department who oversaw the whistle-blower program, has now come forward alleging that Mr. Drake was persecuted by the very officials in his office who were supposed to protect him. In interviews with me, and in sworn accounts to the government’s Office of Special Counsel, Mr. Crane provided a new chapter in the Snowden story. Mr. Crane argues that the Defense Department broke the law in Mr. Drake’s case. (Mr. Crane resigned in 2013 after he was told he would be dismissed.) Assuring whistle-blowers’ anonymity is a core provision of federal laws protecting them. This confidentiality is considered essential to shield them from retaliation. Yet somehow, Mr. Crane said, Mr. Drake’s name came to the attention of the F.B.I. This struck him as suspicious. CONTINUE READING: www.nytimes.com/2016/05/26/opinion/whistle-blower-beware.html?_r=0
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Sept 14, 2016 12:34:55 GMT -6
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/14/edward-snowden-pardon-bernie-sanders-daniel-ellsberg?CMP=edit_2221&utm_content=buffer9f395&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer 'Edward Snowden did this country a great service. Let him come home' Bernie Sanders, Daniel Ellsberg, former members of the NSA and more weigh in on whether Obama should grant clemency to the divisive whistleblowerby Ed Pilkington www.theguardian.com/profile/edpilkingtonWednesday 14 September 2016 Bernie Sanders leads a chorus of prominent public figures calling for clemency, a plea agreement or, in several cases, a full pardon for the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden. Writing in the Guardian, the runner-up in the race to become Democratic presidential candidate argues that Snowden helped to educate the American public about how the NSA violated the constitutional rights of citizens with its mass surveillance program. Sanders argues that there should be some form of resolution that would acknowledge both the “troubling revelations” that he had brought to light and the crime that he committed in doing so, that would “spare him a long prison sentence or permanent exile”. Sanders joins 20 other prominent public figures – from Hollywood actors and rock musicians to politicians, professors and Black Lives Matter activists – who call on Barack Obama to find some way of allowing Snowden to return home to the US from exile in Russia. The Guardian’s voices are raised in the week that Oliver Stone’s film, Snowden, is released in the US and that a coalition of groups including the ACLU and Amnesty International launch a new campaign for a presidential pardon before Obama steps down. Among the writers in the Guardian are Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower who released the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s, who calls for Snowden to be allowed to make a public interest defense in any US trial. From the world of arts, actor Susan Sarandon and director Terry Gilliam, novelist Barry Eisler and Sonic Youth singer Thurston Moore all make impassioned calls for an Obama pardon. Senior politicians from both sides of the Atlantic, including former US senator Mark Udall, UK parliamentarian David Winnick and German Green party member Hans-Christian Ströbele all fly the flag for a Snowden homecoming. Similar calls are made by public intellectuals including Noam Chomsky, Cornel West and Sanders’ former Democratic presidential rival and Harvard law professor, Lawrence Lessig. Not everyone writing in the Guardian today is empathetic towards the whistleblower. The former director of the NSA, Michael Hayden, says Snowden should face “the full force of the law” were he to come home. Stewart Baker, also latterly of the NSA, argues that Snowden’s leak caused harm to US national interests – a contention that is strongly disputed by many of the other people writing here. CONTINUE READING: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/14/edward-snowden-pardon-bernie-sanders-daniel-ellsberg?CMP=edit_2221&utm_content=buffer9f395&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
can't wait to see this movie...starts this friday... SNOWDEN
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Sept 16, 2016 12:39:05 GMT -6
www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/movies/snowden-review-oliver-stone-joseph-gordon-levitt.html?_r=0 Review: ‘Snowden,’ Oliver Stone’s Restrained Portrait of a Whistle-BlowerBy A. O. SCOTT / www.nytimes.com/by/a-o-scott?action=click&contentCollection=Movies&module=Byline®ion=Header&pgtype=articleSEPT. 15, 2016 Oliver Stone’s “Snowden,” a quiet, crisply drawn portrait of the world’s most celebrated whistle-blower, belongs to a curious subgenre of movies about very recent historical events. Reversing the usual pattern, it could be described as a fictional “making of” feature about “Citizenfour,” Laura Poitras’s Oscar-winning documentary on the former National Security Agency contractor Edward J. Snowden. That film seems to me more likely to last — it is deeper journalism and more haunting cinema — but Mr. Stone has made an hoannable and absorbing contribution to the imaginative record of our confusing times. He tells a story torn from slightly faded headlines, filling in some details you may have forgotten, and discreetly embellishing the record in the service of drama and suspense. In the context of this director’s career, “Snowden” is both a return to form and something of a departure. Mr. Stone circles back to the grand questions of power, war and secrecy that have propelled his most ambitious work, and finds a hero who fits a familiar Oliver Stone mold. Edward (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, leaning hard on a vocal imitation) is presented as a disillusioned idealist, a serious young man whose experiences lead him to doubt accepted truths and question the wisdom of authority. He has something in common with Jim Garrison in “J.F.K.” and Ron Kovic in “Born on the Fourth of July,” and also with Chris Taylor and Bud Fox, the characters played by Charlie Sheen in “Platoon” and “Wall Street.” Like those young men in a hurry, Edward falls under the sway of two antithetical father figures, a silky apparatchik played by Rhys Ifans, and an unbuttoned renegade played by Nicolas Cage. Drawn to intelligence work out of a sincere desire to serve his country, Edward is not immune to other attractions of the job. He likes the intrigue, the money (especially after he becomes a private contractor) and the feeling of being part of a select group of insiders who know how things really work. But he is not a figure of operatic, tragic ambition in the mold of Richard M. Nixon, Jim Morrison or Alexander the Great (at least as Mr. Stone imagined them). Nerdy in aspect and phlegmatic in mMaybe Mr. Stone has mellowed, or maybe the world has caught up with him. What used to be paranoia — the idea, say, that your electronic appliances are spying on you — looks nowadays like blunt realism. It can also seem as if the physical world, that bloody, sex-infused battleground of the self where previous Stone heroes have raged and fought, had been displaced by a more abstract zone of codes and algorithms. Edward passes from one realm to the other when an injury ends his career as a United States Army Ranger. “There are lots of ways to serve your country,” the doctor tells him, and soon enough, his bosses at the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. are explaining that the real war is being waged on computer and cellular networks. Mr. Stone, well served by his cinematographer, the digital wizard Anthony Dod Mantle, and the composers Craig Armstrong and Adam Peters, evokes the chilly colorations and spooky undertones of our technological reality. The Hong Kong hotel room where Edward meets with Ms. Poitras (Melissa Leo) and the journalists Glenn Greenwald (Zachary Quinto) and Ewen MacAskill (Tom Wilkinson) is an eerie futuristic box. Snowden’s workplaces in Geneva, Tokyo and Oahu are hives full of glowing screens and whispered jargon.anner, Edward never takes a drink or chases a skirt. (His girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, is played by Shailene Woodley.) And “Snowden” is, by Mr. Stone’s standards, a strikingly sober film. Restraint shows in both the filmmaking and the politics. There are very few wild, bravura visual flights and not much in the way of wild conspiracymongering. Edward is a rational, ethical creature — “responsibility” is one of his favorite words — and the movie takes pains to be reasonable. Its basic argument about government data-collection would not be out of place on the Op-Ed page of this or any other newspaper. And its dialogue and pacing would work just fine on television. CONTINUE READING: www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/movies/snowden-review-oliver-stone-joseph-gordon-levitt.html?_r=0
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Sept 16, 2016 14:58:58 GMT -6
Have you seen it Aunty? Waiting for your review! 😄
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Sept 17, 2016 16:21:39 GMT -6
Have you seen it Aunty? Waiting for your review! 😄 not yet jc...hopefully sometime next week...
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Dec 20, 2016 13:52:37 GMT -6
www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/news-tips/ Edward Snowden @snowden 22m22 minutes ago
Edward Snowden Retweeted Runa Sandvik:
Why is it called whistle-blowing? Because it only counts when everyone can hear it. Here's @nytimes new guide on how to send documents: THE NEW YORK TIMESGot a confidential news tip?Do you have the next big story? Want to share it with The New York Times? We offer several ways to get in touch with and provide materials to our journalists. No communication system is completely secure, but these tools can help protect your anonymity. We’ve outlined each below, but please review any app’s terms and instructions as well. Please do not send feedback, story ideas, pitches or press releases through these channels. For more general correspondence visit our contact page.
What Makes a Good Tip?A strong news tip will have several components. Documentation or evidence is essential. Speculating or having a hunch does not rise to the level of a tip. A good news tip should articulate a clear and understandable issue or problem with real-world consequences. Be specific. Finally, a news tip should be newsworthy. While we agree it is unfair that your neighbor is stealing cable, we would not write a story about it. Examples of good tips include: Here is evidence that this government representative is breaking the law. Here is proof that this company is conducting itself unethically. We will be reviewing messages regularly, but cannot promise each will receive an individual response. Thank you for taking the time to reach out to us. WhatsAppWhatsApp is a free messaging app owned by Facebook that allows full end-to-end encryption for its service. Only the sender and recipient can read messages, photos, videos, voice messages, documents and calls. Though you can limit some account information shared to Facebook, WhatsApp still keeps records of the phone numbers involved in the exchange and the users’ metadata, including timestamps on messages. Add us: +1 646-951-4771 MORE INFO: www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/2016/news-tips/
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Dec 20, 2016 14:25:55 GMT -6
www.pogo.org/blog/2016/12/intelligence-community-landmark.htmlNSA Watchdog Removed for Whistleblower RetaliationBy: Adam Zagorin / www.pogo.org/about/board-staff/staff-profiles/adam-zagorin.htmlDecember 15, 2016 Top NSA Watchdog Who Insisted Snowden Should Have Come to Him Receives Termination Notice for Retaliating Against a Whistleblower
Dr. George Ellard Until just a few months ago, George Ellard occupied a position of trust as top watchdog of the National Security Agency, America’s principal collector of signals intelligence. Ellard was not only NSA’s Inspector General, but an outspoken critic of Edward Snowden, the former contract employee who leaked hundreds of thousands of classified emails to publicly expose the agency’s domestic surveillance program. Snowden claimed, among other things, that his concerns about NSA’s domestic eavesdropping were ignored by the agency, and that he feared retaliation. Ellard publicly argued in 2014 that Snowden could have safely reported the allegations of NSA’s domestic surveillance directly to him. Then last May, after eight months of inquiry and deliberation, a high-level Intelligence Community panel found that Ellard himself had previously retaliated against an NSA whistleblower, sources tell the Project On Government Oversight. Informed of that finding, NSA’s Director, Admiral Michael Rogers, promptly issued Ellard a notice of proposed termination, although Ellard apparently remains an agency employee while on administrative leave, pending a possible response to his appeal from Secretary of Defense Ash Carter. The closely held but unclassified finding against Ellard is not public. It was reached by following new whistleblower protections set forth by President Obama in an executive order, Presidential Policy Directive 19. (A President Trump could, in theory, eliminate the order.) Following PPD-19 procedures, a first-ever External Review Panel (ERP) composed of three of the most experienced watchdogs in the US government was convened to examine the issue. The trio -- IG’s of the Justice Department, Treasury, and CIA – overturned an earlier finding of the Department of Defense IG, which investigated Ellard but was unable to substantiate his alleged retaliation. “The finding against Ellard is extraordinary and unprecedented,” notes Stephen Aftergood, Director of the Secrecy Program at the Federation of American Scientists. “This is the first real test drive for a new process of protecting intelligence whistleblowers. Until now, they’ve been at the mercy of their own agencies, and dependent on the whims of their superiors. This process is supposed to provide them security and a procedural foothold.” “The case, which is still in progress, offers hopeful signs that the new framework may be working,” Aftergood added. POGO learned of the decision against Ellard from sources who spoke on condition of anonymity. The information was later confirmed by government officials. POGO has been told that mention of the finding will appear in a semiannual report (SAR) of the Intelligence Community IG (ICIG) that should be released in the near future. It makes brief mention of the case without citing Ellard by name. Neither Ellard, his lawyer, nor the NSA provided any comment, despite POGO’s numerous attempts to offer them the opportunity. POGO also reached out to the NSA employee and victim of Ellard’s retaliation, posing a detailed series of questions about what happened through an official intermediary. POGO has been told that the whistleblower composed answers to at least some of those queries, and was seeking NSA approval before releasing them. So far, there is no sign that such approval has been granted. The DODIG told POGO it would have no immediate comment. THE RETALIATOREdward Snowden photo by Flickr user Zennie Abraham. Ellard, a Yale-trained lawyer and former prosecutor with a doctorate in philosophy, was for nine years the top oversight official keeping tabs on NSA, an agency fraught with controversy over its handling of Edward Snowden and other prominent whistleblowers. Ellard in particular chose to enter that debate along with other critics who faulted Snowden for his alleged unwillingness to report his concerns about NSA domestic surveillance through channels inside the agency set up for that purpose. IG Ellard’s criticism of Snowden first stirred controversy during a 2014 panel discussion at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. “Snowden could have come to me,” Ellard declared, arguing that the leaker, now a fugitive in Russia, would have received the same protections as other NSA employees, who file some one thousand reports annually to the agency’s hotline. “We have surprising success in resolving the complaints that are brought to us,” Ellard said, adding, “Perhaps it’s the case that we could have shown, we could have explained to Mr. Snowden his misperceptions, his lack of understanding of what we do.” Snowden himself has explicitly contended that he feared retaliation and that he had no other option but to go public if he wished to expose NSA domestic eavesdropping. Among the cases of retaliation that Snowden has pointed to is that of former senior NSA employee Thomas Drake, who after reporting alleged wrongdoing through authorized channels, was arrested at dawn by the FBI, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes under the Espionage Act, all of which were later dropped, leaving him to find work in an Apple store. Snowden’s related contention is that in his own case, he did, in fact, report his concerns in emails to NSA superiors at the time, a contention which NBC has said it verified. Now, given the official finding that Ellard retaliated against an NSA whistleblower, the credibility of Ellard’s argument that Snowden could have come to him is gravely undermined. More generally, there are few if any incentives for intelligence whistleblowers to report problems through designated authorities when the IG of NSA is found to have retaliated against such an individual. CONTINUE READING: www.pogo.org/blog/2016/12/intelligence-community-landmark.html The (POGO) Blog www.pogo.org/blog/index.html?bloglisttopics=whistleblower-protections
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Dec 21, 2016 12:33:36 GMT -6
The closely held but unclassified finding against Ellard is not public. It was reached by following new whistleblower protections set forth by President Obama in an executive order, Presidential Policy Directive 19. (A President Trump could, in theory, eliminate the order.) Following PPD-19 procedures, a first-ever External Review Panel (ERP) composed of three of the most experienced watchdogs in the US government was convened to examine the issue. The trio -- IG’s of the Justice Department, Treasury, and CIA – overturned an earlier finding of the Department of Defense IG, which investigated Ellard but was unable to substantiate his alleged retaliation. “The finding against Ellard is extraordinary and unprecedented,” notes Stephen Aftergood, Director of the Secrecy Program at the Federation of American Scientists. “This is the first real test drive for a new process of protecting intelligence whistleblowers. Until now, they’ve been at the mercy of their own agencies, and dependent on the whims of their superiors. This process is supposed to provide them security and a procedural foothold.”
*******
I also find this "extraordinary" that this person, named as ellardz!?, obviously has no recollection that he retaliated against someone in the far or near past. How else could someone be so confident that events would not be looked into to prove or disprove his statement(s). Do we have verifyibly unstable and insane people working at "top levels", is career suicide the same as jumping out of a window when it appears that there is nothing else you can do ...... maybe, just maybe, we now have some sort of "device", that causes people to lose important memories.....
|
|
|
Post by auntym on Dec 22, 2016 14:32:34 GMT -6
www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowersThe long read How the Pentagon punished NSA whistleblowersLong before Edward Snowden went public, John Crane was a top Pentagon official fighting to protect NSA whistleblowers. Instead their lives were ruined – and so was his *Snowden calls for whistleblower shield after claims by Pentagon source: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/snowden-whistleblower-protections-john-crane *Exclusive: Pentagon source goes on record against whistleblower program: www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/may/22/pentagon-government-whistleblower-thomas-drake-edward-snowden-videoby Mark Hertsgaard / www.theguardian.com/profile/mark-hertsgaardSunday 22 May 2016 By now, almost everyone knows what Edward Snowden did. He leaked top-secret documents revealing that the National Security Agency was spying on hundreds of millions of people across the world, collecting the phone calls and emails of virtually everyone on Earth who used a mobile phone or the internet. When this newspaper began publishing the NSA documents in June 2013, it ignited a fierce political debate that continues to this day – about government surveillance, but also about the morality, legality and civic value of whistleblowing. But if you want to know why Snowden did it, and the way he did it, you have to know the stories of two other men. The first is Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on the very same NSA activities 10 years before Snowden did. Drake was a much higher-ranking NSA official than Snowden, and he obeyed US whistleblower laws, raising his concerns through official channels. And he got crushed. Drake was fired, arrested at dawn by gun-wielding FBI agents, stripped of his security clearance, charged with crimes that could have sent him to prison for the rest of his life, and all but ruined financially and professionally. The only job he could find afterwards was working in an Apple store in suburban Washington, where he remains today. Adding insult to injury, his warnings about the dangers of the NSA’s surveillance programme were largely ignored. “The government spent many years trying to break me, and the more I resisted, the nastier they got,” Drake told me. Drake’s story has since been told – and in fact, it had a profound impact on Snowden, who told an interviewer in 2015 that: “It’s fair to say that if there hadn’t been a Thomas Drake, there wouldn’t have been an Edward Snowden.” But there is another man whose story has never been told before, who is speaking out publicly for the first time here. His name is John Crane, and he was a senior official in the Department of Defense who fought to provide fair treatment for whistleblowers such as Thomas Drake – until Crane himself was forced out of his job and became a whistleblower as well. His testimony reveals a crucial new chapter in the Snowden story – and Crane’s failed battle to protect earlier whistleblowers should now make it very clear that Snowden had good reasons to go public with his revelations. Advertisement During dozens of hours of interviews, Crane told me how senior Defense Department officials repeatedly broke the law to persecute Drake. First, he alleged, they revealed Drake’s identity to the Justice Department; then they withheld (and perhaps destroyed) evidence after Drake was indicted; finally, they lied about all this to a federal judge. The supreme irony? In their zeal to punish Drake, these Pentagon officials unwittingly taught Snowden how to evade their clutches when the 29-year-old NSA contract employee blew the whistle himself. Snowden was unaware of the hidden machinations inside the Pentagon that undid Drake, but the outcome of those machinations – Drake’s arrest, indictment and persecution – sent an unmistakable message: raising concerns within the system promised doom. “Name one whistleblower from the intelligence community whose disclosures led to real change – overturning laws, ending policies – who didn’t face retaliation as a result. The protections just aren’t there,” Snowden told the Guardian this week. “The sad reality of today’s policies is that going to the inspector general with evidence of truly serious wrongdoing is often a mistake. Going to the press involves serious risks, but at least you’ve got a chance.” CONTINUE READING: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/may/22/how-pentagon-punished-nsa-whistleblowers
|
|