Snowden's Dad SCHOOLS Obama, Pelosi, and Holder in Open Letter

Obama Swearing to Uphold the Constitution
Dees Illustration

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Snowden's Dad SCHOOLS Obama, Pelosi, and Holder in Open Letter

Re: Civil Disobedience, Edward J. Snowden, and the Constitution

Dear Mr. President:

You are acutely aware that the history of liberty is a history of civil disobedience to unjust laws or practices. As Edmund Burke sermonized, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.”

Civil disobedience is not the first, but the last option. Henry David Thoreau wrote with profound restraint in Civil Disobedience: “If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.”

Thoreau’s moral philosophy found expression during the Nuremburg trials in which “following orders” was rejected as a defense. Indeed, military law requires disobedience to clearly illegal orders.

A dark chapter in America’s World War II history would not have been written if the then United States Attorney General had resigned rather than participate in racist concentration camps imprisoning 120,000 Japanese American citizens and resident aliens.

Civil disobedience to the Fugitive Slave Act and Jim Crow laws provoked the end of slavery and the modern civil rights revolution.

We submit that Edward J. Snowden’s disclosures of dragnet surveillance of Americans under § 215 of the Patriot Act, § 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments, or otherwise were sanctioned by Thoreau’s time-honored moral philosophy and justifications for civil disobedience. Since 2005, Mr. Snowden had been employed by the intelligence community. He found himself complicit in secret, indiscriminate spying on millions of innocent citizens contrary to the spirit if not the letter of the First and Fourth Amendments and the transparency indispensable to self-government. Members of Congress entrusted with oversight remained silent or Delphic. Mr. Snowden confronted a choice between civic duty and passivity. He may have recalled the injunction of Martin Luther King, Jr.: “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it.” Mr. Snowden chose duty. Your administration vindictively responded with a criminal complaint alleging violations of the Espionage Act.

From the commencement of your administration, your secrecy of the National Security Agency’s Orwellian surveillance programs had frustrated a national conversation over their legality, necessity, or morality. That secrecy (combined with congressional nonfeasance) provoked Edward’s disclosures, which sparked a national conversation which you have belatedly and cynically embraced. Legislation has been introduced in both the House of Representatives and Senate to curtail or terminate the NSA’s programs, and the American people are being educated to the public policy choices at hand. A commanding majority now voice concerns over the dragnet surveillance of Americans that Edward exposed and you concealed. It seems mystifying to us that you are prosecuting Edward for accomplishing what you have said urgently needed to be done!

The right to be left alone from government snooping–the most cherished right among civilized people—is the cornerstone of liberty. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson served as Chief Prosecutor at Nuremburg. He came to learn of the dynamics of the Third Reich that crushed a free society, and which have lessons for the United States today.

Writing in Brinegar v. United States, Justice Jackson elaborated:

The Fourth Amendment states: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

These, I protest, are not mere second-class rights but belong in the catalog of indispensable freedoms. Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart. Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government. And one need only briefly to have dwelt and worked among a people possessed of many admirable qualities but deprived of these rights to know that the human personality deteriorates and dignity and self-reliance disappear where homes, persons and possessions are subject at any hour to unheralded search and seizure by the police.

We thus find your administration’s zeal to punish Mr. Snowden’s discharge of civic duty to protect democratic processes and to safeguard liberty to be unconscionable and indefensible.

We are also appalled at your administration’s scorn for due process, the rule of law, fairness, and the presumption of innocence as regards Edward.

On June 27, 2013, Mr. Fein wrote a letter to the Attorney General stating that Edward’s father was substantially convinced that he would return to the United States to confront the charges that have been lodged against him if three cornerstones of due process were guaranteed. The letter was not an ultimatum, but an invitation to discuss fair trial imperatives. The Attorney General has sneered at the overture with studied silence.

We thus suspect your administration wishes to avoid a trial because of constitutional doubts about application of the Espionage Act in these circumstances, and obligations to disclose to the public potentially embarrassing classified information under the Classified Information Procedures Act.

Your decision to force down a civilian airliner carrying Bolivian President Eva Morales in hopes of kidnapping Edward also does not inspire confidence that you are committed to providing him a fair trial. Neither does your refusal to remind the American people and prominent Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate like House Speaker John Boehner, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann,and Senator Dianne Feinstein that Edward enjoys a presumption of innocence. He should not be convicted before trial. Yet Speaker Boehner has denounced Edward as a “traitor.”

Ms. Pelosi has pontificated that Edward “did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents.” Ms. Bachmann has pronounced that, “This was not the act of a patriot; this was an act of a traitor.” And Ms. Feinstein has decreed that Edward was guilty of “treason,” which is defined in Article III of the Constitution as “levying war” against the United States, “or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”

You have let those quadruple affronts to due process pass unrebuked, while you have disparaged Edward as a “hacker” to cast aspersion on his motivations and talents. Have you forgotten the Supreme Court’s gospel in Berger v. United States that the interests of the government “in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done?”

We also find reprehensible your administration’s Espionage Act prosecution of Edward for disclosures indistinguishable from those which routinely find their way into the public domain via your high level appointees for partisan political advantage. Classified details of your predator drone protocols, for instance, were shared with the New York Times with impunity to bolster your national security credentials. Justice Jackson observed in Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York: “The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority must be imposed generally.”

In light of the circumstances amplified above, we urge you to order the Attorney General to move to dismiss the outstanding criminal complaint against Edward, and to support legislation to remedy the NSA surveillance abuses he revealed. Such presidential directives would mark your finest constitutional and moral hour.

Sincerely,
Bruce Fein
Counsel for Lon Snowden
Lon Snowden

Bruce Fein & Associates, Inc.
722 12th Street, N.W., 4th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20005
Phone: 703-963-4968
bruce@thelichfieldgroup.com

Posted at: http://www.activistpost.com/2013/07/snowdens-dad-schools-obama-pelosi-and.html?m=1

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ANONYMOUS: Senator Dianne Feinstein has received over $698,244 from NSA affiliates in political donations, since the formation of PRISM in 2007

Anonymous Operation NSA's first target: Californian Senator Dianne Feinstein. She has taken over $698,000 in bribes from security and defense contractors to vote in favor of them and against you. - See more at: 

http://xrepublic.tv/node/4463

Video transcript:

Greetings Californian State Senator Dianne Feinstein. We are Anonymous.
Did you think that your actions against the citizens of this country would go unnoticed?

Did you think that we the people, would not respond to your gruesome dishonesty?

We have been watching.

In accordance with phase II of #Op NSA we have found you, Senator Feinstein, GUILTY Of supporting unconstitutional acts carried out by the Government and its agencies.


Although the opinion of the FISA court that oversees the National Security Agency's operations is often not released to the public, we are now making it known to the public.

While the public may have been kept in the dark; you, Senator Feinstein were fully aware  of the FISA court's two thousand and eleven opinion. Eighty pages detailing how the National Security Agency's surveillance conduct is in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the United States Constitution as well as in excess of the limitations imposed by the statute:  The FISA amendments act of two thousand and eight.

When you told the American people that you have no knowledge of the National Security Agency's surveillance program, PRISM, of violating anyone's civil liberties or freedoms:
You were lying.

Today the first strand of the virus has been identified.  Here is the information you, the people need to know to address the system failure.

Californian State Senator Dianne Feinstein has received over $698,244 from NSA affiliates in political donations, since the formation of PRISM in 2007.
These relationships go back much longer than that however, and will continue to do so.

These donations come from organizations such as BAE Systems, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, SAIC, Raytheon, General Dynamics, QualComm, L-3 Communications, Palantir and Lockheed Martin.

She also voted in favor of the PATRIOT act in two thousand and eleven and sits on various committees as Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Member of the Subcommittee on Department of Defense,

Member of the Subcommittee on Department of the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies and a Member of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law amongst many others.

Lastly let us not forget Senator Feinstein firmly stands by her wishes to see NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden tried for treason, punished to the fullest extent of the law.

We are Anonymous.
We are Legion.
We do NOT forgive.
We do NOT forget.
You should have expected us.

http://xrepublic.tv/node/4463

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Statement by Edward Snowden to human rights groups at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport

Statement by Edward Snowden to human rights groups at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport
Friday July 12, 15:00 UTC

Edward Joseph Snowden delivered a statement to human rights organizations and individuals at Sheremetyevo airport at 5pm Moscow time today, Friday 12th July. The meeting lasted 45 minutes. The human rights organizations included Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch and were given the opportunity afterwards to ask Mr Snowden questions. The Human Rights Watch representative used this opportunity to tell Mr Snowden that on her way to the airport she had received a call from the US Ambassador to Russia, who asked her to relay to Mr Snowden that the US Government does not categorise Mr Snowden as a whistleblower and that he has broken United States law. This further proves the United States Government’s persecution of Mr Snowden and therefore that his right to seek and accept asylum should be upheld. Seated to the left of Mr. Snowden was Sarah Harrison, a legal advisor in this matter from WikiLeaks and to Mr. Snowden’s right, a translator.

Transcript of Edward Joseph Snowden statement, given at 5pm Moscow time on Friday 12th July 2013. (Transcript corrected to delivery)

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone’s communications at any time. That is the power to change people’s fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president’s plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela’s President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.

Thank you.

http://wikileaks.org/Statement-by-Edward-Snowden-to.html

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The Guardian: The cyber-intelligence complex and its useful idiots

J Edgar Hoover (right, with President Richard Nixon)
 ran the FBI's illegal Cointelpro domestic political
surveillance scheme. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/01/cyber-intelligence-complex-useful-idiots

The cyber-intelligence complex and its useful idiots
Those who tell us to trust the US's secret, privatised surveillance schemes should recall the criminality of J Edgar Hoover's FBI

Barrett Brown
guardian.co.uk, Monday 1 July 2013 11.21 EDT

It's a fine thing to see mainstream American media outlets finally sparing some of their attention toward the cyber-industrial complex – that unprecedented conglomeration of state, military and corporate interests that together exercise growing power over the flow of information. It would be even more heartening if so many of the nation's most influential voices, from senator to pundits, were not clearly intent on killing off even this belated scrutiny into the invisible empire that so thoroughly scrutinizes us – at our own expense and to unknown ends.

Summing up the position of those who worry less over secret government powers than they do over the whistleblowers who reveal such things, we have New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who argues that we can trust small cadres of unaccountable spies with broad powers over our communications. We must all wish Friedman luck with this prediction. Other proclamations of his – including that Vladimir Putin would bring transparency and liberal democracy to Russia, and that the Chinese regime would not seek to limit its citizens' free access to the internet – have not aged especially well.

An unkind person might dismiss Friedman as the incompetent harbinger of a dying republic. Being polite, I will merely suggest that Friedman's faith in government is as misplaced as faith in the just and benevolent God that we know not to exist – Friedman having been the winner of several of the world's most-coveted Pulitzer Prizes.

If Friedman is, indeed, too quick to trust the powerful, it's a trait he shares with the just over half of Americans, who tell pollsters they're fine with the NSA programs that were until recently hidden from their view. Why, our countrymen wonder, ought we to be disturbed by our state's desire to know everything that everyone does? Given the possibility that this surveillance could perhaps prevent deaths in the form of terrorist attacks, most Americans are willing to forgo some abstract notion of privacy in favor of the more concrete benefits of security.

Besides, the government to which we're ceding these broad new powers is a democracy, overseen by real, live Americans. And it's hard to imagine American government officials abusing their powers – or at least, it would be, had such officials not already abused similar but more limited powers through repeated campaigns of disinformation, intimidation and airtight crimes directed at the American public over the last five decades. Cointelpro, Operation Mockingbird, Ultra and Chaos are among the now-acknowledged CIA, FBI and NSA programs by which those agencies managed to subvert American democracy with impunity. Supporters of mass surveillance conducted under the very same agencies have yet to address how such abuses can be insured against in the context of powers far greater than anything J Edgar Hoover could command.



Many have never heard of these programs; the sort of people who trust states with secret authority tend not to know what such things have led to in the recent past. Those who do know of such things may perhaps contend that these practices would never be repeated today. But it was just two years ago that the late Michael Hastings revealed that US army officials in Afghanistan were conducting psy-ops against visiting US senators in order to sway them towards continued funding for that unsuccessful war. If military and intelligence officials have so little respect for the civilian leadership, one can guess how they feel about mere civilians.

Not that anyone need merely guess. Discussing the desirability of such "information operations" in his 2001 book, retired USAF Lt Col George Crawford noted that voters tend to view these sorts of programs with suspicion. "Consequently," he concludes, "these efforts must take place away from public eyes."

And so they do. If we want to learn a thing or two about the latest round of such programs – that is, if we are willing to disregard the Thomas Friedmans of this world – we must look not just towards the three letter agencies that have routinely betrayed us in the past, but also to the untold number of private intelligence contracting firms that have sprung up lately in order to betray us in a more efficient and market-oriented manner. Our lieutenant colonel, scourge of "public eyes", is among the many ex-military and intelligence officials who have left public service, or public obfuscation – or whatever we're calling it now – to work in the expanding sphere of private spookery, to which is outsourced information operations by the Pentagon, spy agencies, and even other corporations who need an edge over some enemy (in Crawford's case, the mysterious Archimedes Global).

So, how trustworthy is this privatized segment of the invisible empire? We would know almost nothing of their operations were it not for a chance turn of events that prompted Anonymous-affiliated hackers to seize 70,000 emails from one typical firm back in early 2011. From this more-or-less random sampling of contractor activity, we find a consortium of these firms plotting to intimidate, attack and discredit WikiLeaks and those identified as its key supporters, including the (then Salon, now Guardian) journalist Glenn Greenwald – a potentially illegal conspiracy concocted on behalf of corporate giant Bank of America, which feared exposure by WikiLeaks, and organized under the auspices of the Department of Justice itself.

We find several of the same firms – which collectively referred to themselves as Team Themis – involved in another scheme to deploy sophisticated software-based fake people across social networks in order to infiltrate and mislead. For instance, Themis proposes sending two of these "personas" to pose online as members of an organization opposed to the US Chamber of Commerce, another prospective Themis client, in order to discredit the group from within. Yet another revelation involves a massive cross-platform military program of disinformation and surveillance directed at the Arab world; still another relates how one NSA-inked firm can monitor and attack online infrastructure throughout the world, including western Europe, and will rent these capabilities out to those with a few million dollars to spend on such things.

And Booz Allen Hamilton, which has received some belated scrutiny as the eminently powerful employer of NSA leaker Edward Snowden, was apparently in talks with Themis participant HBGary Federal regarding its own still-secret "project" involving, again, WikiLeaks. These are simply a few of the revelations stemming from a portion of the email correspondence among a handful of major contracting firms – a tiny, serendipitous sampling of what such firms are doing for their government and corporate clients as they compete for contracts.

Hundred of these sorts of companies have come about in the last few years, operating in close partnerships with the state, yet existing beyond the view of Congress, the media and "public eyes". Even in the unlikely instance when their activities come to light, potentially illegal behavior goes unpunished; even calls by congressmen to investigate the sordid Themis conspiracy were ignored by the Department of Justice, which, of course, set the whole thing in motion to begin with through its recommendation.

This, then, is the environment in which public officials and Beltway insiders like Friedman are asking us to trust the intelligence community and its private partner firms with increasing power over information. It's an age in which even the limited rules in place can be broken with impunity by the powerful – even as journalists and activists who cross them are targeted for destruction by state-corporate alliances armed with increasingly sophisticated cyber weapons, propaganda techniques and surveillance authority.

This is the world we accept if we continue to avert our eyes. And it promises to get much worse.

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EU Furious at NSA Spying

Edward Snowden (image by AK)

Europe demands answers about U.S. bugging claims
http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/01/world/europe/eu-nsa/index.html?hpt=wo_c2

By Josh Levs and Catherine E. Shoichet, CNN

updated 10:34 AM EDT, Mon July 1, 2013

(CNN) -- The European Commission will sweep its offices for electronic listening devices and other security breaches following revelations of alleged U.S. surveillance programs targeting European leaders, a commission spokeswoman said Monday.

The allegations, reported Sunday by the German news magazine Der Spiegel, threaten to derail negotiations on a variety of issues with the United States, French President Francois Hollande said Monday. U.S. and EU officials are scheduled to begin talks on a proposed trans-Atlantic free trade agreement next month.

Hollande said any such surveillance must stop immediately before negotiations can go forward.
"We know that there are systems which have to control notably for the threat against terrorism, but I do not think that this is in our embassies or in the EU that this risks exist," he said.

Hollande's comments and the planned security sweep come amid building outrage in Europe over allegations that the National Security Agency had bugged EU offices in Washington and New York and conducted an "electronic eavesdropping operation" that tapped into an EU building in Brussels, Belgium.



Der Spiegel reported the allegations Sunday, citing information from secret documents obtained by self-avowed NSA leaker Edward Snowden and "in part seen" by the news magazine.

In Brussels, Der Spiegel says, the agency targeted the Justus Lipsius Building, which houses the European Council and the EU Council of Ministers, the union's main decision-making and legislative body.

And in Washington, the magazine report claims, the NSA installed bugs in the European Union's building and infiltrated its computer network.

The reports elicited particular outrage in Germany, where Der Spiegel reported that NSA spying had targeted telephone and Internet connection data in Germany more than any other European nation.
Citing the Snowden documents, the news magazine reported that an average of up to 20 million phone connections and 10 million Internet data connections are surveyed daily. Der Spiegel noted that the intensity of surveillance puts the U.S. ally on par with China, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

Reactions abroad

German President Angela Merkel's spokesman Steffan Seibert cautioned Monday against taking the report as fact without further confirmation.

"If it is, though, confirmed that diplomatic representations of the EU and some European countries were spied upon, we have to say clearly: The bugging of friends is unacceptable. That cannot happen at all. We are no longer in the Cold War."

The German and French foreign ministries planned to meet with the U.S. ambassadors to those countries to talk about the allegations.

The Italian Foreign Ministry called the reports "a very thorny affair."

On Sunday, European Parliament President Martin Schulz said he was "deeply worried and shocked" by the claims.

"If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-U.S. relations," he said. "On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the U.S. authorities with regard to these allegations."

Obama covers his bases on Snowden

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius called for a swift explanation from American authorities.
"These acts, if they are confirmed, would be absolutely unacceptable," he said in a statement.
Another report Sunday claimed that surveillance extended beyond European offices.

The Guardian newspaper reported that one NSA document leaked by Snowden describes 38 embassies and missions as "targets" and details surveillance methods that include planting bugs in communications equipment and collecting transmissions with specialized antennae.

Targets included France, Italy, Greece, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey, according to The Guardian.

CNN has not independently confirmed the allegations in the reports from Der Spiegel and The Guardian.

What the U.S. has to say
U.S. officials did not immediately respond to The Guardian's report. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence declined to comment Sunday on specific allegations published in Der Spiegel.
"The United States government will respond appropriately to the European Union through our diplomatic channels, and through the EU/U.S. experts' dialogue on intelligence that the U.S. proposed several weeks ago," the office said in a statement. "We will also discuss these issues bilaterally with EU member states. While we are not going to comment publicly on specific alleged intelligence activities, as a matter of policy, we have made clear that the United States gathers foreign intelligence of the type gathered by all nations."

U.S. asks Ecuador to reject any asylum request from Snowden
Ben Rhodes, White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communications, said he had not seen the report and "would not comment on unauthorized disclosures of intelligence programs. The intelligence community would be the most appropriate to do that."

Rhodes added that "those are some of our closest intelligence partners, so it's worth noting that the Europeans work very closely with us. We have very close intelligence relationships with them."
The reports come as negotiations for a trans-Atlantic trade agreement between the United States and the European Union are set to start next month in Washington.

Father proposes deal for Snowden's voluntary return
Michael Hayden, a former director of the NSA and CIA, told "Face the Nation" on CBS on Sunday morning that he didn't know whether the report was true.

"I've been out of government for about five years, so I really don't know, and even if I did, I wouldn't confirm or deny it," he said. "But I think I can confirm a few things for you here this morning.

Number one, the United States does conduct espionage. Number two, our Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans' privacy, is not an international treaty. And number three, any European who wants to go out and rend their garments with regard to international espionage should look first and find out what their governments are doing."

Obama: Pay no attention to that man we can't capture

Snowden and his asylum bid
Snowden has revealed himself as the source of documents outlining a massive effort by the NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans.
Now Snowden, who faces espionage charges in the United States, is in Russia and seeking asylum from Ecuador.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden asked Ecuador "to please reject" the request for asylum, according to Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose organization facilitates the release of classified documents and is assisting Snowden's asylum bid, said he couldn't reveal details about the former NSA contractor's specific location or the status of his case. He criticized U.S. officials for pressuring Ecuador on the matter.

"Asylum is a right that we all have. It's an international right. The United States has been founded largely on accepting political refugees from other countries and has prospered by it. Mr. Snowden has that right," said Assange. "Ideally, he should be able to return to the United States.

Unfortunately, that's not the world that we live in, and hopefully another country will give him the justice that he deserves."

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro weighed in Sunday. In a letter to Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega published in Cuban state media, Castro praised Ecuador's president for standing up to U.S. threats over Snowden.

On Saturday night, Correa said the ball was in Russia's court.

"We didn't ask to be in this situation. Mr. Snowden has been in touch with Mr. Assange, who recommended he ask for asylum in Ecuador. In order to process this request, he needs to be in Ecuadorian territory," Correa said in an interview with Ecuador's Oromar TV on Saturday night. "At this point, the solution for Snowden's final destination is in the hands of the Russian authorities."
While Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Snowden is a free man and urged him to decide where he is going, quickly, a top Russian lawmaker said Sunday that Russia must not hand Snowden over to the United States.

"It's not a matter of Snowden's usefulness to Russia, it's a matter of principle," Alexei Pushkov -- who heads the international affairs committee at the Duma, the lower house of parliament -- said on Twitter.

"He is a political refugee, and handing him over is morally unacceptable," he said.

CNN's Barbara Starr, Miriam Falco, Kathryn Tancos, Alexander Hunter, Claudia Rebaza, Patrick Oppmann and Susanna Palk contributed to this report.

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The Roots of Our Slavery

In the Midwest, USA summer is just days away; gardening season is upon us.  The blossoming has begun and in a few weeks time the green grass will be merely a backdrop for a vibrant explosion of color.  We’ll be surrounded with flowers.

If you’ve done any yard work then you most likely know the most efficient way to keep weeds at bay.  You’ve got to dig deep and pull them out into the sun, exposing the root.  They’ll decompose and nourish the soil, in turn feeding the flowers and vegetables you’d like to keep.  It takes a bit of effort, yet it’s a permanent fix – at least for that particular weed.

It may look like Edward Snowden is one of the mightiest weed pullers.  In fact he is.  Yet if you listen to his words you’ll see he understands that the complete root has yet to be exposed; more work is required for that permanent fix.  A complete statement is here.  What shouted out from it all was this: “The great fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change. [People] won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things…” Edward Snowden

He is speaking about the deepest roots and they still grow quite comfortably inside each of us.  It is not possible for a weed to grow without the proper environment.  Slavery takes root because our very nature feeds it.  We cannot reach back far enough in our history to find absolute freedom.  Kingdoms, caste systems and royalty were a part of our earliest ancestry.  Who then are we?  Were we created for slavery?  With all the current information available, that answer appears to be yes.

Can we escape the slavery mindset?  Again, the answer is yes.  Yet, as Edward Snowden so wisely tells us, we have to get to the deepest part of this root and remove it.  That will take some very real effort by each one of us.

Data harvesting with our tools of communication and commerce would not be possible in an empowered society.  The idea that some “authority”, “program”, “bank” or “institution” knows your password and you are comfortable with that is ludicrous.  That password is the key to most of your public and private life.  Who besides you do you want in there?

The thinking that you must perform and obey is taught.  If subservience and servitude and conformity can be taught – then it can be forgotten.  You cannot forget to breathe.  You cannot forget to love.

Understand that you’ll have to dig deep and it’ll be hard.  You’ll have to refuse the shiny, easy, “in your face” tools that are feeding the slavery system; Google, twitter, face book, Skype.  The jolt you are feeling is not fatal; it is a trained reaction to resisting the norm.  It’ll pass.

There are alternatives.  They may not be as pretty or convenient – yet.  Consider the price you are in truth paying for cooperating inside the slavery system.  Your freedom is at stake.  In July 2013 Project XIII will be released.  There are numerous others here.

We cannot expect change if we are not willing to dig deep.  The world will change without firing a shot once we refuse to cooperate with it as it stands.  Sovereignty is equality – no one has any more rights or value than you do.  No one.

I’ve had 3 face book and 2 email accounts hacked and compromised.  I am no longer on Facebook, so please post this there if you are.  I’d like for my friends to see it and know where I’ve gone.  I will post all updates on the blog as I’ll be changing many of my locations (email, you tube, twitter) after doing some further research.  I’ll choose again. 

We are in a time of enormous possibility for growth and abundance.  The weeds have to be permanently removed so our growth is not impeded, limited or restricted.  Once removed, they will nourish our new growth.  We are here now to do this very thing. It’s time to find and pull some weeds and their inevitable roots.

As you catch yourself thinking like a slave – stop.  Think again.  Decide what price you are willing to pay and then proceed.  Know that you embody eternal essence.  There is no dollar amount that can contain your worth.  You are limitless.  You are priceless.  Act like the God that you are.

There is no more waiting.  You are the One.

~Sophia

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