“An open, public, informed conversation on surveillance,” writes Philip Bump in The Atlantic Wire, “has been the president’s stated goal since shortly after the Edward Snowden leaks began” (“It Doesn’t Count as Outreach When Obama Talks About the NSA in Secret,” August 9). In a society governed by “rule of law” as portrayed by our,…

Estou chocado — chocado! — com o fato de a Coronela Denise Lind, juíza militar que sentenciou, em fevereiro, que Bradley Manning poderia ser julgado em função de diversas acusações mesmo depois de ter ficado preso antes de ser denunciado por mais do que cinco vezes o período mais longo total especificado nas regras das Forças…

Even as the U.S. security state becomes more closed, centralized and brittle in the face of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s leaks, civil society and the public are responding to the post-Snowden repression by becoming more dispersed and resilient. That’s how networks always respond to censorship and surveillance. Each new attempt at a file-sharing service, after…

Back in 2006 Ori Brafman and Rod Beckstrom, in The Starfish and the Spider, contrasted the way networks and hierarchies respond to outside attacks. Networks, when attacked, become even more decentralized and resilient. A good example is Napster and its successors, each of which has more closely approached an ideal peer-to-peer model, and further freed…

Lately, it hasn’t been clear what exactly the First Amendment protects. Between whistleblowers PFC Manning and Edward Snowden, one awaits a sentencing of potentially 90 years in prison, and the other finds himself trapped in a country where he doesn’t speak the language. Perhaps it’s time to find a better way to protect free speech….

C4SS Fellows Jason Lee Byas and Trevor Hultner discuss war, the anti-war movement, the civil war and left libertarianism with Smash Walls Radio.

O poder não é para ser conquistado, é para ser destruído. Ele é, por natureza, tirânico, seja exercido por rei, ditador ou presidente eleito. A única diferença da ‘democracia’ parlamentarista é o escravo moderno ter a ilusão de escolher o senhor a quem obedecerá. O voto torna-o cúmplice da tirania que o oprime. Ele não…

Major Ashlend Fein, US Army prosecutor in Bradley Manning’s court martial, caught my attention when he referred to Manning as an “anarchist” in closing arguments. As an anarchist, I’d be proud to share that label with Manning. But I’ve never heard from any reliable source that he considers himself one. Manning — if indeed guilty…

Dear President Obama, I possess neither Emile Zola’s writing talent nor his penchant for presidential flattery, but I think I may perhaps lay rightful claim to some semblance of his well-developed sense of moral outrage. I address you as “president” only as a concession to popular convention. In truth, your claimed authority is a fraud,…

As indústrias de internet nos Estados Unidos podem ter acabado de inadvertidamente ter recebido bilhete azul pelo complexo industrial militar. Agora compete à Europa oferecer alternativa para o estado abelhudo. Quase todos os principais gigantes da indústria de internet estão sediados nos Estados Unidos. Os motivos são históricos e econômicos. A tradição de forte empreendedorismo…

Everything was going well for the al-Assad regime as it basked in 40 years of rule — until what started as a peaceful demonstration against the Baathist dictatorship violently escalated into full-blown civil war. Another war in the Middle East? Uncle Sam wants you! US president Barack Obama can now green-light his administration’s plan to…

Power is not to be conquered, it is to be destroyed. It is tyrannical by nature, whether exercised by a king, a dictator or an elected president. The only difference with the parliamentarian ‘democracy’ is that the modern slave has the illusion of choosing the master he will obey. The vote has made him an…

I’m shocked — shocked! — that Colonel Denise Lind, the military judge who ruled in February that Bradley Manning could be tried on various charges even after being held prior to arraignment for more than five times the absolute longest time specified in the US Armed Forces’ “speedy trial” rules, has now also ruled that…

The Internet industries of America may just have inadvertently had their hats handed to them by the military industrial complex. Now it’s up to Europe to provide an alternative to the surveillance state. Almost all of the major Internet industry giants are based in the United States. The reasons for this are historical and economical. The tradition of strong…

Esperado e oficial – o estado de escuta global. O vazamento de Edward Snowden para The Guardian mostrou à escâncara o quanto os Estados Unidos foram longe em nome da “segurança nacional”. O que os vazamentos revelaram foi um governo fora dos limites de sua constituição, dedicado à coleta secreta de informações, e incrivelmente intrometido. Nos recintos do poder…

Expected and official – the global surveillance state. Edward Snowden’s leak to The Guardian blew wide open just how far the United States has gone in the name of “national security”. What has been revealed by the leaks is a government outside the limits of its constitution, dedicated to intelligence, and incredibly intrusive. With in…

On a very cold day in February more than 40,000 people came together in Washington DC from across the United States and Canada for the largest climate rally in US history — Forward on Climate. They urged the Obama administration to take climate science and our energy crisis seriously. They called attention to devastating storms,…

The recent reports of secret NSA surveillance reveal the important role the whistleblowers play in uncovering government wrongdoing. Edward Snowden is the latest whistleblower to face the Obama administration’s wrath for uncovering executive branch criminality. But another victim of the administration’s War on Whistleblowers is Private Bradley Manning. Manning  currently faces charges of “aiding the…

A White House petition asking US president Barack Obama to pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has passed the 100,000-signature mark, theoretically compelling a response from the Obama administration (I say “theoretically” because the finish line on these petitions has been moved before). My own sympathies naturally lie with Snowden, and the petitioners’ hearts are presumably…

É importante, ao ouvirmos os formadores oficiais de opinião na mídia, perguntarmo-nos o que eles realmente querem dizer com as palavras que usam. Como Orwell destacou em “A Política e a Língua Inglesa,” aqueles no poder usam a linguagem para obscurecer o significado, mais amiúde do que para torná-lo inteligível. Bom exemplo é a recorrência…