<blockquote>'Beyond the detail of the operation of the programme, there is a larger, long-term anxiety, clearly expressed by the UK source: "If there was the wrong political change, it could be very dangerous. All you need is to have the wrong government in place. It is capable of abuse because there is no independent scrutiny." '
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MI5 feared GCHQ went 'too far' over phone and internet monitoring, June 22, 2013</blockquote>
<blockquote>'In his view, the NSA spying scandal clearly illustrates how subservient to corporate and state power the American media has become. “There would be headlines saying this is a bad joke” if the press wanted to be truly independent, Chomsky told Flanders.'
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Chomsky: Obama is ‘dedicated to increasing terrorism’ June 19, 2013</blockquote>
'..governments will use whatever technology is available to them to combat their primary enemy – which is their own population..'<blockquote>' "Governments should not have this capacity. But governments will use whatever technology is available to them to combat their primary enemy – which is their own population," he told the Guardian.
In his first public comment on the scandal that has enveloped the US, UK and other governments, as well as internet companies such as Google and Microsoft, Chomsky said he was not overly surprised technology and corporations were being used in this way.
"This is obviously something that should not be done. But it is a little difficult to be too surprised by it," he said. "They [governments and corporations] take whatever is available, and in no time it is being used against us, the population. Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich." '
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NSA surveillance is an attack on American citizens, says Noam Chomsky, 19 June 2013</blockquote>
'..radical violation of the Magna Carta.'<blockquote>'It's interesting to see the way in which due process is being reinterpreted by Obama's Justice Department in regards to the drone killings. Attorney General Eric Holder was asked why the administration was killing people without due process. Well, there was due process, he said, because they discuss it within the executive branch. King John in the 13th century would have loved that.
In two years, we're going to get to the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, and it'll be a funeral. Not just this, but every other aspect. Take rendition, for example. One of the provisions of Magna Carta is that you can't send someone across the seas for punishment. Much of the world participates in rendition now.
..
Bradley Manning is another case of radical violation of the Magna Carta. Here's a guy, an American citizen. He's been held in prison without trial for about a year and a half, a large part of it in solitary confinement, which is torture, and he's never going to get a civil trial. It'll be a military trial if he even gets one.
It's pretty remarkable to see that things like this are acceptable and not even worthy of comment. And Bradley Manning isn't even the worst case. Take, say, the first Guantanamo prisoner who went to what's called "trial" under Obama. Omar Khadr, his name is. Take a look at his history. He's a 15-year-old boy in his village in Afghanistan. Soldiers invade the village, so he shoots at them, trying to defend it. That makes him a terrorist. So he was sent to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, which is worse than Guantanamo. There's no Red Cross, no supervision, no nothing. He was there for a couple of years, and then sent to Guantanamo for another couple of years. Finally there came a chance to have a hearing before a military tribunal. This is mostly under Obama, for the record. His lawyers were told, You have two choices: You can plead guilty and you get another eight years in Guantanamo. Or you can plead innocent, in which case, you're here forever. So those are the choices his lawyers were given, practically in those words. So they told him to plead guilty. He's actually a Canadian citizen, and though they could have gotten him out anytime they wanted, Canada finally had the courage to step on the master's toes and asked for him to be released, though he remains imprisoned.
The point of this is that we accept it. There's virtually no protest over the fact that a 15-year-old child is treated this way.'
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Noam Chomsky: Obama's Attack on Civil Liberties Has Gone Way Beyond Imagination, April 26, 2013</blockquote>
Context 'When the free free press .. becomes equivalent to an "enemy of the United States" something very, very bad is happening.'<blockquote>
Why This Gigantic "Intelligence" Apparatus? June 18, 2013
'In the final chapter (just preceding a Postscript) Spencer concluded, "The function of Liberalism in the past was that of putting a limit to the powers of kings. The function of true Liberalism in the future will be that of putting a limit to the power of Parliaments." '
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From Spencer's 1884 to Orwell's 1984, June 20, 2013
We still can't quite believe what David Gregory asked Glenn Greenwald just now[:]
David Gregory To Glenn Greenwald: 'Why Shouldn't You Be Charged With A Crime?' June 23, 2013
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HuffPost Media, June 23, 2013</blockquote>