State-loyal journalists seem to believe in a duty to politely submit to bullying tactics from political officials

'Sending a message': what the US and UK are attempting to do 

By Glenn Greenwald 
The Guardian 
August 21, 2013

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger on Monday night disclosed the remarkable news that UK authorities, several weeks ago, threatened the Guardian UK with prior restraint if they did not destroy all of their materials provided by Edward Snowden, and then sent agents to the basement of the paper's offices to oversee the physical destruction of hard drives. The Guardian has more details on that episode today, and MSNBC's Chris Hayes interviewed the Guardian's editor-in-chief about itlast night. 

As Rusbridger explains, this behavior was as inane as it was thuggish: since this is 2013, not 1958, destroying one set of a newspaper's documents doesn't destroy them all, and since the Guardian has multiple people around the world with copies, they achieved nothing but making themselves look incompetently oppressive.

But conveying a thuggish message of intimidation is exactly what the UK and their superiors in the US national security state are attempting to accomplish with virtually everything they are now doing in this matter. 

On Monday night, Reuters' Mark Hosenball reported the following about the 9-hour detention of my partner under a terrorism law, all with the advanced knowledge of the White House:

One US security official told Reuters that one of the main purposes of the British government's detention and questioning of Miranda was to send a message to recipients of Snowden's materials, including the Guardian, that the British government was serious about trying to shut down the leaks."

I want to make one primary point about that. On Monday, Reuters did the same thing to me as they did last month: namely, they again wildly distorted comments I made in an interview - speaking in Portuguese, at 5:00 am at the Rio airport, waiting for my partner to come home after finally being released - to manufacture the sensationalizing headline that I was "threatening" the UK government with "revenge" journalism. That wasn't remotely what I said or did, as I explained last night in a CNN interview (see Part 2).

But vowing to report on the nefarious secret spying activities of a large government - which is what I did - is called "journalism", not "revenge". 

As the Washington Post headline to Andrea Peterson's column on Monday explained: "No, Glenn Greenwald didn't 'vow vengeance.' He said he was going to do his job." She added:

"Greenwald's point seems to have been that he was determined not to be scared off by intimidation. Greenwald and the Guardian have already been publishing documents outlining surveillance programs in Britain, and Greenwald has long declared his intention to continue publishing documents. By doing so, Greenwald isn't taking 'vengeance.' He's just doing his job."

But here's the most important point: the US and the UK governments go around the world threatening people all the time. It's their modus operandi. They imprison whistleblowers. They try to criminalize journalism. They threatened the Guardian with prior restraint and then forced the paper to physically smash their hard drives in a basement. 

They detained my partner under a terrorism law, repeatedly threatened to arrest him, and forced him to give them his passwords to all sorts of invasive personal information - behavior that even one of the authors of that terrorism law says is illegal, which the Committee for the Protection of Journalists said yesterday is just "the latest example in a disturbing record of official harassment of the Guardian over its coverage of the Snowden leaks", and which Human Rights Watch says was "intended to intimidate Greenwald and other journalists who report on surveillance abuses." 

And that's just their recent behavior with regard to press freedoms: it's to say nothing of all the invasions, bombings, renderings, torture and secrecy abuses for which that bullying, vengeful duo is responsible over the last decade.

But the minute anyone refuses to meekly submit to that, or stands up to it, hordes of authoritarians - led by state-loyal journalists - immediately start objecting: how dare you raise your voice to the empire? 

How dare you not politely curtsey to the Queen and thank the UK government for what they have done. The US and UK governments are apparently entitled to run around and try to bully and intimidate anyone, including journalists - "to send a message to recipients of Snowden's materials, including the Guardian", as Reuters put it - but nobody is allowed to send a message back to them. That's a double standard that nobody should accept.

If the goal of the UK in detaining my partner was - as it now claims - to protect the public from terrorism by taking documents they suspected he had (and why would they have suspected that?), that would have taken 9 minutes, not 9 hours. 

Identically, the UK knew full well that forcing the Guardian UK to destroy its hard drives would accomplish nothing in terms of stopping the reporting: as the Guardian told them, there are multiple other copies around the world. The sole purpose of all of that, manifestly, is to intimidate. 

As the ACLU of Massachusetts put it:

The real vengeance we are seeing right now is not coming from Glenn Greenwald; it is coming from the state."

But for state-loyal journalists, protesting thuggish and aggressive behavior from the state is out of the question. It's only when aggressive challenges come from those who are bringing transparency and accountability to the state do they get upset and take notice. As Digbywrote last night: "many elite journalists seem to be joining the government repression of the free press instead of being defiant and protecting their own prerogatives." 

That's because they believe in subservient journalism, not adversarial journalism. I only believe in the latter.

Related matters

The Wall Street Journal reported last night that NSA surveillance has a far greater reach than previously imagined - including 75% of domestic traffic - and included this excellent graphic with it about how that is done, taken in part from the Snowden materials we have been reporting.

Here is David Miranda explaining to the BBC what it's like to be forced to turn over your passwords to security agents who have detained you under a terrorism law, so they can troll through your emails and Facebook account and Skype program while you are detained. Just watch that short video and judge for yourself.

Finally, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow had an excellent commentary on Monday about all of this that really captures the heart of it all:

'Journalism is not terrorism'

Rachel Maddow excoriates U.S. and British authorities for harassing journalists like Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda, and squandering U.S. credibility on questions of government overreach.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Source:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/21/sending-message-miranda-gchq-nsa
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Democracy Now Interview

Owner of Snowden’s Email Service on Why He Closed Lavabit Rather Than Comply With Gov’t 

By Amy Goodman 
Democracy Now 
August 13, 2013 

Lavabit, an encrypted email service believed to have been used by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, has abruptly shut down. The move came amidst a legal fight that appeared to involve U.S. government attempts to win access to customer information. In a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we are joined by Lavabit owner Ladar Levison and his lawyer, Jesse Binnall. "Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it. I would like to, believe me," Levison says. "I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore." 

In a message to his customers last week, Levison said: "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit." Levison said he was barred from discussing the events over the past six weeks that led to his decision. Soon after, another secure email provider called Silent Circle also announced it was shutting down. (Related: Watch our continued discussion with Levison and Nicholas Merrill, who took FBI to court after receiving a national security letter.)

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AARON MATÉ: We turn now to the news an encrypted email service believed to have been used by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has abruptly shut down. The move came amidst a legal fight that appeared to involve U.S. government attempts to win access to customer information.

The owner of Lavabit, Ladar Levison, wrote a message online saying, quote, "I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit." Ladar Levison said he was barred from discussing the events over the past six weeks that led to his decision.

He went on to write, quote, "This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States."

Later on Thursday, another secure email provider called Silent Circle also announced it was shutting down.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, in a Democracy Now! broadcast exclusive, we go to Washington, D.C., where we’re joined by Ladar Levison, founder, owner and operator of Lavabit. We’re also joined by his lawyer, Jesse Binnall.

We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Ladar Levison, let’s begin with you. Explain the decision you made.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, well, I’ve—thank you, Amy. I’ve compared the decision to that of, you know, putting a beloved pet to sleep, you know, faced with the choice of watching it suffer or putting it to sleep quietly. It was a very difficult decision. But I felt that in the end I had to pick between the lesser of two evils and that shutting down the service, if it was no longer secure, was the better option. It was, in effect, the lesser of the two evils.

AMY GOODMAN: What are you facing? When you say "the lesser of two evils," what was the other choice?

LADAR LEVISON: Unfortunately, I can’t talk about that. I would like to, believe me. I think if the American public knew what our government was doing, they wouldn’t be allowed to do it anymore, which is why I’m here in D.C. today speaking to you. My hope is that, you know, the media can uncover what’s going on, without my assistance, and, you know, sort of pressure both Congress and our efforts through the court system to, in effect, put a cap on what it is the government is entitled to in terms of our private communications.

AARON MATÉ: For those who aren’t familiar with what encrypted email is, can you walk us through that and talk about what your service provided?

LADAR LEVISON: Certainly. You know, I’ve always liked to say my service was by geeks, for geeks. It’s grown up over the last 10 years, it’s sort of settled itself into serving those that are very privacy-conscious and security-focused. We offered secure access via high-grade encryption. And at least for our paid users, not for our free accounts—I think that’s an important distinction—we offered secure storage, where incoming emails were stored in such a way that they could only be accessed with the user’s password, so that, you know, even myself couldn’t retrieve those emails. And that’s what we meant by encrypted email. That’s a term that’s sort of been thrown around because there are so many different standards for encryption, but in our case it was encrypted in secure storage, because, as a third party, you know, I didn’t want to be put in a situation where I had to turn over private information. I just didn’t have it. I didn’t have access to it. And that was sort of—may have been the situation that I was facing. You know, obviously, I can’t speak to the details of any specific case, but—I’ll just leave it at that.

AMY GOODMAN: NSA leaker Edward Snowden recently described your decision to shut down Lavabit as, quote, "inspiring." He told The Guardian's Glenn Greenwald, quote, "America cannot succeed as a country where individuals like Mr. Levison have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful. Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren't fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are. The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with, but one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred Lavabits could not."

Snowden went on to say, quote, "When Congress returns to session in September, let us take note of whether the internet industry’s statements and lobbyists—which were invisible in the lead-up to the Conyers-Amash vote—emerge on the side of the Free Internet or the NSA and its Intelligence Committees in Congress."

Ladar, you were the service provider for Edward Snowden?

LADAR LEVISON: I believe that’s correct. Obviously, I didn’t know him personally, but it’s been widely reported, and there was an email account bearing his name on my system, as I’ve been made well aware of recently.

AMY GOODMAN: Glenn Greenwald also wrote, "What is particularly creepy about the Lavabit self-shutdown is that the company is gagged by law even from discussing the legal challenges it has mounted and the court proceeding it has engaged. In other words, the American owner of the company believes his Constitutional rights and those of his customers are being violated by the US Government, but he is not allowed to talk about it."

Greenwald goes on to write, quote, "Just as is true for people who receive National Security Letters under the Patriot Act, Lavabit has been told [that] they would face serious criminal sanctions if they publicly discuss what is being done to their company."

Ladar Levison, why did you start Lavabit?

LADAR LEVISON: Well, just to add one thing to Greenwald’s comments, I mean, there’s information that I can’t even share with my lawyer, let alone with the American public. So if we’re talking about secrecy, you know, it’s really been taken to the extreme. And I think it’s really being used by the current administration to cover up tactics that they may be ashamed of.

But just to answer your question, why did I start Lavabit? It was right out of college. I was sitting around with a group of my friends. I owned the domain name nerdshack.com, and we thought it would be cool to offer, you know, a free private email with a large quota, just like Gmail, and we sort of built the service along those lines. And as I was designing and developing the custom platform, it was right around when the PATRIOT Act came out. And that’s really what colored my opinion and my philosophy, and why I chose to take the extra effort and build in the secure storage features and sort of focus on the privacy niche and the security focus niche. And it’s really grown up from there. We’ve seen a lot of demand for, you know, people who want email but don’t necessarily want it lumped in and profiled along with their searches or their browsing history or any of their other Internet activities. And that’s really where we’ve focused and really how we’ve grown over the years, up to when I shut down 410,000 registered users.

AARON MATÉ: And, Ladar, during this time, you’ve complied with other government subpoenas. Is that correct?

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, we’ve probably had at least two dozen subpoenas over the last 10 years, from local sheriffs’ offices all the way up to federal courts. And obviously I can’t speak to any particular one, but we’ve always complied with them. I think it’s important to note that, you know, I’ve always complied with the law. It’s just in this particular case I felt that complying with the law—

JESSE BINNALL: And we do have to be careful at this point.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, I—

JESSE BINNALL: But I think he can speak philosophically about the—his philosophy behind Lavabit and why it would lead to his decision to shut down.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, I have—

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Jesse Binnall, by the way. And, Jesse, how difficult is this for Ladar Levison, what he can say, what he can’t say? How high are the stakes here?

JESSE BINNALL: The stakes are very high. It’s a very unfortunate situation that, as Americans, we really are not supposed to have to worry about. But Ladar is in a situation where he has to watch every word he says when he’s talking to the press, for fear of being imprisoned. And we can’t even talk about what the legal requirements are that make it so he has to watch his words. But the simple fact is, I’m really here with him only because there are some very fine lines that he can’t cross, for fear of being dragged away in handcuffs. And that’s pretty much the exact fears that led the founders to give us the First Amendment in the first place. So it’s high stakes.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah.

AARON MATÉ: And, Ladar, in your letter, you write that "A favorable decision would allow me to resurrect Lavabit as an American company." So, are you suggesting perhaps that you would consider moving it abroad?

LADAR LEVISON: I don’t think I can continue to run Lavabit abroad as an American citizen. I would have to move abroad, effectively, to administer the service. As an American citizen, I’m still subject to the laws and jurisdiction of the United States, particularly as long as I continue to live here. You know, that’s why I have a lot of respect for Snowden, because he gave up his entire life, the life that he’s known his entire life, so that he could speak out. I haven’t gotten to that point. I still hope that it’s possible to run a private service, private cloud data service, here in the United States without necessarily being forced to conduct surveillance on your users by the American government.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you say, Ladar, if you’ve received a national security letter?

LADAR LEVISON: No.

JESSE BINNALL: Unfortunately, he can’t.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to talk about that in a minute, the overall issue of what these are, for listeners and viewers who are not familiar with this. But, Ladar Levison, soon after you pulled the plug on Lavabit, another encrypted email provider called Silent Circle also shut down. Mike Janke, Silent Circle’s CEO and co-founder, said, quote, "There was no 12-hour heads up. If we announced it, it would have given authorities time to file a national security letter. We decided to destroy it before we were asked to turn (information) over. We had to do scorched earth." Ladar, your response?

LADAR LEVISON: I can certainly understand his position. If the government had learned that I was shutting my service down—can I say that?

JESSE BINNALL: Well, I think it’s best to kind of avoid that topic, unfortunately. But I think it is fair to say that Silent Circle was probably in a very different situation than Lavabit was, and which is probably why they took the steps that they did, which I think were admirable.

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah. But I will say that I don’t think I had a choice but to shut it down without notice. I felt that was my only option. And I’ll have to leave it to your listeners to understand why. But it’s important to note that, you know, Lavabit wasn’t the first service provider to receive a government request, and we’re not the first service provider to fight it. We’re just the first service provider to take a different approach. And it could very well be because of our size that we have that option. We’re wholly focused on secure email. Without it, we have no business. You take a much larger provider with a greater number of employees, and shutting down a major section of their company, when they have to answer to shareholders, may not be a viable option.

AMY GOODMAN: Why have you decided to speak out today, Ladar?

LADAR LEVISON: Because my biggest fear when I shut down the service was that no good would come of it. And I’m hoping that by speaking out, I can prompt, hopefully, Congress to act and change the laws that put me in this circumstance to begin with. I know that’s a little ironic, considering I can’t speak about the specific laws that put me in this position, but, you know, there’s a real need in this country to establish what the rights are of our cloud providers. And unless we take actions to ensure that, you know, we can continue to operate secure, private services, I think we’re going to lose a lot of business over the next few years. And I think all the major providers, not just Lavabit, have gone on record to say the same.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think people should use email?

LADAR LEVISON: Yeah, I think it’s a great way to communicate. I think we’re entering a world where we have any number of ways of communicating, from postal mail to Twitter, to text messaging, to Facebook, to instant messenger, to email, to telephone, to video chat. They all kind of blend together. They all sort of fit their own niche, their own purpose. And I think email still has a very important role to play in communication between people.

AMY GOODMAN: Should we just assume it’s all being read?

LADAR LEVISON: I think you should assume any communication that is electronic is being monitored.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to our discussion. And we’ll be joined by a service provider who did get a national security letter and is now able to talk about it. We’ve been speaking with Ladar Levison, Lavabit owner, who just shut down the—as a service provider, provided services to Edward Snowden; and Jesse Binnall, his lawyer. We’ll be back in a minute.

---

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.

 Source:
 http://www.democracynow.org/2013/8/13/exclusive_owner_of_snowdens_email_service
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JULIAN ASSANGE TALKS TO VICE ABOUT BRADLEY MANNING AND POLITICAL PAYBACK

In the buildup to Julian Assange’s run for the Australian senate, VICE was invited to the Ecuadorian embassy in London for a rare in-person interview. Our visit coincided with the conviction of Bradley Manning, the young US Army private whose alleged espionage put WikiLeaks on the map. Assange spoke to us about political payback, his plans for freeing the most famous whistle-blower in history, and why the world needs a WikiLeaks political party.

More about Bradley Manning and Julian Assange:

Bradley Manning Was Convicted of Espionage, and We Protested at the White House

The Torture of Bradley Manning

Julian Assange Isn't WikiLeaks

Hosted by Royce Akers

Source:
http://www.vice.com/vice-news/julian-assange-talks-to-vice-about-bradley-manning-and-political-payback
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An interview with George Mitchell

The industry can no longer simply focus on the benefits of shale gas

The Economist
Schumpeter
Aug 1st 2013

George Mitchell, the pioneer of extracting shale gas economically, who died on July 26th, rarely talked to the press. In May 2012

The Economist conducted a written interview with him:

Fracking is an old technique, as is horizontal drilling. Geologists had long been aware of the huge reserves of shale gas. What made you decide that you could use the former to tap the latter? Had others before you tried and failed to make fracking and horizontal drilling economically viable?

Big oil companies knew the upside potential of shale gas, and many were working to economically extract the gas from the shale without much success. Many people were trying to make fracking work better, but they weren’t able to get the cells to give up the gas.

We knew there was gas in some of these shale fields. We would measure the volume of gas in the reservoir and it was very high methane (25-40% methane). You could get to the methane, but you couldn’t get it to leave the cells until you fractured it, and that was the major breakthrough.

Normally the gas is in the fracture zones or in the substrate and not in the cells. The gas in these shale fields is located in the cells, and we had to figure out how to get it to break down and get it to come into the atmosphere. So getting it to flow out of the cells is what really was the hard part and what we were trying to do.

It’s a big breakthrough. It really is. It made some of the big companies look foolish. Why didn’t they discover this? I’m not sure why they didn’t, in fact. They just didn’t give it enough effort. We all knew the gas was in the cells, sometimes up to 40% methane, but we couldn’t get it to flow. The other companies were all working on shale gas trying to figure it out, but they weren’t working directly on how to separate the gas from the cells.

I understand that it took a lot of time and money to perfect the techniques. How long roughly did you persist? Did you ever consider giving up?

We invested approximately $6m over a ten-year period in the 1980s and 1990s to make fracturing an economically viable process. I never considered giving up, even when everyone was saying, “George, you’re wasting your money.”

What were the biggest challenges and most important breakthroughs? Was there a eureka moment or did progress come in small incremental steps?

There were no eureka moments; progress came in small, incremental steps. The biggest challenge was to get the gas, which was located in the cells, to flow. We were able to get small samples, but flow was critical. Finally getting the gas to flow from the cells was our biggest breakthrough. We experimented with a number of different processes over the years, each time making incremental progress.

When did it become apparent that your technology would turn American gas markets upside down? Did you always know what was in prospect or did the incredible impact that shale gas promises come as a surprise.

It’s not a surprise that our fracking technology has helped turn American gas markets upside down. We were confident in its upside potential. What’s surprising is how quickly it’s happening. In 2000, shale gas represented just 1% of American natural gas supplies. Today, it is 30% and rising.

How much of a collective effort was it? How much, if at all, did other firms or the government contribute to your innovations?

Although the federal government did research about fracking, it was routine, and certainly not collaborative. Our research and development efforts and technology innovations tended to be proprietary—and it was mainly our team, with other firms contributing very little.

Are the concerns of environmentalists over fracking justified? What can the industry do to reassure the public that shale gas extraction techniques are safe?

As a concerned businessman and philanthropist, I have come to understand that the natural gas industry can no longer simply focus on the benefits of shale gas while failing to address its challenges. We know that there are significant impacts on air quality, water consumption, water contamination, and local communities. 

We need to ensure that the vast renewable resources in the United States are also part of the clean energy future, especially since natural gas and renewables are such great partners to jointly fuel our power production. Energy efficiency is also a critical part of the overall energy strategy that our nation needs to adopt.

Some in the industry have been reluctant to support common-sense regulation, and that needs to change.

Industry leaders, representing companies of all sizes, need to rally behind solutions based on hard science and technological innovation. To find these solutions, industry leaders must lend their best engineers and scientists to a national campaign, teaming up with counterparts from government, academia, and the environmental community, to develop strong state‐by‐state regulations and effective solutions to the environmental challenges of shale gas.

We need to replace all-or-nothing arguments with a reasoned discussion that identifies a new path forward.

Most rules should be designed at the state level, starting with the 14 states that possess 85% of U.S. onshore natural gas reserves. Best regulatory practices should be shared among state regulators and similar best management practices should be shared among health, safety, and environmental affairs professionals.

A strong federal role is also necessary, starting with the Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules calling for more controls over the most dangerous air pollution associated with hydraulic fracturing.

The rules will also mitigate methane leakage during the drilling process. This is critical, since methane is a powerful greenhouse gas pollutant, and uncontrolled leakages call into question whether natural gas is cleaner than coal from a global climate perspective.

Why did “big oil” take so long to join in the shale gas bonanza?

That’s a question that has you, me, and most everyone else stumped.

How do you respond to the sceptics who maintain that the potential for shale gas is overhyped and that rapid depletion rates and the seeming contraction of sweet spots in big shale fields mean that the gas may not flow as rapidly as predicted?

As I noted earlier, in the year 2000, shale gas represented just 1% of American natural gas supplies. Today, it’s 30% and rising. We’ll see where it goes.

How much personal pride to you take in developing a technique that have changed American and, potentially, global gas markets for good.

The hydraulic fracturing process is a critical technology, not only to this country, but also to the world.

It’s amazing to me how quickly the technology caught fire—not only in this country but also around the world. I take pride that hydraulic fracturing technology was developed by independents, and I take pride in the part I played in making this happen.

We could have patented our proprietary process and made exponentially more money. I already had enough money from the sale of Mitchell Energy & Development Corp. to Devon Energy, and I was more motivated to introduce this technology into the public domain—make it public record—so that the world could benefit from natural gas as an important energy and fuel source.

A lot of the people who worked with me to make this happen went on to work with other companies—both large and small oil and gas companies—so it has revolutionized independents as well.

Many Chinese companies and major American independents are leading this movement and making huge investments in the hydraulic fracturing technology, and the big guys are sleeping.

Read Schumpeter's column on George Mitchell here.

Source:
http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2013/08/interview-george-mitchell
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