Father of slain Boston bombing witness releases letter to Obama accusing FBI of murder

By Nick Barrickman and Barry Grey, wsws.org

Ibragim Todashev’s father seeking (futilely) justice.

Abdulbaki Todashev, the father of slain Boston Marathon bombing witness Ibragim Todashev, released an open letter to President Obama last week pleading for justice and asking the president to ensure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) not interfere with his investigation into the killing.

In the letter, the elder Todashev accused the FBI of murdering his son in order to prevent him from testifying in court.

Ibragim Todashev, 27, was shot to death at his Orlando, Florida apartment last May by FBI agents who were interrogating him about his ties to Tamerlan Tsarnaev. An ethnic Chechen like Todashev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev is alleged to have carried out the April 15, 2013 Boston Marathon bombings along with his younger brother Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Three people were killed and another 264 injured in the terrorist bombings.

Young Todashev: Interrogated with terminal prejudice. Chalk up one more death to a lawless empire.

Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed by police on April 19. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured and faces a possible death sentence on charges of using weapons of mass destruction and malicious destruction of property resulting in death.

[pullquote]_{[As usual, the filthy and complicit] establishment media have imposed a virtual wall of silence on the extraordinary death of Todashev, which has continued in relation to the open letter to Obama from his father.}[/pullquote]

The death of Ibragim Todashev remains unexplained more than seven months after the event. Initially, it was alleged that Todashev had lunged at officials, wielding a knife, during the interrogation, upon implicating himself and Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a 2011 triple killing in Waltham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston, where the two had been acquainted. Government officials subsequently acknowledged that Todashev had not been armed when he was fatally shot.

Authorities have refused to release the name of the FBI agent who shot and killed the unarmed Todashev at point-blank range, and the FBI has blocked the release of the autopsy report. No charges have been filed and no one has been arrested for what was evidently a state murder.

The establishment media have imposed a virtual wall of silence on the extraordinary death of Todashev, which has continued in relation to the open letter to Obama from his father.

In the letter, Abdulbaki wrote: “My reaching out to you is dictated by the calling of my soul and the unsubsiding pain of the father who has lost his guiltless son to a violent shooting death…

Apparently he was shot in the head and the back as well as in the chest. The whole thing remains intentionally murky.

“Did my son know that he had the right to remain silent or did he have rights at all, including the right to live? Being a citizen of another country he might not be aware of the laws as he was only 27 years old and wanted to live so much. No, they left no chances for him, inflicting 13 gunshot wounds and multiple hematomas on his body…

“They did it deliberately so that he can never speak and never take part in court hearings. They put pressure on my son’s friends to prevent them from coming to the court and speaking the truth.”

The letter concluded: “I rely on you, Mr. President, and hope that the prosecutor’s office and the court do not let the agencies conducting internal investigation on this case prevent the truth from coming to light so that at least some part of our grief, caused by the murder of our son, is relieved, and that the murderers stand trial instead of sit in their desk chairs.”

Included with the letter were postmortem photographs of Ibragim Todashev, showing in graphic detail the numerous bullet wounds inflicted to his head and torso.

When asked by reporters about the administration’s plans to respond, National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlyn Hayden said that “[W]e have just received Mr. Todashev’s letter and will be reviewing it to determine the appropriate follow-up.” Hayden referred all further questions to the FBI.

Abdulbaki Todashev initially ventured to the US in the immediate aftermath of his son’s killing with the intention of uncovering the reasons for the death, announcing his own private investigation in August. This was meant to coincide with an investigation being conducted by the FBI. Nothing has come of reported official investigations, with authorities at both the federal and state level repeatedly stonewalling attempts to obtain information.

Instead, authorities have taken to intimidating the family and friends of those associated with Todashev. In October, the former live-in girlfriend of Todashev, Tatiana Gruzdeva, was deported to her native Moldova after she gave an interview to Boston Magazine questioning the FBI’s killing of her fiancée. Another friend of Todashev was taken into custody while being denied access to an attorney.

The murder of Todashev and the subsequent government-media cover-up raise the very real possibility that the young man was killed because he was in a position to reveal facts about Tamerlan Tsarnaev that would be highly embarrassing to the US government and various intelligence and police agencies. Todashev may have had information about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s links to Islamist separatist terrorists in the Russian Caucasus as well as his relations with the FBI and other US state agencies.

No explanation has been given for the fact that the FBI and CIA had warnings, well in advance of the Boston bombings, of Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s radical Islamist leanings, having been alerted by Russian authorities in 2011 as well as, according to some reports, by Saudi officials. The FBI says it conducted an investigation of Tsarnaev, questioning him and other family members, and gave him a clean bill of health.

The elder Tsarnaev brother was taken off a federal watch list in 2012 and permitted to travel to Dagestan, neighboring Chechnya, where he reportedly established links to radical Islamist separatist movements. The Tsarnaev family maintained links to Chechen rebels and the US government through the Congress of Chechen International Organizations, set up by Ruslan Tsarni, the uncle of Tamerlan and Dhzokhar. That outfit was run from the suburban Washington DC home of Graham Fuller, former vice-chairman of the US National Security Council. (See: “Who is Ruslan Tsarni”).

Last May, the Boston police commissioner and a top Massachusetts Homeland Security official told a congressional panel that local and state police were never informed by the FBI or the federal Homeland Security Department, in advance of the Boston Marathon, an international event that draws tens of thousands of people to downtown Boston, of warnings about Tamerlan Tsarnaev or the investigation carried out by the FBI. This was despite the presence of state and local police officials on a joint terrorism task force for the region that included the FBI, Homeland Security and other federal agencies.

The Boston Marathon bombings were seized upon by the federal government to impose an unprecedented lockdown of Boston and its environs, during which the streets were occupied by heavily armed troops and police and patrolled by machine gun-mounted armored vehicles, while military helicopters flew overhead. Residents were ordered to say indoors and warrantless house-to-house police searches were conducted throughout entire neighborhoods.

The terror attack, carried out by people who had been closely monitored by the FBI and were known to the CIA, became the occasion for imposing de facto martial law and testing out plans previously drawn up to impose dictatorial control over major American cities.

The authors also recommend:

The state killing of Ibragim Todashev
[3 June 2013]

Snowden reveals massive National Security Agency hacking unit

By Robert Stevens, wsws.org

The US National Security Agency (NSA) runs an Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO), described by Germany’s Der Spiegel as the “NSA’s top operative unit—something like a squad of plumbers that can be called in when normal access to a target is blocked.”

A report published Sunday based on documents released by whistleblower Edward Snowden states that the TAO operates as a vast hacking unit on behalf of the US government.

Based in San Antonio, Texas and formed in 1997, the TAO, “are involved in many sensitive operations conducted by American intelligence agencies. TAO’s area of operations ranges from counterterrorism to cyber attacks to traditional espionage. The documents reveal just how diversified the tools at TAO’s disposal have become—and also how it exploits the technical weaknesses of the IT industry, from Microsoft to Cisco and Huawei, to carry out its discreet and efficient attacks.”

In 2008, the TAO unit had 60 specialists the magazine said—a number set to escalate to 270 by 2015. The TAO’s duties according to the NSA are based on “Getting the ungettable.”

A document seen by Der Spiegel cites a former head of the TAO who comments that it had collected “some of the most significant intelligence our country has ever seen” and has “access to our very hardest targets.”

The remit of the TAO is enormous, with the former head stating it “needs to continue to grow and must lay the foundation for integrated Computer Network Operations.”

In a statement that reveals how the mass surveillance operations of the NSA are intimately tied to the drive by US imperialism to dominate its rivals internationally, the former head states that the TAO must “support Computer Network Attacks as an integrated part of military operations.”

Outlining its future role, she said the TAO would have to acquire “pervasive, persistent access on the global network.”

Der Spiegel reports that this is precisely what has been achieved. “During the middle part of the last decade, the special unit succeeded in gaining access to 258 targets in 89 countries—nearly everywhere in the world,” Der Spiegelnotes. “In 2010, it conducted 279 operations worldwide.”

Through their hacking operations the TAO has “directly accessed the protected networks of democratically-elected leaders of countries” states DerSpiegel. It notes in passing, “Workers at NSA’s target selection office…had Angela Merkel in its sights in 2002 before she became [German] chancellor…”

Der Spiegel states that the TAO “infiltrated networks of European telecommunications companies and gained access to and read mails sent over Blackberry’s BES email servers, which until then were believed to be securely encrypted.”

The global reach of the TOA is vast, with Der Spiegel reporting that the “San Antonio office handles attacks against targets in the Middle East, Cuba, Venezuela and Colombia, not to mention Mexico, just 200 kilometers (124 miles) away, where the government has fallen into the NSA’s crosshairs.”

One of the presentation slides states that a critical TAO goal is to “subvert endpoint devices.” These include the many main devices that make up modern communication technologies including “servers, workstations, firewalls, routers, handsets, phone switches, SCADA systems, etc.”

Der Spiegel explains, “SCADAs are industrial control systems used in factories, as well as in power plants” and notes that the “most well-known and notorious use of this type of attack was the development of Stuxnet, the computer worm whose existence was discovered in June 2010. The virus was developed jointly by American and Israeli intelligence agencies to sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, and successfully so.”

The TAO has developed various means to gain access to the PCs of Internet users. One slide reveals that TAO is able to gain “passive access” to a machine via Microsoft’s automated PC crash reports. Der Spiegel notes, “even this passive access to error messages provides valuable insights into problems with a targeted person’s computer and, thus, information on security holes that might be exploitable for planting malware or spyware on the unwitting victim’s computer.”

TAO operatives even created an internal graphic, for their own amusement, which replaced Microsoft’s original error message with one reading, “This information may be intercepted by a foreign sigint system to gather detailed information and better exploit your machine.”

Sigint is the acronym for “signals intelligence”, meaning the gathering of intelligence by interception of signals.

Another document reveals that among the TAO’s “most productive operations” is the direct interception of new PCs and other computer accessories ordered by individuals targeted by the NSA.

In a process named “interdiction”, the goods are rerouted from the supplier to one of the TAO’s secret workshops. Der Spiegel states that TAO agents then “carefully open the package in order to load malware onto the electronics, or even install hardware components that can provide backdoor access for the intelligence agencies. All subsequent steps can then be conducted from the comfort of a remote computer.”

Interdiction allows the TAO to exploit networks “around the world,” said the document.

The information on the TAO was published just days after Edward Snowden broadcast an “alternative” Christmas Day television message for Britain’s Channel 4, to contrast with that given by the Queen. Speaking from his forced exile in Moscow, Snowden said the world’s population have recently “learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do.”

He added that “the conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together, we can find a better balance.”

His message followed an interview with the Washington Post December 24 in which he said of the revelations he has made available, “For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished… Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”

Snowden has exposed a state intelligence apparatus of genuine totalitarian dimensions, which spies on the entire world’s population and his courage and dedication to the preservation of basic democratic rights are admirable. However, if he believes that “a better balance” can now be found, he is mistaken.

Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency, said Sunday that he had thought of Snowden as a “defector,” but is now “drifting in the direction of perhaps more harsh language…such as ‘traitor.’ I think there’s an English word that describes selling American secrets to another government, and I do think it’s treason.”

Earlier this month John Bolton, US ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration, said, “My view is that Snowden committed treason, he ought to be convicted of that, and then he ought to swing from a tall oak tree.”

Similarly, former CIA director James Woolsey declared that Snowden “should be prosecuted for treason. If convicted by a jury of his peers, he should be hanged by his neck until he is dead.”

The Other Police State

Private Cops vs. the Public Good

by DAVID ROSEN

On November 20^th, the Center for Corporate Policy, a Washington, DC, good-government group, issued a revealing study, “Spooky Business: A New Report on Corporate Espionage Against Non-profits.” Written by Gary Ruskin, it confirms one’s worst suspicions about the ever-expanding two-headed U.S. security state.

One “head” of this apparatus consists of the formal law-enforcement, security juggernaut. It includes the vast network of federal, state and local entities that are duly, “legally,” constituted to maintain law and order. It maintains state power. (Which maintains corporate power, or the plutocracy.)

The second “head” consists of a parallel “police” force, local and national corporate entities that use legal — and often questionable — practices to undermine democracy, most notably a citizen’s right to object to what s/he perceives as an unjust business practice. It maintains corporate power.

Together, the public-state and private-corporate security system is gaining ever-greater control over the lives of ordinary Americans. They constitute the postmodern, 21^st century policing apparatus.

The revolving-door thesis acknowledges the link between government employees and private corporations. Pres. Eisenhower warned against it in his legendary 1961 Farewell Address in which he publically identified the military-industrial complex. In the last half-century, the revolving door has become an unquestioned, acceptable career path for upwardly mobile bureaucrats. So, few were surprised when Timothy Geithner, former Sec. of the Treasury and head of the New York Fed, and one of those who orchestrated the banking plunder known as the Great Recession, took a job as president and managing director of Warburg Pincus, a leading private equity firm.

“Spooky Business” shows that many leading U.S. corporations are retaining the services of former federal security personnel to wage campaigns to subvert Constitutionally protected citizen rights. It details the practices of Bank of America, BP, Brown & Williamson, Burger King, the Chamber of Commerce, Chevron Coca-Cola, Dow Chemical, Kraft, McDonald’s, Monsanto, Shell and Wal-Mart. Going further, it argues that to pull this off, these companies hire former employees of the CIA, FBI, NSA, Secret Service, the military and local law-enforcement. As Ruskin shows, these “security officials” are linked to infiltration, espionage, surveillance and other tactics that are intended to undermine ostensible threats posed by nonprofit organizations, activists and whistleblowers.

The two-headed security apparatus is nothing new in America. It traces its roots to the post-Civil War era, a period of industrialization, immigration and urbanization. Then, especially in both big cities and the recently settled West, the formal state was weak, law enforcement still being development. Thus, many private companies turned to private security efforts to resolve differences.

The tension – and increasing integration – of the state and the corporation has shaped the U.S. since the Civil War. The interlinking of public and private policing is the gravest threat to American democracy. The security state flourished during the anti-Communist, McCarthy ’50 and again against anti-war and black activists during the ‘60s. It is now being implemented as the war against “terrorism.”

* * *

The decades following the Civil War were an era of modernization. Many among the respectable classes shared the perception that the country’s moral life was degenerating. Social ills were mounting, painfully evident in the growing number of the urban poor, in the increase in beggars and prostitutes on city streets as well as an increase in saloons, gambling dens, dance halls and dime museums throughout the country.

Making matters worse, these upstanding citizens felt that police corruption was widespread, helping to turn vice – drink, gambling and prostitution — into a profitable business. In response, “good government” reformers embraced two strategies to confront what they saw as the crime threat. One involved establishing a network of private prevention societies; the second saw greater reliance on private police services.

Prevention groups first emerged in England in the early-19^th century and got started in the U.S. in 1866 with the founding of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). By the late-19^th century, a host of these groups operated in New York and other cities. Elbridge Gerry established the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (SPCC) in 1866; Anthony Comstock, with the backing of the Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA), founded the NYSSV (or SSV) in 1873; Howard Crosby founded the Society for the Prevention of Crime (SPC) in 1877 to fight “white slavery,” prostitution; and in 1884, the Rev. Benjamin DeCosta established the White Cross Society promoting purity (i.e., sexual abstinence) until marriage. In 1892, Rev. Charles Parkhurst established the New York City Vigilance League to fight vice.

During this period, the New York state legislation, along with others throughout the country, empowered prevention societies with law enforcement authority. New York initially gave the SPCC the power to issue warrants, followed by the power to conduct arrests and engage in vigilante-like raids on private amusement resorts. These societies, in effect, privatized law enforcement.

A second front in the development of private policing involves the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Allan Pinkerton founded the company in 1850 and, during the Civil War, he helped foil an assassination attempt against Pres. Lincoln and served as head of the Union Intelligence Service, the forerunner of the Secret Service. In the decades after the War, Pinkerton became the nation’s leading private police agency.

A recent biography by Beau Riffenburgh, “Pinkerton’s Great Detective: The Amazing Life and Times of James McParland” (Viking, 2013), sheds light on how the agency used undercover detectives to crush worker protests, undermine unions and defeat more violent groups. McParland served as an undercover detective amidst the bitter Pennsylvania coalfield battles of the mid-1870s. He garnered national media attention as the lead witness in a sensational trial against the Molly Maguires, nine of whom were convicted. Riffenburgh’s account reads, at times, like a potboiler.

McParland’s success against the Molly Maguires moved him up the Pinkerton ladder. Over a four-decade career at the company, he eventually came to run it’s Western division in Denver. In 1894, he played a major role in the break up of the Cripple Creek, CO, miners’ strike, and he supervised the 1896 campaign against the Wild Bunch, a gang of bank and train robbers led by “Butch” Cassidy. His last great effort, investigating the assassination of a former Idaho governor from 1906-1907, pitted him against “Big Bill” Haywood, Clarence Darrow and the mineworkers union. It ended in McParland’s utter failure as all those accused—and against whom he testified—were acquitted.

Riffenburgh details many of the questionable—if not illegal—practices McParland and other detectives employed: undercover infiltration, covert surveillance, bribery of witnesses, deception of authorities, planting false evidence, giving false confessions, serving as agent provocateurs, destabilizing unions and using vigilantes to beat back any threat to their corporate client’s interests. Their principle clients were the railroads and coal companies. Nothing was unacceptable. And, given the findings of the Center for Corporate Policy study, little has changed over the last century-plus.

* * *

Private security is big business in the U.S. According to estimates in the “Spooky Business” report, the private security business is a $50 billion enterprise involving nearly 2,000 companies. According to Inc., among the nation’s leading private security firms (and their annual revenue in $/millions) are: Universal Service of America ($718.1/m), Accuvant ($420.2/m), Defense Direct ($394.9/m) and LifeLock ($276.4/m).

“Spooky Business” details a dozen or so cases in which leading corporations employed private security firms to engage in dubious, if not illegal, activities against a variety of nonprofit organizations. These groups’ focuses range from the environment, anti-war, public interest, consumer, food safety pesticide reform and nursing home reform to gun control, social justice, animal rights and arms control.

Most illustrative, the study details the campaign backed by Dow Chemical and a number of public relations firms, including Ketchum and Dezenhall Resources, against Greenpeace. These companies retained the now-defunct private security firm, Beckett, Brown, International (BBI), to conduct the campaign that included electronic surveillance, hacking, wire taping, infiltration, theft of confidential material and even the search of Greenpeace’s trash.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about widespread surveillance conducted by the NSA confirm many people’s worst fears: once-lauded principles of American democracy are in jeopardy. We are all being constantly tracked, monitored and surveilled. The state security system is using an ever-growing variety of techniques in this effort.

“Spooky Business” extends the NSA revelations from the federal government to private corporations. It details how some companies use the security apparatus, including questionable espionage tactics, against anyone who challenges their authority. The study extends the analysis made by Heidi Boghosian, the executive director of the National Lawyers Guild, in “Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, Corporate Power, and Public Resistance.” Orwell’s 21^stcentury security system is really watching you.

David Rosen regularly contributes to AlterNet, Brooklyn Rail, Filmmaker and Huffington Post. Check outwww.DavidRosenWrites.com; he can be reached atdrosennyc@verizon.net

Police State Britain

by Stephen Lendma

“The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government’s intentions.”

It was “one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history,” he said. It was likely the most chilling.

Two GCHQ security experts oversaw the destruction of Guardian hard drives. They checked to be sure nothing but “mangled bits of metal” remained.

Whitehall was satisfied. Freedom in Britain sustained another body blow. It’s fast disappearing like in America. Both nations are more police states than democracies.

They mock virtually all democratic principles. They govern lawlessly. They do it ruthlessly. Sweeping surveillance is official policy. So is suppressing information about government wrongdoing.

Journalists involved in exposing it are threatened. Guardian disclosures fall under parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee’s remit.

It reinforces government claims about compromising national security. When good journalism is equated with doing it, freedom dies.

Guardian contributors are targeted for doing their job. Doing so amounts to state censorship. Warnings about prosecutions and imprisonments follow.

Free expression is the most important of all rights. Without it, all others at risk. On the bogus pretext of fighting terrorism, America and Britain want none of their lawless activities exposed.

The Victorian-era image of the British bobby, well-mannered, respectful of the public, and mostly unarmed has been replaced by a new kind of police along American lines.

On August 18, UK authorities detained Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, at Heathrow Airport.

He was held incommunicado for nine hours. He was denied legal counsel. A counterterrorism law pretext was used to do so.

He was in transit from Berlin to Rio de Janeriro. He threatened no one. He violated no laws. It didn’t matter.

His laptop, cell phone, camera, memory sticks, DVDs and game consoles were confiscated. It was done lawlessly. Police states operate this way.

London’s Observer said Miranda was detained “for promoting ‘political’ causes.” His detention shone “new light on the Metropolitan police’s explanation for invoking terrorism powers – a decision critics have called draconian.”

London’s Mirror headlined “David Miranda detention shows UK is becoming a police state.” Targeting him “shows just how determined the security services are to get the upper hand.”

“Big Brother isn’t just watching you. He knows which plane you’re on, where you’re traveling, and he’s in close contact with Big Daddy across the water in Washington.”

It “illustrates the general point that we are now living in a security state.”

“Historically, the national interest has always been what’s good for the government, not what’s right for the people.”

It’s more than ever true today. State-of-the-art technology makes it easy. So do rogue politicians wanting unchallenged control.

Greenwald called detaining his partner “a failed attempt at intimidation.” I’ll have the opposite effect, he said. Virtually never are in transit passengers detained like Miranda.

Schedule 7 of Britain’s Terrorism Act says “fewer than 3 people in every 10,000 are examined as they pass through UK borders.” Over 97% of examinations last under an hour.

Individuals are questioned regarding possible involvement “in the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.”

Miranda didn’t enter Britain. He was en route to Rio. Targeting him was unrelated to terrorism. It was intimidation. It was harassment. Downing Street was directly involved.

It sent a message. Responsible journalism exposing government wrongdoing is threatened. Authorities want it entirely eliminated.

Miranda was released uncharged. Journalists, editors, human rights lawyers and civil libertarians expressed outrage over what happened. Doing so reflects police state harshness.

UK Metropolitan police lied saying:

“Holding and properly using intelligence gained from such stops is a key part of fighting crime, pursuing offenders and protecting the public.”

Police states justify lawlessness this way. Miranda was threatened. He was treated like a criminal.

He was told he faced prosecution if he didn’t cooperate. He did nothing wrong. It didn’t matter. It got worse.

On September 6, Britain’s high court said government authorities could continue examining materials seized from him.

They could do it to determine if he violated Britain’s Terrorism and Official Secrets Acts. UK courts lack independence like America’s.

They support the worst of government practices. They rubber-stamp some of the most outrageous acts. They violate fundamental freedoms doing so.

On November 2, Reuters headlined “NSA Leaks Journalist Glenn Greenwald’s Partner Accused of ‘Terrorism,’ ‘Espionage.’

After returning to Rio, Miranda filed suit. He wants lawlessly seized materials returned.

“At a London court hearing a document called a ‘Ports Circulation Sheet’ was read into the record.”

“It was prepared by Scotland Yard – in consultation with the MI5 counterintelligence agency.”

It said “(i)intelligence indicates that Miranda is likely to be involved in espionage activity which has the potential to act against the interests of UK national security.”

“We assess that Miranda is knowingly carrying material the release of which would endanger people’s lives.”

“Additionally the disclosure, or threat of disclosure, is designed to influence a government and is made for the purpose of promoting a political or ideological cause. This therefore falls within the definition of terrorism.”

Miranda wasn’t charged. At least not so far. He remains threatened. He may become as much at risk as Edward Snowden.

A hearing on Miranda’s legal challenge is scheduled this week. During a preparatory session days earlier, “new details of how and why British authorities (targeted him) were made publicâ€¦”

Materials authorities seized allegedly included 58,000 NSA and GCHQ documents. In an email to Reuters, Greenwald said:

“For all the lecturing it doles out to the world about press freedoms, the UK offers virtually none. They are absolutely and explicitly equating terrorism with journalism.”

On October 31, German lawmaker Hans-Christian Stroebele met with Edward Snowden. He did so in Moscow. He released a letter he wrote. In part, it said:

“I have been invited to write to you regarding your investigation of mass surveillance.”

“I believe I witnessed systemic violations of law by my government that created a moral duty to act.”

“As a result of reporting these concerns, I have faced a severe and sustained campaign of persecution that forced me from my family and home.”

“Citizens around the world as well as high officials – including in the United States – have judged the revelation of an unaccountable system of pervasive surveillance to be a public service.”

“Though the outcome of my efforts has been demonstrably positive, my government continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense.”

“(S)peaking truth is not a crime.” He thanked supporters for their “efforts in upholding the international laws that protect us all.”

Not in America or Britain. In a document read into the public record, Britain’s MI5 said:

“Our main objectives against David Miranda are to understand the nature of any material he is carrying (so as to) mitigate the risks to national security that this material poses.”

A UK Washington spokesperson had no comment. Equating good journalism with terrorism shows Britain will stop at nothing to keep government wrongdoing secret.

Doing so shows how low Britain has sunk. Its stripped off facade reveals dark side tyranny.

Britain’s Terrorism Law provides wide latitude. Its terrorism definition includes a “use or threat designed to influence the government (or international governmental organization).”

It’s “made for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, or ideological cause.”

It does so if it “endangers a person’s life, other than that of the person committing the action (and) creates a serious risk to the health or safety of the public or a section of the public.”

Most chilling is that UK security services, on their own, can decide if legitimate journalism is terrorism or its equivalent.

They can do so without publicly releasing materials allegedly able to compromise national security. They can pronounce guilt on their say alone. They can get courts to rubber-stamp their accusations.

It’s much the same in America. Government whistleblowers are threatened. They’re fraudulently charged under the long ago outdated Espionage Act.

It’s a WW I relic. It belongs in history’s dustbin. It’s unrelated to exposing government wrongdoing. Revealing it is equated with aiding the enemy.

The so-called “enemy” apparently is “we the people.” Our fundamental constitutional rights are threatened. Upholding them is what courts are supposed to do.

Not in America. Not in Britain. Terrorism or acts relating to it are what both governments say they are.

On July 30, Bradley Manning was wrongfully convicted on 20 of 22 bogus charges. He never had a chance.

He was judged guilty by accusation. He got 35 years imprisonment for acting responsibly.

It’s by far the harshest ever punishment for leaking information everyone has a right to know.

Washington wants Edward Snowden prosecuted the same way. Russia granted him political asylum.

Whether he’ll stay free remains to be seen. He’s America’s public enemy number one. Safety is his main concern.

He’s got good reason to worry. He’s a wanted man. He knows how NSA operates. It’ll try monitoring him every way possible.

Whether he’ll stay free from its tracking remains to be seen. The same is true for everyone.

America and Britain are ruthless. They’re unforgiving. They want unchallenged power. They want no one compromising it.

They want government wrongdoing suppressed. UK Prime Minister David Cameron threatened Britain’s media with injunctions or so-called D (Defense Advisory) notices.

They’re official requests not to publish or broadcast information for reasons of national security.

London’s Guardian and Miranda remain in limbo. Criminal charges could follow. Responsible journalism is threatened.

It bears repeating. Equating it with terrorism shows how low Britain has sunk. The same holds for America. Police state justice prevails.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network.

It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/police-state-britain/

The Latest Step in the Evolution of America’s Police State

Targeting Trojanow

by WILLIAM BLUM

“If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

So say many Americans. And many Germans as well.

Ilija Trojanow

But one German (German-Bulgarian, actually), Ilija Trojanow, would disagree. He has lent his name to published documents denouncing the National Security Agency (NSA), and was one of several prominent German authors who signed a letter to Chancellor Angela Merkel urging her to take a firm stance against the mass online surveillance conducted by the NSA. Trojanow and the other authors had nothing to hide, which is why the letter was published for the public to read. What happened after that, however, was that Trojanow was refused permission to board a flight from Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, to Miami on Monday, September 30. Without any explanation.

Trojanow, who was on his way to speak at a literary conference in Denver, told the Spiegel magazine online website that the denial of entry might be linked to his criticism of the NSA. Germany’s Foreign Ministry says it has contacted US authorities “to resolve this issue”.

In an article published in a German newspaper, Trojanow voiced his frustration with the incident: “It is more than ironic if an author who raises his voice against the dangers of surveillance and the secret state within a state for years, will be denied entry into the ‘land of the brave and the free’.”

Further irony can be found in the title of a book by Trojanow: “Attack on freedom. Obsession with security, the surveillance state and the dismantling of civil rights.”

Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., who oversees the NSA and other intelligence agencies, said recently that the intelligence community “is only interested in communication related to valid foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes.”

It’s difficult in the extreme to see how this criterion would apply in any way to Ilija Trojanow.

The story is a poignant caveat on how fragile is Americans’ freedom to criticize their Security State. If a foreigner can be barred from boarding a flight merely for peaceful, intellectual criticism of America’s Big Brother (nay, Giant Brother), who amongst us does not need to pay careful attention to anything they say or write.

Very few Americans, however, will even be aware of this story. A thorough search of the Lexis-Nexis media database revealed a single mention in an American daily newspaper (The St. Louis Post-Dispatch), out of 1400 daily papers in the US. No mention on any broadcast media. A single one-time mention in a news agency (Associated Press), and one mention in a foreign English-language newspaper (New Zealand Herald.)

William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, Rogue State: a guide to the World’s Only Super Power . His latest book is: America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy. He can be reached at: BBlum6@aol.com