Glenn Greenwald has been right on top of this NSA story from the very beginning. He published a damning overview in The Guardian.

The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America’s largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.

The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.

The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.

The NY Times has published an article that’s more on Greenwald than the privacy breeches. It mentions that he begin his blog in 2005 covering news of warrantless surveillance by the Bush administration…and now here he is, discovering that the Obama administration is doing exactly the same things.

But it also gives the last words to his ideological oppenents.

His writing has made him a frequent target from ideological foes who accuse him of excusing terrorism or making false comparisons between, for example, Western governments’ drone strikes, and terrorist attacks like the one in Boston.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a national security expert and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who is often on the opposite ends of issues from Mr. Greenwald, called him, “a highly professional apologist for any kind of anti-Americanism no matter how extreme.”

Mr. [Andrew] Sullivan wrote in an e-mail: “I think he has little grip on what it actually means to govern a country or run a war. He’s a purist in a way that, in my view, constrains the sophistication of his work.”

“Purist” is one of those code words for “principled and honest”; “apologist for anti-Americanism” means he expects better of our own government’s administration. I really detest these lying conservative weasels who think it is in our country’s best interests to hide the underhanded crap our shadier elements perpetrate; these people make excuses for criminal activities that undermine our nation’s effectiveness and corrupt the goals towards which we should be working. You want to find a true anti-American? Look for someone who rejects any effort to uncover its flaws and correct them.

A perfect example: Barack Obama is meeting with President Xi Jinping of China. I’m sure Jinping welcomes the news that he’s negotiating with a country that has as little respect for individual liberty as his does.

The timing for Barack Obama couldn’t be worse. Just as he meets for the first time to forge a new diplomatic relationship with his Chinese counterpart, President Xi Jinping, a series of exposes on the secret surveillance programs of the US National Security Agency has presented a major distraction and eroded America’s moral high ground.

The meeting at a gigantic estate in California called Sunnylands is a chance for the two world leaders to establish personal rapport and find common ground, but it’s also inevitably a joust for diplomatic leverage. After months of leaked reports about Beijing’s cyber espionage campaign against US corporations and military targets in the lead-up to the Sunnylands meeting, Obama was expected to put cyber-security near the top of the agenda—and he probably will still do so.

But now Xi has an easy rejoinder to any criticisms from  Obama: how can the US complain when has been caught running a large-scale data harvesting program? The NSA’s inclusion of Americans among its targets has raised the most controversy, but don’t forget that the program is purportedly aimed at foreigners—surely many Chinese among them.

As is common, I expect the superficial ideologues of both the right and the left to complain bitterly that the problem isn’t the crime of compromising American privacy, but the exposure of the rotten behavior by our government.

Here’s a wonderful collection of photos from the Turkish uprising.

I wish the Turkish people great success in changing their country for the better.

Turkey has erupted in demonstrations and protests over the last few days. The precipitating event was an effort to demolish an historic town square to build commercial properties, but it seems to be an expression of long resentment over a corrupt and autocratic leadership, and the growing tension within a country that was founded as a secular nation but is facing a rising Islamist faction. What happens when you try to mix capitalism and theocracy, modernism with traditionalism? We’re finding out.

The scenes carried the symbolic weight of specific grievances: people held beers in the air, a rebuke to the recently passed law banning alcohol in public spaces; young men smashed the windshields of the bulldozers that had begun razing Taksim Square; and a red flag bearing the face of modern Turkey’s secular founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, was draped over a destroyed police vehicle.

The people are more than a little annoyed with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Many of the protesters, some of whom voted for Mr. Erdogan, said his leadership had become increasingly dictatorial. In a Twitter message late Saturday, Mr. Erdogan appeared to mock the protesters, saying he could mobilize a million people to support him in Taksim Square, while putting the number of protesters at 100,000.

“When he first came to power, he was a good persuader and a good speaker,” said Serder Cilik, 32, who was sitting at a tea shop watching the chaos unfold. Mr. Cilik said he had voted for Mr. Erdogan but would never do so again.

An older man standing nearby, overhearing the conversation, yelled, “Dictator!”

Mr. Cilik, who is unemployed, continued: “He brainwashed people with religion, and that’s how he got the votes. He fooled us. He’s a liar and a dictator.”

Now it’s tear gas and bullets and angry mobs swarming the streets.

I think I love these people. 90 demonstrations in 48 cities, hundreds injured or arrested, two have been killed, all in the face of extreme police action, and they keep on fighting for what is right. They are actually standing against an increasingly authoritarian, conservative, and religious government.

I wish we Americans had that kind of courage.