The Intercept announced today that they are releasing new information from the documents that were obtained by Edward Snowden. They are beginning with the 166 internal NSA newsletters called SIDtoday that were published for more than a decade beginning in 2003.
Glenn Greenwald, one of the original recipients of the Snowden archive, explains why they are broadening access to the Snowden database now and there is also an explanation of how they prepared the materials, some of it classified as ‘secret’ and ‘top secret’ for public dissemination.
Michal Lee and Margot Williams review some of the most interesting news items from the documents. Cora Currier has a separate article on the role of the NSA in the Guantanamo interrogations.
We can expect these new revelations to unleash another round of howls of outrage from those supporters of the national security state who are vehemently opposed to what Snowden did.
I used to occasionally encounter members of the intelligence community who swore up and down that they were patriots who’d disobey an unlawful or unconstitutional order. Knowing that they had in-house journals full of self-congratulatory fellating certainly helps clarify the truth of that. The intelligence community is a runaway meta-state that exports terror and fights democracy worldwide. The fact that they aren’t being broken down and prosecuted just shows the degree to which the DOJ and executive branch is in on it. Burn it all. Burn it to the ground.
I agree.
I’m not against having a NSA, CIA, etc., but it’s evident IMHO that we need to start from scratch with entirely new actors in an entirely new framework.