Daniel Ellsberg On NSA Spying: 'We're A Turnkey Away From A Police State'
BERKELEY, Calif. -- Famed Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg had harsh words for the Obama Administration during an event here Tuesday evening, charging that the rapid expansion of government surveillance since 9/11 has left the country "a turnkey away from a police state."
"We're not a police state yet, but the foundation has been set," he continued. "It could happen overnight."
Ellsberg, 82, is a former military analyst who became one of the most famous men in America when he leaked a top-secret government report on the Vietnam War to The New York Times in 1971. He has since been a patron saint to the civil liberties movement and is viewed by many as a predecessor of modern-day leakers like Bradley Manning and now Edward Snowden, the man who recently released evidence of the National Security Agency's covert phone records collection and Internet data mining.
Speaking at a panel discussion on "our vanishing civil liberties" organized by the Berkeley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the anti-war activist group Code Pink, Ellsberg argued that recent revelations of the large-scale collection of Internet and cell phone data should be of grave concern to all Americans.
"Reassurances by high officials on the limits of the surveillance state are worthless," he said, referring to a speech given by President Barack Obama last week where the president defended the NSA's monitoring programs.
"Legalizing this activity doesn't make it constitutional," Ellsberg said. "Congress cannot repeal the Fourth Amendment."
The event's decidedly liberal crowd gave a rousing chorus of boos to Ellsberg's mentions of both Obama and Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the latter of whom has called Snowden's leak "an act of treason."
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ReplyDeleteMatthew
If she wants to play the "treason" game and pass judgement in that fashion, Ms. Feinstein should take into account her own unswerving loyalty to Israel(most likely of course since she's Jewish) which could be interpreted by some as placing as then placing an even greater loyalty to that country and its policies than toward domestic issues(i.e., the spying on American citizens). And like most other "patriotic" Congress members she has never rebuked Israel for its human rights violations whether it be the invasion of Gaza some years back or the current policies of oppression against the Palestinians.
ReplyDeleteYes, imagine a Dick Cheney, or worse, getting into power with this kind of surveillance capacity all set up.
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