This is What a Tor Supporter Looks Like: Edward Snowden

> We already know far too much about mass surveillance that oversteps rational or constitutional bounds by national data collection agencies of many democracies -- and of dictatorships where no bounds even exist.

I question whether in a democracy The People can actually "know far too much" about government abuses, but as a human rights activist, I am happy to agree with you that oppressive dictatorships must be denounced. I'd add that one hardly needs to spy on their communications to be aware that numerous governments are rather openly violating human rights of people within their borders (see rsf.org, hrw.org, etc).

> Lets stick to what we know.

Here's some of what we know:

https://eff.org/nsa-spying/nsadocs

https://theintercept.com/drone-papers

As more whistleblowers bring out more documents, we will learn even more about the activities of NSA.

> As a Tor supporter it is concerning when the blog is for used for loud accusations on non-privacy issues where partisanship seems to be the main qualification.
>
> E.g. rubbish like the NSA deliberately "targets" children for drone strikes.

I understand why NSA employees don't like to think of themselves as working for a barbaric state-sponsored terrorism organization, but the facts are damning.

As you are probably aware, NSA and DOD employees are not permitted to read The Intercept, because articles there often cite documents leaked by a true American patriot, Edward Snowden. But when you get home, because there are obviously some things you should know that you don't yet know, I think you should really fire up Tails and go read this:

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-say-they-wer…
Former Drone Operators Say They Were “Horrified” By Cruelty of Assassination Program
Murtaza Hussain
19 Nov 2015

> U.S. DRONE OPERATORS are inflicting heavy civilian casualties and have developed an institutional culture callous to the death of children and other innocents, four former operators said at a press briefing today in New York.
>
> The killings, part of the Obama administration’s targeted assassination program, are aiding terrorist recruitment and thus undermining the program’s goal of eliminating such fighters, the veterans added. Drone operators refer to children as “fun-size terrorists” and liken killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” said one of the operators, Michael Haas, a former senior airman in the Air Force. Haas also described widespread drug and alcohol abuse, further stating that some operators had flown missions while impaired.

Then please read this:

https://theintercept.com/2014/02/10/the-nsas-secret-role/
The NSA’s Secret Role in the U.S. Assassination Program
Jeremy Scahill, Glenn Greenwald
10 Feb 2014

> The National Security Agency is using complex analysis of electronic surveillance, rather than human intelligence, as the primary method to locate targets for lethal drone strikes – an unreliable tactic that results in the deaths of innocent or unidentified people.
>
> According to a former drone operator for the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) who also worked with the NSA, the agency often identifies targets based on controversial metadata analysis and cell-phone tracking technologies. Rather than confirming a target’s identity with operatives or informants on the ground, the CIA or the U.S. military then orders a strike based on the activity and location of the mobile phone a person is believed to be using.
> ...
> The former JSOC drone operator is adamant that the technology has been responsible for taking out terrorists and networks of people facilitating improvised explosive device attacks against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But he also states that innocent people have “absolutely” been killed as a result of the NSA’s increasing reliance on the surveillance tactic.
>
> One problem, he explains, is that targets are increasingly aware of the NSA’s reliance on geolocating, and have moved to thwart the tactic. Some have as many as 16 different SIM cards associated with their identity within the High Value Target system. Others, unaware that their mobile phone is being targeted, lend their phone, with the SIM card in it, to friends, children, spouses and family members.

NSA knows about this problem, and has repeatedly taken the decision to simply ignore it. But this kind of decision will, if there is any justice, eventually enable the ICC to try them on war crimes charges. Notice the distinction between a trial in which the defendents have an experienced defense team, and the NSA's approach: "conviction" and execution by algorithm.

If memory serves, Snowden told Greenwald that he had decided to leak to Greenwald, rather than other reporters, because he had been impressed by Greenwald's passionate denunciation of the NSA murder of Abdulrahman al Awlaki, aged 16, by a *targeted* drone strike just a few weeks after the strike targeting his father, Anwar.

Another term of art used by the drone assassins: "bug splat" (derived from a violent video game). Greenwald was the first to point out the moral damage this causes to the young servicepersons (often hardly more than children themselves) who actually push the button that launches the Hellfire missile:

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/10/bravery_and_drone_pilots/
Bravery and drone pilots
Glenn Greenwald
10 Jul 2012

> For a new generation of young guns, the experience of piloting a drone is not unlike the video games they grew up on. Unlike traditional pilots, who physically fly their payloads to a target, drone operators kill at the touch of a button, without ever leaving their base – a remove that only serves to further desensitize the taking of human life. (The military slang for a man killed by a drone strike is “bug splat,” since viewing the body through a grainy-green video image gives the sense of an insect being crushed.)

Concerning the extralegality, the editorial boards of many major US papers have been compelled by the reporting of Greenwald and others to denounce the extrajudicial drone assassinations:

http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/29/opinion/la-ed-drone-killings-la…
When the government kills
The Constitution's guarantee of due process means the president can't act as judge, jury and executioner of suspected terrorists, especially when they are U.S. citizens.
July 29, 2012

> Whether or not it succeeds in court, a lawsuit challenging the killings of Al Qaeda figure Anwar Awlaki and two other U.S. citizens clearly lays out the problems with the Obama administration's policy of "targeted killings" of suspected terrorists even outside the battle zone of Afghanistan.
>
> Allowing the president of the United States to act as judge, jury and executioner for suspected terrorists, including U.S. citizens, on the basis of secret evidence is impossible to reconcile with the Constitution's guarantee that a life will not be taken without due process of law. Under the law, the government must obtain a court order if it seeks to target a U.S. citizen for electronic surveillance, yet there is no comparable judicial review of a decision to kill a citizen. No court is even able to review the general policies for such assassin
>
> The suit filed this month by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights seeks an after-the-fact determination that the killings of Awlaki, an associate named Samir Khan and Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, were not legal. The elder Awlaki and Khan were killed in a drone strike in Yemen in September; Abdulrahman Awlaki was the apparently unintended victim of a strike two weeks later.

NSA is the enemy of all people, everywhere, at any time. Even its own employees.

So please quit working for NSA, and become a dues-paying member of the ACLU. And don't forget to bring out more documents when you rejoin the rest of the human race.