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(FULL TITLE: "'I'm neither a traitor nor a hero... I'm an American': NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden finally breaks cover - and vows to expose MORE secrets") Newspaper said he has exposed more details about surveillance targets He said he will remain in Hong Kong and fight any extradition bidSnowden's whereabouts in Hong Kong are still unknown Edward Snowden, the former CIA analyst behind one of the most significant government leaks in U.S. history, has vowed to expose further surveillance secrets as he speaks out again. The 29-year-old whistleblower remained defiant in an interview with the South China Morning Post on...

The LA Times reports that sales of the book, which concerns a discontented propagandist working for the Ministry of Truth in a time of endless war, are up 5,771 percent as of Tuesday morning. From a sales rank of 12,507 in the days before The Guardian published top-secret government documents provided by Snowden, "1984" has risen to crack Amazon's top 200.

Former Justice Department prosecutor Larry Klayman amended an existing lawsuit against Verizon and a slew of Obama administration officials Monday to make it the first class-action lawsuit in response to the publication of a secret court order instructing Verizon to hand over the phone records of millions of American customers on an "ongoing, daily basis." Klayman told U.S. News he will file a second class-action lawsuit Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia targeting government officials and each of the nine companies listed in a leaked National Security Agency slideshow as participants in the government's PRISM...

LINKThe statistics are updated hourly, so this number will change shortly.5. -- 4,556% Sales rank: 164 (was 7,636)

National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney explains how the secretive agency runs its pervasive domestic spying apparatus in a new piece by Laura Poitras in The New York Times. Binney—one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history—worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution." In a short video called "The Program," Binney explains how the agency took part of one of the programs he built and started using it to spy on virtually every U.S....

Faulk says he and others in his section of the NSA facility at Fort Gordon routinely shared salacious or tantalizing phone calls that had been intercepted, alerting office mates to certain time codes of "cuts" that were available on each operator's computer. "Hey, check this out," Faulk says he would be told, "there's good phone sex or there's some pillow talk, pull up this call, it's really funny, go check it out. It would be some colonel making pillow talk and we would say, 'Wow, this was crazy'," Faulk told ABC News. Faulk said he joined in to listen, and...

Sales of George Orwell’s "1984" are up 69 percent on Amazon, according to a list on the website.

Sales of George Orwell’s ’1984′ are up 69 percent on Amazon, according to a list on the website.The book’s 60th anniversary was on June 6th, amidst a flurry of real-world news stories on secret government surveillance. ... Update: As of 3:22 p.m. EST, sales of Orwell's '1984' are up 91 percent on the Amazon "Movers and Shakers list."

Things got feisty on Morning Joe today, as Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian clashed with Mika Brzezinski over the leak of the NSA phone surveillance program by Greenwald's informant, Edward Snowden. H/t NB reader Jeff M. When Brzezinski alleged that wiretapping or the review by the NSA of emails required an additional judicial review and warrant, Greenwald accused Mika of using "White House talking points" that were "completely misleading and false." Mika denied it. View the video here.

New Zealand Herald can't be posted to FR, but I think a link might be OK: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10889158

This Week in History: June 6 marked the the 69th anniversary of D-Day. General Eisenhower addressed the troops departing for the invasion on the beaches of Normandy: "The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to victory.... We will accept nothing less than full victory! Let us all beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking.” Did he mention God? To the troops? Oh my! What an unenlightened time that was. Imagine –a time when our troops felt free to implore a Higher Being as they embarked upon a deadly battle...

The inventor of the World Wide Web said the internet is facing a “major” threat from “people who want to control it on the sly” through “worrying laws” such as SOPA, the US anti-piracy act, and through the actions of internet giants. “If you can control [the internet], if you can start tweaking what people say, or intercepting communications, it's very, very powerful...it's the sort of power that if you give it to a corrupt government, you give them the ability to stay in power forever.” Sir Tim was speaking as it emerged that the US government has been collecting...

THE White House has confirmed that US intelligence agencies have been collecting data held by Facebook, Google, Apple and other web giants for nearly six years in a bid to ward off threats to national security. The confirmation of a “classified program” giving agents access to material stored by some of the biggest internet companies was triggered by a report in The Guardian claiming that the National Security Agency (NSA) has had direct access to the servers used by web giants like Facebook and Google since 2007.

All these years I though the movie Enemy of the State (1998, starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman) was an enjoyable drama flick. Now I learn that it was a documentary.I mean, it has it all! A Ft. Marcy Park style murder, video surveillance everywhere, cellphone taps, satellite surveillance, black helicopters, mafia and labor unions. If Hackman had a dog for a pet instead of a cat, you can be sure it would have been shot by the SWAT team.And we thought it was all make-believe.

An editorial published late Thursday said the administration was using the "same platitude" it uses in every case of overreach -- that "terrorists are a real menace and you should just trust us." The editorial continued: "Those reassurances have never been persuasive -- whether on secret warrants to scoop up a news agency's phone records or secret orders to kill an American suspected of terrorism -- especially coming from a president who once promised transparency and accountability. The administration has now lost all credibility." The editorial board claimed Obama "is proving the truism that the executive will use any power it is...

A federal judge has ruled that Google must comply with the FBI's warrantless requests for confidential user data, despite the search company's arguments that the secret demands are illegal.

What’s so bad about the IRS investigating nonprofit applications? That’s their job. The real scandal is that the ensuing hubbub will discourage them from doing it again, writes Ken Stern. Over the last week, commentators have expressed great outrage over the handling by the IRS of applications by Tea Party groups and others for 501(c)(4) status. In the haste to trigger the next administration-crippling “gate,” these analyses have largely ignored one of the most surprising aspects of this entire episode—that the IRS was actually trying to do its job. A little context is warranted. There are more than 1.5 million...

As gratifying as it was to see the “news” media actually do its job last week when the IRS scandal broke, it was also odd that the coverage focused exclusively on abuses of power relating to various Tea Party and anti-abortion groups. A much scarier IRS story has been virtually ignored by the establishment press. On Wednesday, it was reported that a class-action lawsuit had been filed against a group of IRS agents who, according to the complaint filed by “John Doe Company” in the Southern District of California, “stole more than 60,000,000 medical records of more than 10,000,000 Americans,...

The European Union is to ban olive oil jugs and dipping bowls from restaurant tables in a move described by one of Britain’s top cooks as authoritarian and damaging to artisan food makers. The small glass jugs filled with green- or gold-colored extra virgin olive oil are familiar and traditional for restaurant goers across Europe, but they will be banned from 1 January 2014 after a decision taken in an obscure Brussels committee earlier this week. From next year, olive oil “presented at a restaurant table” must be in prepackaged factory bottles with a tamper-proof dispensing nozzle and labeling in...