Free Republic

It took Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers to reveal the staggering extent of the government’s spying on its own people as institutional checks failed.. ... Panic made us politically vulnerable... That vulnerability was exploited by our own government to entitle itself to radically expanded powers that had for decades been out of reach. ... The Patriot Act, which swatted away longstanding rules preventing the state from monitoring US citizens without “probable cause”, was passed .. lightning-fast ... granting domestic law enforcement agencies sweeping new powers. ... green light for the FBI and CIA to carry out “roving wiretaps” where agents...

A crucial witness who has been relied upon to build the deep state’s case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is admitting that he has lied constantly to help the feds railroad the information liberator. Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson reportedly told reporters at Grabien that he lied about Assange to get the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation off of his back so he could commit criminal acts with impunity. Thordarson had allegedly embezzled funds from WikiLeaks after offering to sell merchandise for the group. He then reached out to the federal government hoping to become an informant in order...

The latest political development in Sweden that makes a new election more likely, the Kremlin comments on yesterday's confrontation between a British destroyer and Russia's military and why the Dutch Prime Minister wants to bring Hungary "to its knees" but first... Half of the 891 COVID-19 cases in Israel in the last month involve: "fully vaccinated people"... Effective Sunday Israel reinstating its indoor mask order. The recent uptick in COVID-19 cases many of them identified as "Delta Variant" cited... French Premier Jean Castex visiting the Department of Landes in southwestern France where COVID-19 cases are said to be surging with...

US National Security Agency used a partnership with Denmark's foreign intelligence to spy on senior officials, according to Danish state broadcaster DR The findings are the result of an internal investigation in the Danish Defence Intelligence Service from 2015 into NSA's role in the partnership The NSA used Danish information cables to spy on senior officials in Sweden, Norway, France and Germany, including German chancellor Angela Merkel The internal investigation in the Danish Defence Intelligence Service was launched in 2014 following concerns about Edward Snowden's leaks In Washington, the NSA did not immediately reply to a request for comment and...

I love my digital devices, but people keep telling me to worry more about my privacy. "Encrypt your emails!" "Drop Google and use search engines like DuckDuckGo that don't track us!" I probably should. But I don't. I'm lazy, and I like that web companies know me and show me things I'm interested in. I like that they display "restaurants near me." "You do not understand the way that that system is being used against you," says whistleblower Edward Snowden in my new video. Snowden is in exile in Russia because he revealed how the NSA spied on us and...

Day 314 Of The Dictatorship Of COVID-19, Day 314 Of America And The World Held Hostage The Joe Biden version of DC 19 ramping up... The Trump version of tyranny came before that the buck passed to Mike Pence (White House Task Force) who passed it to Deborah Birx on down to the governors and when the governors imposed the tyranny Donald Trump and the Republican-Conservative political machine "pinned the tail on the donkey" blaming Democrat governors for the restrictions and ignoring the Republican governors from Mike DeWine on who were tyrants... The suppression of free speech in full swing...

Many Democrats in Congress acknowledge that National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed vast government surveillance overreach. They demonstrated their concern with their actions: When key provisions of the Patriot Act were up for reauthorization earlier this year, progressive Democrats led the charge to strip the law of language used to justify mass surveillance programs uncovered by Snowden. But now, as President Donald Trump considers whether to pardon Snowden for his alleged crimes, only one Democratic member of Congress has pushed the lame-duck president to do it. The federal government has charged Snowden with three felonies: one count of theft...

As this term ends, and I look back on the record of Donald Trump as president, one thing stands out: he has been far more libertarian and done more on foreign policy and civil liberties than has any recent president.First, as in my previous profession as a physician, my first yardstick for a politician is to “do no harm.” President Trump has started no new wars, has kept us out of conflicts like Syria, and has been actively attempting to wind down the wars he inherited in Iraq and Afghanistan.He also inherited another reaction to the war on terror —...

President Donald Trump should pardon Edward Snowden. Who? I know, it's embarrassing -- Assange, Manning, Snowden... Who did what? I got them confused before I researched this topic. National security isn't my beat. I finally educated myself this month because I got a chance to interview Snowden, the CIA/NSA employee who told the world that our government spied on us but lied to Congress about it. Now Snowden hides from American authorities. We talked via Zoom. Fourteen years ago, when Snowden worked for the CIA, and then the NSA, he signed agreements saying he would not talk about what he...

The same actors who assure us Edward Snowden is a super-secret Russian and Chinese spy later told us that President Trump colluded with the Russians to win the 2016 election.President Trump should issue a full pardon to Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower who tops the enemies list of the unaccountable anti-American actors in the U.S. intelligence community, otherwise known as the Deep State.In a series of monumental leaks, Snowden exposed that the Obama administration had been using the supposed authority of the post-9/11 Patriot Act to continue and advance a massive, indiscriminate, unconstitutional data collection program that swept up the...

"The death rate appears not to be linked with the responses of governments..stringency of the measures settled to fight pandemia, including lockdown, did not appear to be linked with the death rate." There's research from French scientists saying that government restrictions taken against the coronavirus have not reduced the mortality rate... "making a statement that it's a different court" New York Governor Andrew Cuomo's view of the Thanksgiving Eve 5-4 decision from the US Supreme Court against Cuomo's restrictions on houses of worship in the state... Breaking News: Iran reporting the assassination of a prominent Iranian physicist. Moshen Fakhrizadeh and...

Although National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden has settled in Russia, he has insisted that his “ultimate goal” is to return to the U.S. But the fugitive now has begun the process of formally pledging loyalty to the Russian state. “In this era of pandemics and closed borders, we’re applying for dual US-Russian citizenship,” he tweeted Sunday. Mr. Snowden and his wife are Americans, so the real news is that he is pursuing a Russian passport. Moscow already has granted permanent residency to the former NSA contractor. Vladimir Putin’s government gave Mr. Snowden asylum in 2013, after he fled the...

A curfew in Philadelphia tonight from 9pm to 6am. Streets in the downtown area closed. Members of the Pennsylvania National Guard deployed... A federal judge in Portland granting a preliminary injunction saying that federal officers denied First Amendment rights to peaceful protesters... Walmart removing firearms and ammunition from display floors...Today Walmart reversing course... The country with the highest coronavirus infection rate in Europe moving to a national lockdown. Belgium shutting down... In Canada Winnipeg the largest city in Manitoba moving to a Code Red coronavirus lockdown... An earthquake measuring 7.0 struck off the coast of Turkey today... The current UK...

Glenn Greenwald on Thursday told Tucker Carlson the left supports a CIA set on destroying Donald Trump after earlier resigning from a website he co-founded, claiming editors 'censored' an article he wrote criticizing Joe Biden. The journalist, part of a team that won a Pulitzer for reports about government surveillance programs based on leaks by Edward Snowden, told the Fox News host that the left's 'healthy skepticism of the CIA' has 'all disappeared'. Greenwald, who announced his resignation from the The Intercept Thursday, added: 'The reason it's disappeared is because the CIA from the very first days of the Trump...

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia has granted U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden permanent residency rights, his lawyer said on Thursday, a step towards Russian citizenship if he wants it. Snowden, 37, fled the United States and was given asylum in Russia after leaking secret files in 2013 that revealed vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the U.S. National Security Agency where he was a contractor. U.S. authorities have for years wanted Snowden returned to the United States to face a criminal trial on espionage charges brought in 2013. “His (Russian) residency permit was expiring and we asked to extend...

@TulsiGabbardBrave whistleblowers exposing lies & illegal actions in our government must be protected. Join me and urge Congress: Pass my bipartisan legislation (HRes1162, HRes1175, HR8452) calling for charges against @Snowden & Assange to be dropped & to reform the Espionage Act.

(Reuters) - Seven years after former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the mass surveillance of Americans’ telephone records, an appeals court has found the program was unlawful - and that the U.S. intelligence leaders who publicly defended it were not telling the truth. In a ruling handed down on Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said the warrantless telephone dragnet that secretly collected millions of Americans’ telephone records violated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and may well have been unconstitutional. Snowden, who fled to Russia in the aftermath of the 2013...

It is now Saturday in Australia where a coronavirus freedom protest is being attempted in the tightly locked down city of Melbourne. Arrests have already taken place in the city at the gathering site of the protest, the "Shrine of Remembrance". Police acting to prevent the protest from taking place.... Police in a federal operation shooting dead the man wanted in connection with the killing of a "Patriot Prayer" member in Portland..... Facebook removing accounts linked to "Patriot Prayer"...... The FBI arresting two men said to be "militia members: and admirers of Kyle Rittenhouse at the request of Kenosha, Wisconsin...

A federal judge in Oregon denying a request by three Christian schools in that state to reopen... "vehemently opposed" That's what US Attorney General William Barr has to say about the notion of a pardon fro former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden..... The sentencing today for actress Lori Loughlin and her husband Mossimo Gianulli in the "college admissions bribe scandal". She sentenced to two months and he to five months by a federal judge.... California wildfires rapidly expanding today with Governor Gavin Newsom looking for help from as far away as Canada and Australia..... And California's Governor Gavin Newsom...

President Donald Trump said Saturday he's considering granting a pardon to whistleblower Edward Snowden. "I'm going to take a look at that very strongly," Trump said during a news conference at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey..."It seems to be a split decision," he said. "Many people think he should be somehow treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things."