Zero thinks that he has a message problem, because people don’t believe him when he lies about spying on us. He wants us to believe that he is lying with our best interests at heart.

NPR has the transcript of today’s news conference.

Marcy was all over Zero’s failure to tell the truth.

Digby went after the mythical review that was going to take place, ‘real soon now’, the review that Mark Udall & Ron Wyden have been calling for for years, the review that Edward Snowden was in fact waiting for when he voted for Zero. To emphasize – Edward Snowden voted for Obama in the HOPE that Obama would CHANGE what was going on, and decided to leak when it became obvious that things were getting worse.

Zero’s plan obviously has to start with “a blue-ribbon panel” to study the issue. That is the standard stall of governments at every level when they are caught screwing up. But he is also talking about appointing a ‘civil liberties advocate’ to the FISA court, who will be in exactly the same box as Senators Udall & Wyden, knowing that evil is occurring but unable to say anything because it’s all classified. There is also going to be a ‘civil liberties watchdog’ at NSA who will have no one to watch as everything is being done at remote locations by contractors.

The American people got the real message from the documents that Edward Snowden provided – our government is spying on all of us, and the only message we want from the government is that the spying has stopped.

As the owner of Lavabit writes “This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”

Juanita in comments alerted me to a story I found on the Beeb: Snowden link to encrypted email service closes

Two encrypted email services have closed down for reasons linked to US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden.

Texas-based Lavabit service has shut down but said legal reasons prevented it explaining why.

Correspondents say Lavabit appears to have been in a legal battle to stop US officials accessing customer details.

In addition, secure communications firm Silent Circle has shut its email service because messages cannot be kept wholly secret.

[Note: I added the links to the companies’ announcements.]

According to TechDirt Silent Circle did something extra – they didn’t announce they were shutting down their e-mail server until after they had destroyed it, so that nothing was recoverable. After what happened to Lavabit, the company felt if they announced they were shutting down a court order might be issued before they could scrub everything.

They went on to say if the government orders them to install an sniffer on their systems, they will cease to operate. Their business is based on a guarantee of privacy, and if they can’t provide it, they don’t really have anything to sell.

So, having already trashed the US Cloud market, Zero has moved on to destroy the US privacy market. Pretty soon the Internet will be routed around us, the way many foreign airline routes already are.

Marcy pointed me to this wonderful take-down by Julia Ioffe: Dear Lawrence O’Donnell, Don’t Mansplain to Me About Russia.

Ms Ioffe is shrill, but with reason, i.e. she knows what she is talking about and has no illusions about anyone involved. The only thing that I would add is that Zero and Putin both have a lot in common with the Shrubbery – all three are much better at campaigning than governing. They want the office and power, but they aren’t all that interested in doing the job.

Update: Ms Ioffe has picked up kudos from Digby, Duncan, and Charley Pierce offered her a job.

Driftglass has decided that he is the ultimate authority on who is a whistleblower and has ruled that Glenn Greenwald is a liar because he claimed that Edward Snowden could spend the rest of his life in a Super-max if he returned to the US, rather than staying in Russia.

Driftglass uses the example of John Kiriakou, to show what ‘really happens to whistleblowers’ under the benevolent reign of Zero, noting that he was only sentenced to 30 months in prison.

[Read more →]

The Hermit At Rest

You looking at me?

[Editor: Hermit was the only one around when I had the camera out, but Tip and Weasel wandered by later. In my neighborhood we have had only one day without rain this month, so the cats are not out and about.]

Friday Ark