Snowdon is a dummy

Arguably, yes. Manning has been imprisoned, without charges being pressed, for three years. The conditions of his imprisonment have been much harsher than those of an ordinary prisoner. For example, he's been forced to sleep naked in a room without air conditioning, which is demeaning and unnecessary.

I disagree with most of your post but this stuck out and I hope it is not true.

Are you saying that Manning was physically or even mentally tortured?

Never read or heard such, a lot of different and other attributes, yes, but 'bright''? Even Greenwald doesn't say so

How can you disagree with a series of facts?

On a tangent, I have lately become extremely frustrated with American 'Progressives' and their approach to Obama. The man is a petty-fascist. He orders citizens assassinated without a trial, imprisons whistle-blowers without a trial, claims the authority to monitor every American's every step through their cell phones without a warrant, and is just generally awful about human rights. There is no way that left-of-center Americans wouldn't have raised hell about these things if it was still G. W. Bush doing them.

And yet, this country's 'Progressives' give Obama a free pass overall because (1) all Republican competitors are even worse, and (2) Obama is Black, and standing up to a Black president would make 'Progressives' look too much like Tea-Party people. It is a depressing state of affairs. Depressing enough that I tabled my application for American citizenship --- not that any of you has any obligation to care.

On a tangent, I have lately become extremely frustrated with American 'Progressives' and their approach to Obama. The man is a petty-fascist.

Glenn Greenwald
theguardian.com, Monday 29 July 2013 12.33 BST
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Major opinion shifts, in the US and Congress, on NSA surveillance and privacy
Pew finds that, for the first time since 9/11, Americans are now more worried about civil liberties abuses than terrorism

It is a depressing state of affairs. Depressing enough that I tabled my application for American citizenship --- not that any of you has any obligation to care.

I agree with your statement, Walter. Edward Snowden certainly seems courageous enough but in this particular case one must not confuse courageousness with intelligence.

The crux of the NSA story in one phrase: 'collect it all'
The actual story that matters is not hard to see: the NSA is attempting to collect, monitor and store all forms of human communication


Glenn Greenwald
theguardian.com, Monday 15 July 2013 11.40 BST

The Washington Post this morning has a long profile of Gen. Keith Alexander, director the NSA, and it highlights the crux - the heart and soul - of the NSA stories, the reason Edward Snowden sacrificed his liberty to come forward, and the obvious focal point for any responsible or half-way serious journalists covering this story. It helpfully includes that crux right in the headline, in a single phrase:

collect it all
What does "collect it all" mean? Exactly what it says; the Post explains how Alexander took a "collect it all" surveillance approach originally directed at Iraqis in the middle of a war, and thereafter transferred it so that it is now directed at the US domestic population as well as the global one:

"At the time, more than 100 teams of US analysts were scouring Iraq for snippets of electronic data that might lead to the bomb-makers and their hidden factories. But the NSA director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, wanted more than mere snippets. He wanted everything: Every Iraqi text message, phone call and e-mail that could be vacuumed up by the agency's powerful computers.

"'Rather than look for a single needle in the haystack, his approach was, 'Let's collect the whole haystack,' said one former senior US intelligence official who tracked the plan's implementation. 'Collect it all, tag it, store it. . . . And whatever it is you want, you go searching for it. . . . .

"It also encapsulated Alexander's controversial approach to safeguarding Americans from what he sees as a host of imminent threats, from terrorism to devastating cyberattacks.

"In his eight years at the helm of the country's electronic surveillance agency, Alexander, 61, has quietly presided over a revolution in the government's ability to scoop up information in the name of national security. And, as he did in Iraq, Alexander has pushed hard for everything he can get: tools, resources and the legal authority to collect and store vast quantities of raw information on American and foreign communications."

Aside from how obviously menacing and even creepy it is to have a state collect all forms of human communication - to have the explicit policy that literally no electronic communication can ever be free of US collection and monitoring - there's no legal authority for the NSA to do this.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/15/crux-nsa-collect-it-all