A panel titled “NSA Surveillance and Our ‘Almost Orwellian’ State” will be livestreamed this Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Pacific Time.
The panel will include Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers, which showed a pattern of deceit by the U.S. government in the Vietnam War. Nixon called him “the most dangerous man in America.”
See Ellsberg recently on CNN: “Pentagon Papers Leaker: Snowden is a Hero of Mine.”
Also on the panel will be Norman Solomon, founding director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, and co-founder of RootsAction.org, and the following analysts:
CINDY COHN, cindy at eff.org, @eff
Legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which recently released the assessment “Obama Takes First Steps Toward Reforming NSA Surveillance, but Leaves Many Issues Unaddressed,” Cohn represented a broad range of groups, including the Bill of Rights Defense Committee and gun ownership advocates in “First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles v. NSA.”
SHAHID BUTTAR, media at bordc.org, @bordc
Executive director of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Buttar said today: “President Obama’s speech last Friday about the NSA’s domestic dragnet reflected the latest move in a continuing shell game. Ignoring the vast majority of his own review board’s 40 recommendations, preempting the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and failing to take advantage of the political cover offered by more meaningful changes supported by the authors of the ‘PATRIOT Act’ themselves, the president announced meager (and potentially counterproductive) changes to a limited set of issues, leaving in place most of the activities through which the NSA assaults the rights of the American people.
“With federal courts dueling over competing rulings at the district level, and appellate courts contriving reasons not to examine NSA spying on the merits, only Congress is poised to take effective action to restore constitutional rights. And Congress will act only upon hearing a sustained transpartisan clamor from We the People of the United States.”
Buttar is also a poet and performer, here is video of him rapping at the “Stop Watching Us” rally in Washington, D.C.
See from ProPublica: “Four Questionable Claims Obama Has Made on NSA Surveillance.”
