Vast NSA Surveillance of Whole Populations Protects US Dirty Wars

The "us" being watched by the U.S. has become more widely apparent, as the U.S. has tacitly admitted monitoring the communications of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, including personal mobile calls, and the heads of dozens of other countries.  The response of those leaders, who haven't been much outraged about the surveillance of millions of their citizens, has put the Obama administration and the NSA somewhat at odds over who knew what?  Did the NSA keep the White House ignorant of the extent of spying?  The White House seems to say so, but its Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, says they all knew.

But for Edward Snowden, the evidence would not have come out to us. The administration is doing an "internal review" of their surveillance activities, i.e. determining what they will admit to, while defending all of their unconstitutiional actions with the "everyone does it" explanation, and allowing President Obama "plausible deniability."

World Can't Wait joined the first large protest of NSA spying Saturday in Washington, on the anniversary of the USA Patriot Act, passed in 2001 as part of the legal architecture for mass spying on the world. 

Edward Snowden sent a message, delivered by Jessalyn Radack:

We've learned that the U.S. intelligence community secretly built a system of pervasive surveillance. Today, no telephone in America makes a call without leaving a record with the NSA. Today, no internet transaction enters or leaves America without passing through the NSA's hands. Our representatives in Congress tell us this is not surveillance. They're wrong.

Most of the established civil liberties and "peace" groups were not there, but lots of younger electronic privacy activists were, energized and angry about the constant new revelations.  

Surveillance on whole populations, chilling protest and dissent here is used by the U.S. government to enforce world-wide, systematic wars of aggression, unjust occupations, and “dirty” wars of targeted killing and secret ops.  World Can't Wait's model MQ-9 Reaper drone soared along the march and behind the stage, with the message:

STOP U.S. WARS & SURVEILLANCE BY DRONE!

The CIA and U.S. Military, aided by the NSA, use killer robots flown from 8,000 miles away to attack people on the basis of suspected patterns of behavior (a “signature” strike) and on President Obama's order.  Some call drone war a cleaner form of war because U.S. forces are not at risk. We call it illegitimate, immoral and unjust – murder. “American” lives are not more important than other lives. 

We have a new flyer with links to films/reports on US drone war which we distributed Saturday October 26 at the StopWatching.us rally protesting NSA surveillance (click here for flier en español).  

See coverage of the StopWatching.us rally in the Huffington Post which interviewed me.  View photos on Reuters. Watch video onusatoday.com. See coverage on The Guardian. 

New video from StopWatching.us in which actor Maggie Gyllenhall says, "We need to end mass suspicionless surveillance."