By Prof. Jose Maria Sison Chairperson, International League of Peoples' Struggle

We, the International League of Peoples' Struggle, praise the heroic act of Edward Snowden in exposing PRISM, a secret national security electronic surveillance program operated by the US National Security Agency (NSA) since 2007. We applaud his noble and democratic purpose of making the exposure in order to defend the privacy rights of American citizens and the people of the world.

PRISM is covered by an unconstitutional blanket authority from the US Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) for the NSA to monitor the phone, email and other communications of US citizens and foreigners and require the world's leading technology companies to provide access to the electronic data. The antecedent of PRISM is the Terrorist Surveillance Program, implemented in the wake of 9-11.

In exposing PRISM, Snowden has provided copies of the classified documents about the program to The Guardian and Washington Post. The documents include 41 Power Point slides and identify the collaborating technology companies, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Paltalk, YouTube, AOL, Skype and Apple. The NSA intercepts all electronic data that pass into, from and through the US.

The whistleblower, Edward Snowden, is a 29 year-old technology expert and former technical assistant for the CIA, who has worked at the NSA as an employee of various defense contractors, including Booz Allen Hamilton and Dell. He was in a position to access and copy an enormous amount of intelligence documents from the NSA, the most secretive organization in the world.

He is now acknowledged as one of the most consequential whistle blowers in US history, together with Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon papers and Bradley Manning who provided Wikileaks with the memoranda and cables to and from the US State Department. In fact, Snowden is now rated as the one who has exposed the most documents about the criminal and anti-democratic acts of the US government.

We admire his principled position and courage in exposing PRISM. He has declared that he stands for the right of the people to privacy and all related democratic rights against the unconstitutional and criminal acts of the state. By daring to fight the No. 1 imperialist power, he has sacrificed his relatively high salary and comfortable life and he is now in danger of being renditioned and even murdered by US covert operatives and their shady partners.

We condemn US imperialism for having laid the legal and electronic infrastructure of a surveillance state and a fascistic executive branch of government. In connection with PRISM, the US has arrogantly claimed that it is out to violate the rights of foreigners and not American citizens. This is a blatant demagogic lie disproven by the classified documents that have come to light.

We stand in solidarity with Edward Snowden and support him all the way in his fight for the democratic rights pf the people against the growing surveillance state in the US and against the criminal arrogance and hegemonism of the US. We are happy that the ILPS chapter and member-organizations in Hongkong and Macao have expressed support for Snowden. We call on all global region committees, national chapters, member-organizations and allies of the ILPS to do likewise and to act militantly in defense of Snowden.

#UnitedStates #US #JoseMariaSison #InjusticeSystem #PRISM #EdwardSnowden #NSA

These surveillance scandals come just weeks after the Associated Press announced that the U.S. Justice Department had secretly obtained two months worth of their reporters’ and editors’ phone records.

“There is a massive apparatus within the United States government that with complete secrecy has been building this enormous structure that has only one goal, and that is to destroy privacy and anonymity, not just in the United States but around the world,” said Glenn Greenwald, who broke the story for The Guardian, speaking on CNN. “That is not hyperbole. That is their objective.”

While many Americans are trying to figure out what these revelations mean for their Fourth Amendment right to privacy, at least 23 anti-war and international solidarity activists have already been dealing with this for quite some time. In 2010 the FBI subpoenaed the Anti-War 23 to testify at a secret grand jury in Chicago about their activism and their fellow members of peace and justice movements. Some also had their homes raided and it was apparent from their search warrants that the government was starting to listen – and maybe already was listening – to their phone conversations and reading their emails and social media communications.

Fight Back! asked activists involved with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, “As someone who the government has been spying on since at least 2008, what do you have to say to the majority of Americans who just realized that they are also being spied on?”

Joe Iosbaker, an activist with the Chicago Antiwar Committee answered, “The FBI raids and grand jury subpoenas that we were hit with taught us that we have to defend our democratic rights to organize and to protest. The U.S. government is in crisis as a result of losing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus their system has an economic crisis that is not solvable. The corporations and the politicians are making the people pay for the crisis by cutting services, and the fight back is growing before our eyes. Some examples are the Occupy movement, the march against NATO and growing public worker strikes, like the teachers in Chicago. President Obama fears the prospect of even greater unrest, so the government gathers information, and when a movement gets going, tries to stop it with intimidation and threats of prison. People should stand up and say no to spying and intimidation! Don’t be afraid. Speak out!”

Tom Burke, an organizer with the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, agreed with Iosbaker, “People are rightly upset that the secretive National Security Agency listens to their phone calls and spies on them. People are angry that President Obama made promises to end spying at home and then acted worse than President George W. Bush did. People feel violated that their private phone calls and emails are being recorded and observed by U.S. government spies. It makes more people question the FBI raids and repression targeting anti-war activists, Arab-Americans and Muslims.”

Dave Schneider, an activist with SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in Tallahassee, Florida, has done organizing to defend the Anti-War 23. He sees these news revelations coming to light as an opportunity for organizing. “This is an important moment for activists in the U.S. Despite overwhelmingly voting against the repression and surveillance that defined the Bush administration in 2008 and 2012, activists today find themselves at the mercy of an expanded national security state turned inward on the people. The U.S. makes a habit of criticizing other governments for supposedly spying on their citizens, but this practice goes completely unchecked by courts or laws in this country. If there is one lesson activists can learn from these revelations, it's that some words written on a piece of paper over 225 years ago doesn't guarantee you the right to free speech or to protest. We have to fight for it by organizing a broad based people's movement against government repression in the U.S.”

Edward Snowden reported to The Guardian that the scope of the surveillance on Americans is incredibly widespread and is violating the right to privacy of everyone. When asked why he was revealing that he was the whistleblower he said, “I don’t want to live in a society that does these sorts of things.” He added, “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.” Snowden is at risk for significant punishment from U.S. authorities for leaking this information. It is now up to the American public to use his information to challenge the government’s expanding security state.

#UnitedStates #CommitteeToStopFBIRepression #NationalSecurityAgency #PRISM #EdwardSnowden