June Fifth: “Edward Snowden Day” Except Not. Yet.

By Lambert Strether of Corrente.

Paul Jay of The Real News Network interviews Michael Ratner on the revelations of Edward Snowden; the first Guardian story ran on June 5. Ratner is President Emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York and Chair of the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights in Berlin. Ratner is currently a legal adviser to Wikileaks and Julian Assange. Heres the video:

More at The Real News

June 5. Has it really been such a short time? Or so long a time? Ratner explains:

[W]ere recording this on June 5, which is Thursday, which is the day the first article based on Snowden documents appeared in The Guardian. .. And its also the second anniversary or coming on the second anniversary of two years of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy. Thatll be June 19. So the anniversaries in June are quite important.

Lets go back to the first story, the first story of June 5, the work of Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras. They had gotten to Hong Kong a few days before that. They met Edward Snowden. They met with him on June 3. And they do the first story, which I said is a FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) court order, secret court order, concerning Verizon in particular, but saying that Verizon had to turn over all of the metadata on our phone calls in the United States and elsewherebasically, how long, what cell towers theyre from, all kinds of information. And from that, of course, they make a tree of everybody, whos in contact with who, and they get a huge range of information about it. That was the first story, a big story, because it was a misinterpretation, in many of our views, by the secret court of the FISA powers, of the Foreign Intelligence Act powers. And it also showed just how pervasive the surveillance is.

Second day, June 6, which will be an anniversary of, on this Friday, the day after tomorrow, they expose the PRISM story. Thats the NSA has direct access, through our computers, through Google, Facebook, Apple, and other U.S. internet giants, to data held by those internet giants, our actual content of our datamy emails, etc., another huge story.

This year, Edward Snowden Day, June 5, was also #ResetTheNet Day, of which Edward Snowden wrote:

Today, we can begin the work of effectively shutting down the collection of our online communications, even if the US Congress fails to do the same. Thats why Im asking you to join me on June 5th for Reset the Net, when people and companies all over the world will come together to implement the technological solutions that can put an end to the mass surveillance programs of any government.

We have the technology, and adopting encryption is the first effective step that everyone can take to end mass surveillance. Thats why I am excited for Reset the Net it will mark the moment when we turn political expression into practical action, and protect ourselves on a large scale.

Read more here:
June Fifth: “Edward Snowden Day” Except Not. Yet.