- It’s been a busy week for those on the NSA beat. First, the partner of Glenn Greenwald-the Guardian reporter who’s worked closely with whistleblower Edward Snowden-was detained for nine hours at Heathrow Airport. …
- … after which The Guardian had to destroy the hard drives that stored the rest of the leaked data, or surrender it to the U.K. government.
- Then The Wall Street Journal revealed today that the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs-which have names like Blarney, Fairview, Oakstar, Lithium, and Stormbrew-cover 75 percent of U.S. web traffic. This doesn’t mean analysts are sifting through your embarrassing Google searches, but still, yikes.
- Meanwhile, the NSA isn’t quite sure how much info Snowden has yet to leak, but they think it’s probably a lot.
- And we’re not done yet! Bradley Manning, who provided more than 700,000 government files to Wikileaks in 2010, has been sentenced to 35 years in prison.
- So what’s it all mean? Dana Milbank is worried that whistleblowers who try to take a more traditional road to transparency aren’t being appreciated by the Obama administration, which could mean a steady stream of litigious leaker messes is in our future.
- Joshua Foust wonders what Manning’s sentence means for future whistleblowers. “The big question of whether it will serve as a deterrent to future leakers, however, remains to be seen.”
- Political fallout from the brouhaha is starting to become clear. Young voters are increasingly miffed at President Obama over what they see as clear breaches of Internet privacy.
- Anyway. Maybe the best way to solve this is to make PRISM available to everyone! There’s an app for that, right?
