Daily Meme: The Whistleblower Chronicles

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  • 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?

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