Edward Snowden’s nightmare comes true

[EC]

Via Politico: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/edward-snowden-nsa-93742.html#ixzz2YA9swP2k

Edward Snowden’s nightmare may be coming true.

Not exile; not the danger of imprisonment or prosecution; and not his newfound association with dictators, lawyers and impresarios.

Snowden’s worst fear, by his own account, was that “nothing will change.”

“People will see in the media all these disclosures, they’ll know the lengths the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally, to create greater control over American society and global society,” he told The Guardian last month after he’d asked it to identify him as its source. “But they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.”

One month after the Guardian’s first story, which revealed an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing the NSA to collect the phone records of every Verizon customer, there has been no public movement in Washington to stop the court from issuing another such order. Congress has no intelligence reform bill that would rein in the phone-tracking, or Internet monitoring, or cyberattack-planning, or any of the other secret government workings that Snowden’s disclosures have revealed.

There is no modern-day Sen. Frank Church ready to convene historic hearings about the intelligence community, like the ones Church ran in the 1970s, proceedings that radically transformed the U.S. intelligence services. Far from having been surprised by Snowden’s disclosures, today’s intelligence committee leaders stepped right up to defend the NSA’s surveillance programs. From Republicans, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, to Democrats, including Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, they’ve been nearly unanimous in their support.

“I feel I have an obligation to do everything I can to keep this country safe,” Feinstein told The New York Times. “So put that in your pipe and smoke it.”

More at link.

[mountaineer]

What a sobering thought. Feinstein's comment should have gotten her tarred and feathered. Instead .... zip.

[massadvj]

Until there is a publicized domestic prosecution of someone based on information gleaned from this snooping, there will be no outcry.  At this point, the government is gathering information for meta-analysis.  As far as we know, innocent individuals are not being harmed.  Sooner or later, the government will overreach, and then there may be an outcry.  In the meantime, we are all frogs in the pot, and the temperature does seem to be going up, but who notices?  So long as I have my virtual reality, who cares what goes on in the real world.  We'll just surrender that to the government.

[Rapunzel]

The fact they scan every single piece of mail to see who we are communicating with is as troubling as them reading our emails, posting history and listening to our phone calls.