Chris Hedges VS Geoffrey Stone Debate: Is Edward Snowden a Hero?

with Chris Hedges
Writer, Dandelion Salad
June 12, 2013

Image by Michael Fleshman via Flickr

democracynow June 12, 2013

http://www.democracynow.org – Edward Snowden’s decision to leak a trove of secret documents outlining the NSA’s surveillance program has elicited a range of reactions. Among his detractors, he’s been called “a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison,” (Jeffrey Toobin of the New Yorker), who’s committed “an act of treason,” (Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate intelligence committee). To supporters, Snowden is a hero for showing that “our very humanity [is] being compromised by the blind implementation of machines in the name of making us safe,” (author Douglas Rushkoff), one whom President Obama should “thank and offer him a job as a White House technology advisor,” (American Conservative editor Scott McConnell). We host a debate with two guests: Chris Hedges, a senior fellow at the Nation Institute and former Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign correspondent for the New York Times; and Geoffrey Stone, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School. Stone served as an informal advisor to President Obama in 2008, years after hiring him to teach constitutional law.

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Chris Hedges spent two decades as a foreign reporter covering wars in Latin America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. His latest books are Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt, Death of the Liberal Class, and The World as It Is: Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress.

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More Intrusive Than Eavesdropping? NSA Collection of Metadata Hands Gov’t Sweeping Personal Info

democracynow June 12, 2013

http://www.democracynow.org – As the American Civil Liberties Union sues the Obama administration over its secret NSA phone spying program, we look at how the government could use phone records to determine your friends, medical problems, business transactions and the places you’ve visited. While President Obama insists that nobody is listening to your telephone calls, cybersecurity expert Susan Landau says the metadata being collected by the government may be far more revealing than the content of the actual phone calls. A mathematician and former Sun Microsystems engineer, Landau is the author of the book “Surveillance or Security?: The Risks Posed by New Wiretapping Technologies.”

see

Chris Hedges: The Moral Order of the Country Has Been Flipped Upside Down

Julian Assange: It’s a Vast, Sprawling, Transnational Surveillance System

Julian Assange To Edward Snowden: I Would Strongly Advise Him To Go To Latin America + Glenn Greenwald: Boundless Informant: The NSA’s Secret Tool

Long Running, Long-Known NSA Illegalities and Long-Ignored NSA Whistleblowers by Sibel Edmonds

The Judicial Lynching of Bradley Manning by Chris Hedges

Left Forum #LF2013 Event: Bradley Manning and Whistleblowers + I am Bradley Manning