Welcome! This is an unapologetic, agenda-free zone. Just commentaries on current events that’ll move you to think, laugh, rage, and even cry.
Three years ago, Edward Snowden made defying government mass surveillance a cause celebre. Ever since, tech companies have been in the vanguard of those championing this cause. From day one, however, I’ve been decrying their hypocrisy and the ignorance of their customers. This excerpt – from “Complaints about NSA Spying Are Schizophrenic … and Misguided,”… Read more.
So why are news organizations still portraying him as a hero instead of a zero (aka traitor)? Britain has been forced to move some of its spies after Russia and China accessed the top-secret raft of documents taken by former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, British media reported. The BBC and the Sunday Times cited… Read more.
MIT professor emeritus Noam Chomsky is arguably the most accomplished thinker in America, if not the world, today. Whatever one thinks of Wikipedia, it fairly describes Chomsky as an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, logician, political commentator, social justice activist, and anarcho-syndicalist advocate. That established, Chomsky shared “his views on the current media landscape” in… Read more.
I have written many commentaries denouncing Edward Snowden as more traitor than hero for leaking NSA secrets. Here are illustrative excerpts from two of them. From “Judge Ruling on NSA Spying…,” December 18, 2013. __________________ I too would be championing Snowden’s professed cause if he had taken his treasure trove of NSA secrets to a… Read more.
Here, in part, is how I pooh-poohed – in “I Spy, You Spy, We All Spy,” July 2, 2013 – the moral indignation Germans (and other Europeans) hurled at the Americans after Snowden’s leaks revealed that the NSA routinely spied on them, including Chancellor Angela Merkel: The Europeans are ‘shocked, shocked,’ and are expressing feelings of profound… Read more.
People are up in arms about the recent revelation that Facebook manipulated its users during a psychological study… User Interface designers and researchers at places like Google, Facebook or Yahoo! regularly tweak the live site’s interface for a subset of visitors to see whether users behave differently in response. While this technique shines new light… Read more.
Putin clearly has no use for Snowden. But, as a perfectly understandable matter of form, he must avoid any appearance of caving in to American demands to return him immediately… There seems little doubt that Putin will eventually hand Snowden over to his ‘American partner.’ And I assure you, he has every intention of doing so… Read more.
According to Edward Snowden’s latest rolling disclosures, when it comes to international spying, the United States targets allies like France and Germany as readily as it targets frenemies like China and Russia. Unsurprisingly, the Europeans are “shocked, shocked,” and are expressing feelings of profound betrayal: The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French president, François Hollande,… Read more.
Immediately below is a commentary I wrote last Saturday (June 8) on the public’s reaction to leaks about the U.S. government’s National Security Agency (NSA) spying on its citizens. In light of the international media frenzy NSA leaker Edward Snowden caused this week, I have decided to reprise it here, followed by a new commentary… Read more.
