WarSclerotic

BBC News – Barack Obama pledges greater surveillance transparency.

( Gee, that’s great.  Nothing to worry about anymore.  Let’s put Snowden in jail for life for being the “traitor” that brought about this wonderful new “transparency” and get on with surrendering to radical Islam. – JW )

At a White House news conference, he proposed “safeguards against abuse”, including amending legislation on the collection of telephone data.

Mr Obama also urged allowing a lawyer to challenge decisions by the nation’s secretive surveillance court.

He has been defending the programmes since they were leaked in June.

Mr Obama said on Friday that the US “can and must be more transparent” about its snooping on phone and internet data.

“Given the history of abuse by governments, it’s right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives,” he told reporters.

“It’s not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programmes,” Mr Obama added. “The American people need to have confidence as well.”

Snowden ‘no patriot’

Mr Obama unveiled four steps aimed at reassuring Americans about the surveillance:

• He said he would work with Congress to reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which governs the programme that collects telephone records
• He directed justice officials to make public the legal rationale for the government’s phone-data collection activities, under Section 215
• He proposed allowing an attorney to challenge the government’s position on the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court
• He announced the formation of a group of external experts to review all US government intelligence and communications technologies

The president went on to accuse Russia of “backward” thinking, following its decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who disclosed details of the secretive surveillance programmes to media.

Although he played down talk of a serious diplomatic rift with Moscow, Mr Obama said there had been more anti-American rhetoric since President Vladimir Putin returned to Russian presidency.

He said that during photocalls with President Putin, the Russian leader “has got that kind of slouch, looking like he’s the bored kid in the back of the classroom”. But he said their discussions in private had been constructive.

In response to a journalist’s question about Mr Snowden, Mr Obama said: “No, I don’t think Mr Snowden was a patriot.”

The White House this week cancelled a planned summit between Mr Obama and Mr Putin next month in Moscow.

Opinion: Obama’s foreign policy in a tailspin – CNN.com.

(CNN) — America’s foreign policy has gone into a tailspin. Almost every major initiative from the Obama administration has run into sharp, sometimes embarrassing, reverses. The U.S. looks weak and confused on the global stage.

This might come as happy news to some opponents of the administration who enjoy seeing Barack Obama fail, but it shouldn’t.

America’s failure in international strategy is a disaster-in-the-making for its allies and for the people who see the U.S. model of liberal democracy as one worth emulating in their own nations.

There is no question that Obama was dealt a difficult hand.

He came to office after America’s international standing was battered by the unpopular Iraq war launched by George W. Bush. Since then, countless events outside of Washington’s control have presented the White House with options ranging in many cases from bad to worse, and problems that had no good solution.

Still, trying to count the ways in which foreign policy has gone badly for Obama makes for a stunningly long list.

Relations with Russia have fallen off a cliff, making the theatrical “reset” of 2009 look, frankly, cringe-worthy. No, it’s not all Obama’s fault. Putin has sought to belittle the U.S. and humiliate Obama personally, a man he reportedly despises, as part of his campaign to build up his authoritarian rule at home. Obama just canceled a summit meeting after Putin — incredibly, posing as the great defender of freedom — granted asylum to NSA leaker Edward Snowden despite the very public pleas from Washington, which only made the U.S. look more powerless.

You might confuse the times with the old Cold War days, but back then the U.S. looked mighty — one of two awe-inspiring superpowers. The U.S. doesn’t exactly inspire awe anymore.

Obama dramatically warned Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, as he slaughtered his people by the thousands, that if he used chemical or biological weapons, he would cross a “red line.” The line was crossed and not much happened. Syria is crumbling, self-destructing in a civil war that I, for one, believe could have turned out quite differently if Washington had offered material and diplomatic support for moderates in the opposition. Fears that the opposition would be dominated by extremists became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Syria’s war has sucked in Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, taking Lebanon to the edge of disaster and making Iran a major player in a war for the survival of the anti-American Shiite axis — Iran-Syria-Hezbollah — while the U.S., to all appearances, stands helplessly on the sidelines.

But it is Egypt where America’s foreign policy fiasco is most visible.

It was in Cairo in 2009, where the newly elected Obama, still reflecting the glow of sky-high expectations, launched his campaign to repair relations with the so-called “Muslim World.”

His landmark “New Beginning” speech in Egypt was cited by the committee that awarded Obama the Nobel Peace prize.

Nobody knew what would happen in Cairo’s Tahrir Square a few years later. But today, the same people who yearned for democracy despise Washington. When Egyptians elected a Muslim Brotherhood president, Washington tried to act respectfully, but it showed a degree of deference to the Muslim Brotherhood that ignored the ways in which the group violated not only Egyptians’ but America’s own standards of decency and rule of law.

As tensions in Egypt grow between Islamists on one side and the military and anti-Islamists on the other, there is one sentiment shared by all: Both sides feel betrayed by Washington.

Egypt’s most powerful man, Gen. Abdel Fatah al-Sissi, said, “You [the U.S.] left the Egyptians; you turned your back on the Egyptians, and they won’t forget that.”

The awkward dance around whether to call Egypt’s overthrow of President Mohamed Morsy a coup made Washington look dishonest and incompetent, especially when Secretary of State John Kerry accidentally went off script during an interview in Pakistan, saying the military was “restoring democracy.”

Just as the Arab uprisings were unfolding, the U.S. announced a major new policy, the “pivot” to Asia, with new attention to China’s rising power. But the pivot proved premature. The Middle East demanded American attention with increasing urgency.

Then there’s al Qaeda, all but given up for dead, now apparently resurrected. More than a dozen U.S. embassies stand shuttered across the Middle East and Africa, the world’s last remaining superpower symbolically cowering behind locked gates.

The scare came from what could be counted as a victory for U.S. intelligence, reportedly the result of communications surveillance. And yet, one wonders whether telling the world that the U.S. successfully listened in on al Qaeda’s leaders isn’t an absurd mistake. But Washington is on the defensive, trying to explain to the world that the surveillance is still necessary.

Everyone, it seems, is angry at the U.S. after Snowden’s revelations of NSA spying. Even Germany, one of America’s closest friends, cannot hide its irritation. Bolivia is furious after the presidential plane was forced to land on suspicions that Snowden was aboard.

America’s diplomatic disaster is the result of ham-handed efforts to please all sides, compounded by a failure to explain America’s position in a coherent way. In fact, there is no driving idea behind the country’s foreign policy. What does America stand for in the world today, can anyone answer that question?

The problem, ironically, is tailor-made for none other than President Obama. Although there is no denying that he bears the brunt of the responsibility for the problem, he is someone who has shown a talent for distilling overarching ideas from competing narratives.

It is time for a real reset, for a pivot.

It is time for Obama to spend some time thinking about what America stands for, what its goals are and then explain it in a clear and credible way. Even if we disagree with his conclusions, at least there will be a North Star guiding his policies.

Obama’s supporters and his critics should hope he can pull America forward.

Editor’s note: Frida Ghitis is a world affairs columnist for The Miami Herald and World Politics Review. A former CNN producer and correspondent, she is the author of “The End of Revolution: A Changing World in the Age of Live Television.” Follow her on Twitter: @FridaGColumns.

Anti-U.S. Hostility Ramps Up in Egypt – WSJ.com.

( Wow… The Muslims are outdoing our own loony conspiracy theorists.  Obama’s not only a “secret Muslim,” he’s a “radical Muslim.” –  JW )

Media Outlets Blast American Policies, Further Straining Ties

Opponents of ousted President Mohammed Morsi sit under anti-American banners in Cairo’s Tahrir Square on Thursday, reflecting the increasing hostility toward the U.S. from a broad range of factions in Egypt.

A headline in a major Egyptian state newspaper this week referred to the proposed U.S. envoy to Egypt as the “Ambassador of Death.” Posters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, a center of pro-government rallies, depict President Barack Obama with a beard and turban, exclaiming his “support for terrorism.”

Another large Egyptian newspaper alleged Sen. John McCain, who traveled to Cairo this week in an effort to break a deadlock between the government and its Islamist rivals, has chosen sides by employing Muslim Brotherhood staffers in his office.

Photos of President Obama were burned, defaced or shown with a beard during the protests.

Egypt’s state and privately owned media outlets, already no strangers to demonizing the U.S., have embarked on a particularly critical campaign. The latest salvos have targeted Robert Ford, the likely nominee for American ambassador to a country that is pivotal to U.S. foreign policy.

Egypt’s state and privately owned media outlets have embarked on a particularly critical campaign against the U.S. Adam Entous joins Lunch Break with more. Photo: AP.

The moves highlight the depth of public distrust of U.S. policies, and draw from a “reservoir of anti-Americanism and conspiratorial theories,” said Vali Nasr, dean of the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and a former senior Obama administration adviser.

America, he says, has few fans in the country after the 2011 overthrow of U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak and last month’s military ouster of Muslim Brotherhood-backed President Mohammed Morsi. “We’re caught in a situation of having to essentially try to find a balance between our values and our interests. It satisfies nobody,” Mr. Nasr said. “The Mubarak people are unhappy with the way he was shoved off without a thank you. The military thinks we coddled the Brotherhood and didn’t intervene to control them. And the Brotherhood thinks that we never supported them when they needed support, and then gave the green light to the military.”

The latest anti-American hysteria is a throwback to Mr. Mubarak’s three decades of rule, when state-owned media fixated on a common enemy such as Israel or the U.S. in what critics called a bid to rally the nation and deflect from government shortcomings. Now, according to several observers, Egypt’s new military-backed government is using the same playbook to divert attention from internal tensions toward what newspaper headlines and television anchors call U.S. meddling in Egyptian affairs.

“The state media are programmed to the line of whoever is in power. They don’t need instructions or calls to be told what to write,” said Hisham Qassem, a founding publisher of privately owned Al Masry Al Youm, a major newspaper. Years of state-cultivated xenophobia have left Egyptians suspicious of foreign policy and America’s interests in Egypt, said Mr. Qassem, who is now starting up his own newspaper and news channel.

Egypt’s state media acts independently, said a spokesman for the Egyptian military, Ahmed Ali.

U.S. officials say they are used to the onslaught. “There’s been a great deal of misinformation out there,” State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki said Thursday. “We’ve been taking every step possible to convey what our view is.”

The spike in rhetorical hostilities only adds to the discomfort in a relationship that has been vital to both countries in recent years. Egypt has come to count on some $1.5 billion in mostly military aid each year from the U.S., while Washington wants Egypt to maintain its peace treaty with Israel and help the U.S. against terrorism.

The Obama administration last month didn’t declare the military’s ouster of Mr. Morsi a coup. The White House froze the transfer of F-16 warplanes but hasn’t cut off other forms of assistance. Based on that, the country’s state media has reasoned that the U.S. is unlikely to cut off aid, analysts said.

Hopes that America could reset its relationship with Egypt by appointing a new ambassador are dwindling as well, after the fierce media campaign that has targeted Mr. Ford. Mr. Ford has served as the U.S. Ambassador to Damascus since late 2010.

The White House hasn’t formally nominated Mr. Ford for the Cairo post.

A fluent Arabic speaker, Mr. Ford has served in many of the Middle East’s toughest spots. In Iraq, he was known for pressing Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki’s government to crack down on Shiite militias who were attacking U.S. troops, often in collaboration with Iranian intelligence organizations.

Some in the Egyptian government have voiced displeasure with Mr. Ford’s expected nomination. One official in Cairo said he had hoped to have “a fresh face” as the next U.S. ambassador, not a diplomat seen tied to unpopular U.S. policies in the Muslim world.

The campaign against Mr. Ford comes despite requests, according to U.S. officials, from Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel to Egyptian military chief Gen. Abdel Fattah Al Sisi to intervene to stop the incitement of anti-Americanism.

Mr. Ford’s former boss in Baghdad, recently retired American Ambassador James Jeffrey, said the charges in the Egyptian press were “completely unfounded.”

“He is the best we have,” Mr. Jeffrey said of Mr. Ford. “His service in Iraq and in Syria were on orders of the president to go where the situation was the most delicate and dangerous, and to do the very best he could.”

One U.S. official said: “If it’s not Ford’s nomination, they’d find a way to criticize someone else.”

The criticism against Mr. Ford erupted this week. An article on Monday in Al Ahram, the flagship state newspaper, called Mr. Ford “the engineer of destruction in Syria, Iraq and Morocco” and “the man of blood.”

The privately owned Al Watan newspaper this week called Mr. Ford “a superstar in the world of intelligence” sent to Cairo to “finally execute on Egyptian lands what all the invasions has failed to do throughout the history.”

While stressing the media is acting on its own, Mr. Ali, the military spokesman, said: “You can’t bring someone who has a history in a troubled region and a lot of unrest, make him the U.S. ambassador to Egypt and then expect people to be happy with it.”

On a trip this week to Cairo as part of efforts to urge reconciliation between the Brotherhood and the government, Sen. McCain, an Arizona Republican, showed visible frustration with the rising anti-American sentiment.

“Let me just say as a friend of Egypt, we Americans see the demonization of our country in Egyptian state media and these kind of actions are harmful to our relationship and to your friends,” Sen. McCain said Tuesday. He warned that some representatives in the Congress wanted to sever America’s relationship with Egypt.

A spokesman for Mr. McCain on Thursday denounced accusations in Al Watan that the senator had Brotherhood staffers. “It’s sad to see these supposedly legitimate news outlets make comments so transparently absurd and outrageous,” the spokesman said.

The demonization of America in Egyptian state media has the potential to play out in dangerous ways that can’t be reined in by the government, some observers said.

In the past few months, two U.S. citizens were stabbed on Egyptian streets—one fatally—with one of the attackers telling police that he had traveled from afar to Cairo in search of an American to kill. Last fall, thousands of protesters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, some scaling the walls of the fortified compound, tearing down the American flag and replacing it with an Islamist one.

Egypt’s media appeared to bolster sentiments voiced by Raeef Elwishee, a protester living in a dirty, torn tent in Tahrir Square, to demonstrate his support of the military’s overthrow of the Brotherhood.

Mr. Elwishee, 51 years old, said he is a dual U.S.-Egyptian citizen with a wife and three children who live in Missouri. He now spends his time holding anti-American placards in Tahrir Square, one with Mr. Obama’s face crossed out with red.

“In general, Egyptians want America out of Egyptian affairs. For the U.S. to take the Brotherhood’s side is not goodwill. They have a deal to give power to the Brotherhood in Egypt and in exchange the U.S. will give Sinai to Israel,” Mr. Elwishee said with a slight American accent.

When asked for his thoughts on Mr. Ford, Mr. Elwishee didn’t hesitate. “He’s a troublemaker. It’s enough to know that he was ambassador to Syria,” he said. “He is top in one of the U.S. spy agencies…and we don’t need that kind of relationship.”

When asked where he had read about Mr. Ford serving as an intelligence agent, Mr. Elwishee answered: “I’m telling you from the newspapers I read and the people who watch TV and tell me about it.”

Israel and the Stakes in Egypt « Commentary Magazine.

Jonathan S. Tobin | @tobincommentary 08.09.2013 – 2:20 PM

Israel fires drone into Sinai, say Egypt officials | The Times of Israel.

Strike targets five suspected terrorists; Israeli military looking into report

Illustrative photo of the Israeli drone, “Ethan” (photo credit: Yossi Zeliger/Flash90)

Turkey calls on citizens to leave Lebanon | The Times of Israel.

After kidnapping of two pilots on Friday, Turkish Foreign Ministry issues advisory against Lebanon-bound travel

A Turkish Airlines flight (photo credit: CC BY-SA BriYYZ/Flickr/File)

The Turkish Foreign Ministry told its citizens to leave Lebanon on Friday and advised against travel to the country, after two Turkish pilots were abducted by gunmen in an attack that appeared linked to the ongoing civil war in neighboring Syria.

Six gunmen ambushed a van Friday carrying a Turkish Airlines crew on an old airport road in Beirut, abducting the two Turkish nationals, a pilot and co-pilot, and letting the rest of the crew go, officials said.

The van was travelling between Rafik Hariri International Airport and a Beirut hotel when the ambush took place, said the Lebanese officials, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Lebanon’s state news agency said a group called the Zuwaar al-Imam Rida claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. The group, which was previously unknown, said in a statement carried by the National News Agency that the pilots “will only be released when the Lebanese hostages in Syria return.”

The civil war in neighboring Syria has deeply divided the Lebanese. The Syrian rebels, who are backed by Turkey, have been holding nine Lebanese Shiites hostage since last year. There have been other kidnappings on both sides since the war began.

A representative for the Lebanese hostages’ families said that there was “no relationship between the kidnapping of Turkish pilots and case of Lebanese hostages in Syria,” the NNA reported. However, Sheik Abbas Zougheib of the Higher Shiite Councils said if the abduction “is to settle the question of Lebanese abducted in Syria, we support it,” according to the news service.

The Turkish crew had landed a Turkish Airlines flight from Istanbul early Friday morning, the Lebanese officials told The Associated Press. Authorities were investigating and the road where the kidnapping occurred has been closed off with several police checkpoints, the officials said.

The NNA reported earlier that the driver of the van was being questioned and that eight gunmen were involved in the abduction. The difference in the number of the attackers in the report and the Lebanese officials’ account could not immediately be explained.

In Turkey, Foreign Ministry spokesman Levent Gumrukcu confirmed the kidnapping. He said the rest of the crew was still in Beirut but were leaving to return to Turkey on Friday evening.

“We don’t know who did this and for what purpose,” Gumrukcu said. He said the Turkish government was in close contact with Lebanese officials over the abduction.

Turkey supports the Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to topple the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad, which is dominated by Alawites, an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam.

A spokesman for Turkish Airlines Ali Genc identified the two pilots as Murat Akpinar and Murat Agca. Genc did not offer any other information.

The Lebanese are deeply divided over Syria’s civil war, with Shiites largely supporting the regime in Damascus and Sunnis backing the rebels. Both Sunni militants, and fighters from Lebanon’s dominant Shiite Hezbollah group, have been fighting on opposite sides in the conflict.

The conflict in Syria that has claimed more than 100,000 lives since it erupted in March 2011. The fighting frequently has spilled into Lebanon.

Iran’s Plan B for the Bomb – NYTimes.com.

Mike McQuade

By AMOS YADLIN and AVNER GOLOV

Published: August 8, 2013 29 Comments

The Muslim Brotherhood makes sparks fly – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Just as they had been once before, voices calling for the banning of the Muslim Brotherhood are on the rise, in the wake of recent events. Aside from the consequences of that battle, I think the word “banned” doesn’t do the Brotherhood justice. I think it is better that we deem the Brotherhood “jinxed.” Their jinx doesn’t stop at them; it extends to everyone who deals with them – even those who aren’t with them.

Look at all the “jinxes” that have befallen anyone who tries to be rational and logical in dealing with the Brotherhood. Accusations of espionage and treason have been thrown at everyone who has tried to deal with the situation peacefully, far from the calls for “beating and slamming.”

This jinx has stuck with everyone who has tried to defend you [the Brotherhood] when you were a banned group, and with everyone who tried to meet you half-way when you were in power. The curse of this jinx has extended to everyone who tried to reach a peaceful solution with you after you were ousted from power.

This jinx has reached people like ElBaradei, Hamzawy, Belal Fadl and many other political and rights activists.

You must well remember how your media flexed their muscles, while defaming many of us with accusations of heresy, espionage, treason, shady funding and homosexuality. With your fall, we should have gloated and celebrated the collapse of those who defamed our honour and reputation: but we did not. Rather, many of these people continue to suffer smear campaigns that use the same discourse your media used, after being exported to the private media and Facebook pages that oppose you. Hence, anyone who deals with you is doomed from all angles. Didn’t I tell you that you are “jinxed”?

Mursi’s reinstatement?

But forget about the media and the extremist Facebook pages; let’s look at how the average person thinks.

I conducted a little experiment where I talked to many of those who voted for you whether in parliamentary or presidential elections. I have never witnessed such hatred and repulsion vis-à-vis a political party as I did within this experiment. I discovered that even those who have reservations about June 30, those who hate the Ministry of Interior (MOI) as well as the SCAF, have reservations. Those reservations stem from the mismanagement of the political situation, and from their hatred towards the Mubarak regime, its media and their fear of its return. But when I asked even the most sympathetic none demanded the return of Mursi. Even most of those who call what happened a coup do not call for Mursi’s reinstatement. They instead use words like “reconciliation,” “co-existence” and “political participation” out of fear of the return of the days of the 1990s: not out of support for your [the Brotherhood’s] stance.

I am not asking the Brotherhood to learn from history, and the fact that the society has discharged them more than once because of their stupidity. For you have proven that you do not like, nor learn from, history. But I do ask you to learn from what has happened over the last two years.

 

Bassem Youssef

Even the calls of those “idealists” for your return to the political life are shattered by what happens on a daily basis on the stage in Rabaa; the blocking of roads; and terrorizing of people in their own homes. So much so, that the average person is left asking: “Who are these people we’re talking about returning and participating in government? Those who don’t mind replicating the Syrian scenario? Those who don’t hesitate to threaten setting the country on fire unless their demands are met? Those who see nothing wrong in resorting to foreigners, but rather cheer when they hear some fantasy news on the stage [in Rabaa] about American boats moving towards our coasts? Those who use women and children as human shields, and are not embarrassed to present their children in funeral garbs in a cheap theatrical performance?”

We all know that a person’s resolve/character is most tested at times of difficulty, and you have provided the worst example for dealing with the bleakest of moments. The “simple citizen” looks at you and wonders: “Can you imagine what they would do to the country if they resume power?”

The simple citizen, who has always been looked down upon by those who accused him of selling out for some sugar and oil, has seen nothing of your Nahda [Renaissance] Project. He now sees you inciting violence and using hate speech on the stage [in Rabaa]; he sees the terrorist attacks on Sinai and the attacks on churches in Minya, Suhag and Assiut. He sees all of this and you want to resume power? This citizen no longer believes your empty mantra of: “We bring prosperity to Egypt.” What prosperity do you speak of, when you are inciting discord, hatred and destruction?

When I try to convince the simple citizen that we should deal with the sit-in quickly and calmly he, who is neither a political expert nor a journalist, tells me: “Sir, these are people who neither want to negotiate nor reconcile. They want to twist this country’s arm. The government is calling on them to sit and dialogue, but they are hiding behind their women. They are looking for trouble, a funeral they can use to trade in politics, and thus play the victim.”

Yes: I swear this was a conversation with the supermarket employee who voted for the Brotherhood in parliament and for Mursi as president.

How did support turn into hatred and distrust in less than a year? Didn’t I tell you it was jinxed?

Rowhani’s two-track nuclear policy – Alarabiya.net English | Front Page.

Email service used by Snowden shuts itself down, warns against using US-based companies | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | theguardian.com.

( This is the scariest of scary pieces to come out about the US’s abuse of its citizen’s human rights.  Off topic here, it is of such deep concern to me that I urge all who come here to read it and decide what they are willing to do about it.  It is time for grass-roots ACTION !  – JW )

Snowden: “Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren’t fighting for our interests the same way”

The front page of Lavabit announces to its users its decision to shut down rather than comply with ongoing US surveillance orders Photo: Lavabit

A Texas-based encrypted email service recently revealed to be used by Edward Snowden – Lavabit – announced yesterday it was shutting itself down in order to avoid complying with what it perceives as unjust secret US court orders to provide government access to its users’ content. “After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations,” the company’s founder, Ladar Levinson, wrote in a statement to users posted on the front page of its website. He said the US directive forced on his company “a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit.” He chose the latter.

CNET’s Declan McCullagh smartly speculates that Lavabit was served “with [a] federal court order to intercept users’ (Snowden?) passwords” to allow ongoing monitoring of emails; specifically: “the order can also be to install FedGov-created malware.” After challenging the order in district court and losing – all in a secret court proceeding, naturally – Lavabit shut itself down to avoid compliance while it appeals to the Fourth Circuit.

This morning, Silent Circle, a US-based secure online communication service, followed suit by shutting its own encrypted email service. Although it said it had not yet been served with any court order, the company, in a statement by its founder, internet security guru Phil Zimmerman, said: “We see the writing on the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now.”

What is particularly creepy about the Lavabit self-shutdown is that the company is gagged by law even from discussing the legal challenges it has mounted and the court proceeding it has engaged. In other words, the American owner of the company believes his Constitutional rights and those of his customers are being violated by the US Government, but he is not allowed to talk about it. Just as is true for people who receive National Security Letters under the Patriot Act, Lavabit has been told that they would face serious criminal sanctions if they publicly discuss what is being done to their company. Thus we get hostage-message-sounding missives like this:

I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what’s going on – the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.”

Does that sound like a message coming from a citizen of a healthy and free country? Secret courts issuing secret rulings invariably in favor of the US government that those most affected are barred by law from discussing? Is there anyone incapable at this point of seeing what the United States has become? Here’s the very sound advice issued by Lavabit’s founder:

This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.“

As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote in a great Bloomberg column last week, this is one of the key aspects of the NSA disclosures: the vast public-private surveillance partnership. That’s what makes Lavabit’s stance so heroic: as our reporting has demonstrated, most US-based tech and telecom companies (though not all) meekly submit to the US government’s dictates and cooperative extensively and enthusiastically with the NSA to ensure access to your communications.

Snowden, who told me today that he found Lavabit’s stand “inspiring”, added:

“Ladar Levison and his team suspended the operations of their 10 year old business rather than violate the Constitutional rights of their roughly 400,000 users. The President, Congress, and the Courts have forgotten that the costs of bad policy are always borne by ordinary citizens, and it is our job to remind them that there are limits to what we will pay.

“America cannot succeed as a country where individuals like Mr. Levison have to relocate their businesses abroad to be successful. Employees and leaders at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, and the rest of our internet titans must ask themselves why they aren’t fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are. The defense they have offered to this point is that they were compelled by laws they do not agree with, but one day of downtime for the coalition of their services could achieve what a hundred Lavabits could not.

“When Congress returns to session in September, let us take note of whether the internet industry’s statements and lobbyists – which were invisible in the lead-up to the Conyers-Amash vote – emerge on the side of the Free Internet or the NSA and its Intelligence Committees in Congress.”

The growing (and accurate) perception that most US-based companies are not to be trusted with the privacy of electronic communications poses a real threat to those companies’ financial interests. A report issued this week by the Technology and Innovation Foundation estimated that the US cloud computing industry, by itself, could lose between $21 billion to $35 billion due to reporting about the industry’s ties to the NSA. It also notes that other nations’ officials have been issuing the same kind of warnings to their citizens about US-based companies as the one issued by Lavabit yesterday:

And after the recent PRISM leaks, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich declared publicly, ‘whoever fears their communication is being intercepted in any way should use services that don’t go through American servers.’ Similarly, Jörg-Uwe Hahn, a German Justice Minister, called for a boycott of US companies.”

The US-based internet industry knows that the recent transparency brought to the NSA is a threat to their business interests. This week, several leading Silicon Valley and telecom executives met with President Obama to discuss their “surveillance partnership”. But the meeting was – naturally – held in total secrecy. Why shouldn’t the agreements and collaborations between these companies and the NSA for access to customer communications not be open and public?

Obviously, the Obama administration, telecom giants, and the internet industry are not going to be moved by appeals to transparency, privacy and basic accountability. But perhaps they’ll consider the damage being done to the industry’s global reputation and business interests by constructing a ubiquitous spying system with the NSA and doing it all in secret.

It’s well past time to think about what all this reflects about the US. As the New York Times Editorial Page put it today, referencing a front-page report from Charlie Savage enabled by NSA documents we published: “Apparently no espionage tool that Congress gives the National Security Agency is big enough or intrusive enough to satisfy the agency’s inexhaustible appetite for delving into the communications of Americans.” The NYT added:

Time and again, the NSA has pushed past the limits that lawmakers thought they had imposed to prevent it from invading basic privacy, as guaranteed by the Constitution.”

I know it’s much more fun and self-satisfying to talk about Vladimir Putin and depict him as this omnipotent cartoon villain. Talking about the flaws of others is always an effective tactic for avoiding our own, and as a bonus in this case, we get to and re-live Cold War glory by doing it. The best part of all is that we get to punish another country for the Supreme Sin: defying the dictates of the US leader.

[Note how a country’s human rights problems becomes of interest to the US political and media class only when that country defies the US: hence, all the now-forgotten focus on Ecuador’s press freedom record when it granted asylum to Julian Assange and considered doing so for Edward Snowden, while the truly repressive and deeply US-supported Saudi regime barely rates a mention. Americans love to feign sudden concern over a country’s human rights abuses as a tool for punishing that country for disobedience to imperial dictates and for being distracted from their own government’s abuses: Russia grants asylum to Snowden –> Russia is terrible to gays! But maybe it’s more constructive for US media figures and Americans generally to think about what’s happening to their own country and the abuses of the own government, the one for which they bear responsibility and over which they can exercise actual influence.]

Lavabit has taken an impressive and bold stand against the US government, sacrificing its self-interest for the privacy rights of its users. Those inclined to do so can return that support by helping it with lawyers’ fees to fight the US government’s orders, via this paypal link provided in the company’s statement.

One of the most remarkable, and I think enduring, aspects of the NSA stories is how much open defiance there has been of the US government. Numerous countries around the world have waved away threats, from Hong Kong and Russia to multiple Latin American nations. Populations around the world are expressing serious indignation at the NSA and at their own government to the extent they have collaborated. And now Lavabit has shut itself down rather than participate in what it calls “crimes against the American people”, and in doing so, has gone to the legal limits in order to tell us all what has happened. There will undoubtedly be more acts inspired by Snowden’s initial choice to unravel his own life to make the world aware of what the US government has been doing in the dark.