The Science is Settled, CO2 is a Greenhouse Gas, But Our Atmosphere's Sensitivity to it is Uncertain

In 1992 Al Gore famously and infamously stood before the US Congress and declared, "the science is settled",  in his usual style of sensationalistic, oversimplified, headline hunting hyperbole. And the with those words our climate war began. Al was of course right that back in 1862 John Tyndall described the key to climate change. He had discovered [and many have repeated his experiments since then] in his laboratory that certain gases, including water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2), are opaque to heat rays. He understood that such gases high in the air help keep our planet warm by interfering with escaping radiation, the Greenhouse Effect..

What Al neglected to mention, perhaps because it clouded his hunt for the perfect headline, was that our planet's atmospheric sensitivity to those gases and all the other complex interactions from a wide range of confounding factors make climate science a study in uncertainty. Consequently, climate sensitivity is the term scientists use to describe the way our climate reacts to changes in carbon-dioxide levels.

Climate sensitivity is one of the key parameters that the various computer programs we call climate models use to output future climate prognostications from an alphabet soup of parameters all of whose values are a function of other derivatives. In reality, climate sensitivity itself is function of hotly debated parameters derived from things like the looking backward at the historic records of temperature and CO2 concentrations which are themselves debatable. Simply put [for now] they strongly correlate over time but because there's no way to know 'the chicken or the egg' answer, this correlation is no proof of causation.

In the next few days The Mud Report will try to navigate the switchbacks of climate sensitivity and some of the uncertainties embedded in it from proponent, opponent and heretical perspectives. Columbia University has an excellent one page non-technical primer called 'The Carbon Cycle and Earth's Climate'. It explains that, "Carbon dioxide is an atmospheric constituent that plays several vital roles in the environment. It is a greenhouse gas that traps infrared radiation heat in the atmosphere. It plays a crucial role in the weathering of rocks. It is the carbon source for plants. It is stored in biomass, organic matter in sediments, and in carbonate rocks like limestone."

As PhD Physicist Joel Shore said in an email response recently:
"It seems to me that “the science is settled” is a phrase that is probably used more often by AGW skeptics (clearly, not approvingly) than it is by AGW proponents. It is of course true that in science, all knowledge is tentative…And, yet people don’t argue that one should make policy decisions under the assumption that the Law of Gravity could still theoretically be overturned by new knowledge (which may sound ridiculous, but if you consider the issues of Dark Energy and of the fact that nobody has ever successfully married quantum mechanics and gravity, there truly are some unsettled issues).

The fact is that various aspects of climate science are known to various degrees of certainty. The value of climate sensitivity…and particularly the feedback from clouds is clearly much more uncertain, as are some of the consequences of climate change on sea level, flora, fauna, and society. However, that does not mean that nothing is known about them.

To the extent that AGW proponents do say things to the effect that “the science is settled,” what is often meant is that the weight of the evidence is sufficiently clear that it is unwise to act as if we are not facing a serious problem and that continuing to burn through all of the likely reserves of fossil fuels is probably going to cause significant disruptions. Depending on just how large the climate sensitivity turns out to be and how large the impacts from climate change turns out to be, we probably face significant disruptions if we don’t move to drastically curtail our emissions." 

Shore obviously believes in 'The Precautionary Principle' not because he's certain, but because he's not..

The Cloudy Climate Science Consensus is Based on Simplified Models of our Complex Atmosphere

Yesterday's post talked about the limitations of consensus in science. As a friend pointed out this morning my logic in it was a bit cloudy. Cloudy is actually a really good representation of the whole issue as well as one of the major uncertainties involved in climate science's attempts to tease out reliable projections from such an impossibly complex system as our atmosphere.

Further clouding yesterday's topic is the fact that there are two different types of science being discussed in the post.  One is the type of science that is a repeatable experiment with controls and isolated materials/effects. The second was scientific modeling where, like the earth's atmosphere, there's only one so there can be no controls - no separate planet identical planet that's left untouched - and no possible isolation of effects/materials.

The second type, modeling, is where the climate change consensus comes into play because there are no definitive/repeatable results to be had. In modeling complex systems, whether the economy, air flow over planes/cars or especially the atmosphere, there are so many interdependent variables all highly sensitive to initial condition who's values are all derived from other variables no one answer is achievable. The climate science consensus depends on our attempts to describe the highly complicated real world with simple models

As Hendrik Tennekes, retired Director of Research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, says, "Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification, the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit. From this perspective, those that advocate the idea that the response of the real climate is adequately represented in climate models have an obligation to prove that they have not overlooked a single nonlinear, possibly chaotic feedback mechanism [the black swan effect-ed.] that Nature itself employs." Which of course is impossible

Consequently all climate models return uncertain results. There are different types of climate model, each has different input parameters who's values are derived from other variables. Each of these parameters is hotly debated in great detail by climatologists, meteorologists, physicists, chemists, astrophysicists, geologists and other specialists in each area. The best site IMO to follow the arguments of the specialists is world famous meteorologist Judith Curry's Climate Etc.

Another, less technical article that gives excellent overall analysis of model uncertainty issues as well as the different types of climate models and their parameters is t 'Climate science: A sensitive matter'. In the next few posts The Mud Report will try to explain the uncertain consensus among 97% of climate scientists who are 66% certain that the results from the combined models are accurate. Then go on to explain that many of the opponents of that 'consensus' agree with the results that lie outside that 66% range [both above and below] for valid reasons.

We'll start tomorrow with Al Gore's famous and oversimplified statement before congress back in 1992 that "the science is settled" and explain that he was right because all the way back in 1862 John Tyndall discovered in his laboratory that certain gases, including water vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2), are opaque to heat rays and that such gases high in the air help keep our planet warm by interfering with escaping radiation. But that the atmosphere's 'sensitivity' to those gases and the complex interactions in our atmosphere are far from certain.

Consensus is a Tool of Political Compromise that has Nothing to do with Real Science

Consensus is almost always a race to the bottom. In every group of people, on any complicated issue there are a wide range of opinions. A consensus is what they'll all agree on so it's either a compromise none of them actually agree with or an opinion reached by a bartering of values or, like most of the UN's decisions, a situation where everyone falls into line with the one or two holdouts that refuse to compromise at all.

The UN Security Council is the perfect example. No matter how many countries condemn Syria right now they are unable to reach the mandatory consensus for any type of action because Russia and China know nothing will happen as long as they refuse to compromise. The Americans do the same thing on every issue that involves Israel.

"Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world. In science consensus is irrelevant. What are relevant are reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus." - Michael Crichton

Once upon a time the mainstream scientific consensus agreed that the earth was flat, that leeches were the best medical intervention and that DDT was a miracle.  DDT first synthesized in 1874, its insecticidal properties were discovered in 1939 and in 1948 Swiss chemist Paul Hermann Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work with DDT as a poison for troublesome insects. As far back as the early 1940's a small minority of scientists questioned the safety of DDT but they were mostly ignored until the bestseller Silent Spring was published in 1962. It argued that DDT was poisoning wildlife, the environment and endangering human health. The public's reaction to Racheal Carson's classic launched the modern environmental movement.

Einstein was ridiculed, Galileo threatened with being burned at the stake if he didn't recant his heathen opinion that the earth wasn't the center of the universe. Keeping an open mind about the conclusions of 'experts' is always a good idea. As Dawud Bone, the Stone Ashdown Director of the Centre for the Study of Muslim-Jewish Relations at the Woolf Institute, says, "It is not only legitimate to question consensus, it is essential to do so."

IPCC is an arm of the UN, its conclusions are subject to the revisions of the UN's member states each of which has its own political agenda. Before the IPCC issues any report on climate it is also subject to the review of scientists of all different stripes who have a wide range opinions about every aspect of the underlying science. Consequently the IPCC's consensus opinions are always stated as a probability. For instance, right now 97% of the scientists are 66% sure of the present consensus [more on that tomorrow].

In the next few posts The Mud Report will explore both sides of the cloudy climate consensus conclusions that are at the heart of what really has become a philosophical not a scientific debate. Somehow this one symptom has taken the much broader environmental disease issue as a hostage. As Jane Goodall said, “Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don't believe is right.” Dialogue, as Goodall states, requires open minded listening to those folks who have reached different conclusions from our own. Sometimes, on inconsequential issues, a consensus, even if it means a compromise that nobody really agrees with is fine, but on the issues of the causes to and solutions for environmental destruction a race to the bottom type consensus is worth less than nothing.

The Surveillance State Controls the Consensus of Liberals and Conservatives With Fear

Control of the public is essential to those who's goal it is to protect the status quo and the violence inherent in corporate capitalism. That, the need for control, is why the surveillance state really collects all that data on private citizens. The state machinery of fascism must keep track of all of us who want to bring down the corporate capitalist system.... the extractive, excessive profit oriented, destructive system that every single day is destroying life on this planet.  The security state must control the consensus of public opinion for it to endure.

Perhaps some vestigial civil libertarianism remains in North America, but the vast majority have been co-opted into believing that they are deeply 'invested' in the status quo, that they have much to lose, making them easily convinced that the surveillance state and the loss of liberty are just the cost of doing business in today’s world. People, liberals and conservatives alike, have been carefully cultivated by fear mongering to accept that their tiny slice of the pie will be taken from them by the 'terrorists'.

In a fear-filled world, murder isn't the crime; unmasking and distributing evidence of it is. This hypocrisy lies at the heart of the secret military trial of Bradley Manning. The security state demands that the compliant media focus the public's attention on Manning not his message [ad hominem], but the trail isn't about Manning. It's about a government obsessed with secrecy about its crimes against humanity. If Manning is an enemy of the state then so too is truth.

To insist that Manning or Snowden's disclosures put their colleagues in harm's way is a bit like a cheating husband claiming that his partner reading his diary, not the infidelity, is what is truly imperilling their marriage. Avoiding responsibility for action, one instead blames the information and informant who makes that action known.

Glenn Greenwald said today that, "The purpose of whistleblowing is to expose secret and wrongful acts by those in power in order to enable reform. A key purpose of journalism is to provide an adversarial check on those who wield the greatest power by shining a light on what they do in the dark, and informing the public about those acts." The whistleblowers remind us that resistance is still an option.

Liberals and conservatives in believing they have something to lose are easily controlled by propaganda, fear and secret surveillance but not those who fly under the security radar, not those who live at the margins - the dispossessed, the homeless and the dropouts. Having nothing to lose they see more clearly that as FDR famously said, "We having nothing to fear but fear itself"

We All Have RIGHTS. There Must be a Sensible Route to Security that Doesn't Undermine Them

We all have the RIGHT to privacy, rights are permanent. Rights are beyond the tyranny of the majority's present formulations and fears. No matter how often my rights are violated or how many fear-filled folks the polls say agree that national security trumps my civil rights, i'll continue to say and do what little I can to uphold my rights against the national security state, big business interests and the compliant mainstream media who have all the money and power necessary to manufacture the consent of the majority of my fellows.

As Steve Burgess pointed out today, the politically widespread outrage about Edward Snowden's whistlebolwing has been sorta heartwarming, saying, "According to the Book of Revelations, when Al Gore and Senator Rand Paul agree on an issue the End Times are near. As well, scientists say that having the American Civil Liberties Union and the Tea Party on the same side of any question may reverse the polarity of the Earth's magnetic field and make cows lactose intolerant."

Glen Greenwald seems to agree in his Guardian article today titled 'On PRISM, Partisanship and Propaganda' though he uses less cows in his revelations addressing many of the issues arising from last week's NSA stories and breakdown of the numbers in the much discussed PEW polling results. In his analysis Greenwald says,  "As I've written many times, one of the most significant aspects of the Obama legacy has been the transformation of Democrats from pretend-opponents of the Bush War on Terror and National Security State into their biggest proponents: exactly what the CIA presciently and excitedly predicted in 2008 would happen with Obama's election."

Greenwald quotes then Senator Joe Biden who in 2006 while condemning GW Bush's tamer secret wire-tapping program said, "I don't have to listen to your phone calls to know what you're doing. If I know every single phone call you made, I'm able to determine every single person you talked to. I can get a pattern about your life that is very, very intrusive." Biden knew then, as he does now, that one of the big problems is that metadata is the fool's gold for determining intent.

Many security experts say the NSA's surveillance played little role in foiling the terror plots despite the fact that the Obama administration says NSA data helped make arrests in two important cases. Court documents lodged in the US and UK, as well as interviews with involved parties, suggest that data-mining through PRISM and other NSA programmes played a relatively minor role in the interception of the two plots. Conventional surveillance techniques, in both cases including old-fashioned tip-offs from intelligence services in Britain, appear to have initiated the investigations.

National security, in every nation, is very important. But as Edward Snowden said a few days ago, “We managed to survive greater threats in our history than a few disorganized terrorist groups and rogue states without resorting to these sorts of programs." And he's right-on, somehow, even now in the digital ago, there must be a route to security that doesn't require the undermining of our RIGHTS.

A popular saying among my parents, who both fought in WW11, and their friends of 'the greatest generation' back when i was growing up was, "I disagree totally with what you are saying but I'd gladly die fighting for your right to say it." They fought for the right to free speech, to liberty, to privacy. They knew the difference between one's opinion of what is right and what a RIGHT is. Many, the majority according to PEW, have succumbed to the fear mongering of the fascists and their genuflecting media, but thankfully not all have. Thankfully there still are folks like Edward Snowden and journalists like Glen Greenwald who are brave enough to stand up for my RIGHTS.

Canadians Must Stop Being Naive About Security and Understand We're All 'Foreigners' Somewhere

A few days ago Obama attempted to re-assure this fellow Americans that the US's secret surveillance programs didn't target US citizens or residents. The next day it was Canada's Defence Minister Peter MacKay's turn to say that Canada's secret data-collection program is not targeting Canadians saying, "Canada’s own secretive online and phone metadata surveillance program is 'prohibited' from looking at the information of Canadians and is directed at monitoring foreign threats." Next up,  British Foreign Secretary William Hague rejected suggestions that US surveillance programs were being used by UK authorities to avoid local privacy laws and spy on British citizens. The Germans and the Aussies also said their secret information gathering only focused on  foreign targets.

In this day and age of lawyer speak folks must listen carefully to these politician's answers. What does it matter if your private calls are 'screened' by a Canadian intelligence network, or by an American or British or German or Australian intelligence network? The politicians all refer to not getting/using info from a particular country, none say they don't get and use info from one of the other countries in their security web. All of the countries have admitted, even bragged, at other times that they are supplying the other governments with information. It's easy for MacKay to state that Canadians are not being spied on by 'our' intelligence networks, when the Americans, British, Germans or Australians can do the work for him, as they are not bound to any such privacy regulations when it to comes to 'foreign' citizen's conversations. We're all foreigners somewhere.

Canada's metadata collection program was initially brought in by the former Liberal government in 2005, but was later put on hiatus over concerns it could lead to warrant less surveillance of Canadians. Then the program was quietly reinstated on Nov. 21, 2011 after MacKay signed a ministerial directive, which is not subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

Canada has also loudly and proudly signed 'The Integrated Cross Border Law Enforcement Operations Act'. It's part of 'The Beyond The Border initiative' which is "intended to foster the sharing of intelligence and, among other measures, the deal aims to address threats at the earliest possible opportunity as well as build on cross-border law enforcement programs and enhance emergency and cyber infrastructure."  And there's the US's 'Cyber-Intelligence Sharing & Protection Act' (CISPA), which commits [Bill C-12] Canada to “real-time information sharing” between cyber-security operations on both sides of the border. So Canada, and the others, already have all the legislation in place that they need to legally and secretly farm out their domestic Internet spying and warrant-less wiretapping.

On another level, none of the data a Canadian stores on Facebook—their photos, check-ins, private messages, friends list, or event attendance records—is saved within Canada. This is all data that is living inside of American servers. For all intents and purposes, the Internet as we know it is American owned. There is no Canadian Facebook alternative. The same goes for Google, there is a Google.ca but everything is stored or mirrored on US servers which are subject to PRISM. Gmail, for instance, may be where you have banking info, your SIN number, intimate photos, or chat logs that describe whatever sketchy shit you’re up to these days. Again, all of that has been entrusted to an American corporation that is currently being monitored in semi-secrecy (the semi part is thanks to Edward Snowden) by the NSA.

Metadata is the information that frames a digital portrait of who a person is. This isn't new or is it rocket science. Corporations like Google and Facebook have become vastly wealthy using these exact methods to build a profile of each of us that they use to serve up ads for stuff we'll be interested in. Considering the amount of data that can be collected about a person through Gmail and Facebook alone, it wouldn’t be hard to build a criminal dossier on someone who, say, has coordinated a few weed transactions and traded some illegal links to streaming TV shows or album downloads using these services.

Every Canadian who thinks for a second that every thing they type, every call they make, isn't being recorded some place by one or more of the West's vast 'security' operations is being naive.

Snowden and Greenwald, Like Orwell and Edward R. Morrow, are Standing With the Truth

Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Whether or not Edward Snowden's heroic whistleblowing revelations and Glen Greenwald's journalistic bravery will 'change the world' is impossible to know just yet, but it has already raised the awareness of people around world to the gathering darkness of the police state.

As Abby Zimet points out this morning, America is being introduced to Big Brother by the revelations about the surveillance state recently. Abby says, "One small good thing to come of the NSA revelations: Americans are discovering the brilliant, prescient "1984" by English Democratic Socialist Eric Arthur Blair, aka George Orwell. Just in time for its 64th anniversary, sales of his classic dystopian tale of state surveillance and thought control have skyrocketed, with sales rising an incredible 5,771% and some editions hitting Amazon's top bestsellers list."

Yesterday's Mud Report was in part about Rand Paul suing the NSA. And today's article 'ACLU Sues Obama Administration Over NSA 'Dragnet' Surveillance Revealed in Historic Leaks' announced that because the NSA phone surveillance will have a 'chilling effect' on ACLU's ability to protect civil liberties they are launching a case. The ACLU's Brett Kaufman says, "As an organization that advocates for and litigates to defend the civil liberties of society's most vulnerable, the staff at the ACLU naturally use the phone—a lot—to talk about sensitive and confidential topics with clients, legislators, whistleblowers, and ACLU members. And since the ACLU is a VBNS [Verizon] customer, we were immediately confronted with the harmful impact that such broad surveillance would have on our legal and advocacy work. So we're acting quickly to get into court to challenge the government's abuse of [the Patriot Act's] Section 215." This is excellent news because the ACLU has a terrific legal team who often presents opinions before SCOTUS so they will be respected by the court and the case will get coverage in the MSM which will work to further raise awareness.

As for the dynamic duo, Edward Snowden said in an interview today in The South China Morning Post that, "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American". In the interview Snowden explains that he chose Hong Kong because he believes that their very fair legal system will allow him to fight US extradition effectively. And Glen Greenwald, channeling the great Edward R. Murrow - who stood up to Senator Joseph McCarthy's tyrannical Red Scare when all other journalists ran for cover in the 50s - reiterated his statement that many more leaks are coming, which in the face of a government that summarily executes its own citizens with no due process is IMO very courageous.

“There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.” - George Orwell, 1984

Once Again the Pauls-Ron and Rand-Stand Up Against the Orwellian State and for Guaranteed Rights

Just like back in March when Rand Paul's now-famous 13-hour filibuster attempted to sound the alarm that “no American should be killed by a drone on American soil without first being charged with a crime” and being found guilty in a court of law, a day Glenn Greenwald described as a, "Fascinating day:Tea Party Senator filibusters torture-supporting CIA nominee over civil liberties, while Dem establishment mocks & fumes.", Rand and his father Ron are again standing nearly alone in Washington, again embarrassing both Democrats and Republicans and reminding us all that 'silence is complicity'.

This time Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is planning on filing a class-action lawsuit against the federal government over the National Security Agency’s surveillance of phone records and Internet data. “I’m going to be seeing if I can challenge this at the Supreme Court level. I’m going to be asking the Internet providers and all of the phone companies; ask your customers to join me in a class-action lawsuit,” he said, adding, “If we get 10 million Americans saying, ‘We don’t want our phone records looked at’ then maybe someone will wake up and things will change in Washington.”

Former Rep. Ron Paul, Rand's father, has been a vocal supporter of Snowden, saying he’s done a “great service for telling the truth” about government surveillance. Going on to say, “When you have a dictatorship or an authoritarian government, truth becomes treasonous and this is what they do if you are a whistle blower or you’re trying to tell the American people our country is destroying our rule of law or destroying our constitution, they turn it on and they say oh, you’re committing treason. For somebody to tell the American people the truth is a heroic effort.”

Three days ago Senator Rand Paul announced new legislation to "ensure that no government agency can search the phone records of Americans without a warrant based on probable cause." He calls the bill the Fourth Amendment Restoration Act of 2013. "The revelation that the NSA has secretly seized the call records of millions of Americans, without probable cause, represents an outrageous abuse of power and a violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution," Paul wrote on his web site.

And in a Guardian editorial Friday, Rand Paul invited his colleagues to join him in supporting a new phone records protection law, saying, "We shall see how many join me in supporting a part of the Bill of Rights that everyone in Congress already took an oath to uphold."

In the end, both Pauls - known as a strong proponents of civil liberties - agreed this intelligence-gathering strategy is simply a step too far. "I think the American people are with me and I think if you talk to young people who use computers on a daily basis, they are absolutely with me. We fought a revolution over behavior like the NSA's." Rand Paul said.

There many many issues i totally disagree with the Rand Paul on. IMO Rand, like his father, should simply apply the same libertarian freedom philosophy to the all the issues like they do to 4th Amendment Rights, drug legalization, defense policies, the Federal Reserve and Foreign Relations. IMO, if Rand were to have an epiphany and see that abortion is a personal decision outside the purview of government, that homosexuality is too, that the right to health care is the same as the right to an education, that a true libertarian philosophy encompasses the fact that every individual has the right to clean air and water and that corporations aren't people and so have no right to poison the water and air of real people, he could be elected President as a 3rd party candidate in 2016.

The Global CIA and NSA Spy Networks are on the Hunt: 'Where in the World is Edward Snowden?

The heroic NSA whislteblower - Edward Snowden - checked out of Mira Hotel in Hong Kong at noon Monday local time just about the same time The Guardian was posting more text from Glen Greenwald's  inspirational interview with him.

His whereabouts are now reported by the 'authorities' as unknown. Where Snowden has gone is any one's guess but for sure the CIA and the NSA are on his trail. The Icelandic Ambassador to China commented yesterday that in order to apply for asylum in Iceland  he'd have to do it in person so maybe he's in Reykjavík. Or maybe he's in Quito, Equador knowing as he must that President Rafael Correa has already granted Julian Assange asylum.

Here's a few quotes from the last few hours:

Daniel Ellsberg says, "In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago. Snowden's whistleblowing gives us the possibility to roll back a key part of what has amounted to an "executive coup" against the US constitution."

When The Washington Post reporter asked Snowden about threats to “national security,” Snowden offered an assessment light-years ahead of mainstream media’s conventional wisdom: “We managed to survive greater threats in our history than a few disorganized terrorist groups and rogue states without resorting to these sorts of programs. It is not that I do not value intelligence, but that I oppose omniscient, automatic, mass surveillance. That seems to me a greater threat to the institutions of free society than missed intelligence reports, and unworthy of the costs.”

Snowden went on to say, "You don’t have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to have eventually fall under suspicion ... and then they can use this system to go back in time and ... derive suspicion from an innocent life”

Americans, and i'm one, can no longer trust the President, Congress, or the courts to protect them and their constitutional rights from the tyranny of corporate fascism. As is now apparent the freedom and liberty of Americans and non-Americans everywhere relies on whistleblowers and reporters. Certainly right now every 'asset' of the Surveillance State is searching the globe for Edward Snowden. The spooks may already have him locked away in one of their secret back hole dungeons, who'd know, but regardless of his fate, Edward Snowden will go down in history as a hero to the cause of liberty.

Secret FISA Court 'Overseeing' NSA's Spying Ruled 1,856 to Zero in 2012 to Allow Domestic Warrents

About a month ago Lauren McCauley wrote an article titled 'Secret Spy Court Authorizes 100% of US Government Requests' About the Secret Court Obama and his stooges have reffered to again and agiun in these last few days as the judicial oversight that should reassure Americans to 'trust us'. In the FISA court, McCauley reminds us, civilians have no representative and government's 'national security' claims win again and again.

As Wired's David Kravets explains, "The secret court, which came to life in the wake of the Watergate scandal under the President Richard M. Nixon administration, now gets the bulk of its authority under the FISA Amendments Act, which Congress reauthorized for another five years days before it would have expired last year. The act allows the government to electronically eavesdrop on Americans’ phone calls and e-mails without a probable-cause warrant."

The McCauley article references a report (pdf), which was released on May 2nd to Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), which states that during 2012, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the “FISC”) approved every single one of the 1,856 applications made by the government for authority to conduct [domestic] electronic surveillance and/or physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes.

"Though depicted as some kind of check on Executive Branch behavior," Glenn Greenwald writes, the entire process "is virtually designed to do the opposite: ensure the Government's surveillance desires are unimpeded."

The laws, Cicero wrote in the days of the Roman Republic, “are silent in time of war.” But what if the war has no end, no defined enemy, no defined territory?

Meet Edward Snowden - the Heroic Whistleblower Behind the NSA Surveillance Revelations

Meet Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old source of biggest intelligence leak in US history. Listen to him explain his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows in this historic video released just hours ago by Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras from Hong Kong as part of Glenn Greenwald's history making series on security and liberty.

Edward Snowden now joins the heroic ranks of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, Daniel Ellsbergand many more...who have forsaken their own personal freedom and safety to expose the inner workings of the Evil Empire.  Glenn Greenwald and his team of journalists also deserve the highest praise that can be given for their service to the great tradition of journalism. They too are in the cross-hairs now...and they know it.

The US's illegal and unconstitutional surveillance program is being spun by corrupt Western governments as necessary for security from the threat of terrorism when it is actually fear mongering designed to elicit a fawning response in the millions of already indoctrinated and terrorized sheeple. In fact the whole thing is a counter-offensive launched by the 1% to protect themselves from the anger and protests by the folks who have been robbed of their jobs, homes and liberty.

The criminal elites are up to their eyebrows in war crimes, financial fraud and an unfolding global attack on liberty. They rightfully fear a rebellion from their victims, so they have ordered their puppets to monitor all phone calls, emails and web activity to identify dissidents and quell an uprising before it develops.

Edward Snowden, is a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. In a note accompanying the first set of documents Edward Snowden provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

Greenwald asks Snowden in his interview, "Why did he do it? Why give up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle?" Snowden answers, "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."