The Guardian has an interview with David Miranda describing his 9 hour detention.

The Guardian editor describes how he was pressured to destroy hard drives.

[O]ne of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

The White House says it didn't request Miranda's detention, but the UK gave it a heads-up -- in other words, the U.S. knew of the detention plan before it occurred. [More...]

President Obama held a press conference today on NSA surveillance and released two documents concerning the program. They are combined here:

• Pages 1 to 23: A legal memorandum explaining the Government’s legal basis for an intelligence collection program under which the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) obtains court orders directing certain telecommunications service providers to produce telephony metadata in bulk.
• Pages 24 to 30: NSA on Legal Authorities: a seven-page document describing the legal authorities that the agency uses as the basis for its spying, the controls that are in place to limit the surveillance and a brief description of what guides the agency’s use of what they call signals intelligence.

More...

Russia has given asylum to Edward Snowden for a year. He has left the Moscow airport. He is with a member of the Wikileaks legal team.

Why only a year? Maybe Russia is hoping that in a year's time, the U.S. will reconsider its refusal to hand over Victor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko in exchange for Snowden.

Via the Guardian: Edward Snowden's latest contribution to letting the world know what the U.S. Government doesn't want you to know: XKeyscore.

Analysts can also use XKeyscore and other NSA systems to obtain ongoing "real-time" interception of an individual's internet activity.

....One top-secret document describes how the program "searches within bodies of emails, webpages and documents", including the "To, From, CC, BCC lines" and the 'Contact Us' pages on websites".

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has authorized the declassification and public release of these documents:

• Cover Letter and 2009 Report on the National Security Agency’s Bulk Collection Program for USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization
• Cover Letters and 2011 Report on the National Security Agency’s Bulk Collection Program for USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization
• Primary Order for Business Records Collection Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act

Here's a NY Times article on today's hearing and the declassified documents.

The ACLU has a post today showing just how much metadata reveals about your life and associations.

Why this is important: In the attempt to justify the NSA surveillance program, the President and some in Congress resort to claims like "It's just metadata, not content."

"This is just metadata," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein assured the American people, referring to the NSA's bulk collection of Americans call records. "There is no content involved." President Obama and his national security officials have made similar assurances.

Using a program called Immersion, developed by MIT Media Lab, he reviews almost 9 years of his own emails. Immersion examines the From, To, Cc and Timestamp fields-- from a Gmail account and visualizes it.

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The Amash Amendment to end NSA's bulk electronic surveillance program will be voted on this week.

"The amendment would prevent the NSA, the FBI and other agencies from relying on Section 215 of the Patriot Act "to collect records, including telephone call records, that pertain to persons who are not subject to an investigation under Section 215."">will get a vote, probably Thursday. Debate is expected late today.

The vote by itself will not restrict the surveillance, it would simply include Amash's amendment in the annual Defense appropriations bill, which the House is considering this week; the Senate must also approve the bill before it goes to President Obama's desk.

The House Intelligence Committee supports it, the House Judiciary Committee opposes it.

Go here and see how your rep is voting. Send them a tweet urging them to pass the Amendment

The ACLU has published a handy resource guide, After DOMA: What it Means for You.

Implementation of federal rights, benefits, and protections will vary from state to state and on an individual basis.

The Supreme Court's decision in Windsor v United States is here. The ACLU says: [More...]

The Guardian disclosed more information from Edward Snowden today. The U.S. and U.K. spied on their allies at the G-20 summit in 2009, by intercepting telephone lines and email.

Foreign politicians and officials who took part in two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted on the instructions of their British government hosts, according to documents seen by the Guardian. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by British intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.

Dick Cheney came out of the woodwork today to defend warrantless NSA surveillance.

The former No. 2 in the Bush administration defended the NSA's ability to monitor phone and email data, and labeled as a "traitor" the analyst who has admitted to having leaked details about the classified program.

He's concerned Edward Snowden will become a Chinese spy. Same old Cheney. Defending our rights under the Constitution was never his strong suit.

The Government has agreed to let Facebook and other web companies publish some details about the number of surveillance requests it has received.

Facebook has already posted their numbers. For the last six months of 2012, it received between 9,000 and 10,000 requests for user data pertaining to 18,000 to 19,000 of user accounts. This includes requests from all government entities in the U.S. (local, state, and federal, and including criminal and national security-related requests)

Here is Facebook's statement on the release. What's allowed to be disclosed: [More...]

86 civil liberties groups and Internet companies have joined EFF in demanding an end to NSA spying.

bq. In an open letter to lawmakers sent today, the groups call for a congressional investigatory committee, similar to the Church Committee of the 1970s. The letter also demands legal reforms to rein in domestic spying and demands that public officials responsible for this illegal surveillance are held accountable for their actions.

The letter says the NSA program is illegal:

This type of blanket data collection by the government strikes at bedrock American values of freedom and privacy. This dragnet surveillance violates the First and Fourth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, which protect citizens’ right to speak and associate anonymously and guard against unreasonable searches and seizures that protect their right to privacy.

EFF also lauched "Stop Watching Us" -- "a global petition calling on Congress to provide a public accounting of the United States' domestic spying capabilites and to bring an end to illegal surveillance." You can add your name here.