Welcome to Echelon 2.0

The NSA isn't spying on you. They don't have to. They just outsource it to businesses.

Back 20 years ago, there was a conspiracy theory going around called "ECHELON" that claimed the NSA was monitoring the content of everyone's phone calls and emails, everywhere in the world, including the United States. Echelon (probably) existed, but it's wasn't technically feasible to be as extensive as claimed. It was also against the constitution: the NSA is a bunch of bastards, but they would never cross that line.

But they'll move the line. That's what today's revelation by Glen Greenwald (@ggreenwald) at the Guardian has shown us. While the NSA cannot intercept signals within the United States, then can get a court order for most of the information from businesses, with help from the FBI and the FISA court. The court order demanded everyone's call records from Verizon. It demanded not just records of calls made to foreign countries, but those wholly within the United States as well.

Manning transcripts: day one

The website https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/ hired a court reporter in order to publish transcripts of the Bradley Manning trial. The first day's transcripts are here. This majority of this transcript is the "opening arguments" -- the unfiltered arguments directly from the horse's mouths, so to speak.

Don't drone me, bro

Today President Obama gave a speech taking credit for assassinating an American citizen. His justification was:

And as President, I would have been derelict in my duty had I not authorized the strike that took out Awlaki

So what, precisely, is the president's duty? The following is the entire oath of office he took as president:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.

Note that the oath isn't to "defend the country", but to "defend the constitution". The constitution lists a number of additional duties, such as sign bills into laws, give a "State of the Union" speech, and so forth. But none of his constitutional duties include ordering terrorists killed.