News and Commentary

Video by Big Brother Watch 3 intelligence agency whistleblowers, who are friends of Big Brother Watch, give their insights on Edward Snowden's revelations, mass surveillance and the future of privacy.

The Stream: Aljazeera.com It’s been over four years since Julian Assange was forcibly removed from the Ecuadorian embassy and placed in a high security prison in the UK, where he is battling extradition to the United States. The Wikileaks co-founder is wanted on 17 charges of espionage and one charge of computer misuse for publishing documents that exposed US war crimes in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the US military prison at Guantánamo.

By Matthew Guariglia, Cindy Cohn, and Andrew Crocker: Electronic Frontier Foundation On May 20, 2013, a young government contractor with an EFF sticker on his laptop disembarked a plane in Hong Kong carrying with him evidence confirming, among other things, that the United States government had been conducting mass surveillance on a global scale. What came next were weeks of disclosures—and official declassifications—as Edward Snowden worked with some of the world’s top news organizations to reveal critical facts about the National Security Agency vacuuming up people’s online communications, internet activity, and phone records, both inside and outside the U.S..

By Chip Gibbons: Defending Rights & Dissent So long as protests are treated as national security and intelligence matters, national security and intelligence tools will be used to endanger political expression.

By Lisa Ling, Sarah Cords: The Progressive Whistleblowers like Reality Winner and Daniel Hale acted on principle; the same can't be said for alleged Pentagon leaker Jack Teixeira.

DETROIT — Today, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) led Congressmembers Jamaal Bowman (NY-16), Cori Bush (MO-01), Greg Casar (TX-35), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Ilhan Omar (MN-05) and Ayanna Pressley (MA-07) in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling on the Department of Justice to uphold the First Amendment’s protections for the freedom of the press by dropping the Trump-era charges against Australian publisher Julian Assange and withdrawing the American extradition request currently pending with the British government.

By RootsAction Whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg helped to end the Vietnam War when he bravely provided the Pentagon Papers to media outlets in 1971. Ever since then, he has been a tireless and inspiring advocate for peace and prevention of nuclear war.

By Ryan Grim : The Intercept Rep. Rashida Tlaib is collecting signatures on a letter calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to end the extradition drive against WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange.

By Todd Miller : Institute for Public Accuracy Miller writes at The Border Chronicle and just wrote the piece “Autonomous Surveillance Towers Are Creeping Up the California Coast.”

By Erica Techo -- UGA Today Study shows that as newsrooms shrink, so does the trust of some former sources The whistleblowers who once trusted journalism are losing faith in the institution.