Highlights from Snowden’s FIRST LIVE VIDEO INTERVIEW at SXSW (+Full Video)

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As part of the annual South by Southwest Interactive Festival which kicked off this past weekend in Austin, Texas (my current home), organizers set up a video skype conference with NSA mass-surveillance whistle-blower Edward Snowden

Snowden is currently in Russia, where he was granted asylum from the US government.

Here’s a few notable quotes from that interview. The full video is at the end.

  • Snowden told attendees that they were “firefighters”, saying,

“The NSA … they’re setting fire to the future of the Internet…The result has been an adversarial Internet.”

  • Discussing the nature of the surveillance:

“It’s nothing we asked for…It’s not something we wanted.”

  • He dismissed the idea that his revelations have threatened our national security, saying,

“These things are improving national security. We rely on the ability to trust our communications.”

  • He also said that the mass monitoring actually made threat prevention less effective:

“We’ve actually had tremendous intelligence failures because we’ve been monitoring everybody’s communications rather than suspects…What did we get from bulk collections? We got nothing.”

  • He said that the checks on the power of our national intelligence community are ineffective:

“We have an oversight that could work. The overseers aren’t interested in oversight.”

  • When asked if he would do it again, he replied,

“Would I do this again? The answer is absolutely yes. I took an oath to support and defend the Constitution and I saw that the Constitution was violated on a massive scale.”

Here’s the full video.

Read more from Yahoo! News here.

 

 

 

How Old Do You Think Our Planet Is?

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Ever wonder exactly how old our planet is? Well, according to Space.com…

Scientists have calculated that Earth is 4.54 billion years old“

For a comparison the Milky Way galaxy that holds our solar system is is determined to be 13.2 billion years old and the universe as a whole is determined to be 13.8 billion years old.

Scientist have determined the age of our planet by using several different methods of research. These methods include observing and studying other bodies in our solar system as well as rocks on our planet’s surface.

According to Space.com

The oldest rocks on Earth found to date are the “Acasta Gneisses“ in northwestern Canada near the Great Slave Lake, which are 4.03 billion years old. Rocks older than 3.5 billion years can be found on all continents. Greenland boasts the Isua Supracrustal rocks (3.7 to 3.8 billion years old), while rocks in Swaziland are 3.4 to 3.5 billion years. Samples in Western Australia run 3.4 to 3.6 billion years old.”

Check Out the full story to see how we determined the age of our planet here!

 

Credit Space.com

Just In: Air Force General William Shelton Reveals Space Surveillance Program That Includes Two High-Altitude Orbit Spacecraft

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According to an article from Space.com

The U.S. Air Force plans to launch two space surveillance spacecraft into high-altitude orbits later this year to monitor satellite traffic in the congested geosynchronous belt 22,300 miles above Earth, the head of Space Command has announced.”

These two spacecraft are part of the Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP). This program was previously classified and has only been exposed to the public this month. The mission was revealed by General William Shelton head of Air Force Space Command, who according to Space.com described the system as a…

“”Neighborhood Watch” for satellites”

One purpose of this GSSAP is to allow the Air Force to track man-made orbiting objects in high-altitude. The current surveillance systems that the US  Air Force is using include assets on the ground and others several hundred miles above earth, but the current systems are limited to detecting movements at now necessary altitudes.

Check Out the full story from Space.com here.

China Publishes US Human Rights Record After Being Criticized In US Report

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About a week ago, the US State Department published its annual report on the state of human rights worldwide. In their report, they highlighted China, saying that despite some positive reforms,

“China continued its crackdown on human rights activists, increased repression in ethnic Tibetan and Uighur areas, and continued to severely restrict the freedoms of expression, religion, association, and assembly.”

Apparently, the Chinese government got sick of being called out by the US, and responded the next day by releasing a list of the US’s own human rights violations.

China’s State Council Information Office (Photo: Xinhua News)

In the foreword, China’s State Council (who published the report) says,

“The State Department of the United States, which posed as “the world judge of human rights,” made arbitrary attacks and irresponsible remarks on the human rights situation in almost 200 countries and regions again in its just-released Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2013. However, the U.S. carefully concealed and avoided mentioning its own human rights problems.”

The report is expansive, but focuses on a few major issues:

  • The privacy violations of the mass-surveillance NSA programs revealed by Edward Snowden
  • Civilian casualties as a result of drone strikes (particularly in Pakistan, where drone strikes have killed 926 civilians since 2004)
  • The “cruel and unusual” punishment of long-term isolation of prisoners in solitary confinement (some for up to 40 years) and torture of prisoners by US officials abroad
  • Mass murders and rampant gun violence within the US

Read a full transcript of the report here.

Read more from Reuters about the US Human Rights report that prompted the Chinese response here.

Ukraine Latest: Crimea Votes to Join Russia, Russia Sinks Their Own Ship

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Earlier today (3/6/2014), the parliament of Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula in the Black Sea at the center of the current situation with Russia, voted to secede from Ukraine to become part of Russia.

The issue will be put to a referendum in 10 days, when the citizens of Crimea will decide whether or not to approve their parliament’s decision.

Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, immediately denounced the move as having no legal basis in Ukrainian law, saying,

“Crimea was, is and will be an integral part of Ukraine.”

Arseniy Yatsenyuk (Photo: Sergei Chuzavkov- AP)

While European Union leaders echoed this sentiment, calling the move unconstitutional, there doesn’t seem to be anything they can do about it without provoking violence, as Crimea is currently occupied by the Russian military.

On Wednesday, Russian sailors pulled an old anti-submarine vessel out of a junkyard and sank it in the strait that connects the Black Sea to the Donuzlav Lake, preventing Ukrainian ships docked nearby from being able to go to sea.

Russia’s scuttled vessel (Photo: AP)

While the European Union has presented plenty of tough rhetoric, they are hesitant to actually do anything.

Why? Well, because Russia is one of their biggest trading partners, and also provides a substantial portion of the EU’s gas and oil- putting economic sanctions on them would hurt the EU indirectly.

So despite that President Barack Obama called Russia’s intervention a ”violation of international law,” and said that,

“the resolve of the United States and our allies and the international community will remain firm,”

it seems that he might actually be on his own with this one.

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