LIBERTARIANS MOUNT INDEPENDENCE DAY PROTEST AGAINST NSA, PRISM SURVEILLANCE

by JULIE ERSHADI – BRYN MAWR COLLEGE on JULY 5, 2013 @TheFix.com

Disgruntled citizens from around the nation’s capital gathered on Independence Day to rally against the U.S. government’s domestic surveillance practices at a protest inspired by recent revelations of the breadth of these programs.

“The abuse of power isn’t the problem,” Carla Howell, executive director of the Libertarian Party, told a crowd in downtown Washington, D.C.’s McPherson Square. “The problem is the power to abuse.”

The Libertarian Party was an official sponsor of Thursday’s Restore The Fourth protests, Howell said. Besides the one in Washington, Restore The Fourth saw events take place in cities around the country, including New York, Denver, Los Angeles, and Chicago, according to the organizers’website.

Howell and a roster of other speakers decried the National Security Agency’s now notorious PRISM program, the use of drones for domestic surveillance, and the FBI’s warrantless searches and seizures, among other alleged abuses. By turns, they commended whistle-blowers, including Edward Snowden, who have revealed what Thursday’s crowd viewed as violations of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.

CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, who was arrested last week at a White House protest against the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, invited the crowd to send letters to Bradley Manning and attend his trial, in which he is being tried for multiple crimes after releasing government secrets to WikiLeaks in 2010.

She was seen later chatting with Thomas Drake, an earlier NSA whistle-blower who also spoke at the event.

“It’s very encouraging to know that we’re having rallies all over the country. It’s about time — I mean, my gosh,” Drake told The College Fix. “We have to shake the tree of liberty, and that’s what’s happening right now.”

Protesters came from around the region to demonstrate on Thursday, some carrying signs and wearing Guy Fawks masks. When helicopters flew overhead, eyes turned upwards, but police presence was low and no arrests were observed.

Julie Ershadi is a graduate of Bryn Mawr College

Click here to Like The College Fix on Facebook  /  Twitter: @CollegeFix

(Photos by Julie Ershadi)

Statists continue to try to shift story from NSA surveillance to what Snowden has for lunch

‘Grand tour of U.S. adversaries’: NSA leaker Snowden leaves Hong Kong by way of Moscow

Michelle Malkin and Twitchy tweeters don’t seem to realize that everything Snowden does and has done shows that Big Government is incompetent to classify millions of secrets, manage millions of employees with security clearances, and keep track of one 29 year old IT guy and his travels.

Everything the national security state priests like General Keith Alexander and the little worm tongued Clapper homunculus and commentators including the fair lady Michelle Malkin and the lovely haired Tucker Carlson have to say on the subject is mainly shit.

That you think Snowden should have “been brave” and taken up these matters in our corrupted, farcical, untrustworthy American justice system is irrelevant.  Even if that were true it is picayune compared to the undebated and hidden expansion of the surveillance state.  And it is a lie to say “we knew” or “Congress knew.”  All we knew is that months ago after a security briefing Senator Rand Paul told us it was shocking the extent of government surveillance of Americans, but it was illegal for him to disclose what he had been told.  Some debate.

(OK only half shit for Michelle and a fourth shit for Tucker, but you don’t eat the gourmet meal when it is served with a dab of shit.  Tucker is almost the only person on TV pointing out that the real story is the NSA not Snowden.)

As I write this I am watching the Clintonian chipmunk and several ruling class flaks burble among themselves on This Week about how Snowden’s flying to Venezuela (which he hasn’t done yet) is ironic because at least “we” treat our serfs better than they do.  Akin to the standard liberal Democrat argument that their fascism is better than evil Republican fascism because they let us serfs give blow jobs and abort a fetus.  (Very convenient “freedoms” for members of the liberal Democrat ruling class, given how they like to treat the help.)