{"id":19490,"date":"2016-04-04T10:44:21","date_gmt":"2016-04-04T15:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19490"},"modified":"2016-04-04T10:44:21","modified_gmt":"2016-04-04T15:44:21","slug":"a-key-similarity-between-snowden-leak-and-panama-papers-scandal-is-whats-been-legalized","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=19490","title":{"rendered":"A Key Similarity Between Snowden Leak and Panama Papers: Scandal Is What\u2019s Been Legalized"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Key Similarity Between Snowden Leak and Panama Papers: Scandal Is What\u2019s Been Legalized<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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FROM THE START\u00a0of the reporting based on\u00a0Edward Snowden\u2019s leaked document archive, government defenders\u00a0insisted that no illegal behavior was revealed. That was always false: Multiple courts have now found the domestic metadata spying program in\u00a0violation of the Constitution and relevant statutes<\/a>\u00a0and have issued similar rulings for\u00a0other mass surveillance programs<\/a>; numerous articles\u00a0on NSA and GCHQ documented the\u00a0targeting of people and groups<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0blatantly<\/a>\u00a0political<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0legally<\/a>\u00a0impermissible<\/a>\u00a0purposes<\/a>; and the leak revealed that President Obama\u2019s top national security official (still), James Clapper,\u00a0blatantly lied<\/a>\u00a0when testifying before Congress about the NSA\u2019s\u00a0activities \u2014\u00a0a felony<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But illegality was never the crux of the scandal triggered by those NSA revelations. Instead, what was most shocking was what had been legalized: the secret construction of the\u00a0largest system<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0suspicionless spying<\/a>\u00a0in\u00a0human history<\/a>. What was scandalous was not that most of this spying was against the law, but rather that the law \u2014 at least as applied and interpreted by the Justice Department and\u00a0secret, one-sided FISA \u201ccourts\u201d \u2014 now permitted the U.S. government and its partners to engage in mass surveillance of entire populations, including their own. As the ACLU\u2019s Jameel Jaffer\u00a0put it<\/a>\u00a0after the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0publication of documents\u00a0showing NSA analysts engaged in illegal spying: \u201cThe \u2018non-compliance\u2019 angle is important, but don\u2019t get carried away. The deeper scandal is what\u2019s legal, not what\u2019s not.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yesterday,\u00a0dozens of newspapers around the world<\/a>\u00a0reported on what they are calling the Panama Papers: a gargantuan leak of documents from a Panama-based law firm that specializes in creating offshore shell companies. The documents reveal billions of dollars being funneled to offshore tax havens by\u00a0leading governmental and corporate officials in numerous countries (the U.S. was\u00a0oddly missing<\/a>\u00a0from the initial reporting, though journalists\u00a0vow that will change shortly<\/a>).<\/p>\n

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Key Similarity Between Snowden Leak and Panama Papers: Scandal Is What\u2019s Been Legalized FROM THE START\u00a0of the reporting based on\u00a0Edward Snowden\u2019s leaked document archive, government defenders\u00a0insisted that no illegal behavior was revealed. That was always false: Multiple courts have now found the domestic metadata spying program in\u00a0violation of the Constitution and relevant statutes\u00a0and have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[249,1511,5437,4885,551,577,584,13259,765,5567,838],"class_list":["post-19490","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-edward-snowden","tag-gchq","tag-glenn-greenwald","tag-james-clapper","tag-national-security-agency","tag-nsa","tag-obama","tag-panama-papers","tag-surveillance","tag-the-intercept","tag-us-constitution"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19490","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19491,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19490\/revisions\/19491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}