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Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind the NSA surveillance revelationsThe 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows • Q&A with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again' Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill and Laura Poitras in Hong Kong guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 June 2013 15.18 EDT The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said. Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA. In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant." Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing." He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me." Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in." He added: "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them." He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building." 'I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made'Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose. He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year. As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world." On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government. In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills. He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them. Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him. Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington. And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks. "All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory. "Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said. "We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be." Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made." He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become". The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night," he said, his eyes welling up with tears. 'You can't wait around for someone else to act'Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade. By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework. In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression". He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged. After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma. By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents. That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw. He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment. "Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good." He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons. First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary. He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened." The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act." Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them". He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own". But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity." Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said. A matter of principleAs strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich." For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said. His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project. Asked by reporters to establish his authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about anything in his personal life and he will answer. He is quiet, smart, easy-going and self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services. His manner was calm and relaxed but he has been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a CIA ploy to get him out onto the street. Strewn about the side of his bed are his suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney. Ever since last week's news stories began to appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place. He lay, propped up against pillows, watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile. Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news. "I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is." He purposely chose, he said, to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed. As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it "harder for them to get dirty". He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland – with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom – at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled. But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets." http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20full-width-1%20bento-box:Bento%20box:Position1

one great week in Rio club 117 is as good as ever Hope to find Iphguy tonight at 117. on monday i skipped going to 117 and did hotel date. have yet to make it down to MM last night andra was back in town from now work in S.P. T

PR2K Read again. I never said that condoms and lube were included at 117 or the CABINES at Meio Mundo, only for the nicer rooms where they include a sheet and condoms/lube with the fee for the ROOM. The owner of 117, Monik, is an ex-whore. And as an ex-whore, she is always looking out for Number 1. Herself. When the boy gets the room, whoever is at the front desk asks if condoms and lube are needed. The boys want the protection. So they hand out 2 condoms and 2 lubes at 3Reais/each. Ka-Ching. Another 12Reais for Monik. IF and a big IF, the client doesn't need them, want them, use them, the desk will be very happy and credit the client's tab/balcao is the term they use for everything other than the room and entry. However, the client needs to know that they can be returned or be informed by the boy. When I was at 117 in March, there was an idiotic Frenchman who was making a big stink about the cost of condoms, lube and the rooms as it was a Thursday night. If you think about it is kind of hilarious. He spends 45 Reais entry to the sauna. He is probably going to pay the guy 70-100Reais for sex and he refuses to pay another 25Reais for the room. Okay. more or less10Euros. How much did he pay for the airfare? And wherever he is staying? Someone much more knowledgeable than myself had this to say about France and the French. France is a wonderful, beautiful country. It is just too bad that the French don't deserve it.

This abuse of the Patriot Act must endPresident Obama falsely claims Congress authorised all NSA surveillance. In fact, our law was designed to protect liberties Jim Sensenbrenner guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 June 2013 07.00 EDT We've gotten used to what "Big Government" looks like – Washington's unchecked deficit spending, the Obama administration's policing of the press and the IRS's targeting of conservative groups. But the problem is bigger than we thought. "Big Brother" is watching. And he is monitoring the phone calls and digital communications of every American, as well as of any foreigners who make or receive calls to or from the United States. Last week, the Guardian reported that the Obama administration is collecting records of every call made to, from or within the US, as well as records of many digital communications. President Obama has tried to deflect criticism by claiming "every member of Congress has been briefed on this program." While some members of Congress were briefed – particularly those on the intelligence committees – most, including myself, were not. The administration claims authority to sift through details of our private lives because the Patriot Act says that it can. I disagree. I authored the Patriot Act, and this is an abuse of that law. I was the chairman of the House judiciary committee when the US was attacked on 11 September 2001. Five days later, the Justice Department delivered its proposal for new legislation. Although I, along with every other American, knew we had to strengthen our ability to combat those targeting our country, this version went too far. I believed then and now that we can defend our country and our liberty at the same time. I immediately called then-House Speaker Dennis Hastert and asked him for time to redraft the legislation. I told the speaker that if the legislation moved forward as drafted, I would not only vote against it, but would actively oppose it. The country wanted action, and the pressure from the White House was intense. To his credit, Speaker Hastert gave us more time. There were endless meetings and non-stop negotiations with the White House, the FBI and the intelligence community. The question could not have been more fundamental: how could we defend our liberty and protect the American people at the same time? The legislation had to be narrowly tailored – everyone agreed that we could not allow unrestrained surveillance. The Patriot Act had 17 provisions. To prevent abuse, I insisted on sunsetting all the provisions so that they would automatically expire if Congress did not renew them. This would allow Congress to conduct oversight of the administration's implementation of the act. In 2006, Congress made 14 of the provisions permanent because they were noncontroversial. The three remaining provisions, including the so-called business records provision the administration relied on for the programs in question, will expire in 2015 if they are not reauthorized. The final draft was bipartisan and passed the judiciary committee unanimously. The Patriot Act has saved lives by ensuring that information is shared among those responsible for defending our country and by giving the intelligence community the tools it needs to identify and track terrorists. In his press conference on Friday, President Obama described the massive collection of phone and digital records as "two programs that were originally authorized by Congress, have been repeatedly authorized by Congress". But Congress has never specifically authorized these programs, and the Patriot Act was never intended to allow the daily spying the Obama administration is conducting. To obtain a business records order like the one the administration obtained, the Patriot Act requires the government to prove to a special federal court, known as a Fisa court, that it is complying with specific guidelines set by the attorney general and that the information sought is relevant to an authorized investigation. Intentionally targeting US citizens is prohibited. Technically, the administration's actions were lawful insofar as they were done pursuant to an order from the Fisa court. But based on the scope of the released order, both the administration and the Fisa court are relying on an unbounded interpretation of the act that Congress never intended. The released Fisa order requires daily productions of the details of every call that every American makes, as well as calls made by foreigners to or from the United States. Congress intended to allow the intelligence communities to access targeted information for specific investigations. How can every call that every American makes or receives be relevant to a specific investigation? This is well beyond what the Patriot Act allows. President Obama's claim that "this is the most transparent administration in history" has once again proven false. In fact, it appears that no administration has ever peered more closely or intimately into the lives of innocent Americans. The president should immediately direct his administration to stop abusing the US constitution. We all know the saying "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." We are seeing that truth demonstrated once again. Our liberties are secure only so long as we are prepared to defend them. I and many other members of Congress intend to take immediate action to ensure that such abuses are not repeated. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/09/abuse-patriot-act-must-end?guni=Network%20front:network-front%20full-width-1%20bento-box:Bento%20box:Position2

The GOP’s Huge, Growing Modernity Gap by mansplained to Fox News’ incredulous Megyn Kelly this week that “when you look at biology, look at the natural world, the roles of a male and a female in society, and other animals, the male typically is the dominant role.” Exhibit No. 3: Phil Bryant, Mississippi’s first-term governor, blamed working mothers for American illiteracy. Exhibit No. 4, Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss attributed rape in the armed forces to hormones.” The real problem, though, is not stray and scatterred comments. Rather it is that such comments speak to the party's discomfort with modernity. (1998 is the last time Silicon Valley sent a Republican to Congress, and 1988 was the last time it voted Republican for president.) One only needs to look at the technology gap between the Obama and Romney campaigns to see where things stand. On Election Day, Team Romney deployed ORCA, a failed, bloated and beached technology. By contrast, the Obama data-mining operation was revolutionary. As Sasha Issenberg described it, traditionally gauging public opinion “revolved around quarantining small samples that could be treated as representative of the whole.” Obama 2012, instead, created a pointillist portrait in which “the electorate could be seen as a collection of individual citizens who could each be measured and assessed on their own terms.” A mobile app used by the Obama campaign “allowed a canvasser to download and return walk sheets without ever entering a campaign office.” 

 One reason that the Obama campaign got it right was because of the campaign’s relationship with the world of high-technology. The late Steve Jobs of Apple and Eric Schmidt of Google, among others, tutored Jim Messina, the 2012 Obama Campaign Manager and former Deputy White House Chief of Staff on data, messaging and management. With Obama reelected, the relationship between Schmidt and the Obama analytics team has now morphed into a business venture called Civis Analytics, which stands ready to crunch data and advise businesses and not-for-profits alike. The GOP has shown little response to these developments. Liberty Works, a Karl Rove-affiliated company, recently won a contract with the Republican National Committee to create an “i-phone like” and “open-source voter data platform” Got that? Its nascent performance, however, has been wanting. Forget about projecting “cool,” Republicans can start by just being modern. According to Politico, “Liberty Works has gotten off to a shaky start.” Top techies complain of its narrow vision and “say the company’s outreach is underwhelming — as are its salary offers.” Apple, Google and DreamWorks it isn’t. The view from Dallas is not the same as the view from San Jose. Texas may be a testing ground, but it is in Silicon Valley that ideas germinate and incubate. But, in a hopeful sign, the RNC just retained Facebook and Google alumnus Andy Barkett, an actual engineer, as its Chief Technology Officer. Regardless, the symbiosis between the Democratic Party and Silicon Valley is, on a real level, disquieting. It reinforces the censoriousness and paternalism present among Obama and his allies. The NSA's data grab, Eric Holder’s war on the press and the IRS’s attack on the Right are not aberrations, as the Obamans have made clear. For example, Rayid Ghani, the Obama campaign’s Chief Data Scientist, told me that academics and the media should “self-regulate” what they write and say about campaign data. Likewise, in their new book, The New Digital Age, Schmidt and his co-author, Jared Cohen, the director of Google Ideas, announce that “most of all, this is a book about the importance of a guiding human hand in the new digital age.” The 32-year-old Cohen previously served on the State Department Policy Planning Staffs of both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. Politics is part of Cohen’s DNA, and so is technology. And that is the GOP’s problem. Forget about projecting “cool,” Republicans can start by just being modern. Since 1992 the GOP has lost the 18-29 vote in each presidential election. As the adage goes, “although people’s fundamental political views do not change much as they age, their propensity to vote does.” In other words, the GOP’s future could grow ever bleaker as today’s seniors and boomers are supplanted at the ballot box by Generations X, Y and Z. If Gohmert, Bryant, and Erickson have their way, the Republican’s modernity deficit will further congeal and fester, with the GOP relegated, at best, to a congressional party, one that specializes in oversight hearings and impeachment trials but not one actually tasked by America to govern. See original article at: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/09/the-gop-s-gaping-growing-modernity-gap.html

I only have one comment about this dissertation regarding the German language. An old and good friend of mine who graduated from a prestigious college with a dual degree in mathematics and German, went on a sabbatical to Germany a few years after his graduation. His principal aim was to improve his accent and mastery of the language. His chief complaint after returning many months later was that no German citizen wished to speak to him in German. They only wished to improve their English vocabulary and accent. Oh, for the good old days. Best regards, RA1

Here is one commentator making exactly your point: HUMINT over SIGINT The writer himself does not seem too brilliant but he points to some interesting data.

If this is a political post I may have to go into politics. Best regards, RA1

GIG = Galeao - Antonio Carlos Jobim International Airport Closest intercontinental airport for visits to New Meio Mundo, Clube 117 and Pointe 202

Blogger, With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of a Debate By NOAM COHEN and LESLIE KAUFMAN Published: June 6, 2013 After writing intensely, even obsessively, for years about government surveillance and the prosecution of journalists, Glenn Greenwald has suddenly put himself directly at the intersection of those two issues, and perhaps in the cross hairs of federal prosecutors. Enlarge This Image David dos Santos Late Wednesday, Mr. Greenwald, a lawyer and longtime blogger, published an article in the British newspaper The Guardian about the existence of a top-secret court order allowing the National Security Agency to monitor millions of telephone logs. The article, which included a link to the order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department, which has aggressively pursued leakers. On Thursday night, he followed up with an article written with a Guardian reporter, Ewen MacAskill, that exposed an N.S.A. program, Prism, that has gathered information from the nation’s largest Internet companies going back nearly six years. “The N.S.A. is kind of the crown jewel in government secrecy. I expect them to react even more extremely,” Mr. Greenwald said in a telephone interview. He said that he had been advised by lawyer friends that “he should be worried,” but he had decided that “what I am doing is exactly what the Constitution is about and I am not worried about it.” Being at the center of a debate is a comfortable place for Mr. Greenwald, 46, who came to mainstream journalism through his own blog, which he started in 2005. Before that he was a lawyer, including working 18 months at the high-powered New ork firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, where he represented large corporate clients. “I approach my journalism as a litigator,” he said. “People say things, you assume they are lying, and dig for documents to prove it.” Mr. Greenwald’s writings at The Guardian — and before that, for Salon and on his own blog — can resemble a legal brief, with a list of points, extended arguments and detailed references and links. As Andrew Sullivan, a frequent sparring partner and sometime ally, put it, “once you get into a debate with him, it can be hard to get the last word.” While Mr. Greenwald notes that he often conducts interviews and breaks news in his columns, he describes himself as an activist and an advocate. But with this leak about the extremely confidential legal apparatus supporting the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, he has lifted the veil on some of the government’s most closely held secrets. The leak, he said, came from “a reader of mine” who was comfortable working with him. The source, Mr. Greenwald said, “knew the views that I had and had an expectation of how I would display them.” Mr. Greenwald’s experience as a journalist is unusual, not because of his clear opinions but because he has rarely had to report to an editor. He began his blog Unclaimed Territory in 2005 after the news of warrantless surveillance under the Bush administration. When his blog was picked up by Salon, said Kerry Lauerman, the magazine’s departing editor in chief, Salon agreed that Mr. Greenwald would have direct access to their computer system so that he could publish his blog posts himself without an editor seeing them first if he so chose. “It basically is unheard of, but I never lost a moment of sleep over it,” Mr. Lauerman said. “He is incredibly scrupulous in the way a lawyer would be — really, really careful.” The same independence has carried over at The Guardian, though Mr. Greenwald said that for an article like the one about the N.S.A. letter he agreed that the paper should be able to edit it. Because he has often argued in defense of Bradley Manning, the army private who was charged as the WikiLeaks source, he said he considered publishing the story on his own, and not for The Guardian, to assert that the protections owed a journalist should not require the imprimatur of an established publisher. Mr. Greenwald said he has had to get up to speed in the security precautions that are expected from a reporter covering national security matters, including installing encrypted instant chat and e-mail programs. “I am borderline illiterate on these matters, but I had somebody who is really well-regarded actually come and physically do my whole computer,” he said. That computer is in Brazil, where Mr. Greenwald spends most of his time and lives with his partner, who cannot emigrate to the United States because the federal government does not recognize same-sex marriages as a basis for residency applications. Mr. Greenwald grew up in Lauderdale Lakes, Fla., feeling like an odd figure. “I do think political posture is driven by your personality, your relationship with authority, how comfortable are you in your life,” he said. “When you grow up gay, you are not part of the system, it forces you to evaluate: ‘Is it me, or is the system bad?’ ” By the time Mr. Greenwald was studying law at New York University, “he was always passionate about constitutional issues and issues of equal justice and equal treatment,” said Jennifer Bailey, now an immigration lawyer with a nonprofit organization in Maine, who shared a tiny apartment with Mr. Greenwald in the early 1990s. She emphasized that his passion did not translate into partisanship. “He is not a categorizeable guy,” Ms. Bailey said. “He was not someone who played party politics. He was very deep into the issues and how it must come out. He was tireless and relentless about pursuing this. Nobody worked longer hours.” As Mr. Greenwald tells it, the last decade has been a slow political awakening. “When 9/11 happened, I thought Bush was doing a good job,” he said. “I was sucking up uncritically what was in the air.” His writing has made him a frequent target from ideological foes who accuse him of excusing terrorism or making false comparisons between, for example, Western governments’ drone strikes, and terrorist attacks like the one in Boston. Gabriel Schoenfeld, a national security expert and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who is often on the opposite ends of issues from Mr. Greenwald, called him, “a highly professional apologist for any kind of anti-Americanism no matter how extreme.” Mr. Sullivan wrote in an e-mail: “I think he has little grip on what it actually means to govern a country or run a war. He’s a purist in a way that, in my view, constrains the sophistication of his work.” Ms. Bailey has a slightly different take. Because of his passions, she said, “he is just as willing to make enemies of anybody.” http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/07/business/media/anti-surveillance-activist-is-at-center-of-new-leak.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Maybe. I've found that words are often architected into such edifices to make someone or some program seem extra specially important whether he or it is or not. They try to portray a comprehensive understanding of, and solution to the dragon to be slain, all in one sentence -- to give the customer the warm and fuzzies. Think of it more as a technocratic sales jingle. Unfortunately, these guys are not Barry Manilow.

I think that's the same Andrea I fell in love (lust) with back in 2009, although the blurry nature of the picture makes it difficult to make a positive identification (Ihpguy's description sounds a lot like him, though). My Andrea and I e-mailed for a few months after my trip, but then lost contact. If that is indeed him, I had no idea he had moved to São Paulo. If so, that would explain why I never saw him at the Rio saunas again. Does anyone know how long he's staying in Rio? I'll be there from July 22 to August 10. I'd love to see him again, but also to meet up with Tealady again, and meet Ihpguy for the first time.

Last day in Rom. Two hours before my leaving for the airport I went again to Multiclub Sauna. A beautiful young guy came out from the lockers. Downstairs I saw him in the jacuzzi. The guy looked exactly as Milo Ventimiglia, the 'Peter Petrelli' character in Heroes. Same face, same tight, light muscled body. He was obviously masturbating. And since a no has the same number of letters as a yes (at least in Spanish) I descended to the jacuzzi and I spoke to him. He was from Australia, he said, and he allowed my touching. At a certain point I proposed to suck hum... he refused, but suddenly he said he was ready for rimming. So we went to a more discret sector and we had some fun.... It was such a turn on to suck his dick or eat his ass... and being masturbated by him... Such a beauty, that very well defined, hard body giving himself generously for the joy of a gentleman --- maybe 30 years his senior ... Let us hope this kind of intergenerational encounters increase in our 'liquid' society. Also, summing up the less interesting experience in Roma was the meeting of the escort/masseur. Growlr and an old fashon sauna trick i(both for the sake of pure lust) were far better voyage memories... Yours truly Epi

I saw him tonight sitting down next to TeaLady on the bench in the foyer of 117. The picture does not do him justice. Unfortunate. The body, legs, scrotal sack and penis were quite marvelous and soft it was really pretty and quite inviting for a taste. In the above "action" it all looks a bit violent and not quite so tempting. And his skin in person was even prettier than the photos. You all should have been.