Blogger and journalist Glenn Greenwald, who along with Laura Poitras broke the story of Edward Snowden's NSA leaks, announced today that he is departing the Guardian newspaper to join a "new news venture backed by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar," reports Paul Farhi at The Washington Post. — Read the rest

James Risen and Laura Poitras, two journalists who have experienced first-hand the consequences of pissing off the federal government in the course of performing uncompromising investigative journalism, have a story in today's New York Times revealing a new layer of the NSA's domestic surveillance activities. — Read the rest

"Each year, EFF's Pioneer Awards ceremony gives the digital civil liberties community a chance to honor the work of those who have bettered our world through remarkable innovation, activism, journalism, or leadership," writes the EFF's Richard Esguerra. This year's awards honored James Love, Aaron Swartz, and Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, and included a powerful keynote by professor Lawrence Lessig and from Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman, the partner of the late, young Mr. — Read the rest

Trevor Timm of EFF.org and FPF working with John on this op-ed, a few weeks ago. Photo: XJ.

Activist and filmmaker John Cusack, in the Guardian, asks if US attorney general Eric Holder will guarantee the first amendment rights of American journalists like Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, who have reported on information from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, and fear detainment or harassment if they return to the United States:

[W]e learned a few days later that the United States had been given a "heads up" by their British counterparts that they were planning on detaining Miranda.

In Spiegel today, Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark report on how the National Security Agency monitors banks and credit card transactions, sometimes in apparent violation of national laws and global regulations. Documents from the NSA leaked to the reporters by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden show that the European SWIFT financial transaction network is being spied on in various ways. — Read the rest

Xeni recounts an adventure: choppering from the City of Angels to Hackertown with actor, writer, filmmaker, and activist John Cusack. In San Francisco, they met up with hackers, digital civil liberties advocates, and famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.

Laura Poitras, Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark have an (English-language) article in Der Spiegel today on Codename 'Apalachee,' the secret program revealed in leaked National Security Agency documents tasked with surveilling Europe, the United Nations, and various foreign nations. The argument put forth by the Obama administration is the NSA's formidably vast spying capabilities are aimed at preventing terrorist attacks, but this latest revelation would seem to indicate otherwise. — Read the rest

Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda was detained at Heathrow Airport under an anti-terrorism law that allows the cops to hold terrorism suspects and question them for nine hours without a lawyer. He was held for exactly nine hours, and questioned — but not about terrorism. — Read the rest

Peter Maass in the New York Times has a fascinating tick-tock/profile on how filmmaker Laura Poitras (who has produced online op-doc films for the NYT) connected with NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Seconds after she decrypted and read the e-mail, Poitras disconnected from the Internet and removed the message from her computer.

NSA spying is big news in the US, but huge news in Europe, too. This week, the cover story of German weekly newsmagazine Der Spiegel is all about the "Top secret documents that detail the mass scope of efforts by the United States to spy on Germany and Europe." — Read the rest

"By exposing NSA programs like PRISM and Boundless Informant, Edward Snowden has revealed that we are not moving toward a surveillance state: we live in the heart of one," photographer and artist Trevor Paglen writes in Creative Time Reports. He took the incredible photo of the NSA facility in this article, and has also filmed the black sites in Afghanistan and tracked rendition planes. — Read the rest

John Cusack, actor, filmmaker, and board member of journalism advocacy group Freedom of the Press Foundation, on the ethics of civil disobedience in whistleblowing.

In the New York Times, Charlie Savage and Mark Mazzetti explain how Edward J. Snowden instructed three journalists, Glenn Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, to fly to Hong Kong about 12 days ago to "visit a particular out-of-the-way corner of a certain hotel, and ask — loudly — for directions to another part of the hotel. — Read the rest

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old NSA contractor and ex-CIA employee, has revealed that he is behind the series of leaks that have appeared in the Guardian and Washington Post this weekend, which detailed top-secret, over-reaching, and arguably criminal surveillance programs run by America's spies with the cooperation of the Obama administration. — Read the rest

Photo: Shutterstock

We've been CISPA'd again.

For a second year the US House has passed the embarrassingly vague Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, a bill that could scatter your personal information like a tornado hitting a trailer park. Echoing last year, the Obama administration has threatened to veto CISPA if it fails to incorporate privacy controls, but we shouldn't have to rely on presidential intervention or the Senate's questionable wisdom to save us. — Read the rest

The Freedom of the Press Foundation today published the leaked audio of Bradley Manning's statements to the court during his hearing last week.

According to Marc Ambinder and D.B. Grady's new book Deep State: Inside the Government Secrecy Industry, the secretive National Security Agency spying programs have become institutionalized, and have grown, since 9/11.

Shane Harris at the Washingtonian read through the book's account of these sweeping and controversial surveillance programs, conducted under the code name "Ragtime":

Ragtime, which appears in official reports by the abbreviation RT, consists of four parts.

On Reddit today: "Hey, it's John Cusack. I'm here talk to about Freedom of the Press Foundation, among other things. Ask me anything."

More from his intro:

A waterboarding scene from the film "Zero Dark Thirty."

Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the New York University Center on Law and Security and author of The Least Worst Place: Guantanamo's First One Hundred Days, explains seven simple steps to making US torture and detention policies once again acceptable to the American public, as illustrated in "Zero Dark Thirty."

Here's a guide to the charities the Boingers support in our own annual giving. As always, please add the causes and charities you give to in the comments below!

Electronic Frontier Foundation
There's never been a time when EFF's mission was more important: everything we do today involves the Internet; everything we do tomorrow will require it. — Read the rest