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NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams asked Snowden, "When the president and others have made the point that you should have gone through channels, become a whistleblower and not pursued the route you did, what's your response?" "I actually did go through channels and that is documented," Snowden answered. "The NSA has records.

This is publication day for Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Security State, about his last near-year swept away by the Snowden affair. It’s been under wraps until now for obvious reasons. This essay is a shortened and adapted version of Chapter 1 of Glenn Greenwald’s new book, No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Security State, and appears at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of Metropolitan Books.

AI tech race; Algorithm for diversity; Dark Google; Bitcoin at MIT; Fake net neutrality; Covering Snowden; New media and David's sling

Cecily McMillan Trial Update; Reader Comments - Palestinian-Israeli Talks; Walmat, Living Wage, Minimum Wage of $15; Syria; Turkey; Pulitzer and Snowden; Paul Robeson; Russia, Ukraine, Crimea; Immune Systems; New book - What Did You Learn at Work Today? Announcements - Howard Zinn Symposium - Apr 24 - New York; 78th Celebration Abraham Lincoln Brigade & ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism - Apr. 27 - New York; 45th Contingent of the Venceremos Brigade

Guardian and Washington Post each honored with Pulitzer for Public Service. The Guardian team broke the first report on the NSA's collection of Verizon phone records and Gellman, with help from Poitras, reported on the wide-ranging surveillance program known as "PRISM." In addition to Greenwald, Poitras, MacAskill and Gellman—who are primarily credited for the NSA revelations—a number of other reporters working at the publications also contributed to the reporting

The plot begins in the bad years after 9/11 when the CIA embraced global torture in the war against terrorism. Official Washington was traumatized by the attack and looked the other way, pretending not to know what the spooks were doing. The men in black plucked various "terrorists" off the Arab Street shipping them to less squeamish countries around the world where the US agents used medieval methods for pain and punishment, techniques officially prohibited by US law.

A new Senate select committee is needed to investigate CIA-NSA-FBI wrong-doing - at home and abroad. Former chief counsel to the Church Committee calls for such a new committee and new investigation. As Senator Feinstein has revealed, the CIA will not only stall but even spy on Congress to impede its investigation of wrongdoing. The Church Committee found abuses and illegal acts going back to FDR's administration.

Edward Snowden talks NSA and internet surveillance at SXSW.

The government officials who, along with their courtiers in the press, castigate Snowden insist that congressional and judicial oversight, the right to privacy, the rule of law, freedom of the press and the right to express dissent remain inviolate. Yet the promise of that sentence in the Bill of Rights is pitted against the fact that every telephone call we make, every email or text we send or receive, every website we visit are tracked, recorded and stored.