Portside

500 signatories include five Nobel prize winners, Writers demand 'digital bill of rights' to curb abuses

Tech Companies Get Millions from Us for PRISM; EFF Takes Down FISA; Kochs Loose Interest In Tribune; FCC Slashes Prison Phone Rates; Zuckerberg Launches New Initiative for Global Internet Access

If unions are not speaking out against PRISM, it is because they have short memories.

Where oversight and accountability have failed, Snowden's leaks have opened up a vital public debate on our rights and privacy. The relevant issue should be: what exactly is the US government doing in the people's name to "keep us safe" from terrorists?

In my first substantive discussion with Edward Snowden, which took place via encrypted online chat, he told me he had only one fear -that the disclosures he was making, momentous though they were, would fail to trigger a worldwide debate because the public had already been taught to accept that they have no right to privacy in the digital age. Snowden, at least in that regard, can rest easy. The fallout from the Guardian's first week of revelations is intense.

Conservatives applaud President Obama's PRISM program. Mavis Staples' One True Vine released. The Rap Guide to Evolution. Maurice Sendak Google Doodle. Lewis Black's Future Tech. Richie Havens opens Woodstock.

Reader Comments - Dirty Wars and Jeremy Scahill,; Alice Walker's open letter to Alicia Keys; Syrian proxy war; False economic recovery; NSA spying; It's the Corporations; We Steal Secrets; Baseball and drugs; Spain and the International Brigades - today; Berlin demonstrations against Obama visit; Announcement - Milton Rogovin DVD now available on sale

There has been widespread outrage in Europe over the scope of the National Security Agency's PRISM surveillance program. European experts, however, are not surprised by American whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations.