A New Progressive-Tea Party Majority

Momentum Builds Against N.S.A. Surveillance

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

Published: July 28, 2013                 WASHINGTON — The movement to crack down on government surveillance started with an odd couple from Michigan, Representatives Justin Amash, a young libertarian Republican known even to his friends as “chief wing nut,” and John Conyers Jr., an elder of the liberal left in his 25th House term.

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Christopher Gregory/The New York Times

Representative Justin Amash, a Michigan Republican, is part of the movement to crack down on government surveillance.

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But what began on the political fringes only a week ago has built a momentum that even critics say may be unstoppable, drawing support from Republican and Democratic leaders, attracting moderates in both parties and pulling in some of the most respected voices on national security in the House.

The rapidly shifting politics were reflected clearly in the House on Wednesday, when a plan to defund the National Security Agency’s telephone data collection program fell just seven votes short of passage. Now, after initially signaling that they were comfortable with the scope of the N.S.A.’s collection of Americans’ phone and Internet activities, but not their content, revealed last month by Edward J. Snowden, lawmakers are showing an increasing willingness to use legislation to curb those actions.

Representatives Jim Sensenbrenner, Republican of Wisconsin, and Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California, have begun work on legislation in the House Judiciary Committee to significantly rein in N.S.A. telephone surveillance. Mr. Sensenbrenner said on Friday that he would have a bill ready when Congress returned from its August recess that would restrict phone surveillance to only those named as targets of a federal terrorism investigation, make significant changes to the secret court that oversees such programs and give businesses like Microsoft and Google permission to reveal their dealings before that court.

“There is a growing sense that things have really gone a-kilter here,” Ms. Lofgren said.

The sudden reconsideration of post-Sept. 11 counterterrorism policy has taken much of Washington by surprise. As the revelations by Mr. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, were gaining attention in the news media, the White House and leaders in both parties stood united behind the programs he had unmasked. They were focused mostly on bringing the leaker to justice.

Backers of sweeping surveillance powers now say they recognize that changes are likely, and they are taking steps to make sure they maintain control over the extent of any revisions. Leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee met on Wednesday as the House deliberated to try to find accommodations to growing public misgivings about the programs, said the committee’s chairwoman, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California.

Senator Mark Udall, a Colorado Democrat and longtime critic of the N.S.A. surveillance programs, said he had taken part in serious meetings to discuss changes.

Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, the ranking Republican on the panel, said, “We’re talking through it right now.” He added, “There are a lot of ideas on the table, and it’s pretty obvious that we’ve got some uneasy folks.”

Representative Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, has assured House colleagues that an intelligence policy bill he plans to draft in mid-September will include new privacy safeguards.

Aides familiar with his efforts said the House Intelligence Committee was focusing on more transparency for the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees data gathering, including possibly declassifying that court’s orders, and changes to the way the surveillance data is stored. The legislation may order such data to be held by the telecommunications companies that produce them or by an independent entity, not the government.

Lawmakers say their votes to restrain the N.S.A. reflect a gut-level concern among voters about personal privacy.

“I represent a very reasonable district in suburban Philadelphia, and my constituents are expressing a growing concern on the sweeping amounts of data that the government is compiling,” said Representative Michael G. Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican who represents one of the few true swing districts left in the House and who voted on Wednesday to limit N.S.A. surveillance.

Votes from the likes of Mr. Fitzpatrick were not initially anticipated when Republican leaders chided reporters for their interest in legislation that they said would go nowhere. As the House slowly worked its way on Wednesday toward an evening vote to curb government surveillance, even proponents of the legislation jokingly predicted that only the “wing nuts” — the libertarians of the right, the most ardent liberals on the left — would support the measure.

Then Mr. Sensenbrenner, a Republican veteran and one of the primary authors of the post-Sept. 11Patriot Act, stepped to a microphone on the House floor. Never, he said, did he intend to allow the wholesale vacuuming up of domestic phone records, nor did his legislation envision that data dragnets would go beyond specific targets of terrorism investigations.

“The time has come to stop it, and the way we stop it is to approve this amendment,” Mr. Sensenbrenner said.

He had not intended to speak, and when he did, he did not say much, just seven brief sentences.

“I was able to say what needed to be said in a minute,” he said Friday.

First NON-GMO Labeling OKed

 

The American people want to know whether or not their food has genetically modified components inside. But for the most part, the FDA has resisted any efforts to label foods as GMO-free or containing GMOs. Now, however, advocates for Non-GMO foods have done their work with a different regulatory agency, the USDA, in order to get labeling approved for meats and eggs that also indicates if the animals were fed GM food, signaling a small but important success in the fight for a transparent food industry. You may have heard this news, but we’re trying to spread the word even more!

Meat and eggs derived from animals who were not fed genetically-modified feed can now be labeled as such. Companies like Mindful Meats, Mary’s Chicken, and Hidden Villa Ranch are already approved for the GMO-free label and others will likely join their ranks. But the journey to this point wasn’t a simple one.

Unlike the FDA, who normally controls food regulations, the USDA never used third-party organizations to certify food issues. Now, after a lengthy review of the Non-GMO Project, however,the USDA has determined their certification process is reliable and scientific, and is good enough to satisfy their regulatory rigors.

The Non-GMO Project worked closely with food makers like Mary’s Chicken to develop labeling standards that could be approved by the USDA. These standards needed to be “honest, accurate, and transparent,” according to NaturalNews, three things most of us want from our food regulators.

Prior to this approval, the USDA had denied several meat producers who wanted to use such a label. The reason: the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) was not done with their review of the Non-GMO Project standards and practices. It took the USDA more than a year to make this determination as it’s obviously something they were cautious of.

“We started meeting with them to find out what the key objections were and how we navigate through that,” Dave Carter of the National Bison Association told Food Navigator. “I think it will be a very important claim for the meat industry. The non GMO label is the fastest label claim in the marketplace. Consumers want to have that option.”

“It means everything to have this label and we’re very thankful that FSIS worked with us to get this approved,” said David Pitman of Mary’s Chicken, a company that currently has 17 non-GMO verified products on the market.

These companies are rolling out their labeled products right now. While the new labeling only applies to meat and eggs, it’s certainly a victory for those of us who believe we have the right to know what we are eating.

Roberts Stacks FISA Court With 86% GOP Hacks

Roberts’s Picks Reshaping Secret Surveillance Court

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Changing Makeup of Surveillance Courts

Ten of the court’s 11 judges — all assigned by Chief Justice Roberts — were appointed to the bench by Republican presidents.

In making assignments to the court, Chief Justice Roberts, more than his predecessors, has chosen judges with conservative and executive branch backgrounds that critics say make the court more likely to defer to government arguments that domestic spying programs are necessary.

Ten of the court’s 11 judges — all assigned by Chief Justice Roberts — were appointed to the bench by Republican presidents; six once worked for the federal government. Since the chief justice began making assignments in 2005, 86 percent of his choices have been Republican appointees, and 50 percent have been former executive branch officials.

Though the two previous chief justices, Warren E. Burger and William H. Rehnquist, were conservatives like Chief Justice Roberts, their assignments to the surveillance court were more ideologically diverse, according to an analysis by The New York Times of a list of every judge who has served on the court since it was established in 1978.

According to the analysis, 66 percent of their selections were Republican appointees, and 39 percent once worked for the executive branch.

“Viewing this data, people with responsibility for national security ought to be very concerned about the impression and appearance, if not the reality, of bias — for favoring the executive branch in its applications for warrants and other action,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat and one of several lawmakers who have sought to change the way the court’s judges are selected.

Mr. Blumenthal, for example, has proposed that each of the chief judges of the 12 major appeals courts select a district judge for the surveillance court; the chief justice would still pick the review panel that hears rare appeals of the court’s decisions, but six other Supreme Court justices would have to sign off. Another bill, introduced by Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, would give the president the power to nominate judges for the court, subject to Senate approval.

Chief Justice Roberts, through a Supreme Court spokeswoman, declined to comment.

The court’s complexion has changed at a time when its role has been expanding beyond what Congress envisioned when it established the court as part of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The idea then was that judges would review applications for wiretaps to make sure there was sufficient evidence that the F.B.I.’s target was a foreign terrorist or a spy.

But, increasingly in recent years, the court has produced lengthy rulings interpreting the meaning of surveillance laws and constitutional rights based on procedures devised not for complex legal analysis but for up-or-down approvals of secret wiretap applications. The rulings are classified and based on theories submitted by the Justice Department without the participation of any lawyers offering contrary arguments or appealing a ruling if the government wins.

The court “is becoming ever more important in American life as more and more surveillance comes under its review in this era of big data,” said Timothy Edgar, a civil liberties adviser for intelligence issues in both the Bush and Obama administrations. “If the court is seen as skewed or biased, politically or ideologically, it will lose credibility.”

At a public meeting this month, Judge James Robertson, an appointee of President Bill Clinton who was assigned to the surveillance court in 2002 by Chief Justice Rehnquist and resigned from it in December 2005, offered an insider’s critique of how rapidly and recently the court’s role has changed. He said, for example, that during his time it was not engaged in developing a body of secret precedents interpreting what the law means.

“In my experience, there weren’t any opinions,” he said. “You approved a warrant application or you didn’t — period.”

The court began expanding its role when George W. Bush was president and its members were still assigned by Chief Justice Rehnquist, who died in 2005. Midway through the Bush administration, the executive branch sought and obtained the court’s legal blessing to continue secret surveillance programs that had originally circumvented the FISA process.

The court’s power has also recently expanded in another way. In 2008, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act to allow the National Security Agency to keep conducting a form of the Bush administration’s program of surveillance without warrants on domestic soil so long as only foreigners abroad were targeted. It gave the court the power to create rules for the program, like how the government may use Americans’ communications after they are picked up.

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“That change, in my view, turned the FISA court into something like an administrative agency that makes rules for others to follow,” Judge Robertson said. “That’s not the bailiwick of judges. Judges don’t make policy.”

For the most part, the surveillance court judges — who serve staggered seven-year terms and take turns coming to Washington for a week to handle its business — do not discuss their work, and their rulings are secret. But the documents leaked by Edward J. Snowden, a former N.S.A. contractor, have cast an unusual spotlight on them.

The first of the documents disclosed by Mr. Snowden was a top-secret order to a Verizon subsidiary requiring it to turn over three months of calling records for all its customers. It was signed by Judge Roger Vinson, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan who had previously achieved prominence in 2011 when he tried to strike down the entirety of President Obama’s health care law. (!!!)

Chief Justice Roberts assigned Judge Vinson to the surveillance court in 2006, one of 12 Republican appointees, compared with 2 Democratic ones.

While the positions taken by individual judges on the court are classified, academic studies have shown that judges appointed by Republicans since Reagan have been more likely than their colleagues to rule in favor of the government in non-FISA cases over people claiming civil liberties violations. Even more important, according to some critics of the court, is the court’s increasing proportion of judges who have a background in the executive branch.

Senator Blumenthal, citing his own experience as a United States attorney and a state prosecutor, said judges who used to be executive branch lawyers were more likely to share a “get the bad guys” mind-set and defer to the Justice Department if executive branch officials told them that new surveillance powers were justified.

Steven G. Bradbury, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the second term of the Bush administration, argued that it made sense to put judges who were executive branch veterans on the court because they were already familiar with the issues. And he challenged the claim that they would be more deferential.

“When it comes to highly technical national security issues, I really think there is value in a judge being a former prosecutor or a former government lawyer who understands how the executive branch works,” he said, adding that such judges “will be familiar with the process and able to ask the tough questions and see where the weak points are.”

Either way, an executive branch background is increasingly common for the court.

When Judge Vinson’s term ended in May, for example, Chief Justice Roberts replaced him with Judge Michael W. Mosman, who was a federal prosecutor before becoming a judge.

Other current judges include Raymond J. Dearie, a United States attorney; Reggie B. Walton, a prosecutor who also worked on drug and crime issues for the White House; and F. Dennis Saylor IV, chief of staff in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. The only Democratic appointee, Judge Mary A. McLaughlin, was also a prosecutor.

Stephen Vladeck, an American University law professor, said having executive branch veterans — including what he called “law-and-order Democrats” — on the court carried advantages because they brought experience with security issues. But the downside, he argued, is that they may also be unduly accommodating to government requests.

“The further the court’s authority has expanded from where it was in 1978, the greater the need has been for independent-minded government skeptics on the court,” he said.

Chief justices have considerable leeway in choosing judges — the only requirement is that they ensure geographic diversity. In practice, according to people familiar with the court, they have been assisted in evaluating whom to select by the director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts. The counselor to the chief justice and the surveillance court’s presiding judge also sometimes play a role. Judges sometimes volunteer for consideration, while chief justices and their advisers sometimes come up with their own ideas.

Generally, the people familiar with the court said, evaluations have been based on reputation, workload, willingness to undergo an intrusive background check, and experience in security issues. Judges have served an average of 15 years before being assigned to the surveillance court.

Chief Justice Roberts has dealt with a small circle. His past two choices to direct the judiciary’s administrative office have been Republican-appointed judges, Thomas F. Hogan and John D. Bates, whom he also appointed to the surveillance court.

Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee, who has filed a bill that would let Congressional leaders pick eight of the court’s members, said it was time for the court to have a more diverse membership.

“They all seem to have some type of a pretty conservative bent,” he said. “I don’t think that is what the Congress envisioned when giving the chief justice that authority. Maybe they didn’t think about the ramifications of giving that much power to one person.”

The ROLL CALL VOTE to REPEAL NSA SPYING

Progressive Democrats and Tea Party Republicans UNITE.

94 Republicans and 111 Democrats voted to stop the NSA collecting every phone record on every phone call. 

134 Republicans and 83 Democrats voted to let the NSA keep spying on us.  These are 1% corrupted, blinded, bought off temporary Congress Members who need to fall Nov. 2014.

Representing the 1% Corporates, there's Democrat Nancy Pelosi right next to GOP's John Boehner. Rep. (Felon) Issa,  voted to let the NSA keep spying, whereas Rep. Gohmert, who's been ridiculous on tech issues, voted to stop the spying. Oddly Progressive Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Chris Van Hollen, voted for the NSA.

Amash Amodei Bachus Barton Bass Becerra Bentivolio Bishop (UT) Black Blackburn Blumenauer Bonamici Brady (PA) Braley (IA) Bridenstine Broun (GA) Buchanan Burgess Capps Capuano Cardenas Carson (IN) Cartwright Cassidy Chabot Chaffetz Chu Cicilline Clarke Clay Cleaver Clyburn Coffman Cohen Connolly Conyers Courtney Cramer Crowley Cummings Daines Davis, Danny Davis, Rodney DeFazio DeGette DeLauro DelBene DeSantis DesJarlais Deutch Dingell Doggett Doyle Duffy Duncan (SC) Duncan (TN) Edwards Ellison Eshoo Farenthold Farr Fattah Fincher Fitzpatrick Fleischmann Fleming Fudge Gabbard Garamendi

Gardner Garrett Gibson Gohmert Gosar Gowdy Graves (GA) Grayson Green, Gene Griffin (AR) Griffith (VA) Grijalva Hahn Hall Harris Hastings (FL) Holt Honda Huelskamp Huffman Huizenga (MI) Hultgren Jeffries Jenkins Johnson (OH) Jones Jordan Keating Kildee Kingston Labrador LaMalfa Lamborn Larson (CT) Lee (CA) Lewis Loebsack Lofgren Lowenthal Lujan Grisham (NM) Lujan, Ben Ray (NM) Lummis Lynch Maffei Maloney, Carolyn Marchant Massie Matsui McClintock McCollum McDermott McGovern McHenry McMorris Rodgers Meadows Mica Michaud Miller, Gary Miller, George Moore Moran Mullin Mulvaney Nadler Napolitano Neal Nolan Nugent O'Rourke

Owens Pascrell Pastor (AZ) Pearce Perlmutter Perry Petri Pingree (ME) Pocan Poe (TX) Polis Posey Price (GA) Radel Rahall Rangel Ribble Rice (SC) Richmond Roe (TN) Rohrabacher Ross Rothfus Roybal-Allard Rush Salmon Sanchez, Linda T. Sanchez, Loretta Sanford Sarbanes Scalise Schiff Schrader Schweikert Scott (VA) Sensenbrenner Serrano Shea-Porter Sherman Smith (MO) Smith (NJ) Southerland Speier Stewart Stockman Swalwell (CA) Takano Thompson (MS) Thompson (PA) Tierney Tipton Tonko Tsongas Vela Velazquez Walz Waters Watt Waxman Weber (TX) Welch Williams Wilson (SC) Yarmuth Yoder Yoho Young (AK)

House Nearly Repeals NSA Spying 217-205

In a Close Vote, Congress Shamefully Defeats 

Amendment That Sought to Curtail NSA 

Surveillance  (217  -  205  close!)

The US House of Representatives came within a few votes of passing a novel amendment that attempted to strike out funding for the highly contentious NSA calling records surveillance program. Under this program, the NSA acquires the records of who you called, when you called, and how long you spoke—for all calls made within the United States, including international, long distance, and even local.

The amendment was part of the Defense Appropriations Bill (basically, the budget for the Department of Defense, of which NSA is a part), and was eloquently supported by a bipartisan coalition of Reps. Justin Amash, John Conyers, Jr., Thomas Massie, Mick Mulvaney, and Jared Polis. The push by Rep. Amash was a great step forward and comes in the wake of a combative House Judiciary hearing during which many members voiced opposition to unconstitutional NSA spying.

Unfortunately, Congress was unable to muster the votes to pass this important amendment. The amendment failed, with an extremely close vote of 205 to 217.

"This amendment reflected the deep discomfort of Americans who don’t want the government collecting data on them indiscriminately. This type of surveillance is unnecessary and unconstitutional, a needless return to the general warrants that our country’s founders fought against," said Kurt Opsahl, EFF Senior Staff Attorney.

The principal author of the PATRIOT Act in 2001, Rep. Sensenbrenner, was among the strongest supporters of the Amash amendment, urging his fellow Congress members to support this effort to rein in NSA: "The time has come to stop it and the way we stop it is to approve this amendment."

"We were heartened by the many supporters from across the country who called their representative to support the amendment, laying the foundation for further Congressional action to investigate the NSA spying and enact greater privacy protections," said Rainey Reitman, EFF Activism Director.

Congress may not have stood up against the mass spying today, but the fight is not over. Earlier this month, EFF filed First Unitarian v. NSA to stop the spying and get the judiciary to rule that the call records program is illegal and unconstitutional. And earlier this month, a federal court rejected the government’s assertion of the state secrets privilege in Jewel v. NSA,allowing that case to continue. 

EFF will continue to push Congress to rein in unconstitutional surveillance.  Please add your name to our campaign by signing Stopwatching.us. 

Rep. Alan Grayson Amends DOD Budget

ALAN GRAYSON:
Every year, the U.S. House of Representatives passes a single law that authorizes the spending of a half a trillion dollars. That's half a
trillion, with a "T". Half a trillion, as in five hundred billion dollars.
$500,000,000,000.00. Some serious coin.

I'm talking about the spending law for the Defense Department. This
spending bill is being written right now. Congress uses this massive
spending bill to allocate dollars for every base, every gun used by every U.S. soldier, every military drone, each National Security Agency snooping computer, every defense contract for the military-industrial complex, and each covert and overt war.

When you are a Member of Congress, you can influence how that money is spent - as long as you can convince a majority of your colleagues to agree with you. Though I'm a Democrat in a Republican-controlled House, I've had some luck doing this on other pieces of legislation. I've passed seven amendments on the Floor of the House already this year, by persuading my Democratic and Republican colleagues that my ideas are good ideas and worth putting into law.

In other words, even in the Republican-controlled U.S. House of
Representatives, even in gridlocked Washington, D.C., if you pay attention and you work hard, you can actually make a difference. And since so many of you donated to my campaign so generously, I don't have to spend my time begging from lobbyists all day. Instead, because of you, I can spend my time writing good law.

Here are some of the amendments I'm proposing to this massive Defense bill:

A ban on torture;
More money for suicide prevention for American troops;
An end to NSA spying on Americans;
A ban on the funding of video games by the Pentagon;
A ban on the Defense Department naming people killed in a drone strike as "enemy combatants" unless we know for sure they are enemy combatants;
An end to the Pentagon censoring the internet on its internal networks to stop troops from accessing news media sites;
A ban on fees for military families enrolling in military health care;
More money to find a cure for "Gulf War Illness";
A prohibition on the U.S. using the military to pilfer any possible oil resources in Afghanistan;
No defense contracts to companies that are convicted of fraud or bribery;
No defense contracts to companies that lie about their products being made in America; and 
No more no-bid defense contracts to foreign corporations


In all, I'm proposing 20 amendments to this bill. There are 156 amendments in total offered to this bill, by all 435 Members of the House. This means that I am offering roughly one in every eight amendments offered by the ENTIRE U.S. House of Representatives. Will the Republicans let any of them pass? Maybe. In all likelihood, the GOP will block most of them. Most. But even if we pass just one or two, a small shift of priorities in a half-a-trillion-dollar bill is a lot of change.

THAT'S part of what being a True Blue Democrat means. It means getting things done. It means working every angle to make the world a better place. It means trying, trying hard, never surrendering.

And it means, on a bill spending more money for war than we can possibly imagine, working toward peace. That's what you've helped to make possible.
I just thought you'd like to know.
Courage,
Rep. Alan Grayson
P.S. Please share this message on Facebook or Twitter with your friends

FISA OKs NEXT DRAGNET on US CITIZENS

Secret Court Lets NSA Extend Its Trawl of Verizon Customers' Phone Records

By Ed Pilkington, Guardian UK

20 July 13

 Latest revelation an indication of how Obama administration has opened up hidden world of mass communications surveillance.

he National Security Agency has been allowed to extend its dragnet of the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon through a court order issued by the secret court that oversees surveillance.

In an unprecedented move prompted by the Guardian's disclosure in June of the NSA's indiscriminate collection of Verizon metadata, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has publicly revealed that the scheme has been extended yet again.

The statement does not mention Verizon by name, nor make clear how long the extension lasts for, but it is likely to span a further three months in line with previous routine orders from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA).

The announcement flowed, the statement said, from the decision to declassify aspects of the metadata grab "in order to provide the public with a more thorough and balanced understanding of the program".

According to Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, the Verizon phone surveillance has been in place - updated every three months - for at least six years, and it is understood to have been applied to other telecoms giants as well.

The decision to go public with the latest FISA Court order is an indication of how the Obama administration has opened up the previously hidden world of mass communications surveillance, however slightly, since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed the scheme to the Guardian.

The ODNI statement said "the administration is undertaking a careful and thorough review of whether and to what extent additional information or documents pertaining to this program may be declassified, consistent with the protection of national security."

The Verizon metadata was the first of the major disclosures originating with Snowden, who remains in legal limbo in the international airport in Moscow.

NSA-Telcom Spying in South America

What the Empire Didn't Hear: US Spying and Resistance in Latin America

Friday, 19 July 2013 00:00By Benjamin Dangl, Toward Freedom | News Analysis

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(Photo: Pedro Moura Pinheiro / Flickr)US imperialism spreads across Latin America through military bases and trade deals, corporate exploitation and debt. It also relies on a vast communications surveillance network, the recent uncovering of which laid bare Washington’s reach into the region’s streets and halls of power. Yet more than McDonald’s and bullets, an empire depends on fear, and fear of the empire is lacking these days in Latin America.

The controversy stirred up by Edward Snowden’s leaked documents reached the region on July 7th, when the first of a series of articles drawing from the leaks were published in the major Brazilian newspaper O Globo. The articles outlined how the US National Security Agency (NSA) had for years been spying on and indiscriminately collecting the emails and telephone records of millions of people in Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Argentina, just as it had done in the US, Europe and elsewhere.

The articles pointed out that data collection bases were located in Bogota, Caracas, Mexico City and Panama City, with an additional station in Brasilia which was used to spy on foreign satellite communications. The NSA gathered military and security data in certain countries, and acquired information on the oil industry in Venezuela and energy sector in Mexico, both of which are largely under state control, beyond the reach of US corporations and investors.

As with the spying program in the US, Snowden’s leaks demonstrate that this method of collecting communications in Latin America was done with the collusion of private telecommunications companies in the US and Latin America.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff called the spying a “violation of sovereignty and human rights.” The presidents of Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela and other nations in the region condemned Washington for its actions and called for an inquiry into the surveillance.

“A shiver went down my back when we learned that they are spying on us from the north,” Argentina’s President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said in a speech. “More than revelations, these are confirmations of what we thought was happening.”

Indeed, the region is no stranger to US spying and interference. And with the election of leftist presidents across Latin America over the past decade, it should come as no surprise that the US has been spying into what Secretary of State John Kerry recently referred to as Washington’s “backyard.”

The shadow of 20th century dictatorships hangs over much of Latin America, orienting the region’s democratic processes and struggles for justice. Brazil’s Rousseff and Uruguayan President José Mujica are among today’s various Latin American presidents who were active in the social movements fighting against brutal US-backed dictatorships in their respective countries.

Rousseff was jailed for her activism from 1970-1972, and Mujica was shot by the police six times, tortured and imprisoned for 14 years, including being confined to the bottom of a well for over two years. Under the leadership of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, Argentina has sought justice for the some 30,000 people disappeared during that nation’s dictatorship. Needless to say, the legacy of US-backed coups, right-wing spying networks, and police states looms large in Latin American politics and recent memory.

So when Snowden’s leaked documents pointed to contemporary spying, it harkened back to Washington’s Cold War allies who, through coordinated efforts like Operation Condor, collaborated regionally to monitor dissidents and supposed communists, intercepting mail and spying on phone communications as a part of their continental nightmare.

But the Cold War is over, and from Argentina to Venezuela leftist politics have dominated the region’s landscape over the past decade, labor and indigenous movements have been on the rise, and a decidedly anti-imperialist stance has been common on campaign platforms and political policy.

While Washington has succeeded in supporting coups against left-leaning leaders in Honduras and Paraguay in recent years, a US-dominated regional trade agreement was shot down, its military bases have been pushed out of certain areas, US policy in the war on drugs is meeting resistance in key countries, and Latin American governments are going elsewhere for loans and aid. As a historic shift in politics has taken place south of the US border, Washington has often appeared out of touch and grasping for allies.

In this context, leftist Bolivian President Evo Morales’ plane was grounded in Europe upon its return home from Russia on July 2nd. US officials behind the grounding of the plane believed Snowden, currently based in a Moscow airport, was on Morales’ flight, as the whistleblower was seeking asylum in South America.

Upon returning to Bolivia, where a meeting was convened among Latin American leaders to address the US and European nations’ action against Morales, the Bolivian president said "the United States is using its agent [Snowden] and the president [of Bolivia] to intimidate the whole region."

Latin American presidents across the board were outraged at the actions against Morales, and Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia all offered asylum to Snowden in a protest against the US and in solidarity with the whistleblower. Others said they would help to protect him from US prosecution.

When US Vice President Joe Biden pressured Ecuadoran President Rafael Correa to not give asylum to Snowden, Correa thumbed his nose at the US, renouncing $23 million in US trade benefits, and offering those funds instead for training of US officials on civil liberties and human rights.

In regards to the spying revelations and to the grounding of Morales’ plane, Correa told reporters, “We're not 500 years behind. This Latin America of the 21st century is independent, dignified and sovereign."

In all of the data that the US gathered across the region, it missed one crucial fact: that Latin America is no longer Washington’s backyard. In spite of the empire’s wide reach, there are places where it will always be defied, in the telephone booths and dreams of a world that it will never truly own.