Snowden Documentarian Laura Poitras Has Endured Years Of Government Surveillance, Harassment, And She Doesn't Now If There's More To Come. Between July 2006 and April 2012, Poitras was “subjected to ‘Secondary Security Screening Selection,” detained and questioned at the United States border on every international flight she took.” When traveling from the U.S., when she was outside the U.S. traveling internationally, and even when she was traveling within the U.S., Poitras was “occasionally subjected to secondary security screening.” More than 50 times she was given this designation, which allowed Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agents to subject her to extra scrutiny.

The details surrounding the history of this dangerous trade agreement reinforce the impression that ACTA is an outdated trade agreement primarily designed to export the war on sharing knowledge and culture to developing countries.

Whistle-blower website WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange "do not deserve to be treated like common criminals" for upholding "such precious freedom" that does not exist in many countries, a leading Indian journalist said. The US athorities want to charge Assange for revealing state secrets after his website published thousands of documents, including files related to US-led war in Afghanistan and Iraq war and diplomatic cables sent to and from American embassies across glob.

I recently put the proposition, to a senior frontbencher in Federal Parliament, that the WikiLeaks horse had bolted, and that shutting down Julian Assange could not reverse a fundamental shift in the balance of power towards the citizens and away from the institutions that govern them.

Since the release of the 'Collateral Murder' video in April of this year, Julian Assange has been a hunted man, with calls for everything from treason (rather ineffective, given that Assange is an Australian citizen) to vigilante justice. Now, in the wake of Cablegate, it is no longer just Assange and his cronies, or WikiLeaks, but Internet freedom that is at risk. For some time, free speech activists have expressed concern about the powers that private companies have over online speech, an issue dubbed "intermediary censorship" by researcher Ethan Zuckerman.

To talk about current events is one thing. Would talking about it make you ineligible for a job at the State Department? No. But to go into detail, and propagate information that was illegally obtained I don't think that's a good move for anyone. Not Julian Assange, not Wikileaks, and not any U.S. citizen.

It is March 2009. Senator Benjamin Cardin (Democrat, Maryland) is in a Congressional delegation visiting Syria. He gets an audience with President Bashar al-Assad. What does he say?