June 26, 2013
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| At a Tuesday event in Berkeley, Calif., Daniel Ellsberg spoke against the U.S. government's surveillance of Internet and phone data. (LEON NEAL/AFP/Getty Images) |
BERKELEY, Calif. -- Famed Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg had harsh words for the Obama Administration during an event here Tuesday evening, charging that the rapid expansion of government surveillance since 9/11 has left the country "a turnkey away from a police state."
"We're not a police state yet, but the foundation has been set," he continued. "It could happen overnight."
Ellsberg, 82, is a former military analyst who became one of the most famous men in America when he leaked a top-secret government report on the Vietnam War to The New York Times in 1971. He has since been a patron saint to the civil liberties movement and is viewed by many as a predecessor of modern-day leakers like Bradley Manning and now Edward Snowden, the man who recently released evidence of the National Security Agency's covert phone records collection and Internet data mining.
Speaking at a panel discussion on "our vanishing civil liberties" organized by the Berkeley chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the anti-war activist group Code Pink, Ellsberg argued that recent revelations of the large-scale collection of Internet and cell phone data should be of grave concern to all Americans.
"Reassurances by high officials on the limits of the surveillance state are worthless," he said, referring to a speech given by President Barack Obama last week where the president defended the NSA's monitoring programs.
"Legalizing this activity doesn't make it constitutional," Ellsberg said. "Congress cannot repeal the Fourth Amendment."
This article was first posted at Huffington Post on June 12, 2013
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