National Security Agency out of control?
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Back in early September Matthew Green, a computer science professor in cryptography at Johns Hopkins University, tweeted on his blog that the National Security Agency was engaged in efforts “to break encryption” on private servers and was doing so on a big scale.
JHU flagged his post and Green was told to remove it. Later, the school’s decision to impose its heavy-handed censorship measure was reversed.
On Tuesday evening on the campus of Johns Hopkins University a public forum featuring three panel members was held to discuss the above matter and the issue of “collaboration” between the NSA and JHU, and other universities.
The event was sponsored by the students’ “Human Rights Working Group” and the “New Political Society.” The first speaker was Christopher Soghoain, a representative of the ACLU. Soghoain, a graduate of JHU, who is experienced in the field of surveillance cases, said,“We have an intelligence agency [NSA] that is out of control! This is an agency that is collecting information about law-abiding Americans who’ve done nothing wrong…”
Green recounted his JHU-related blog/censorship experience from last year. He also underscored his concern that the “NSA has been inside ‘Google’s Data Centers’ collecting data.”
An attorney and specialist on Constitutional Law, Shahid Buttar, was the third panel member. He is the Executive Director of the “Bill of Rights Defense Committee.” Buttar traced the history of government-sanctioned spying and warned that the NSA’s egregious conduct has currently reached Orwellian proportions and is a serious threat to “Freedom of Thought.”
Bill Hughes is a native of Baltimore. He’s an attorney, author, professional actor and hobbyist photographer. In his salad days, he worked on the docks as a longshoreman. Bill also played on three championship soccer teams: sandlot with Jules Morstein; high school at Calvert Hall; and college at the University of Baltimore.