Wired reporter Kim Zetter writes about the governments increased surveillance powers, and the secret orders they use to achieve them. By secret order, the government is able to read the email of its citizens even when the citizen has never been charged. This is what happened to Jacob Appelbaum, who worked with Wikileaks. The government was able to obtain “… the IP address Appelbaum used to log into his Gmail account as well as the email and IP addresses of anyone he communicated with going back to Nov. 1, 2009”! Some of the other targets of secret government intrusion include “…WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Dutch hacker and activist Rop Gonggrijp and Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament.”

Reuter’s columnist Bernd Debusmann explains what he calls the U.S.’s problem with overclassification. He says that:

If past habits serve as a guide, many if not most of the “confidential,” “secret” and “top secret” markings will fall under the label “overclassification,” a practice that stretches back to the 1940s and has been criticized in a long string of reports by high-powered congressional commissions and academic experts.

He points out the inconsistency between the fact that President Obama has passed acts which purportedly aim to reduce overclassification, yet during the Obama Administration the numbers of documents classified each year have increased. He says that this is a systemic problem and suggests that to fix it government employees who reveal improperly classified information need to be rewarded.

Fireside: 500 days for Bradley Manning. The Alyona Show covers the unreasonable pretrial confinement of Nobel Peace Prize nominee Bradley Manning, that has been going on more than 500 days She also asks why the Obama administration continues to obstruct the U.N. investigator from visiting Bradley Manning.

Several celebs have recently contributed to the “I am Bradley Manning” photo campaign. Check them out athttp://iam.bradleymanning.org/notables and please take part! Send in your photo! Then, you can ask friends and your favorite icons to stand with Bradley!