I blew the whistle on the NSA's surveillance practices not because I believed that the United States was uniquely at fault, but because I believe that mass surveillance of innocents – the construction of enormous, state-run surveillance time machines that can turn back the clock on the most intimate details of our lives – is a threat to all people, everywhere, no matter who runs them.
Time to quickly select Andy Fairweather-Low's Wide Eyed And Legless to prompt his memory and spark his conscience: he needs to be in a position to grant mercy to poor innocents led astray by "God's grain".
In by far the most devastating of what president Giorgio Napolitano called a "succession of true slaughters of innocents" to occur off Italy's coast, at least 114 African migrants, including at least three children, died after their boat sank in waters near the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa.
We intervened in Libya alongside a broad coalition, and with the mandate of the UN security council, because we had the ability to stop the slaughter of innocents; and because we believed that the aspirations of the people were more powerful than a tyrant.
He had not slaughtered innocents but performed "political executions" of "cultural Marxists".
Innocents will sound horrified but our public life would be poorer without leaks – the ones we deplore are usually those we disagree with.
This was only the second time, following a presidential speech that year, that Obama has acknowledged killing innocents.
Zimbabwe might be Test novices but never again will they be termed Test innocents.
There are no words that excuse the killing of innocents.
Enough of the dead are innocents to stir all but the most brutish conscience.
So ought they, as foreign nationals who have targeted American innocents and interests abroad, be dealt with as ordinary criminal suspects and given the protections of the constitution?
