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DOD’s $5 Billion Push to Stop the Next Edward Snowden

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Photo Credit: Reuters/The Fiscal TimesIn the wake of the Edward Snowden NSA leaks, the Defense Department is scrambling to secure data on the growing number of mobile devices and computers with access to sensitive materials.

DOD’s latest action to safeguard data is limiting the use of IPhone and Android phones, forcing an unspecified number of Army personnel to using a Blackberry—a cellular phone that was once considered state of the art until the iPhone came along. iPhones and Android phones don’t use the Good Mobile Messaging System used by DOD to send secure data. Until the Pentagon upgrades to Fixmo, a new $16 million system compatible with the more advanced phones, some soldiers are going to have to carry the unpopular Blackberry.

An email announcing the change and obtained by NextGov.com said, [Army personnel] “have been told that between now and whenever this ‘fixmo’ is online, their Droids and iThings are simply to become useless. Expectation is that Droid and iThing users will be deviceless until March 2014 at earliest, and they can either do without or go back to a BB 9930,” an older Blackberry.

According to tech experts, the switch from more advanced phones to older model Blackberries is one small part of DOD’s seemingly never ending task to secure data. DOD faces tremendous challenges on this front.

John Slye, an advisory research analyst at Deltek, called what’s unfolding at the Pentagon the “perfect storm.” First, DOD allowed soldiers to use late model smart phones, forcing the department to keep up security on mobile devices like iPads and Androids. Technology on these newer devices evolves quickly, forcing DOD to continuously update security software to keep up.

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Investigators Believe Snowden May Have Stayed with a Russian in Hong Kong

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

Investigators do not believe Edward Snowden stayed at the Mira hotel in Hong Kong as he travelled from Hawaii to Russia last summer, but rather at the residence of a non-Chinese national, possibly a Russian, who is suspected of facilitating his travel to Moscow, a source familiar with the case tells Fox News.

The new allegation about Snowden’s contacts in Hong Kong comes as the leadership of the House and Senate intelligence committees also claimed the NSA leaker may have had help.

On the Sunday talk shows, the CIA’s former deputy director, Mike Morrell, along with Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the Democratic head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, for the first time publicly weighed in on that possibility — though neither pointed to specific evidence.

“The disclosures that have been coming recently are very sophisticated in their content and sophisticated in their timing, almost too sophisticated for Mr. Snowden to be deciding on his own,” Morrell told “Face the Nation.”

“And it seems to me he might be getting some help.”

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Comparison with Orwell’s ‘1984’: Edward Snowden’s Christmas Message (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

What do Pope Francis, German President Joachim Gauck and the American “whistleblower” Edward Snowden have in common? This year all three of them have broadcast a Christmas message in which they reflect on their own actions and those of their fellow human beings. Pope Francis did so in the Christmas Eve Mass in the Vatican, Joachim Gauck on German television, and Snowden’s forum is the British television broadcaster Channel 4.

For the past 20 years, Channel 4 has broadcast an “alternative” Christmas message as part of its program. It’s always an unusual speech by people from whom one would not necessarily expect a Christmas message, such as the then Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2008.

Comparison with Orwell’s ‘1984’

Snowden’s television address was his first appearance in several months. The pre-recorded video was broadcast on Wednesday (25.12.2013) at 5.15 p.m. UK time. In it, Snowden warned viewers about the risks inherent in the way we use modern technology.

“A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all,” he said. “They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem, because privacy matters.” He reminded us that, this year, we learned that governments had introduced a system of mass surveillance that watches everything we do.

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Snowden to Give UK Channel 4 ‘Alternative Christmas Address’

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Photo Credit: Sunshinepress/Getty Images

Photo Credit: Sunshinepress/Getty Images

Edward Snowden will deliver the “Alternative Christmas Address” on Britain’s Channel 4. In the past, the address was given by figures such as Ali G and Sharon Osborne. The “Alternative Christmas Address” is the channel’s answer to the Queen’s message to the country.

Snowden will say “Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book – microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go. Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person.”

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Edward Snowden, after Months of NSA Revelations, Says his Mission’s Accomplished

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Photo Credit: AFP-Getty Images

Photo Credit: AFP-Getty Images

…During more than 14 hours of interviews, the first he has conducted in person since arriving here in June, Snowden did not part the curtains or step outside. Russia granted him temporary asylum on Aug. 1, but Snowden remains a target of surpassing interest to the intelligence services whose secrets he spilled on an epic scale.

Late this spring, Snowden supplied three journalists, including this one, with caches of top-secret documents from the National Security Agency, where he worked as a contractor. Dozens of revelations followed, and then hundreds, as news organizations around the world picked up the story. Congress pressed for explanations, new evidence revived old lawsuits and the Obama administration was obliged to declassify thousands of pages it had fought for years to conceal.

Taken together, the revelations have brought to light a global surveillance system that cast off many of its historical restraints after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Secret legal authorities empowered the NSA to sweep in the telephone, Internet and location records of whole populations. One of the leaked presentation slides described the agency’s “collection philosophy” as “Order one of everything off the menu.”

Six months after the first revelations appeared in The Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Snowden agreed to reflect at length on the roots and repercussions of his choice. He was relaxed and animated over two days of nearly unbroken conversation, fueled by burgers, pasta, ice cream and Russian pastry.

Snowden offered vignettes from his intelligence career and from his recent life as “an indoor cat” in Russia. But he consistently steered the conversation back to surveillance, democracy and the meaning of the documents he exposed.

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An NSA Coworker Remembers The Real Edward Snowden: ‘A Genius Among Geniuses’

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Photo Credit: Frederic Jacobs/flickr

Photo Credit: Frederic Jacobs/flickr

Perhaps Edward Snowden’s hoodie should have raised suspicions.

The black sweatshirt sold by the civil libertarian Electronic Frontier Foundation featured a parody of the National Security Agency’s logo, with the traditional key in an eagle’s claws replaced by a collection of AT&T cables, and eavesdropping headphones covering the menacing bird’s ears. Snowden wore it regularly to stay warm in the air-conditioned underground NSA Hawaii Kunia facility known as “the tunnel.”

His coworkers assumed it was meant ironically. And a geek as gifted as Snowden could get away with a few irregularities.

Months after Snowden leaked tens of thousands of the NSA’s most highly classified documents to the media, the former intelligence contractor has stayed out of the limelight, rarely granting interviews or sharing personal details. A 60 Minutes episode Sunday night, meanwhile, aired NSA’s officials descriptions of Snowden as a malicious hacker who cheated on an NSA entrance exam and whose work computers had to be destroyed after his departure for fear he had infected them with malware.

But an NSA staffer who contacted me last month and asked not to be identified–and whose claims we checked with Snowden himself via his ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner—offered me a very different, firsthand portrait of how Snowden was seen by his colleagues in the agency’s Hawaii office: A principled and ultra-competent, if somewhat eccentric employee, and one who earned the access used to pull off his leak by impressing superiors with sheer talent.

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Susan Rice: Snowden Doesn’t Deserve Amnesty

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

National Security Adviser Susan Rice kept her cards close when asked Sunday on “60 Minutes” whether the United States would consider granting secrets leaker Edward Snowden amnesty if he promised to stop revealing classified information.

But she didn’t sound very open to the idea.

“We don’t think that Snowden deserves amnesty. We believe he should come back, he should be sent back, and he should have his day in court,” Rice told CBS’s Lesley Stahl.

Snowden is believed to still have 1.5 million classified documents he has yet to share.

Snowden, who’s living in Russia under temporary asylum, said he stole and leaked the documents to let Americans know that their personal phone calls and emails were being collected and stored as part of the National Security Agency’s fight against terrorism.

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Snowden Believed to Have ‘Doomsday Cache’ – DOD Official: ‘He Stole Everything — Literally Everything’

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Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Photo Credit: Daily Caller

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden stole vastly more information than previously speculated, and is holding it at ransom for his own protection.

“What’s floating is so dangerous, we’d be behind for twenty years in terms of access (if it were to be leaked),” a ranking Department of Defense official told the Daily Caller.

“He stole everything — literally everything,” the official said.

Last month British and U.S. intelligence officials speculated Snowden had in his possession a “doomsday cache” of intelligence information, including the names of undercover intelligence personnel stationed around the world.

“Sources briefed on the matter” told Reuters that such a cache could be used as an insurance policy in the event Snowden was captured, and that, “the worst was yet to come.”

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NSA Officials Consider Edward Snowden Amnesty in Return for Documents

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Photo Credit: Sunshinepress/Getty Images

Photo Credit: Sunshinepress/Getty Images

National Security Agency officials are considering a controversial amnesty that would return Edward Snowden to the United States, in exchange for the extensive document trove the whistleblower took from the agency.

An amnesty, which does not have the support of the State Department, would represent a surprising denouement to an international drama that has lasted half a year. It is particularly unexpected from a surveillance agency that has spent months insisting that Snowden’s disclosures have caused vast damage to US national security.

The NSA official in charge of assessing the alleged damage caused by Snowden’s leaks, Richard Ledgett, told CBS News an amnesty still remains controversial within the agency, which has spent the past six months defending itself against a global outcry and legislative and executive proposals to restrain its broad surveillance activities.

“My personal view is, yes, it’s worth having a conversation about,” Ledgett, who is under consideration to become the agency’s top civilian, said in an interview slated to air Sunday evening on 60 Minutes. “I would need assurances that the remainder of the data could be secured, and my bar for those assurances would be very high. It would be more than just an assertion on his part.”

Snowden is in Russia, having been granted a year-long asylum that has sparked international intrigue. In June, the Justice Department filed a criminal complaint charging the 30-year old former contractor with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and “wilful communication of classified communications intelligence information to an unauthorized person”, although he has not yet been indicted.

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The Guardian Newspaper Could Face Terrorism Charges for Publishing Snowden Docs

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Photo Credit: REUTERS/Luke MacGregorBy Giuseppe Macri.

Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism head told parliament Tuesday that the UK-based Guardian newspaper could face terrorism charges for publishing secret surveillance material leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick testified before Parliament about the investigation shortly after Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger’s hearing, where he stated the newspaper had only released one percent of the Snowden documents so far.

“It appears possible that some people may have committed offenses. We need to establish whether they have or haven’t. That involves scoping a huge amount of material,” Dick said according to The Guardian.

Dick told British lawmakers the newspaper might have violated laws for moving and writing about secret documents that could have the potential to endanger the lives of British spies.

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Photo Credit: AFP/Getty Images Guardian editor defends publication of Snowden files

By Anthony Faiola.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger on Tuesday vigorously defended his decision to publish a series of articles based on the secret files leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, telling a parliamentary committee that the right to continue pursuing the story goes to the heart of press freedoms and democracy in Britain.

Rusbridger also told lawmakers that the Guardian had published only 1 percent of the 58,000 files it had received from Snowden.

“I would not expect us to be publishing a huge amount more,” he said.

The hearing on the Guardian’s handling of intelligence data leaked by Snowden, who is living in self-imposed exile in Moscow, drew the attention of free-speech advocates on both sides of the Atlantic. Rusbridger faced more than an hour of questioning during the Home Affairs Select Committee’s counterterrorism hearing, testifying in an occasionally combative public grilling of both the Guardian and its editor.

Along with The Washington Post, the Guardian — a London-based news outlet with a print circulation under 200,000 but online readers numbering in the many millions — was the first to publish reports based on the Snowden leaks. In response, British authorities have acted far more aggressively than U.S. or other European officials, launching what Rusbridger and international free-speech advocates have decried as a campaign of “intimidation” against the paper. Actions taken include the coerced destruction of Snowden data being held at the Guardian’s London headquarters and public denunciations by Prime Minister David Cameron, as well as the decision to summon Rusbridger for questioning by lawmakers on Tuesday.

Read more from this story HERE.