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Edward Snowden’s Nightmare Comes True

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Photo Credit: APBy Philip Ewing. Edward Snowden’s nightmare may be coming true.

Not exile; not the danger of imprisonment or prosecution; and not his newfound association with dictators, lawyers and impresarios.

Snowden’s worst fear, by his own account, was that “nothing will change.”

“People will see in the media all these disclosures, they’ll know the lengths the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally, to create greater control over American society and global society,” he told The Guardian last month after he’d asked it to identify him as its source. “But they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.”

One month after The Guardian’s first story, which revealed an order from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court authorizing the National Security Agency to collect the phone records of every Verizon customer, there has been no public movement in Washington to stop the court from issuing another such order. Congress has no intelligence reform bill that would rein in the phone tracking, or Internet monitoring, or cyberattack planning, or any of the other secret government workings that Snowden’s disclosures have revealed. Read more from this story HERE.

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Last chance for Edward Snowden?

By Associated Press. An influential Russian parliament member who often speaks for the Kremlin encouraged NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Sunday to accept Venezuela’s offer of asylum.

Alexei Pushkov, who heads the international affairs committee in Russia’s parliament, posted a message on Twitter saying: “Venezuela is waiting for an answer from Snowden. This, perhaps, is his last chance to receive political asylum.”

Russian officials say Snowden has been stuck in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since arriving on a flight from Hong Kong two weeks ago, unable to travel further because the United States annulled his passport.

Pushkov’s comments appear to indicate that the Kremlin is now anxious to be rid of the former National Security Agency systems analyst, who the U.S. wants returned to face espionage charges.

The asylum offer from Venezuela came in the early hours of Saturday, Moscow time, and there has been no response from the Kremlin or Russian Foreign Ministry. As Pushkov’s tweet indicated, Snowden also is not known to have responded to Venezuela’s offer. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: DPASnowden Claims German Intelligence “in Bed” With the NSA

By Spiegel. For weeks now, officials at intelligence services around the world have been in suspense as one leak after another from whistleblower Edward Snowden has been published. Be it America’s National Security Agency, Britain’s GCHQ or systems like Prism or Tempora, he has been leaking scandalous information about international spying agencies. In an interview published by SPIEGEL in its latest issue, Snowden provides additional details, describing the closeness between the US and German intelligence services as well as Britain’s acquisitiveness when it comes to collecting data.

In Germany, reports of the United States’ vast espionage activities have surprised and upset many, including politicians. But Snowden isn’t buying the innocence of leading German politicians and government figures, who say that they were entirely unaware of the spying programs. On the contrary, the NSA people are “in bed together with the Germans,” the whistleblower told American cryptography expert Jacob Appelbaum and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras in an interview conducted with the help of encrypted emails shortly before Snowden became a globally recognized name.
Snowden describes the intelligence services partnerships in detail. The NSA even has a special department for such cooperation, the Foreign Affairs Directorate, he says. He also exposes a noteworthy detail about how government decision-makers are protected by these programs. The partnerships are organized in a way so that authorities in other countries can “insulate their political leaders from the backlash” in the event it becomes public “how grievously they’re violating global privacy,” the former NSA employee says.

Intensive Cooperation with Germany

SPIEGEL reporting also indicates that cooperation between the NSA and Germany’s foreign intelligence service, the BND, is more intensive than previously known. The NSA, for example, provides “analysis tools” for the BND to monitor signals from foreign data streams that travel through Germany. Among the BND’s focuses are the Middle East route through which data packets from crisis regions travel. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APCuba’s Raul Castro backs asylum offers for Edward Snowden

By Fox News. Cuba’s Raul Castro stood Sunday with Latin American countries that have expressed a willingness to grant asylum NSA leaker Edward Snowden.

Venezuela and Bolivia both made asylum offers to Snowden over the weekend, and Nicaragua has said it is also considering his request.

Snowden has until Monday to respond to Venezuela’s offer.

“We support the sovereign right of …. Venezuela and all states in the region to grant asylum to those persecuted for their ideals or their struggles for democratic rights,” Castro said in a speech to Cuba’s national assembly, according to state-run newspaper Juventud Rebelde.

The foreign media was not given access to the session, but the speech was expected to be broadcast in its entirety later Sunday. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APBrazil Top Target of NSA Eavesdropping, Second Only to the US

By Reuters. The U.S. National Security Agency monitored the telephone and email activity of Brazilian companies and individuals in the past decade as part of U.S. espionage activities, the Globo newspaper reported on Sunday, citing documents provided by fugitive Edward Snowden, a former NSA intelligence contractor.

The newspaper did not say how much traffic was monitored by NSA computers and intelligence officials. But the Globo article pointed out that in the Americas, Brazil was second only to the United States in the number of transmissions intercepted.

Brazil was a priority nation for the NSA communications surveillance alongside China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan, Globo said.

In the 10-year period, the NSA captured 2.3 billion phone calls and messages in the United States and then used computers to analyze them for signs of suspicious activity, the paper said. In the United States, the NSA used legal but secret warrants to compel communications companies to turn over information about calls and emails for analysis.

Some access to Brazilian communications was obtained through American companies that were partners with Brazilian telecommunications companies, the paper reported, without naming the companies. Read more from this story HERE.

Tyranny of the Judiciary: In Secret, Court Vastly Broadens Powers of NSA

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By Eric Lichtblau. In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency [NSA] the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say.

The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions.

The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said.

Last month, a former National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden, leaked a classified order from the FISA court, which authorized the collection of all phone-tracing data from Verizon business customers. But the court’s still-secret decisions go far beyond any single surveillance order, the officials said. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: ZEIT ONLINEAstonishing Graphic Shows What You Can Learn From 6 Months Of Someone’s Phone Metadata

By Michael Kelley. A German politician named Malte Spitz filed a suit against T-Mobile for the release of all the metadata from his phone that had been gathered and stored.

He received 35,830 records — six months worth — and then gave it to ZEIT Online.

From ZEIT (emphasis ours):

“We combined this geolocation data with information relating to his life as a politician, such as Twitter feeds, blog entries and websites, all of which is all freely available on the internet.

By pushing the play button, you will set off on a trip through Malte Spitz’s life.”

The result is astonishing to watch — a politician’s daily movements, phone calls, text messages, and mobile Internet usage over months. Read more from this story HERE.

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Europe Threatens to Suspend Data-Sharing in NSA Spying Flap

By Thomson/Reuters. The European Union is threatening to suspend two agreements granting the United States access to European financial and travel data unless Washington shows it is respecting EU rules on data privacy, EU officials said on Friday.
The threat reflects European disquiet about allegations that the United States has engaged in widespread eavesdropping on European Internet users as well as spying on the EU.

Cecilia Malmstrom, the EU’s home affairs commissioner, wrote to two senior U.S. officials on Thursday to voice European concerns over implementation of the two agreements, both struck in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and regarded by Washington as important tools in the fight against terrorism.

“Should we fail to demonstrate the benefits of (the agreements) for our citizens and the fact that they have been implemented in full compliance with the law, their credibility will be seriously affected and in such a case I will be obliged to reconsider (whether) the conditions for their implementation are still met,” Malmstrom said.

EU-U.S. relations are going through a “delicate moment,” she wrote in the letter to U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano and David Cohen, Treasury under-secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. Read more from this story HERE.

Snowden a Whistleblower, but US Leaders, Press Increasingly Call Him a Traitor as Asylum Offers are Made

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Photo Credit: J Scott Applewhite/APEdward Snowden is a whistleblower, not a spy – but do our leaders care?

By Spencer Ackerman. According to US legislators and journalists, the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden actively aided America’s enemies. They are just missing one essential element for the meme to take flight: evidence.

An op-ed by Representative Mike Pompeo (Republican, Kansas) proclaiming Snowden, who provided disclosed widespread surveillance on phone records and internet communications by the National Security Agency, “not a whistleblower” is indicative of the emerging narrative. Writing in the Wichita Eagle on 30 June Pompeo, a member of the House intelligence committee, wrote that Snowden “has provided intelligence to America’s adversaries”.

Pompeo correctly notes in his op-ed that “facts are important”. Yet when asked for the evidence justifying the claim that Snowden gave intelligence to American adversaries, his spokesman, JP Freire, cited Snowden’s leak of NSA documents. Those documents, however, were provided to the Guardian and the Washington Post, not al-Qaeda or North Korea.

It’s true that information published in the press can be read by anyone, including people who mean America harm. But to conflate that with actively handing information to foreign adversaries is to foreclose on the crucial distinction between a whistleblower and a spy, and makes journalists the handmaidens of enemies of the state.

Yet powerful legislators are eager to make that conflation about Snowden. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APVenezuela, Nicaragua offer Snowden asylum

By Hadas Gold and Nick Gass. Nicaragua and Venezuela on Friday night became the first countries to offer National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden asylum.

“As head of state, the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela decided to offer humanitarian asylum to the young American Edward Snowden so that he can live (without) … persecution from the empire,” President Nicolas Maduro said, according to the Associated Press.

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said he’d be willing to extend the same offer to the 29-year-old, but adding he would only do so “if circumstances allowed it.”

“We have the sovereign right to help a person who felt remorse after finding out how the United States was using technology to spy on the whole world, and especially its European allies,” Ortega said.

Wikileaks announced earlier Friday via Twitter that Snowden has applied for asylum in six more countries. Read more from this story HERE.

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Iceland proposal to grant NSA leaker Snowden citizenship appears to go nowhere

By Fox News. Icelandic lawmakers introduced a proposal in Parliament to grant immediate citizenship to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden — but it looks like it’s going nowhere.

Parliament later voted not to debate the measure before the summer recess, Reuters reported.

With his options narrowing daily, WikiLeaks announced Friday the fugitive NSA leaker had applied for asylum in another six countries, in addition to the 12 where he reportedly already has applied. However, WikiLeaks said it could not reveal the new names due to “attempted U.S. interference.”

Ogmundur Jonasson, whose liberal Left-Green Party is backing the Snowden citizenship proposal along with the Pirate Party and Brighter Future Party, put the issue before the Judicial Affairs Committee Thursday, but it received minimal support.

Snowden is believed to be stuck in a Moscow airport transit area. At one point, he told the Guardian newspaper that he was inclined to seek asylum in a country that shared his values — and that “the nation that most encompasses this is Iceland.” Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Valda Kalnina/EPANSA leaks: UK blocks crucial espionage talks between US and Europe

By Ian Traynor. Britain has blocked the first crucial talks on intelligence and espionage between European officials and their American counterparts since the NSA surveillance scandal erupted.

The talks, due to begin in Washington on Monday, will now be restricted to issues of data privacy and the NSA’s Prism programme following a tense 24 hours of negotiations in Brussels between national EU ambassadors. Britain, supported only by Sweden, vetoed plans to launch two “working groups” on the espionage debacle with the Americans.

Instead, the talks will consist of one working group focused on the NSA’s Prism programme, which has been capturing and storing vast amounts of internet and mobile phone metadata in Europe. Read more from this story HERE.

Surveillance State on Steroids: Fed’s Tracking All Postal Mail, Too (+video)

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Photo Credit: NY Times Leslie James Pickering noticed something odd in his mail last September: a handwritten card, apparently delivered by mistake, with instructions for postal workers to pay special attention to the letters and packages sent to his home.

“Show all mail to supv” — supervisor — “for copying prior to going out on the street,” read the card. It included Mr. Pickering’s name, address and the type of mail that needed to be monitored. The word “confidential” was highlighted in green.

“It was a bit of a shock to see it,” said Mr. Pickering, who with his wife owns a small bookstore in Buffalo. More than a decade ago, he was a spokesman for the Earth Liberation Front, a radical environmental group labeled eco-terrorists by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Postal officials subsequently confirmed they were indeed tracking Mr. Pickering’s mail but told him nothing else.

As the world focuses on the high-tech spying of the National Security Agency, the misplaced card offers a rare glimpse inside the seemingly low-tech but prevalent snooping of the United States Postal Service.

Mr. Pickering was targeted by a longtime surveillance system called mail covers, a forerunner of a vastly more expansive effort, the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking program, in which Postal Service computers photograph the exterior of every piece of paper mail that is processed in the United States — about 160 billion pieces last year. It is not known how long the government saves the images.

Read more from this story HERE.

Obama’s Fundamental Transformation of a Nation He Despises

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Photo Credit: GettyIs it just incompetence, or is there something else going on here?

Obama’s only real competence, it seems, lies in spying on Americans and imposing new restrictions on their liberty. This fact may be the key to understanding this president. He has shown himself sympathetic toward every anti-American dictator on the planet, warmly embracing Hugo Chávez, lifting travel restrictions to Castro’s Cuba, and (when he thought no one could hear him) promising a cozy second term with President Putin.

Obama’s love affair with Marxist tyrants has not earned him any favors — not even the return of one globe-trotting traitor. The best he can do is issue a weak protest and direct his new secretary of state to remark that Hong Kong’s and Russia’s actions in regard to Snowden are really “disappointing.” That kind of swagger should make the Chinese and Russian leadership wet their britches.

For his part, Obama has done nothing, perhaps because he is still in thrall of anyone who calls himself a Marxist. The only people he really distrusts are Americans, especially those patriotic Tea Party members who care about their country’s future.

Does President Obama really hate the American people that much?

Read more from this story HERE.

NSA Accused of Breaking More Rules to Spy on Citizens

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

Much like some of the nation’s biggest gangsters have been taken down by the fine print – tax rules and the like – over the generations, it now appears that the National Security Agency’s massive spy-on-citizens scheme could unravel because officials reportedly failed to follow the rules.

The challenge is being raised by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which started protesting the NSA surveillance plans a few weeks ago, and promises to renew the protest every week until something happens.

It points out that the NSA’s search and copy functions regarding Americans and their telephone or other records, “also constitutes a legislative rule that ‘substantively affects the public to a degree sufficient to implicate the policy interests animating notice-and-comment rulemaking.”

What that means is that the organization believes the Administrative Procedures Act requires the NSA to open up its surveillance strategy for a public comment period – before it legally could begin those search and copy functions.

“Accordingly, the NSA’s collection of domestic communications, absent the opportunity for public comment, is unlawful,” the letter to NSA chief Keith Alexander and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel explains.

Read more from this story HERE.

John Cusack: We’re Not Morons, Stop the Bait and Switch with Snowden

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Photo Credit: Columbia Pictures

Photo Credit: Columbia Pictures

John Cusack wants you to stop paying attention to Edward Snowden.

The actor lashed out at reporters Tuesday for fixating on Snowden’s saga, which has taken on the flavor of an international thriller in recent weeks.

Criticizing media personalities by name who have questioned either Snowden’s or Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald’s character—such as CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin, The New York Times’s David Brooks, and NBC News’s David Gregory—Cusack in a conference call said focusing on Snowden at the expense of the information he uncovered was “the oldest bait-and-switch in the book.”

“We’re not morons,” he said. “The questions this NSA scandal raises aren’t going away. How long do we expect rational people to excuse the abuse of power?”

Read more from this story HERE.

National Intelligence Director Clapper Apologizes for Lying, Now Suggests He Was Confused

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has apologized for telling Congress the National Security Agency doesn’t gather data on millions of Americans.

The apology comes after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden gave top-secret information to newspapers that last month published stories about the federal government collecting the data from phone calls and such Internet communications as emails.

Clapper apologized in a letter to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein that was posted Tuesday on the website of Clapper’s office.

Clapper said in the June 21 letter that his answer was “clearly erroneous”…

Clapper said in the letter to Feinstein that when answering he was confounded by the word dossier and challenged by trying to protect classified information. He also said that when answering Wyden, he was focused on whether the U.S. collected the content of phone and email conversations, and not so-called metadata, which essentially is phone numbers, email addresses, dates and times. He wrote that he “simply didn’t think of” the pertinent section of the Patriot Act under which that information can be collected.

Read more from this story HERE.

Snowden Breaks Silence as New Asylum Requests Revealed, Says He Is ‘Free and Able’ to Continue Leaking (+video)

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

By Fox News. NSA leaker Edward Snowden broke his weeklong silence on Monday, defending his “right to seek asylum” while separately claiming he remains “free and able” to publish sensitive information on U.S. surveillance.

The statements came as Wikileaks revealed that Snowden had made requests for asylum or asylum assistance to 19 additional countries around the world, following earlier requests made to the countries of Ecuador and Iceland.

In a statement issued on the WikiLeaks website, Snowden attacked the Obama administration, saying, “On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic ‘wheeling and dealing’ over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow

Monday July 1, 21:40 UTC

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful.

On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic “wheeling and dealing” over my case. Yet now it is being reported that after promising not to do so, the President ordered his Vice President to pressure the leaders of nations from which I have requested protection to deny my asylum petitions.

This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile. These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.

For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid out and voted for by the U.S. in Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is now being rejected by the current government of my country. The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon. Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person. Without any judicial order, the administration now seeks to stop me exercising a basic right. A right that belongs to everybody. The right to seek asylum.

In the end the Obama administration is not afraid of whistleblowers like me, Bradley Manning or Thomas Drake. We are stateless, imprisoned, or powerless. No, the Obama administration is afraid of you. It is afraid of an informed, angry public demanding the constitutional government it was promised — and it should be.

I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many.

Edward Joseph Snowden

Monday 1st July 2013

[Snowden’s statement originally appeared HERE.]

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Honey, Snowden Shrank Obama

By Jed Babbin. Even vacationing in Africa, President Obama isn’t far enough away to avoid the international disdain being heaped on him on the subject of infamous NSA leaker Edward Snowden. These days, you’re just not cool unless you’ve dissed Obama. It’s almost as if he welcomes the treatment he’s receiving.

On Thursday, President Obama said he’s not going to start “wheeling and dealing” with Russia and China to get Snowden extradited to the US. He disclaimed any intention to become involved in the matter by calling Putin or Chinese President Xi to try to get Snowden back. Obama evidently views the matter as below his pay grade.

“I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” he also told reporters during a news conference in Senegal. Nevertheless, he had Joey Biden call Ecuadoran Prez Rafael Correa on Friday to ask that Snowden be denied asylum there. Correa announced the call in a radio address, and didn’t miss the opportunity to slam Obama…

Though he’s not wheeling and dealing, you have to conclude that Obama is wheedling and diddling. Hong Kong authorities reported that they let Snowden go to Russia because our Justice Department didn’t respond to their requests for more information on why Snowden should be arrested. The Russians are denying that Snowden is really in Russia (being kept in a transit zone at an airport) so they can’t do anything about him either. And Correa is also saying that Ecuador will decide what to do with Snowden if he gets there (or to one of their embassies).

Being serially dissed by China, Russia, and now Ecuador, Obama looks — and is — more and more powerless. Yesterday, even the European Union (!) joined in. Some guy named Martin Schulz, who is apparently president of the European Parliament said he was “deeply worried and shocked” by reports that the NSA surveillance had been pointed at the EU. (My sources expressed equal shock at the idea that anyone had any interest in anything the EU had to say.) Read more from this story HERE.

European Nations Lash Out at Kerry Who Maintains that “Spying on Allies is Not Unusual”

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The US spying scandal deepened today as Secretary of State John Kerry said it is ‘not unusual’ for governments to bug the offices of their allies sparking fierce retorts from France and Germany.

The extraordinary statement has angered leaders across the world after leaked documents revealed America spied on 38 foreign missions and embassies including the European Union’s Washington nerve centre.

As outrage grew across the EU over the damaging revelations, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was first to lash out, declaring that ‘bugging friends is unacceptable’ before French premier Francois Hollande demanded its ‘immediate halt’.

Speaking to a press conference today, Kerry said: ‘I will say that every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs and national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security and all kinds of information contributes to that. All I know is that is not unusual for lots of nations.’

But the remarks did not wash with Francois Hallande who demanded an immediate explanation, adding: ‘We cannot accept this kind of behavior.

Read more from this story HERE.