Edward Snowden interview - Part 2

[Kevin_Kennedy]

In the second part of an exclusive interview with Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden contemplates the reaction from the US government to his revelations of top-secret documents regarding its spying operations on domestic and foreign internet traffic, email and phone use. This interview was recorded in Hong Kong on 6 June 2013

Edward Snowden: 'The US government will say I aided our enemies' ? video interview | World news | guardian.co.uk

The video is at the link.

You can also read this.

Edward Snowden predicted more than a month ago while still in hiding in Hong Kong that the US government would seek to demonise him, telling the Guardian that he would be accused of aiding America's enemies.

In the second instalment of an interview carried out before he revealed himself as the NSA whistleblower, Snowden insisted that he was a patriot and that he regards the US as a fundamentally good country.

But he said he had chosen to release the highly classified information because freedoms were being undermined by intelligence agency "excesses".

Edward Snowden: US surveillance 'not something I'm willing to live under' | World news | guardian.co.uk

 

[waltky]

Granny says Obama oughta send Navy Seal Team 6 over there to snatch him...

Snowden likely to remain out of U.S. reach
July 17th, 2013 > Edward Snowden appears likely to stay out of reach of U.S. officials even if the Russian government gives the self-avowed intelligence leaker papers to leave.

Snowden has been holed up in the transit lounge of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for weeks, having flown there from Hong Kong in June after admittedly detailing top-secret National Security Agency electronic surveillance programs to media outlets. He has applied for temporary asylum in Russia, and his lawyer said on Wednesday that he may be able to leave the airport within days. If that happens, it’s not clear if Russia will meet his request. Snowden has said he wants to stay while awaiting passage to Latin America. The United States has charged the former NSA contractor with espionage and has said numerous times he does not have valid travel documents because his passport is revoked.

Washington has asked Moscow to expel him. But so far, that hasn’t happened and capturing him is complex business. Snowden appears likely to try to avoid the chance of U.S. capture even if Russia grants him papers to leave. The United States has no extradition agreement with Russia and while FBI Director Robert Mueller has been in contact with his counterparts in Moscow, federal agents in the American Embassy have no authority to make arrests. If Snowden tries to leave Russia, the United States will carefully watch the route he takes if he tries to reach one of the Latin American countries willing to take him in.

The presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia have said their countries would give Snowden asylum, and Nicaragua's president said he would offer it "if circumstances permit." The United States could grab Snowden if any plane carrying him were to refuel in a country that respects U.S. arrest warrants. But he likely will be careful to avoid that scenario. Nevertheless, the United States has sent provisional arrest warrants to a number of countries where Snowden could either transit or seek asylum, a U.S. official said last week.

Snowden likely to remain out of U.S. reach ? CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs

 

[waltky]

Snowden been talkin' to the Russian spooks?...

Inquiry Says Snowden in Contact with Russia's Spy Services
Dec 22, 2016 | WASHINGTON — Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden remains in contact with Russian intelligence services, according to a bipartisan congressional report released at a time when Russia is considered a top national security concern.

The two-year inquiry focused on Snowden's 2013 leak of classified U.S. material about America's surveillance programs. It concluded that Snowden compromised national security by these disclosures and is avoiding prosecution while living in a country that is considered one of the top U.S. adversaries. In recent months, U.S. intelligence agencies have been outspoken about their beliefs that Russia actively interfered in the U.S. political process by hacking into private email accounts. The report sends a strong message to President Barack Obama during his final days in office: Do not pardon Edward Snowden. Obama has not offered any indication that he is considering pardoning Snowden for the leaks that embarrassed the U.S. and angered allies. Lisa Monaco, Obama's adviser on homeland security and counterterrorism, said last year that Snowden "should come home to the United States and be judged by a jury of his peers — not hide behind the cover of an authoritarian regime."

However, there has been a push by privacy advocacy groups to pardon the former NSA contractor who they herald as a whistleblower for leaking documents that disclosed the extent of the data the U.S. collects on Americans in its efforts to fight terrorism. After the disclosures, Obama reined in some of the surveillance authorities and put in place additional measures to provide more transparency to the classified programs. The House intelligence committee released the report to provide what the panel's chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., called "a fuller account of Edward Snowden's crimes and the reckless disregard he has shown for U.S. national security." The 33-page unclassified report pointed to statements in June 2016 by the deputy chairman of the defense and security committee in the Russian parliament's upper house, who asserted that "Snowden did share intelligence" with the Russian government. The report said, "Since Snowden's arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services." The following sentence was redacted, and there is nothing in the unclassified report that explains why the committee believes Snowden is still sharing intelligence with the Russians.

Edward Snowden appears on a video broadcast from Moscow at an event sponsored by ACLU Hawaii in Honolulu.​

The committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, said Snowden isn't a whistleblower as he and his defenders claim. "Most of the material he stole had nothing to do with Americans' privacy, and its compromise has been of great value to America's adversaries and those who mean to do America harm," Schiff said. Ben Wizner, Snowden's lawyer, dismissed the report and insisted that Snowden acted to inform the public. "The House committee spent three years and millions of dollars in a failed attempt to discredit Edward Snowden, whose actions led to the most significant intelligence reforms in a generation," Wizner said. "The report wholly ignores Snowden's repeated and courageous criticism of Russian surveillance and censorship laws. It combines demonstrable falsehoods with deceptive inferences to paint an entirely fictional portrait of an American whistleblower."

One of the programs that came under great scrutiny is set to expire in a year, and it will be a top priority for the House committee, among others in Congress, to get it renewed. Under that program, the NSA sweeps up communications of non-Americans outside the U.S., and it can also capture the domestic communications of any American in contact with the terror suspect, even if those contacts have nothing to do with terrorism. The resulting sweeps are likely to have included emails and other data from tens of thousands of Americans over the past decade, experts have said. Three years ago, Snowden revealed U.S. government efforts to hack into the data pipelines used by U.S. companies to serve customers overseas. The programs collected the telephone metadata records of millions of Americans and examined emails from overseas. Snowden fled to Hong Kong and then to Russia to avoid prosecution.

Inquiry Says Snowden in Contact with Russia's Spy Services | Military.com

See also:

Snowden refutes House report that he's collaborated with Russian agents
Dec. 22, 2016 - "Everyone knows this is false," Snowden said of the claim he's communicated with Russian intelligence agents.

Edward Snowden has communicated with Russian intelligence agents while living under asylum in Moscow, a House investigative report said Thursday -- an accusation the former U.S. defense contractor vigorously denies. The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday released its declassified report, which details the circumstances of the case the panel learned from its two-year investigation.

The House investigation paints Snowden as a "disgruntled" employee who often clashed with supervisors in his work for the U.S. government. Its claim that he's been in contact with Russian agents come at a time of bitter relations between Washington and Moscow, particularly in view of the CIA's conclusion this month that the Kremlin acted to interfere in the presidential election in Donald Trump's behalf. "Since Snowden's arrival in Moscow, he has had, and continues to have, contact with Russian intelligence services," the 38-page report said. "In June 2016, the deputy chairman of the Russian parliament's defense and security committee asserted that 'Snowden did share intelligence' with [Russia's] government," it continued.

The report, though, offered no conclusive proof of that claim. It wasn't made clear whether investigators know which Russian agencies Snowden has purportedly communicated with or for what purpose. The report is heavily redacted and omits a good deal of other details. The observations are part of the committee's lengthy review of Snowden's actions in 2014, when he furnished the classified materials to multiple media outlets, including The New York Times and Britain's The Guardian newspaper. "The American people can now get a fuller account of Edward Snowden's crimes and the reckless disregard he has shown for U.S. national security, including the safety of American servicemen and women," Rep. Devin Nunes, the panel's chairman, said in a statement Thursday. "It will take a long time to mitigate the damage he caused, and I look forward to the day when he returns to the United States to face justice."

The exiled 33-year-old computer security expert, however, staunchly disputed the conclusions of the report Thursday in a series of tweets. "They claim without evidence I'm in cahoots with Russian intel. Everyone knows this is false," he said on his Twitter page. They characterize many of the best things I ever did -- standing up for co-workers, reporting XSS vulns in TS/SCI systems -- as wrongs. — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 22, 2016 "Was I a pain in the ass to work with? Perhaps; many technologists are. But this report establishes no worse," he added. "It is an endless parade of falsity so unbelievable it comes across as parody. Yet unintentionally exonerating."

MORE

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

And now the committee is already saying they got things wrong.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles...tee-walks-back-claims-about-intentional-lying

 

[Windship]

Granny says Obama oughta send Navy Seal Team 6 over there to snatch him...

Snowden likely to remain out of U.S. reach
July 17th, 2013 > Edward Snowden appears likely to stay out of reach of U.S. officials even if the Russian government gives the self-avowed intelligence leaker papers to leave.

Snowden has been holed up in the transit lounge of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport for weeks, having flown there from Hong Kong in June after admittedly detailing top-secret National Security Agency electronic surveillance programs to media outlets. He has applied for temporary asylum in Russia, and his lawyer said on Wednesday that he may be able to leave the airport within days. If that happens, it’s not clear if Russia will meet his request. Snowden has said he wants to stay while awaiting passage to Latin America. The United States has charged the former NSA contractor with espionage and has said numerous times he does not have valid travel documents because his passport is revoked.

Washington has asked Moscow to expel him. But so far, that hasn’t happened and capturing him is complex business. Snowden appears likely to try to avoid the chance of U.S. capture even if Russia grants him papers to leave. The United States has no extradition agreement with Russia and while FBI Director Robert Mueller has been in contact with his counterparts in Moscow, federal agents in the American Embassy have no authority to make arrests. If Snowden tries to leave Russia, the United States will carefully watch the route he takes if he tries to reach one of the Latin American countries willing to take him in.

The presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia have said their countries would give Snowden asylum, and Nicaragua's president said he would offer it "if circumstances permit." The United States could grab Snowden if any plane carrying him were to refuel in a country that respects U.S. arrest warrants. But he likely will be careful to avoid that scenario. Nevertheless, the United States has sent provisional arrest warrants to a number of countries where Snowden could either transit or seek asylum, a U.S. official said last week.

Snowden likely to remain out of U.S. reach ? CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs

Edward Snowden is a hero. If you want to know why you dont feel this way, go watch the vid I posted.