Edward Snowden, a name to remember

[Quantum Windbag]

Good news, bad news for Obama.

Good news, he won't have to defend Holder for opening an investigation into foreign reporters who work for the Guardian.

Bad news, he won't be able to order Holder to open an investigation into foreign reporters who work for the Guardian.

Eric Snowden wanted people to know who he is, and what he stands for. He doesn't want to live in a world where this happens.

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.
Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA.
In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance

Thanks to his courage, we might not have to.

 

[Katzndogz]

Snowden is in Hong Kong, nominally independent. How long will it be before China starts protecting him?

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - dey most likely liable to deport his butt back here...

Hong Kong Seen as Likely to Extradite Leaker if U.S. Asks
June 10, 2013 — In choosing Hong Kong as an initial place to take refuge from the United States government, the National Security Agency contractor who has acknowledged leaking documents has selected a jurisdiction where it may be possible to delay extradition but not avoid it, legal and law enforcement experts here said.

The contractor, Edward J. Snowden, was apparently still in Hong Kong at 12:30 p.m. Monday. The Mira Hotel, an elegant boutique hotel on the Kowloon side of Victoria Harbor, said Monday evening that he had stayed at the hotel but checked out at that time.

It was not clear whether Mr. Snowden remained in Hong Kong or left the territory, which is part of China but has a high degree of autonomy. The hotel gave no further information, and the Hong Kong government declined to discuss Mr. Snowden’s whereabouts, citing a policy of not commenting on individual cases. “All cases will be handled in accordance with the laws of Hong Kong,” the government said in a brief statement.

The United States Consulate in Hong Kong referred questions to the Justice Department in Washington, which has said only that it is in the initial stages of an investigation into the release of information about government programs to monitor telephone and Internet communications. The Obama administration has said the programs were focused on the communications of people who were not American citizens. But Mr. Snowden asserted in a video interview, released by the Guardian newspaper of Britain on Sunday, that the scale of the surveillance was much broader and involved the recording of a vast array of communications in the United States and elsewhere.

Hong Kong was a British colony before its return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, and it still follows the legal system it inherited from the British, with broad protections for civil liberties. Mr. Snowden told The Guardian that he had fled here because “they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent.” But Hong Kong won that reputation mainly as a place where Chinese political dissidents sought refuge from mainland authorities, not people sought by other governments.

The Hong Kong authorities have worked closely with law enforcement agencies in the United States for years and have usually accepted requests for extradition under longstanding bilateral agreements, according to Regina Ip, a former secretary of security who is now a member of the territory’s legislature. “He won’t find Hong Kong a safe harbor,” Ms. Ip said. “Those agreements have been enforced for more than 10 years. If the U.S. submits a request, we would act in accordance with the law.”

Nicholas Bequelin, a researcher with Human Rights Watch who is based in Hong Kong, wondered why Mr. Snowden would have considered the territory a good place to stay after he left Hawaii three weeks ago. “If he took time to talk with a lawyer, he would have decided somewhere else was a better prospect” to avoid extradition, Mr. Bequelin said. “His explanation of his choice of Hong Kong was a bit off.”

MORE

 

[CrusaderFrank]

He's a patriot and hero

 

[Katzndogz]

Watch for the name Tom Drake, he's another whistleblower.

If the New York Times says that Hong Kong will extradite Snowden, it might be true or it might be a talking point released to the Times so that the public thinks that the government is still in charge. Don't worry, we'll get him! It is as likely that China will extradite Snowden as not. I'd bet not.

 

[waltky]

Granny thinks Snowden's just another whack-job dat's gone crackers...

Rise of the idealistic nerd
10 June 2013 > US President Barack Obama says he welcomes a debate about the right balance between privacy and security. That is good, because it will rage for a long while.

I suspect many in his administration are not quite so pleased about this public airing of secrets, but there is nothing now that can put the genie back in the bottle. It is not only the raw debate that will grow. So will the argument about whether the people behind the leaks are heroes or villains. It strikes me that the revelations made by ex-CIA employee Edward Snowden are of a piece with those of US soldier Bradley Manning when he gave a vast stash of US documents to the website Wikileaks. Neither are leaks in the old sense - of a single, sensational story about a particularly scandalous operation.

Instead they are, at heart, about the breadth and depth of intelligence gathering and how the internet changes spying itself. It is also about two young men who were horrified by what they saw going on and decided to expose it - in the words of my colleague, Paul Adams, "the rise of the idealistic nerd." It is probable that as the technology changed, intelligence services had to hugely increase the number of fairly low-level experts they employ.

President Obama said the surveillance programme was strictly monitored by lawmakers and a secret court

Possibly, their background checks were less rigorous than in the past. Maybe the type of person recruited was more committed to a technology that has gone hand in hand with a vaguely libertarian ethos than a commitment to national security, whatever the implications for privacy and freedom. It is not certain how this will play for Mr Obama, but it does not look great. It is true that it runs against the right's narrative: "Obama is weak on national security." Once again, as with drones, he has shown himself to be rather ruthless with the niceties. On the other hand, it plays right in to the hands of another conservative narrative: "President Obama expands the power of the state."

Given that it comes on top of the tax scandal at the Internal Revenue Service, and the raid on the Associated Press, it builds up a picture of an administration that plays fast and lose with civil liberties. This resonates with the president's own natural supporters as well, and those on the left who feel "he is just as bad as former President George W Bush". It adds to the general feeling of cynicism about politicians and suspicion of the power of the state.

BBC News - Rise of the idealistic nerd

See also:

Official: Damage assessment over U.S. intelligence-gathering leaks
June 8th, 2013 > Following the furor over revelations the U.S. government is collecting telephone records and data mining popular online services, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper took the unusual step Saturday of declassifying some details about the programs.

In doing so, Clapper reiterated President Barack Obama's position that the programs are necessary to fight terrorism, while one of his deputies said the administration was looking into possible repercussions caused by leaks to the media about programs. "We are doing an assessment of the damage that has been done to U.S. national security by the revelation of this information," Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told reporters during a news briefing in Rancho Mirage, California, where President Barack Obama was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. "...Currently, there's a review underway to understand what potential damage may be done."

Clapper's declassification of some details is the most comprehensive explanation by the government to date of how the programs work and what information they collect. Among the details made public: The National Security Agency's PRISM program - the program that reportedly allows the government to access online services - is an internal government computer system that is used to manage foreign intelligence collected from online providers and services. "Over the last week we have seen reckless disclosures of intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe," Clapper said in a statement distributed along with a two-and-a-half pages of details about the programs. "In a rush to publish, media outlets have not given the full context - including the extent to which these programs are overseen by all three branches of government."

The release of the declassified material comes as the government is under fire following revelations about the surveillance and intelligence programs that have seen privacy advocates call for reforms and elected officials question the expansive nature of the intelligence-gathering activities. The revelations began Wednesday, when a British newspaper, the Guardian, published a top secret order from an intelligence court that required Verizon Business Network Services to give telephone records detailing the time, location and telephone numbers involved in domestic calls from April 25 to July 19.

That was followed a day later by a report from The Washington Post that the government was using a program called PRISM that reportedly allows NSA analysts access to computers at Microsoft, Google, Apple and other companies to extract details of customer activities, including "audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents" and other materials. Clapper said the surveillance activities published in the Guardian and The Washington Post are "lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress" since its inception in 2008.

http://security.blogs.cnn.com/2013/...ssment-over-u-s-intelligence-gathering-leaks/