What Edward Snowden just said about the DEEP STATE should WAKE US UP
Friday, April 19, 2024
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
Facial Recognition Option in Some Scottish Schools
Nine UK schools tell schoolkids to pay for lunch via FACIAL RECOGNITION as opponents warn it normalizes surveillance state
18 Oct, 2021 17:53
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Nine Scottish elementary schools have embraced a pilot plan to deploy facial recognition technology to verify children's school lunch payments, insisting the system is faster and more hygienic, while dodging the privacy issue.
A group of nine schools in North Ayrshire has begun scanning students' faces to record school lunch payments, praising the new high-tech system for speeding up the transaction process and minimizing physical contact between individuals. The program officially began on Monday, replacing the schools' previous system of card-swiping and fingerprint scanning.
"With Facial Recognition, pupils simply select their meal, look at the camera and go, making for a faster lunch service whist removing any contact at the point of sale," a flyer distributed to parents by the schools reads, while an FAQ sheet reassures them that kids' data is stored in an encrypted format and deleted when they leave the school.
ALSO ON RT.COMNYPD spent $159mn on facial recognition, ‘stingray’ cellphone trackers & X-ray van spy tools using secretive fund, documents showParents supposedly have to opt in in order for the tech to be used, though it's not clear what alternatives will be available to those who decline to adopt the new system. The firm in charge, CRB Cunninghams, boasted that its facial recognition setup cut payment time to a mere five seconds on average, and managing director David Swanston revealed 65 more schools were in line to roll out the program, which was first piloted in 2020.
Cameras check captured images against encrypted "faceprint" templates representing individual students, which are stored on servers at the schools rather than at some central location, Swanston told the Financial Times on Sunday, stressing that CRB's system was different from "live" facial recognition tech, which scans crowds to identify faces. The latter practice has been banned in New York and penalized in a Swedish municipality that adopted it on a trial basis.
North Ayrshire council defended the new system by contrasting it with the previous one, explaining "pupils often forget their [personal identification numbers] and unfortunately some have also been the victim of PIN fraud, so they are supportive of the planned developments and appreciate the benefits to them." However, while the council claimed 97% of parents and children consented to enroll in the biometric program, some parents acknowledged their children's approval might be motivated by peer pressure or other outside forces.
ALSO ON RT.COMUK Met Police upgrades ‘massively invasive’ face recognition tech net over London, but data watchdog warns of ‘public trust’ costParents themselves are unlikely to fully grasp the implications of the technology, and the growing frequency of hack attacks and leaks from such systems is unlikely to instill faith in those who do understand the setup. Worse, a Freedom of Information request by Pippa King, proprietor of the Biometrics in Schools blog, revealed the Department for Education has zero data related to the use of facial recognition in schools, meaning the pupils of North Ayrshire will essentially serve as guinea pigs.
Activist Silkie Carlo of pro-privacy group Big Brother Watch argued the biometric lunch setup was a dangerous step down a slippery slope, "normalizing biometric identity checks for something that is mundane."
"You don't need to resort to airport-style [technology] for children getting their lunch," she said.
The Biometrics Commissioner for England and Wales has also cautioned against deploying technology for technology's sake. "If there is a less intrusive way, that should be used," Fraser Sampson told the Times.
https://www.rt.com/uk/537794-scotland-schools-facial-recognition-privacy/
Friday, March 10, 2017
Thursday, March 9, 2017
The most shocking revelation from the CIA spying scandal
It happened again-- another spying scandal in the Land of the Free.
Yesterday Wikileaks released 8,761 CIA documents detailing the agency’s hacking of smart phones, routers, computers, and even televisions.
These files reveal that the CIA can and has hacked devices that were supposedly secure-- iPhones, iPads, and Android devices.
The documents further reveal that the CIA is deliberately infecting personal computers with spyware, including Windows, Mac OS/X, Solaris, Linux, and other operating systems.
They’re also hacking WiFi routers to deploy software that monitors Internet activity, and have even figured out how to bypass anti-virus software so that their spyware cannot be detected.
They’ve also managed to make the rest of the world believe that Russian hackers, not the CIA, are behind all this malware and spyware.
It’s like a restatement of that old Mission: Impossible line-- "Should any of your IM force be caught or killed… we’ll blame Russia.”
The CIA is pretty shameless about its activities, nicknaming its various hacking programs “Assassin”, “Medusa”, and “Brutal Kangaroo”.
One of the deepest revelations is that the agency is able to hack Internet-connected televisions, including Samsung smart TVs, through a program called “Weeping Angel”.
Basically the CIA can turn your TV into a listening device, recording conversations in the room and transmitting the audio to a CIA server.
Even if you think the TV is off, it’s not.
CIA hackers have been able to spoof the on/off display and set the television to a “false off” mode.
Bottom line, no device that’s connected to the outside world is truly safe.
And future Wikileaks publications may show that the intelligence community is hacking home automation devices, Internet-connected automobiles (including driverless vehicles), and artificial intelligence like Amazon’s Alexa.
It’s hard to be shocked at this point that the government is spying on its own allies and citizens.
This is just the latest in a pattern of brazen surveillance and flagrant Constitutional violations on the part of the US intelligence community.
But that’s precisely what I find MOST concerning-- the LACK of concern over these new CIA documents.
People have such a low expectation of their government now, and have become so accustomed to the government routinely violating their civil liberties, that there’s hardly any public outrage anymore about these spying scandals.
More importantly, the lack of concern is indicative of what freedom means in the Land of the Free today.
Here’s a great example--
Young people are traditionally the most politically charged activists in the country.
But where are the protests across university campuses demanding freedom and privacy?
It’s not happening.
That’s because university students are too busy protesting against ideas they don’t want to hear about.
At Middlebury College last week, a small liberal arts school in Vermont, a small mob of student protestors physically assaulted a conservative speaker because his ideas offended them. Link
They couldn’t simply skip the lecture and allow interested students to attend.
No, they had to engage in violent censorship, oppressing any idea that doesn’t conform to their narrow agenda.
The only thing these cry bullies are interested in hearing is apologetic white men groveling over their privilege.
This is the new reality in the Land of the Free: freedom has deteriorated into some gender studies professor’s socialist fantasy.
Constitutionally guaranteed liberties have become irrelevant.
Forget about “free speech”.
Any intellectual dissent from the intolerant Social Justice view is now considered “hate speech”.
And the Fourth Amendment, which establishes “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures,” has become a distant memory.
As a child who grew up in the 80s during the height of the Cold War, I imagine there would have been widespread disgust if a similar scandal had been exposed.
Spying on citizens and allies? That’s what the Soviet Union did.
But today, everything else is more important.
Transgender bathrooms. Silencing hate speech. Forcing elementary school children to feel guilty about their white privilege. Political correctness in extremis. #everyone-else-but-white-people’s-lives-matter.
This is what dominates the social conversation now in the Land of the Free.
Privacy is no longer a Western value.
After all, people narcissistically upload their entire lives to social media (as if anyone cares what they’re having for dinner) so that Mark Zuckerberg can auction off our details to the highest bidder.
And it is precisely this decline that I find most disturbing.
Some people hold the idiotic belief that, “If I have nothing to hide, I have nothing to fear.”
This is dangerous logic, for so many reasons.
Even the use of the word ‘hide’ is ridiculous… as if the fact that I don’t upload photos of my nether regions to Instagram means that I’m “hiding” something.
We all keep things private. It’s why we wear clothing, don’t discuss our personal finances in polite company, and worry when our social security number is stolen.
But more importantly, if it doesn’t matter that the CIA is monitoring people’s most intimate moments, then does anything matter?
They keep moving the line, probing deeper and deeper into our lives and enveloping the nation inside an Orwellian surveillance state.
And it doesn’t stop... because we’re in the midst of a complete breakdown of western values.
Until tomorrow,
Simon Black
Founder, SovereignMan.com
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Sunday, November 3, 2013
NSA revelations boost corporate paranoia about state surveillance
By Chris Bryant in Frankfurt, Financial Times, October 31, 2013
On a mild day in late August a German police helicopter buzzed low over the US consulate in Frankfurt, the financial capital of Germany.
On the instruction of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, its mission was to photograph the rooftop of the US outpost, which is located less than 5km from the European Central Bank and Bundesbank.
German media say the BfV hoped to identify the presence of listening antennas and the action prompted an exchange between the US and the German foreign ministry in Berlin.
James Clapper, US Director of National Intelligence, insisted again in September that the US does not use foreign intelligence capabilities “to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of…US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line”.
But ever since Edward Snowden, the contractor turned whistleblower, began releasing his treasure trove of US surveillance secrets, European governments and business leaders are no longer sure whether to take the director at his word.
Reports that the US National Security Agency spied on Brazilian oil company Petrobras and gained access to data held by US cloud providers including Google and Yahoo have ratcheted corporate paranoia about state surveillance to new highs.
The final straw came when it was revealed that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone had been bugged, possibly for about a decade. If Europe’s most powerful person can be targeted, then surely business leaders are also potential targets.
German companies believe the US now poses almost as big a risk as China when it comes to industrial espionage and data theft, according to a survey published in July by EY, the consultancy.
The reach and technical sophistication of US spy agencies exposed by the Snowden revelations have come as a shock to some companies who previously thought the biggest surveillance risk was posed by China.
A big shift is occurring in cloud computing where European executives have become more aware that data stored in the US is subject to that jurisdiction and therefore potentially vulnerable.
According to a survey carried out by the Cloud Security Alliance, a trade body, some 10 per cent of non-US members cancelled plans to use a US-based cloud provider after revelations about the US Prism data mining programme.
Jim Snabe, co-chief executive at SAP, says: “We see a new question from customers that didn’t come up a year ago—which is where is my data stored and can you guarantee that it stays physically in that jurisdiction.”
Many German executives argue that the latest reports are simply confirmation of what they already knew: that powerful states want to steal their most prized secrets and these data must therefore be guarded at all costs.
For large companies, the message has long since been drummed home that picking up a free USB stick at a trade fair, or leaving a laptop unguarded in a hotel room are unwise, to say the least.
Ulrich Hackenberg, board member at carmaker Audi, says it has been standard practice for years for mobile phones to be collected before board meetings so they cannot be used as remote listening devices.
Germany’s BfV advises executives to consider using simple prepaid mobiles when on foreign trips because of the risk that smart phones are compromised. The prepaid mobiles are then thrown away afterwards.
However, there is concern that small and medium-sized companies remain vulnerable to hacking and surveillance. In Germany, many of these companies are global market leaders in their particular niche.
"Small and medium sized companies often lack the experience, personnel and financial resources to protect corporate secrets effectively against unauthorised access," the BfV warns in a report.
The US warns its own companies about economic espionage by other countries. The US National Intelligence Estimate in February named France alongside Russia and Israel in a second tier of offenders who engage in hacking for economic intelligence, behind China, according to The Washington Post.
A board member at a German blue-chip company concurred that when it comes to economic espionage, “the French are the worst”.
Bernard Squarcini, former head of the French internal intelligence agency DCRI, was quoted in an interview this month as saying: “The services know perfectly well that all countries, even as they co-operate in the antiterrorist fight, spy on their allies. The Americans spy on us on the commercial and industrial level as we spy on them too, because it is in the national interest to defend our businesses. Nobody is fooled.”
On a mild day in late August a German police helicopter buzzed low over the US consulate in Frankfurt, the financial capital of Germany.
On the instruction of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, its mission was to photograph the rooftop of the US outpost, which is located less than 5km from the European Central Bank and Bundesbank.
German media say the BfV hoped to identify the presence of listening antennas and the action prompted an exchange between the US and the German foreign ministry in Berlin.
James Clapper, US Director of National Intelligence, insisted again in September that the US does not use foreign intelligence capabilities “to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of…US companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line”.
But ever since Edward Snowden, the contractor turned whistleblower, began releasing his treasure trove of US surveillance secrets, European governments and business leaders are no longer sure whether to take the director at his word.
Reports that the US National Security Agency spied on Brazilian oil company Petrobras and gained access to data held by US cloud providers including Google and Yahoo have ratcheted corporate paranoia about state surveillance to new highs.
The final straw came when it was revealed that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone had been bugged, possibly for about a decade. If Europe’s most powerful person can be targeted, then surely business leaders are also potential targets.
German companies believe the US now poses almost as big a risk as China when it comes to industrial espionage and data theft, according to a survey published in July by EY, the consultancy.
The reach and technical sophistication of US spy agencies exposed by the Snowden revelations have come as a shock to some companies who previously thought the biggest surveillance risk was posed by China.
A big shift is occurring in cloud computing where European executives have become more aware that data stored in the US is subject to that jurisdiction and therefore potentially vulnerable.
According to a survey carried out by the Cloud Security Alliance, a trade body, some 10 per cent of non-US members cancelled plans to use a US-based cloud provider after revelations about the US Prism data mining programme.
Jim Snabe, co-chief executive at SAP, says: “We see a new question from customers that didn’t come up a year ago—which is where is my data stored and can you guarantee that it stays physically in that jurisdiction.”
Many German executives argue that the latest reports are simply confirmation of what they already knew: that powerful states want to steal their most prized secrets and these data must therefore be guarded at all costs.
For large companies, the message has long since been drummed home that picking up a free USB stick at a trade fair, or leaving a laptop unguarded in a hotel room are unwise, to say the least.
Ulrich Hackenberg, board member at carmaker Audi, says it has been standard practice for years for mobile phones to be collected before board meetings so they cannot be used as remote listening devices.
Germany’s BfV advises executives to consider using simple prepaid mobiles when on foreign trips because of the risk that smart phones are compromised. The prepaid mobiles are then thrown away afterwards.
However, there is concern that small and medium-sized companies remain vulnerable to hacking and surveillance. In Germany, many of these companies are global market leaders in their particular niche.
"Small and medium sized companies often lack the experience, personnel and financial resources to protect corporate secrets effectively against unauthorised access," the BfV warns in a report.
The US warns its own companies about economic espionage by other countries. The US National Intelligence Estimate in February named France alongside Russia and Israel in a second tier of offenders who engage in hacking for economic intelligence, behind China, according to The Washington Post.
A board member at a German blue-chip company concurred that when it comes to economic espionage, “the French are the worst”.
Bernard Squarcini, former head of the French internal intelligence agency DCRI, was quoted in an interview this month as saying: “The services know perfectly well that all countries, even as they co-operate in the antiterrorist fight, spy on their allies. The Americans spy on us on the commercial and industrial level as we spy on them too, because it is in the national interest to defend our businesses. Nobody is fooled.”
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Dear USA: Might Doesn't Make Right, And Moles Make Miserable Allies
Uwe Schmitt, Die Welt, Oct. 25, 2013
WASHINGTON—Within the space of a few days, U.S. ambassadors in Paris, Mexico City and Berlin have been called into crisis talks, and President Barack Obama has received two angry phone calls from European heads of state.
These are difficult times for American foreign policy, which no longer seems to differentiate between friend and foe. At least, that is the unpleasant impression created by new allegations that the U.S. has been spying on its allies and even their heads of government.
The fact that the whistleblowers—former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, who leaked information about phone-tapping, and journalist Glenn Greenwald, who reported it—are being treated as spies only serves to condemn the U.S. government further. This paranoid surveillance of everyone and everything is becoming highly damaging for the country’s international reputation.
The American media’s reaction to the allegations that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone was tapped has been rather muted, but it seems none of the newspapers fails to mention that Merkel grew up in “communist East Germany,” as if her experience of the Stasi made Merkel particularly sensitive to being spied on. But the example of the Stasi shows that mass surveillance no longer leads to valuable information.
It would take an impossibly large commitment of both time and manpower to evaluate such a flood of information. Surely the National Security Agency would be drowning in data if the allegations of tapping 70 million French phone calls in one month turned out to be true? It seems that U.S. columnists are not endowed with a gift for irony. Otherwise they might have reassured their allies by pointing to the ongoing problems with the Obamacare website. “Don’t worry, dear Europeans, our government employees are far too sloppy to do any damage with your data.”
The American approach seems to be that “anyone who threatens our security must be prepared to accept that we determine how to act.” It is an attitude that claims the law of the strongest (“might makes right”) for the USA, giving it precedence over international organizations like the United Nations. Barack Obama may well have said in September that the United States is not the world police, his words do not match his actions. Of course, the U.S. wants to play world police—as long as it can gain more than it loses.
The shock of 9/11 has thrown a country that was known for its soft power and confident approach into a frenzy of paranoia. No matter their political affiliations, Americans agree that their country has changed significantly. Coolness has been pushed out by anxious defensiveness, and the traditional American welcome has been replaced by mistrust towards students and tourists applying for visas. Everyone agrees that it is a sad situation.
Within the political sphere there is still some distinction: Republicans tend to place national security above all else, even above the constitutions of other democracies, while Democrats show a few more scruples and argue that war is wrong as long as the “war on poverty” in their own country is being lost. But even leftists who are constantly accused of weakness on questions of national security can succumb to paranoia.
Barack Obama won over most Europeans with his charisma and common sense, showing a more modest side of the U.S. He was hastily awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on the strength of a few pretty speeches. Then he intensified drone attacks, failed to close down Guantanamo Bay prison and had his reputation damaged by whistleblowers. Now he has to deal with the spying complaints from European heads of state. While it is unlikely that Obama himself authorized such actions, he must have known the country’s secret surveillance efforts had spiraled out of control. Today Obama can no longer count on sympathy from Europe.
George W. Bush may have been seen as a war-hungry if not particularly clever hawk, but Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing: conciliatory, always smiling and intelligent but hard as steel on the inside.
U.S. National Intelligence chief James Clapper described the phone-tapping allegations reported in Le Monde as “misleading and inaccurate.” But to believe such protestations would be as naive as assuming that America’s European allies would not also spy on the U.S. if they had the same advanced technology at their disposal.
Those Americans who recognize that their country is in desperate need of allies to face the complex post-Cold War world are rapidly diminishing. Without the cooperation of the Mexican government, it will be impossible to combat illegal immigration and the drugs and weapons trade. Germany is a valuable friend in Europe and plays a leading role in relations with Russia. Brazil’s sphere of influence is spreading far beyond South America. Barack Obama is too clever to ignore this, and as the U.S. constitution does not allow presidents a third term in office, he does not need to play bad cop in order to win votes.
During Obama’s state visit in June, Angela Merkel joked that she didn’t know of any instance when her phone calls had been tapped. Back then the German chancellor’s words were spoken in jest. Now they leave a bitter taste.
WASHINGTON—Within the space of a few days, U.S. ambassadors in Paris, Mexico City and Berlin have been called into crisis talks, and President Barack Obama has received two angry phone calls from European heads of state.
These are difficult times for American foreign policy, which no longer seems to differentiate between friend and foe. At least, that is the unpleasant impression created by new allegations that the U.S. has been spying on its allies and even their heads of government.
The fact that the whistleblowers—former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, who leaked information about phone-tapping, and journalist Glenn Greenwald, who reported it—are being treated as spies only serves to condemn the U.S. government further. This paranoid surveillance of everyone and everything is becoming highly damaging for the country’s international reputation.
The American media’s reaction to the allegations that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone was tapped has been rather muted, but it seems none of the newspapers fails to mention that Merkel grew up in “communist East Germany,” as if her experience of the Stasi made Merkel particularly sensitive to being spied on. But the example of the Stasi shows that mass surveillance no longer leads to valuable information.
It would take an impossibly large commitment of both time and manpower to evaluate such a flood of information. Surely the National Security Agency would be drowning in data if the allegations of tapping 70 million French phone calls in one month turned out to be true? It seems that U.S. columnists are not endowed with a gift for irony. Otherwise they might have reassured their allies by pointing to the ongoing problems with the Obamacare website. “Don’t worry, dear Europeans, our government employees are far too sloppy to do any damage with your data.”
The American approach seems to be that “anyone who threatens our security must be prepared to accept that we determine how to act.” It is an attitude that claims the law of the strongest (“might makes right”) for the USA, giving it precedence over international organizations like the United Nations. Barack Obama may well have said in September that the United States is not the world police, his words do not match his actions. Of course, the U.S. wants to play world police—as long as it can gain more than it loses.
The shock of 9/11 has thrown a country that was known for its soft power and confident approach into a frenzy of paranoia. No matter their political affiliations, Americans agree that their country has changed significantly. Coolness has been pushed out by anxious defensiveness, and the traditional American welcome has been replaced by mistrust towards students and tourists applying for visas. Everyone agrees that it is a sad situation.
Within the political sphere there is still some distinction: Republicans tend to place national security above all else, even above the constitutions of other democracies, while Democrats show a few more scruples and argue that war is wrong as long as the “war on poverty” in their own country is being lost. But even leftists who are constantly accused of weakness on questions of national security can succumb to paranoia.
Barack Obama won over most Europeans with his charisma and common sense, showing a more modest side of the U.S. He was hastily awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on the strength of a few pretty speeches. Then he intensified drone attacks, failed to close down Guantanamo Bay prison and had his reputation damaged by whistleblowers. Now he has to deal with the spying complaints from European heads of state. While it is unlikely that Obama himself authorized such actions, he must have known the country’s secret surveillance efforts had spiraled out of control. Today Obama can no longer count on sympathy from Europe.
George W. Bush may have been seen as a war-hungry if not particularly clever hawk, but Obama is a wolf in sheep’s clothing: conciliatory, always smiling and intelligent but hard as steel on the inside.
U.S. National Intelligence chief James Clapper described the phone-tapping allegations reported in Le Monde as “misleading and inaccurate.” But to believe such protestations would be as naive as assuming that America’s European allies would not also spy on the U.S. if they had the same advanced technology at their disposal.
Those Americans who recognize that their country is in desperate need of allies to face the complex post-Cold War world are rapidly diminishing. Without the cooperation of the Mexican government, it will be impossible to combat illegal immigration and the drugs and weapons trade. Germany is a valuable friend in Europe and plays a leading role in relations with Russia. Brazil’s sphere of influence is spreading far beyond South America. Barack Obama is too clever to ignore this, and as the U.S. constitution does not allow presidents a third term in office, he does not need to play bad cop in order to win votes.
During Obama’s state visit in June, Angela Merkel joked that she didn’t know of any instance when her phone calls had been tapped. Back then the German chancellor’s words were spoken in jest. Now they leave a bitter taste.
Sunday, October 27, 2013
Allegation of U.S. Spying on Merkel Puts Obama at Crossroads
By David E. Sanger and Mark Mazzetti, NY Times, October 24, 2013
WASHINGTON—The angry allegation by the German government that the National Security Agency monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel may force President Obama into making a choice he has avoided for years: whether to continue the age-old game of spying on America’s friends and risk undercutting cooperation with important partners in tracking terrorists, managing the global economy and slowing Iran’s nuclear program.
The pressure to make such a choice builds each day, as some of the United States’ closest allies have demanded explanations from Washington after similar disclosures about the breadth and sophistication of American electronic spying. Inside the administration it has touched off behind-the-scenes recriminations between the White House and the intelligence agencies over how much detail was given to White House officials about which world leaders are being monitored.
"This was colossally bad judgment—doing something because you can, instead of asking if you should," said one career American official with long experience in Europe. A senior administration official declined to say what Mr. Obama knew or did not know about monitoring of Ms. Merkel’s phone, but said the president "doesn’t think we are in the right place."
The tension with Germany built last week after German officials were given evidence of the cellphone monitoring by Der Spiegel, the German weekly newsmagazine. The first protests to Washington came in an angry phone call to Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, from her German counterpart, Christoph Heusgen.
During the call, according to German officials, Ms. Rice insisted that Mr. Obama did not know about the monitoring of Ms. Merkel’s phone, and said it was not currently happening, and would not in the future. But according to American officials familiar with the call, Ms. Rice would not acknowledge that the monitoring took place, even though she did not dispute the evidence the Germans had provided to her, which stretched back into the administration of President George W. Bush.
If Ms. Rice’s contention that the president was unaware of the monitoring is correct, it raises the question of why he was not alerted—especially after tensions rose earlier this year, following the first revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, about American spying operations in Germany. Mr. Obama addressed those concerns at length during a visit to Germany.
There is little new in spying among allies: the oft-quoted line from Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail” was barely true when he uttered it in 1929, and Mr. Stimson himself later oversaw the breaking of codes during World War II.
But the sentiment is particularly potent in the case of a country like Germany, which has been critical for a number of American intelligence operations.
In the past, Germany has pushed for an agreement similar to the understanding that the United States has with Britain and three other English-speaking allies that prohibits spying on one another.
Until now the Obama administration has been loath to broker such a deal with the Germans, who have publicly stated their interest in a nonspying pact, partly because other nations would demand a similar arrangement. But the revelations of recent days have so strained relations between Washington and Berlin that that calculus appears to be changing—especially because American officials have difficulty making a credible case for what the United States has to gain from spying on senior German officials.
Administration officials say the National Security Agency, in its push to build a global data-gathering network that can reach into any country, has rarely weighed the long-term political costs of some of its operations.
WASHINGTON—The angry allegation by the German government that the National Security Agency monitored the cellphone of Chancellor Angela Merkel may force President Obama into making a choice he has avoided for years: whether to continue the age-old game of spying on America’s friends and risk undercutting cooperation with important partners in tracking terrorists, managing the global economy and slowing Iran’s nuclear program.
The pressure to make such a choice builds each day, as some of the United States’ closest allies have demanded explanations from Washington after similar disclosures about the breadth and sophistication of American electronic spying. Inside the administration it has touched off behind-the-scenes recriminations between the White House and the intelligence agencies over how much detail was given to White House officials about which world leaders are being monitored.
"This was colossally bad judgment—doing something because you can, instead of asking if you should," said one career American official with long experience in Europe. A senior administration official declined to say what Mr. Obama knew or did not know about monitoring of Ms. Merkel’s phone, but said the president "doesn’t think we are in the right place."
The tension with Germany built last week after German officials were given evidence of the cellphone monitoring by Der Spiegel, the German weekly newsmagazine. The first protests to Washington came in an angry phone call to Susan E. Rice, the president’s national security adviser, from her German counterpart, Christoph Heusgen.
During the call, according to German officials, Ms. Rice insisted that Mr. Obama did not know about the monitoring of Ms. Merkel’s phone, and said it was not currently happening, and would not in the future. But according to American officials familiar with the call, Ms. Rice would not acknowledge that the monitoring took place, even though she did not dispute the evidence the Germans had provided to her, which stretched back into the administration of President George W. Bush.
If Ms. Rice’s contention that the president was unaware of the monitoring is correct, it raises the question of why he was not alerted—especially after tensions rose earlier this year, following the first revelations by Edward J. Snowden, the former N.S.A. contractor, about American spying operations in Germany. Mr. Obama addressed those concerns at length during a visit to Germany.
There is little new in spying among allies: the oft-quoted line from Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson that “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail” was barely true when he uttered it in 1929, and Mr. Stimson himself later oversaw the breaking of codes during World War II.
But the sentiment is particularly potent in the case of a country like Germany, which has been critical for a number of American intelligence operations.
In the past, Germany has pushed for an agreement similar to the understanding that the United States has with Britain and three other English-speaking allies that prohibits spying on one another.
Until now the Obama administration has been loath to broker such a deal with the Germans, who have publicly stated their interest in a nonspying pact, partly because other nations would demand a similar arrangement. But the revelations of recent days have so strained relations between Washington and Berlin that that calculus appears to be changing—especially because American officials have difficulty making a credible case for what the United States has to gain from spying on senior German officials.
Administration officials say the National Security Agency, in its push to build a global data-gathering network that can reach into any country, has rarely weighed the long-term political costs of some of its operations.
The NSA Monitored the Phone Calls of 35 World Leaders
James Ball, The Guardian, OCT. 24, 2013
The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The confidential memo reveals that the NSA encourages senior officials in its “customer” departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their “Rolodexes” so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems.
The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately “tasked” for monitoring by the NSA.
The revelation is set to add to mounting diplomatic tensions between the US and its allies, after the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday accused the US of tapping her mobile phone.
After Merkel’s allegations became public, White House press secretary Jay Carney issued a statement that said the US “is not monitoring and will not monitor” the German chancellor’s communications. But that failed to quell the row, as officials in Berlin quickly pointed out that the US did not deny monitoring the phone in the past.
The NSA memo obtained by the Guardian suggests that such surveillance was not isolated, as the agency routinely monitors the phone numbers of world leaders—and even asks for the assistance of other US officials to do so.
The memo, dated October 2006 and which was issued to staff in the agency’s Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID), was titled “Customers Can Help SID Obtain Targetable Phone Numbers”.
It begins by setting out an example of how US officials who mixed with world leaders and politicians could help agency surveillance.
"In one recent case," the memo notes, "a US official provided NSA with 200 phone numbers to 35 world leaders … Despite the fact that the majority is probably available via open source, the PCs [intelligence production centers] have noted 43 previously unknown phone numbers. These numbers plus several others have been tasked."
The document continues by saying the new phone numbers had helped the agency discover still more new contact details to add to their monitoring: “These numbers have provided lead information to other numbers that have subsequently been tasked.”
But the memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced “little reportable intelligence”. In the wake of the Merkel row, the US is facing growing international criticism that any intelligence benefit from spying on friendly governments is far outweighed by the potential diplomatic damage.
The memo then asks analysts to think about any customers they currently serve who might similarly be happy to turn over details of their contacts.
"From time to time, SID is offered access to the personal contact databases of US officials," it states. "Such ‘Rolodexes’ may contain contact information for foreign political or military leaders, to include direct line, fax, residence and cellular numbers."
The NSA memo seen by the Guardian was written halfway through George W Bush’s second term, when Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state and Donald Rumsfeld was in his final months as defence secretary.
Merkel, who, according to Reuters, suspected the surveillance after finding her mobile phone number written on a US document, is said to have called for US surveillance to be placed on a new legal footing during a phone call to President Obama.
The leader of Germany’s Green party, Katrin Goring-Eckhart, called the alleged spying an “unprecedented breach of trust” between the two countries.
Earlier in the week, Obama called the French president François Hollande in response to reports in Le Monde that the NSA accessed more than 70m phone records of French citizens in a single 30-day period, while earlier reports in Der Spiegel uncovered NSA activity against the offices and communications of senior officials of the European Union.
The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, this week backed proposals that could require US tech companies to seek permission before handing over EU citizens’ data to US intelligence agencies, while the European parliament voted in favour of suspending a transatlantic bank data sharing agreement after Der Spiegel revealed the agency was monitoring the international bank transfer system Swift.
The National Security Agency monitored the phone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department, according to a classified document provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The confidential memo reveals that the NSA encourages senior officials in its “customer” departments, such the White House, State and the Pentagon, to share their “Rolodexes” so the agency can add the phone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems.
The document notes that one unnamed US official handed over 200 numbers, including those of the 35 world leaders, none of whom is named. These were immediately “tasked” for monitoring by the NSA.
The revelation is set to add to mounting diplomatic tensions between the US and its allies, after the German chancellor Angela Merkel on Wednesday accused the US of tapping her mobile phone.
After Merkel’s allegations became public, White House press secretary Jay Carney issued a statement that said the US “is not monitoring and will not monitor” the German chancellor’s communications. But that failed to quell the row, as officials in Berlin quickly pointed out that the US did not deny monitoring the phone in the past.
The NSA memo obtained by the Guardian suggests that such surveillance was not isolated, as the agency routinely monitors the phone numbers of world leaders—and even asks for the assistance of other US officials to do so.
The memo, dated October 2006 and which was issued to staff in the agency’s Signals Intelligence Directorate (SID), was titled “Customers Can Help SID Obtain Targetable Phone Numbers”.
It begins by setting out an example of how US officials who mixed with world leaders and politicians could help agency surveillance.
"In one recent case," the memo notes, "a US official provided NSA with 200 phone numbers to 35 world leaders … Despite the fact that the majority is probably available via open source, the PCs [intelligence production centers] have noted 43 previously unknown phone numbers. These numbers plus several others have been tasked."
The document continues by saying the new phone numbers had helped the agency discover still more new contact details to add to their monitoring: “These numbers have provided lead information to other numbers that have subsequently been tasked.”
But the memo acknowledges that eavesdropping on the numbers had produced “little reportable intelligence”. In the wake of the Merkel row, the US is facing growing international criticism that any intelligence benefit from spying on friendly governments is far outweighed by the potential diplomatic damage.
The memo then asks analysts to think about any customers they currently serve who might similarly be happy to turn over details of their contacts.
"From time to time, SID is offered access to the personal contact databases of US officials," it states. "Such ‘Rolodexes’ may contain contact information for foreign political or military leaders, to include direct line, fax, residence and cellular numbers."
The NSA memo seen by the Guardian was written halfway through George W Bush’s second term, when Condoleezza Rice was secretary of state and Donald Rumsfeld was in his final months as defence secretary.
Merkel, who, according to Reuters, suspected the surveillance after finding her mobile phone number written on a US document, is said to have called for US surveillance to be placed on a new legal footing during a phone call to President Obama.
The leader of Germany’s Green party, Katrin Goring-Eckhart, called the alleged spying an “unprecedented breach of trust” between the two countries.
Earlier in the week, Obama called the French president François Hollande in response to reports in Le Monde that the NSA accessed more than 70m phone records of French citizens in a single 30-day period, while earlier reports in Der Spiegel uncovered NSA activity against the offices and communications of senior officials of the European Union.
The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, this week backed proposals that could require US tech companies to seek permission before handing over EU citizens’ data to US intelligence agencies, while the European parliament voted in favour of suspending a transatlantic bank data sharing agreement after Der Spiegel revealed the agency was monitoring the international bank transfer system Swift.
Monday, July 8, 2013
Should Christians oppose the "surveillance state"?
Jonathan Merritt, Religion News Service, Jul 4, 2013
Apparently anything goes in the “war on terror"—even spying on your own citizens.
That’s the message Americans have gotten from their government over the last decade, and it has only been reinforced by the brewing National Security Administration (NSA) surveillance scandal. Thanks to information leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, we now know details of massive telephone and Internet surveillance programs enacted by America against its own citizens. According to this information, your recent Google searches, cell phone conversations, and even personal emails may have been viewed or recorded by government intelligence agencies.
No wonder the Obama Administration is getting fileted and served up with a side of tartar sauce.
But the President is not solely to blame for the Orwellian reality we’re now facing. It is, in part, the Bush Administration’s policies come to roost. Legal cover for these actions has been provided by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which President Bush expanded with an “Authorization" to allow NSA to intercept Americans’ communications, and the Patriot Act of 2001. The super-secret $1.7 billion NSA data collection center in Utah, where much of this intelligence gathering has occurred, is the “realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration."
Of course, few people argue that surveillance should never be allowed in a world as dangerous as ours. But what we’re seeing now is a government with carte blanche power to infringe on individual freedoms with almost no restraint. Out of some 8,600 invasive search requests submitted to the FISA court, only two have been denied.
Americans are justified to be outraged as such power run amok. And the Christians among them, even more so.
Growing up, Americans are taught that we live in the cradle of liberty and democracy. But according to NSA documents, it turns out that America may be one of the most surveilled countries in the world. This rightfully offends our American sensibilities because the impulse of our republic is to provide the most freedom possible for those who call our country home. It is difficult to engage in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" when you’re always looking over your shoulder to see if Big Brother is spying on you.
American Christians have even more reasons to oppose the surveillance state. At the core of Christian theology is an affirmation of human dignity. Every human—regardless of race, gender, country of origin, religion, or anything other marker—is made in the image of God and is the object of that God’s love. Human dignity is a permanent and ineradicable endowment of God to every person.
As Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity, argues, “Persons of faith should be deeply concerned about the current surveillance flap not because privacy is an absolute end in itself but rather because it points to and safeguards something else even more basic and fundamental, namely, human dignity."
His view is echoed by the Roman Catholic Declaration on Religious Freedom, which rightly states that human dignity requires that people “should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by sense of duty."
Infringing on someone’s privacy without just cause robs them of divinely-bestowed dignity.
Additionally, the surveillance state trusts government too much. Christians believe that humans are utterly depraved and especially dangerous when in possession of unchecked power. Therefore, justice can increase only when power is held in check. As Gary Haugen, President of International Justice Mission writes, "[governmental] power must be limited by clear boundaries, and individuals exercising such power must be transparently accountable."
Christians know that nothing can ultimately be hidden. In one sense, there is no ultimate privacy if an all-knowing God exists. As Paul Tillich says, “We are always held and comprehended by something that is greater than we are, that has a claim upon us." But for Christians, only one entity should have and can be trusted with unlimited surveillance: God, not government.
"Only God is omniscient. To God alone are we to be a completely open book," George writes, “To God, and only to God, should we say—or need to say—‘You know when I leave and when I get back; I am never out of your sight. I look behind me and you are there, then up ahead and you are there, too…is there any place I can go to be out of your sight?’"
Christians should desire and help create a society where the tendency of citizens is to look up, not over their shoulders.
Apparently anything goes in the “war on terror"—even spying on your own citizens.
That’s the message Americans have gotten from their government over the last decade, and it has only been reinforced by the brewing National Security Administration (NSA) surveillance scandal. Thanks to information leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden, we now know details of massive telephone and Internet surveillance programs enacted by America against its own citizens. According to this information, your recent Google searches, cell phone conversations, and even personal emails may have been viewed or recorded by government intelligence agencies.
No wonder the Obama Administration is getting fileted and served up with a side of tartar sauce.
But the President is not solely to blame for the Orwellian reality we’re now facing. It is, in part, the Bush Administration’s policies come to roost. Legal cover for these actions has been provided by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which President Bush expanded with an “Authorization" to allow NSA to intercept Americans’ communications, and the Patriot Act of 2001. The super-secret $1.7 billion NSA data collection center in Utah, where much of this intelligence gathering has occurred, is the “realization of the ‘total information awareness’ program created during the first term of the Bush administration."
Of course, few people argue that surveillance should never be allowed in a world as dangerous as ours. But what we’re seeing now is a government with carte blanche power to infringe on individual freedoms with almost no restraint. Out of some 8,600 invasive search requests submitted to the FISA court, only two have been denied.
Americans are justified to be outraged as such power run amok. And the Christians among them, even more so.
Growing up, Americans are taught that we live in the cradle of liberty and democracy. But according to NSA documents, it turns out that America may be one of the most surveilled countries in the world. This rightfully offends our American sensibilities because the impulse of our republic is to provide the most freedom possible for those who call our country home. It is difficult to engage in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" when you’re always looking over your shoulder to see if Big Brother is spying on you.
American Christians have even more reasons to oppose the surveillance state. At the core of Christian theology is an affirmation of human dignity. Every human—regardless of race, gender, country of origin, religion, or anything other marker—is made in the image of God and is the object of that God’s love. Human dignity is a permanent and ineradicable endowment of God to every person.
As Timothy George, Dean of Beeson Divinity, argues, “Persons of faith should be deeply concerned about the current surveillance flap not because privacy is an absolute end in itself but rather because it points to and safeguards something else even more basic and fundamental, namely, human dignity."
His view is echoed by the Roman Catholic Declaration on Religious Freedom, which rightly states that human dignity requires that people “should act on their own judgment, enjoying and making use of a responsible freedom, not driven by coercion but motivated by sense of duty."
Infringing on someone’s privacy without just cause robs them of divinely-bestowed dignity.
Additionally, the surveillance state trusts government too much. Christians believe that humans are utterly depraved and especially dangerous when in possession of unchecked power. Therefore, justice can increase only when power is held in check. As Gary Haugen, President of International Justice Mission writes, "[governmental] power must be limited by clear boundaries, and individuals exercising such power must be transparently accountable."
Christians know that nothing can ultimately be hidden. In one sense, there is no ultimate privacy if an all-knowing God exists. As Paul Tillich says, “We are always held and comprehended by something that is greater than we are, that has a claim upon us." But for Christians, only one entity should have and can be trusted with unlimited surveillance: God, not government.
"Only God is omniscient. To God alone are we to be a completely open book," George writes, “To God, and only to God, should we say—or need to say—‘You know when I leave and when I get back; I am never out of your sight. I look behind me and you are there, then up ahead and you are there, too…is there any place I can go to be out of your sight?’"
Christians should desire and help create a society where the tendency of citizens is to look up, not over their shoulders.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
The Global Hunt for Edward Snowden
By Spiegel Staff, July 1, 2013
At the headquarters of the United States National Security Agency (NSA) in Fort Meade, Maryland, there is a giant granite memorial plaque listing the names of 171 agents killed in the line of duty, with the words “They Served in Silence" carved into the stone. It’s a very American way of remembering the country’s heroes.
They will never say that about Edward Snowden, the biggest whistleblower in recent American history. Nevertheless, he is now a hero for many, because he burst America’s dream of total data control.
Snowden has been traveling around the world carrying four laptops filled with secret documents since the end of May, when he flew from Hawaii to Hong Kong and eventually on to Moscow, leaving behind a trail of global revelations. He exposed the NSA’s Prism program, which uses data from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Skype; he revealed the role played in surveillance by the British intelligence agency GCHQ, whose Tempora program extracts data from hundreds of fiber-optic cables; and now he has also revealed the NSA’s spying activities in Germany. New revelations seem to emerge by the day.
Since then Snowden has been engaged with US authorities in a global hunt with elements of a Cold War thriller—only this time with 21st-century technology. He’s also being pursued by hundreds of journalists, millions upon millions of viewers and presumably no small number of agents. This 30-year-old system administrator has already set off minor and major diplomatic tremors, because the revelations also show the extent to which allied countries spy on each other. The insights into its eavesdropping operations have embarrassed the United States in its relationship with China and Russia, as well as helping enemies and humiliating friends, who must now fear that their own spying activities will be scrutinized.
Snowden probably couldn’t imagine all of this happening when, on May 20, he left his apartment in Hawaii and boarded a flight to Hong Kong. He was carrying a small, black suitcase containing the laptops, on which thousands of highly classified documents were stored. He told his girlfriend that he would be back soon, and he told his employer he needed to take some time off.
Snowden had been working in Hawaii for the security firm Booz Allen Hamilton, which does work for the NSA, for almost three months—and he had access to America’s biggest secrets. Although Snowden was a school dropout, he was also ambitious. When he enlisted in the army, he said that he was a Buddhist and committed to non-violence. The CIA and the NSA hired him because of his skillful handling of data networks.
In Hong Kong, Snowden took a room at the Mira, a five-star hotel in the Kowloon district. His choice of the Chinese special administrative region as a hideout was carefully calculated. He believed that he was safe there from the clutches of both American and Chinese authorities. He was also familiar with the city and had an acquaintance there. It was from Hong Kong that he launched a series of revelations that would shock America and the world before long.
He had already chosen a cohort in Glenn Greenwald, a blogger for Britain’s Guardian newspaper. Greenwald, a former lawyer, has been advocating the disclosure of government secrets for years, and is seen as a passionate champion of transparency and someone who doesn’t make compromises. Greenwald was the man Snowden now needed, so he asked him to come to Hong Kong.
Greenwald, a colleague from the Guardian and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras arrived on June 1. Snowden gave them elaborate directions to meet, and used a Rubik’s cube to identify himself. The trio questioned their informant for almost a week. Then, on June 5, the Guardian published the first revelation, the story of a secret court ruling that showed that the US government had forced the telecommunications company Verizon to hand over telephone data for thousands of US citizens. The Prism surveillance program was disclosed the next day, followed by revelations about a similar program used worldwide, known as “Boundless Informant."
The disclosures coincided with the first meeting between the two most powerful men in the world. On June 7, US President Barack Obama invited Chinese President Xi Jinping to the Sunnylands Ranch in California. It was hot, 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit), and to the annoyance of the Chinese, their hosts had added the subject of cyber security to the agenda at the last minute. Obama told Xi that he would like to see a world order in which everyone played by the same rules. It was an admonition, from those who feel victimized, against the presumed malefactors in the cyber war—the Chinese.
Although the Americans had taken notice of the revelations in the Guardian, they didn’t know that a man on the other side of the Pacific was about to disclose even more secrets.
The video in which Snowden, a previously unknown system administrator, catapulted himself out of anonymity into the public eye, transforming from an everyman into the world’s most wanted person on June 9, is 12 minutes and 35 seconds long. It had been clicked on 1.7 million times soon after its release.
The man in the video is young and pale, is wearing angular glasses and has a three-day beard. He speaks clearly, slowly and confidently. He says he has no intention to hide, because he hasn’t done anything wrong. When asked why he didn’t want to remain anonymous, Snowden replies: “The public is owed an explanation."
Snowden describes the NSA as a super-agency, a giant octopus that accesses massive amounts of data worldwide. He also explains that he decided to become a whistleblower when he realized that what he was experiencing on a regular basis were abuses, and that the more he wanted to talk about it, the more he was ignored and told that it really wasn’t a problem.
The hunt was on. Snowden’s hiding place was discovered a few hours later, but he had already disappeared and gone to the apartment of a Hong Kong acquaintance.
Meanwhile, he was in contact with journalists from the South China Morning Post. After a conversation with Snowden, they revealed that the NSA had also hacked into the servers of telephone companies in China and Hong Kong and had collected millions of text messages.
Snowden apparently hoped to avoid extradition by provoking Chinese rage against the Americans. And he needed to do something, because Washington had already started to apply pressure. Although it has no extradition treaty with China, Hong Kong is largely autonomous and signed its own extradition treaty with the United States in 1996. US politicians were already demanding that Snowden be prosecuted “to the fullest extent of the law."
"People who think I made a mistake in picking HK as a location misunderstand my intentions," Snowden told the South China Morning Post. But he also sensed that he wasn’t safe in Hong Kong. Where else could he go?
At that moment two men entered the equation who wanted some of the whistleblower’s fame to rub off on them: Rafael Correa and Julian Assange.
Ecuador soon announced that it was considering an asylum application by Snowden.
On June 16, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange stood on the balcony at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, together with Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño. He said nothing but waved to his supporters. In interviews, however, Assange called Snowden a hero and recommended that he seek asylum in Latin America.
Assange has been stuck in London for more than a year now. Police officers are waiting outside the embassy to arrest him and extradite him to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of rape and sexual assault. His room at the embassy isn’t much bigger than a jail cell. It contains a table, a few chairs, a bookshelf and a single bed. The room is so gloomy, Assange said, that he ordered a sun lamp to simulate natural sunlight. He also has a treadmill and receives occasional visits from a personal trainer. Otherwise, he spends his time watching old episodes of “The West Wing" and “Twilight Zone."
Assange arranged travel documents for Snowden from Ecuador and sent Sarah Harrison, a member of the WikiLeaks legal defense team, to Hong Kong. He wanted WikiLeaks to become Snowden’s escape agent and bring him to a safe haven—if such a place even exists anymore.
Snowden left his hiding place again for the first time on June 18. He had become even more cautious. He turned up at a meeting with attorney Albert Ho and two colleagues wearing a hat and sunglasses, and he told everyone to leave their mobile phones in the refrigerator. They ate pizza, drank Pepsi and talked for two hours. The lawyers warned him that no one could guarantee that he would remain a free man during possible extradition proceedings. If that happened, he would be without a computer or access to the Internet. Snowden was nervous. He wanted to leave, but he didn’t know where to go.
It was a situation in which WikiLeaks could be helpful to him. A company that handles the accounting for donations to the organization had offered to pay for a private jet to take Snowden to a safe place. Assange had also activated his global network of supporters. WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson filed an application for asylum in Iceland on behalf of Snowden, in case it didn’t work out in Ecuador. But was it just a red herring?
Snowden turned 30 on June 21. That evening, he learned that the US government had filed espionage charges against him, and that Attorney General Eric Holder was personally applying pressure to his Hong Kong counterparts to extradite the whistleblower. A provisional arrest warrant had already been sent to Hong Kong, and his passport had been revoked. The next morning, an intermediary from the Hong Kong government informed Snowden that there would be no objection to his leaving the territory soon. It was clearly a request.
Since the revelations about espionage in China, the leadership in Beijing apparently decided not to extradite Snowden, but instead to urge him to continue his travels. The official explanation reads like a public slap in the face or, even worse, a verbal middle finger pointed at the United States: The documents were incomplete. The US government had used the wrong middle name for Snowden in the extradition documents. The Chinese also demanded prompt clarification of the Americans’ spying activities.
Snowden was too afraid by now, and on June 23 he went to the airport, passed through the normal security control and took an Aeroflot flight to Moscow. His passport was now invalid, but he was presumably traveling with refugee papers from London, accompanied by WikiLeaks activist Sarah Harrison. On the same day, the South China Morning Post published another Snowden revelation. It included his statement that he had deliberately sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton three months earlier to gain access to classified NSA information. At this point, Snowden was starting to look like a professional spy.
Meanwhile, China’s leaders were relishing the fact that the United States, not China, was now being portrayed as a major data thief. Military expert Wang Changqin called the United States a “hacker empire," saying that there was now proof that China itself was a victim of attacks by foreign hackers, and that it isn’t China but America that plunders the intellectual property of others.
Dozens of journalists and intelligence agents were waiting for Snowden when his flight landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport. But no one came face-to-face with the fugitive, who only spoke with the Ecuadorian ambassador in the transit area. Then he disappeared, and there were soon rumors that he was leaving for Ecuador the next day.
Last Monday there was a crowd at Gate 28, where Aeroflot flight SU 150 was departing for Havana. Two dozen journalists had booked tickets on the flight. But seat 17A, where the fugitive was allegedly seated, remained empty. The flight took off, but Snowden was not on board.
Although Ecuador is playing up its role as a possible safe haven, there are only four connections from Moscow, each with a layover: via Madrid, Miami, Amsterdam and Havana. The first three airports are out of the question for Snowden, and even Cuba has an extradition treaty with the United States—and is currently trying to improve relations with its neighbor. In contrast to the 1970s, Cuba is no longer a safe haven for fugitives.
Does this mean that Snowden will remain in Moscow? The Kremlin has ruled out extraditing the whistleblower from the start. Moscow’s power elite sees his presence there as an opportunity to get back at America. Writing in the pro-government newspaper Izvestiya, nationalist writer Eduard Limonov called for revenge: “Let us spit at America and offer Snowden asylum, especially now that we’ve already given the drunkard Gérard Depardieu a passport."
Russian President Vladimir Putin has also commented on the Snowden affair. Because the fugitive was still in the transit area, said Putin, he was not truly in Russia, which was why—unfortunately—Moscow could not extradite him. With a hint of a smile, he added: “Assange and Snowden consider themselves human rights activists and say they are fighting for the spread of information. Ask yourself this: Should you hand these people over so they will be put in prison?"
For Putin, Snowden’s flight to Moscow is a gift. The revelations provide him with ammunition with which to exert control over social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Russia’s intelligence agencies already monitor the online activities of citizens today. The deputy speaker of the Russian parliament even wants to create a “sovereign Internet," free from the control of foreign powers—and all the more controlled by Russian agencies. It wouldn’t be impossible. Of the 20 largest Internet companies operating in Europe, 15 are American and five are Russian.
For Russian intelligence, Snowden’s presence there is a unique opportunity to gain access to top-secret documents, or at least that is the suspicion being expressed out loud in the United States. Many now view the erstwhile hero as a traitor, because he is seeking out the wrong friends. With each day that passes, Snowden is less of a hunter and more of a hunted man. It no longer appears to be his game, but a game controlled by other powers.
By the middle of last week, no one knew where the whistleblower was. Was he in an isolated part of the airport? In a villa near Moscow owned by Russian intelligence? On his way to Ecuador, after all? It seems most likely that he will remain in Moscow for a while longer, and that he may even be applying for asylum there. His fate hangs on two thin threads: that a country allows him to pass through it without stopping him, and that he has the necessary travel documents.
Meanwhile, President Correa is already backpedaling in Quito, where he said: “Snowden is not on Ecuadoran territory, so technically we cannot even process the asylum request." The decision could also take a while, as the foreign minister tweeted, “a day, a week or two months." Snowden seems to be welcome in Ecuador, just as long as he doesn’t actually go there. The longer the diplomatic tug-of-war lasts, the better it is for Correa. He can portray himself as the David of free speech, rising up against a Goliath without having to deal with the problem of American sanctions against a country that depends on the United States economically.
Last Friday evening, Snowden appeared to have three options left. The first was a private plane. The flight from Moscow to Quito would cost about $200,000 (€154,000), and the Russian authorities would have to approve Snowden’s departure.
Snowden’s father Lonnie proposed the second option on Friday: that his son surrender to American authorities. Unlike WikiLeaks informant Bradley Manning, Snowden would be charged in a civilian and not a military court. And he could conceivably be acquitted if the court ruled that he did not commit treason. NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, for example, received one year of probation for his disclosures.
The last option would be to seek refuge at the Ecuadorian Embassy in Moscow, but that would require Russia’s permission. And then? Snowden would be stuck, just like Assange.
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
While N.S.A. Leaker Stays in Hiding, Russian TV Builds a Pedestal for Him
By Ellen Barry, NY Times, June 28, 2013
MOSCOW—While Edward J. Snowden has remained mysteriously hidden from sight during his visit to Russia this week, Russian television has been making him a hero.
On programs that were hastily arranged and broadcast on the two largest federal channels, he was compared to the dissident Andrei Sakharov, to Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and to Max Otto von Stirlitz, a dashing fictional double agent from Soviet television. He was described as “the man who declared war on Big Brother and got stuck in the transit zone," and as “a soldier in the information war, who fights, of course, on the side of Russia, or maybe the side of China."
For as long as he remains here, one program’s host said, “the pulse of world history is beating here in Moscow."
Since Mr. Snowden landed in Moscow on Sunday, the likelihood that he will remain in Russia has steadily crept up.
Though President Vladimir V. Putin said this week that “the sooner he chooses his final destination, the better for us and for him," Mr. Snowden shows no sign of leaving.
The chance that Russia will turn him in has all but vanished, as evidenced by Thursday’s television programs, which were almost certainly produced under Kremlin orders and have a powerful effect on public opinion. Officials here have signaled an openness to granting him political asylum, and each passing day would seem to narrow Mr. Snowden’s options, giving the United States time to negotiate with Ecuador and Venezuela, other countries that may grant him asylum.
"I think the main thing for him right now is to guarantee his security," said Igor Korotchenko, a former specialist in Russia’s top military command who now edits the magazine National Defense. “Already he cannot live his former life. The United States of America will look for him all over the world in order to punish him as an example to potential traitors and so that the political elite in Washington will be satisfied. They want his blood."
"Whose protection does he want: Ecuador, Venezuela or Russia? It is hard to judge right now," Mr. Korotchenko said. He added, “In Russia, he will find a country capable of guaranteeing his security because I think in Latin America the United States would find much opportunity to solve the problem, so to say."
So far, there is no consensus among Russian elites on whether Russia should grant Mr. Snowden asylum, a step that would advertise the country, cold-war-style, as a haven for Western dissidents. Russia’s upper house of Parliament has invited him to testify about the impact of spying by the National Security Agency on Russian citizens, and about the activities of giant Internet companies that may have shared information with the agency.
Though Mr. Putin has made it a central goal to challenge American dominance in world affairs, the potential cost of granting Mr. Snowden asylum has come into sharper focus over the past few days. Russia will host President Obama in September, and would be stung if the visit were called off. Powerful figures like Igor I. Sechin, who as chairman of Rosneft has struck a series of bold deals with Western oil companies, may also be worried about the potential repercussions. Mr. Putin and many of those around him are former intelligence officers, and they may see Mr. Snowden as a traitor, and an unpredictable player.
Igor M. Bunin, the director of the Center for Political Technologies in Moscow, said that by far the best solution for Moscow would be to send Mr. Snowden to another country, “to Ecuador, Venezuela, to Cuba, wherever."
"Snowden is like a hot meat pie in your hands: even if you want to eat it very much, it’s very hot and maybe it’s better to throw it on the floor," Mr. Bunin said. “To make a deal with America to turn Snowden over would be a slap in the face of public opinion because he is already a hero in Russia and part of the West. On the other hand, not turning him over destroys your relationship with America."
Unlike Ecuador and Venezuela, Russia has avoided staking out a position on political asylum for Mr. Snowden, and in his remarks at a news conference on Tuesday, Mr. Putin said he hoped not to become personally involved.
Aleksandr Prokhanov, a nationalist ideologue who has emerged as a leader in conservative thought, called Mr. Snowden “a soldier of the information war," stripping the United States of its right to criticize other countries.
"For Americans, human rights is a powerful tool for influencing other countries," Mr. Prokhanov said. “A country ‘violates human rights,’ and its president becomes a devil incarnate, the society destabilizes, the human rights issue is followed by attack planes, and the country is wiped out from the face of the earth."
Other speakers, like Veronika Krasheninnikova, urged Russians to rally around Mr. Snowden, noting the 60th anniversary this month of the execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage.
Nikolai V. Zlobin, a political analyst and writer who often appears on Russian television to articulate an American perspective and was invited to appear on both shows, said he believed Russian leaders were weighing the cost and benefit of different outcomes to Mr. Snowden’s case. In the end, he said, they can secure a propaganda coup without the participation of Mr. Snowden himself, and without granting him political amnesty.
"What happens now doesn’t matter because public opinion in Russia has already been shaped. America is lying, dishonest, and has double standards," Mr. Zlobin said. “It’s a Christmas gift. They are trying to find the most deft way to use it, but it is unexpected, and they don’t know how to handle it."
Monday, July 1, 2013
Sunday, June 30, 2013
The No-Show
By Anna Nemtsova, Foreign Policy, June 26, 2013
HAVANA—We’re waiting for you in Havana, Snowden. Are you on your way?
It’s still unclear what happened on Monday, June 24, the day after leaker Edward Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong. That day, Snowden was supposed to board a plane to Havana to then transfer to Ecuador, one of the very few places willing to shield him from the American officials who regard him as a traitor. He even had a boarding pass for the window seat in row F, in economy class. But he never showed up, and his seat stayed empty.
Was Snowden trapped in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport against his will by the Russian security service, curious to see the data he had in his computers? Or was he afraid of flying in a plane that could be grounded while passing over the United States, where American courts were waiting to lock him up in jail for over 30 years? Until the very moment the Aeroflot crew closed the plane’s door, it looked like he was coming: Russian police surrounded Gate 28, patrolling outside and inside the airplane. The crew members on the plane looked tense and upset, as if they were facing a horrible trial. We still don’t know what happened at the last moment, but in the end Snowden stayed in Moscow.
I was on that plane, waiting for him along with several dozen other journalists from international news agencies and TV channels, all of us eager to quiz him about his claims. I wanted to ask Snowden about the evidence he had to prove his claims that the U.S. and British intelligence agencies, despite their governments’ public advocacy for freedom of the Internet, had been spying and stealing tons of personal data from people in their home countries.
For a long time, after we took off, we still could not believe that Snowden was not among us: After all, who knew what disguise he might be using? (This might seem a bit less crazy when you consider that we just saw an American spy wearing a wig last month.) Trapped on the flight for 12 hours, journalists walked around the plane looking into every passenger’s face. Other reporters were already waiting to greet Snowden in Cuba. They looked for him inside and outside Havana’s airport, asking every young blond male if he was Snowden. I’m still hoping to meet up with Snowden here in Havana, though Ecuadorean diplomats now say it may take months to issue him political asylum.
There’s one very specific reason Snowden may be having trouble finding a way out of the Moscow airport’s transit lounge, where he apparently is right now: his papers. Right now the only travel document he has is one of dubious status issued by the Ecuadoreans. After the American authorities canceled his U.S. passport on Monday, no airline wants to sell him another plane ticket. (He apparently managed to buy his ticket for Havana while his passport was still valid.)
There are other theories. “He got frightened that Americans would bring him down on that plane," says Igor Bunin, a Moscow political analyst. “He’s a huge pain for the Kremlin, a Catch-22. Now that he’s turned into an anti-American government star, Russia can’t kick him out, but keeping him means even a bigger international scandal." I’d love to ask Snowden about his days and nights in Russia if I ever get the chance to meet him.
My friend Olga Bychkova, a host from radio Echo of Moscow, described a scene she witnessed in the airport’s transit zone on the day of Snowden’s arrival on Sunday. “I saw about 20 Russian officials, supposedly FSB [security service] agents in suits, crowding around somebody in a restricted area of the airport," Bychkova told me. “The Kremlin pretends they have nothing to do with him being stuck in Moscow, but in reality they’re all over him."
What’s up Mr. Snowden? Do you really hate reporters? If you’re “a free man," as President Vladimir Putin says, why hide from crowds of journalists waiting to talk to you in Sheremetyevo airport for three days? WikiLeaks claims that you—the biggest leaker in the history of the National Security Agency—are “in a safe place." If you’re safe and free, why didn’t you use your ticket last Monday? You would have had a great chance to explain the reasons for renouncing your wealthy life with a beautiful girlfriend. Just imagine: 12 hours in front of the world’s major networks on the flight to Cuba! Russian commentators think that you’re not as free as the Russian leader claims, that somebody did not allow you to fly Monday. “Snowden will fly out of Russia when the Kremlin decides he can go," says Moscow political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin. “He might not even be in the airport. The safest place would be a GRU [Russian military intelligence] apartment." That would also explain why no one has seen your face in Moscow yet.
HAVANA—We’re waiting for you in Havana, Snowden. Are you on your way?
It’s still unclear what happened on Monday, June 24, the day after leaker Edward Snowden arrived in Moscow from Hong Kong. That day, Snowden was supposed to board a plane to Havana to then transfer to Ecuador, one of the very few places willing to shield him from the American officials who regard him as a traitor. He even had a boarding pass for the window seat in row F, in economy class. But he never showed up, and his seat stayed empty.
Was Snowden trapped in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport against his will by the Russian security service, curious to see the data he had in his computers? Or was he afraid of flying in a plane that could be grounded while passing over the United States, where American courts were waiting to lock him up in jail for over 30 years? Until the very moment the Aeroflot crew closed the plane’s door, it looked like he was coming: Russian police surrounded Gate 28, patrolling outside and inside the airplane. The crew members on the plane looked tense and upset, as if they were facing a horrible trial. We still don’t know what happened at the last moment, but in the end Snowden stayed in Moscow.
I was on that plane, waiting for him along with several dozen other journalists from international news agencies and TV channels, all of us eager to quiz him about his claims. I wanted to ask Snowden about the evidence he had to prove his claims that the U.S. and British intelligence agencies, despite their governments’ public advocacy for freedom of the Internet, had been spying and stealing tons of personal data from people in their home countries.
For a long time, after we took off, we still could not believe that Snowden was not among us: After all, who knew what disguise he might be using? (This might seem a bit less crazy when you consider that we just saw an American spy wearing a wig last month.) Trapped on the flight for 12 hours, journalists walked around the plane looking into every passenger’s face. Other reporters were already waiting to greet Snowden in Cuba. They looked for him inside and outside Havana’s airport, asking every young blond male if he was Snowden. I’m still hoping to meet up with Snowden here in Havana, though Ecuadorean diplomats now say it may take months to issue him political asylum.
There’s one very specific reason Snowden may be having trouble finding a way out of the Moscow airport’s transit lounge, where he apparently is right now: his papers. Right now the only travel document he has is one of dubious status issued by the Ecuadoreans. After the American authorities canceled his U.S. passport on Monday, no airline wants to sell him another plane ticket. (He apparently managed to buy his ticket for Havana while his passport was still valid.)
There are other theories. “He got frightened that Americans would bring him down on that plane," says Igor Bunin, a Moscow political analyst. “He’s a huge pain for the Kremlin, a Catch-22. Now that he’s turned into an anti-American government star, Russia can’t kick him out, but keeping him means even a bigger international scandal." I’d love to ask Snowden about his days and nights in Russia if I ever get the chance to meet him.
My friend Olga Bychkova, a host from radio Echo of Moscow, described a scene she witnessed in the airport’s transit zone on the day of Snowden’s arrival on Sunday. “I saw about 20 Russian officials, supposedly FSB [security service] agents in suits, crowding around somebody in a restricted area of the airport," Bychkova told me. “The Kremlin pretends they have nothing to do with him being stuck in Moscow, but in reality they’re all over him."
What’s up Mr. Snowden? Do you really hate reporters? If you’re “a free man," as President Vladimir Putin says, why hide from crowds of journalists waiting to talk to you in Sheremetyevo airport for three days? WikiLeaks claims that you—the biggest leaker in the history of the National Security Agency—are “in a safe place." If you’re safe and free, why didn’t you use your ticket last Monday? You would have had a great chance to explain the reasons for renouncing your wealthy life with a beautiful girlfriend. Just imagine: 12 hours in front of the world’s major networks on the flight to Cuba! Russian commentators think that you’re not as free as the Russian leader claims, that somebody did not allow you to fly Monday. “Snowden will fly out of Russia when the Kremlin decides he can go," says Moscow political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin. “He might not even be in the airport. The safest place would be a GRU [Russian military intelligence] apartment." That would also explain why no one has seen your face in Moscow yet.
