Post by TsarSamuil on Jun 30, 2013 12:02:32 GMT -5
www.guardian.co.uk/world/the-nsa-files
Vid,
rt.com/news/assange-rt-snowden-nsa-prism-545/
Assange to NSA whistleblower Snowden: ‘We are winning, but I hope you have a plan’
RT.com
June 11, 2013 19:19
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has voiced strong support for fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden, but urged him to escape Hong Kong immediately to avoid being “prosecuted for years”.
“I have called for exactly such actions in response to the surveillance state, and it is pleasing to see such simple, concrete proof,” Assange told RT, from the Ecuador embassy in London, where he has been holed up for a year.
Last week Snowden, a highly-paid software contractor, revealed the existence of PRISM, an overarching National Security Agency (NSA) program that collects vast amounts of personal online communication.
Assange said that he was aware that the US government was extensively collecting private citizens’ data, but admitted that he was “shocked” by how means of surveillance are “intermeshed into one single system”.
Classified documents leaked to the Guardian showed that the software, operational since 2007, was collating tens of millions of pieces of information each month from the protected inner servers of leading companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple.
On Monday, 29 year-old Snowden, a resident of Hawaii, disappeared from his hotel room in Hong Kong, where he has been for the past three weeks, and has not been contacted since.
Assange has urged him to leave China, whose government he described as “no friend of whistleblowers”.
Instead he has urged him to seek asylum in Russia (which earlier said “it would consider it”) or South America.
“We have been in contact with Snowden’s people in terms of the possible advice and support we can give him,” said Assange.
The chief of WikiLeaks, which became famous for publishing more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables, insisted that the latest leak was part of a new trend, and that in the future, the communication capability of the internet would make it impossible to keep any such program secret.
“I think we are winning, and we are a part of a new international body politic that is developing thanks to the internet,” said Assange.
Assange warned that Snowden and his family would be aggressively pursued by the US prosecutors for “years and years”.
He also compared Snowden’s possible fate to that of Bradley Manning, the US private who was responsible for downloading the diplomatic cables. Manning is currently standing trial on over 20 different charges, including publishing data that was later accessed by Osama Bin Laden.
“The [Manning] trial is trying to set a precedent – that communicating with the media is the same as communicating with the enemy, and that’s a a death penalty offense,” said Assange.
Assange, is stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy, as he faces extradition to Sweden to be questioned over alleged sexual assault the moment he steps out. His lawyers argue that he could then be extradited to the US on more grave charges connected to WikiLeaks, which they say have been prepared against him.
The Australian wished Snowden better luck during his escape.
“Perhaps Snowden has a plan we don’t know about. I hope so,” said Assange.
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Ron Paul: ‘Thankful’ for Edward Snowden.
politico.com
By BREANNA EDWARDS | 6/10/13 5:00 PM EDT
Former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas praised NSA leaker Edward Snowden for his part in exposing how much information the government has been collecting from private citizens.
“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk,” Paul said in a statement posted on the website of Campaign for Liberty, a nonprofit political organization which focuses on educating about constitutional issues, which he chairs. “They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.”
“The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing,” Paul added in obvious criticism of the Obama administration. “The Fourth Amendment is clear; we should be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, and all warrants must have probable cause. Today the government operates largely in secret, while seeking to know everything about our private lives – without probable cause and without a warrant.”
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Russia May Consider US Spy Leaker’s Asylum Request – Media.
MOSCOW, June 11 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian authorities will consider political asylum for Edward Snowden, who risks prosecution in the United States for his recent blockbuster spy leaks, if he sends a proper request, business daily Kommersant said Tuesday, citing the Kremlin spokesman.
“If we receive such a request, we will consider it,” Kommersant quoted presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov as saying.
Snowden, a 29-year-old former employee of the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), unmasked himself on Sunday as a source of recent disclosures about US government’s secret surveillance programs.
He said he was aware of possible prosecution but disclosed secret documents in response to America’s systematic surveillance of innocent citizens.
The leaks have led the NSA to ask the US Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation with possible “state treason” charges. The Justice Department did not comment on the issue saying only that it was in the “initial stages of an investigation” into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, according to The Washington Post.
Snowden, who moved to Hong Kong from the United States before revealing secrets to media, earlier told The Washington Post that he was seeking “asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy.”
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been hiding at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June last year to avoid his extradition to Sweden, on Monday called Snowden a “hero” and urged other countries to grant the US whistleblower political asylum.
“What other countries need to do is line up to give support for him. Everyone should go to their politicians and press and demand that they offer Mr. Snowden asylum in their country,” Sky News quoted him as saying.
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Germany slams US for ‘Stasi methods’ ahead of Obama visit.
RT.com
June 12, 2013 11:07
Germans are expressing outrage as details of a US internet spy program - revealed by a former CIA employee-turned-whistleblower – are prompting comparisons with that of former communist East Germany’s Ministry for State Security.
Unfortunately for Obama’s upcoming trip to Berlin, it was revealed that Germany ranks as the most-spied-on EU country by the US, a map of secret surveillance activities by the National Security Agency (NSA) shows.
German ministers are expressing their outrage over America’s sweeping intelligence-gathering leviathan, with one parliamentarian comparing US spying methods to that of the communist East Germany’s much-dreaded Ministry for State Security (Stasi).
Washington is using "American-style Stasi methods," said Markus Ferber, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian sister party and member of the European Parliament.
"I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell," he said, using the German acronym for the disposed German Democratic Republic.
Clearly, enthusiasm for the American leader’s upcoming visit will be much more tempered than it was in 2008 when 200,000 people packed around the Victory Column in central Berlin to hear Obama speak of a world that would be dramatically different from that of his hawkish Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.
Merkel will question Obama about the NSA program when he visits in Berlin on June 18, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters on Monday. Some political analysts fear the issue will dampen a visit that was intended to commemorate US-German relations on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
Bush excesses, Obama digresses
One year into his second term, Barack Obama seems powerless to roll back the military and security apparatus bolted down by the Bush administration in the ‘War on Terror.’
One consequence of this failure of the Obama administration to reign in Bush-era excesses emerged last week when former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, 29, blew the whistle on a top-secret intelligence system named Prism, which collects data on individuals directly from the servers of the largest US telecommunications companies.
According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, PRISM gave US intelligence agencies access to emails, internet chats and photographs from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Verizon and Skype.
Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said leaked reports that US intelligence services are able to track virtually all forms of Internet communication demanded an explanation.
"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she wrote in a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday. "The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the US administration itself is paramount at this point.”
She has sent a letter to her “US counterpart Eric Holder” seeking clarification on the legal foundation of the PRISM program.
“I’ve observed with great concern reports about a possible program,” Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement emailed by her ministry in Berlin. “This may constitute massive access to telecommunications data without permission on a huge scale.”
All of the facts must be put on the table, the minister added.
Obama has defended the intelligence-gathering system as a "modest encroachment" that Americans should be willing to accept on behalf of security.
"You can't have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience,” he said. “We're going to have to make some choices as a society. There are trade-offs involved."
The United States, however, is not legally restricted from eavesdropping on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be listening to and collecting the private communications of individuals anywhere in the world.
Peter Schaar, Germany's federal data protection commissioner, said the leaked intelligence was grounds for "massive concern" in Europe.
"The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans."
Meanwhile, German opposition parties hope to gain from the scandal, especially with parliamentary elections approaching in September, and Merkel looking to win a third term.
"This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever," Greens leader Renate Kuenast told Reuters.
Obama is scheduled to hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday followed by a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the 18th triumphal arch that is one of Germany’s most recognizable landmarks.
'Cold War' spying: France, Germany want explanation for US leaks ahead of trade talks.
RT.com
July 01, 2013 10:25
French President Francois Hollande has told the US to immediately stop spying on European institutions after reports emerged of US surveillance of European Union diplomatic missions. Germany said such “Cold War-style behavior” was “unacceptable.”
"We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies," Hollande told journalists on Monday. "We ask that this immediately stop."
"There can be no negotiations or transactions in all areas until we have obtained these guarantees, for France but also for all of the European Union, for all partners of the United States," Hollande added.
His statement was reportedly a reference to upcoming talks between the US and EU, which will be aimed at creating the world's largest free trade zone.
The meetings are scheduled to take place next week, but French Minister of Foreign Trade Nicole Bricq said the talks could be jeopardized.
"This is a topic that could affect relations between Europe and the United States," she told AFP. "We must absolutely re-establish confidence...it will be difficult to conduct these extremely important negotiations."
Hollande said he asked French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to get in touch with US Secretary of State John Kerry immediately "to get all the explanations and all the information."
Meanwhile, Brussels has summoned US the ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, to give an explanation for the alleged spying, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders told Belgian television channel VRT.
The German government also summoned the US ambassador to Germany, Philip Murphy, to Berlin on Monday to explain the incendiary reports. Chancellor Merkel’s spokesperson said the government wants “trust restored."
"If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable," said spokesman Steffen Seibert.
"We are no longer in the Cold War," Seibert added.
Germany is pushing for the formation of a US-EU trade agreement which would encourage economic growth. However, Seibert stressed that “mutual trust is necessary in order to come to an agreement.”
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also spoke out against the alleged spying program, calling for an explanation “as quickly as possible."
German publication Der Spiegel reported on Sunday that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had bugged EU offices in Brussels, New York and Washington. The reports were based on data released by CIA fugitive Edward Snowden, who is currently believed to be held up in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport awaiting an answer on his asylum plea to Ecuador.
Following the release of the report, the president of the EU parliament demanded an explanation from Washington, stressing that if the allegations were true there would be significant backlash on US-EU relations.
“I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices,” said the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz.
The EU commissioner for justice, Viviane Reding, also intimated that bilateral trade discussions may be put on hold while the accusations are investigated.
"We cannot negotiate over a big transatlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators," she said.
There have also been calls from French and German politicians for their governments to grant asylum to Edward Snowden.
‘Not unusual’
In the wake of European outrage, US Secretary of State spoke out in defense of the US, maintaining that the mass surveillance of allies was “not unusual.”
“Every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs of national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security and all kinds of information contributes to that,” said Kerry at a press conference. He said he would make no further comments on the matter until he was fully aware of the facts.
Former CIA employee Edward Snowden released a trove of classified data in May, blowing the whistle on the mass US surveillance program, Prism, and inciting the ire of civil rights groups.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange warned the US that no matter what befalls Snowden NSA secrets will continue to be revealed to the public.
“There is no stopping the publishing process at this stage,” he told ABC News program 'This Week,' while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
"Great care has been taken to make sure Mr. Snowden cannot be pressured by any state to stop the publishing process," Assange added.
WikiLeaks has been reportedly aiding Snowden in his asylum plea to the Ecuadorian government, providing him with legal aid and advice.
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Gore: NSA program 'violates' Constitution.
thehill.com
By Daniel Strauss - 06/14/13 06:06 PM ET
Former Vice President Al Gore strongly criticized the National Security Agency's secret telephone data collection program saying it violates the Constitution.
"I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way," Gore told The Guardian. "Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Gore's comments contrast from those from a number of national security officials and lawmakers, including President Obama, who have said the program is constitutional and necessary to national security. But Gore disagreed.
"This in my view violates the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment – and the Fourth Amendment language is crystal clear," Gore continued. "It is not acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is."
"This is not right," Gore added.
Gore's comments come as Obama plans to defend the program to European officials during trips to Germany and Ireland next week.
A recent Washington Post/Pew Research poll found a majority of adults say they find the program acceptable. Gore brushed off those findings.
"I am not sure how to interpret polls on this, because we don't do dial groups on the bill of rights," Gore said.
In a separate interview with Bloomberg TV, former President Bill Clinton said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was correct when he said the NSA program was used to "protect our nation from a wide variety of threats." Clinton said with the NSA and other similar programs, law enforcement officials were just trying to keep track of who was communicating with whom.
"That's essentially what most of these government programs are now trying to do in monitoring telecommunications and e-mail," Clinton said. "And I think that the head of the NSA said it correctly yesterday. They have prevented a very large number of harmful actions."
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rt.com/news/nsa-spied-medvedev-g20-789/
US spied on Russian President Medvedev at 2009 G20 summit – NSA leaks.
RT.com
June 16, 2013 20:30
As Britain readies to host the G8 summit, the documents uncovered by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed that back in 2009 US spies intercepted top-secret communications of then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to London.
The Guardian, which has seen the documents, also revealed that UK intelligence agency GCHQ monitored foreign politicians and intercepted their emails during the 2009 G20 summit held in the British capital, which was attended by Medvedev. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by UK intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
This comes as the 39th G8 summit is scheduled to start on Monday in the small Northern Irish resort town of Lough Erne with all the nations who were present at the 2009 London meeting attending.
According to the leaked documents viewed by the British paper, the details of the intercept of Medvedev’s communications were set out in a briefing prepared by the US National Security Agency (NSA), and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The document entitled "Russian Leadership Communications in support of President Dmitry Medvedev at the G20 summit in London – Intercept at Menwith Hill station" was drafted in August 2009, four months after the Russian president attended the London G20 summit.
The NSA paper says: "This is an analysis of signal activity in support of President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to London. The report details a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted. The signal activity was found to be emanating from the Russian embassy in London and the communications are believed to be in support of the Russian president."
The interception of Medvedev’s communications by the US intelligence service came hours after his first meeting with the US President Barack Obama where they struck a warm tone and promised a “fresh start” in US-Russia relations.
The latest revelations will be a major embarrassment for Washington, as Obama is set to meet with the incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G8 summit in Northern Ireland and discuss such tough issues as the Syrian conflict.
In the wake of the scandalous leak of NSA documents, US officials have been defending massive surveillance tactics stressing that they were crucial in the fight against terrorism. However, the recent revelations about the actions of the NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) suggests this was simply a case of espionage.
The information obtained by the GCHQ analysts was being rapidly passed on to the British representatives in the G20 meetings, giving them a negotiating advantage. "In a live situation such as this, intelligence received may be used to influence events on the ground taking place just minutes or hours later. This means that it is not sufficient to mine call records afterwards – real-time tip-off is essential," read one of the leaked documents.
During the London summit, GCHQ used what one document described as "ground-breaking intelligence capabilities" to intercept the communications of the foreign delegations. The spy agency set up internet cafes where they used an email interception program and key-logging software to monitor delegates' use of computers. The security of delegates’ BlackBerrys had been penetrated to enable GCHQ see their messages and phone calls.
According to the report the surveillance operation was ordered at a senior level in the government of the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, and appears to have run for at least six months before and after the world leaders gathered in London on April 2.
One document reveals that when G20 finance ministers met in London in September 2009, British intelligence again spied on the delegates, including Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and possibly 15 other members of his team.
Referring to the NSA spying on the Russian president at that summit, RT contributor Afshin Rattansi says Britain has served as a surveillance platform for the US for decades. “For many years the British people realized that the National Security Agency was basically using the United Kingdom. And the largest spying outfit of the United States is here in Britain,” he said.
“Perhaps the British people will realize that they are living in a state where their media and all institutions surrounding them, all industrial aspects of the civic society are under a kind of surveillance state that is not being covered in the news.”
The 2009 summit came at a critical moment when the crisis in Western capitalism hit its peak, Rattansi notes. “These kind of revelations show that when governments such as Britain and the United States come close to worrying, they will use this to try and persuade different officials at different governments to sway them.”
Snowden files 'show massive UK spying op'
smh.com.au
June 22, 2013
London: British spies are running an online eavesdropping operation so vast that internal documents say it even outstrips the United States' international internet surveillance effort, The Guardian newspaper says.
The paper cited UK intelligence memos leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to claim that UK spies were tapping into the world's network of fibre optic cables to deliver the "biggest internet access" of any member of the Five Eyes - the name given to the espionage alliance composed of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
That access could in theory expose a huge chunk of the world's everyday communications - including the content of people's emails, calls, and more - to scrutiny from British spies and their US allies. How much data the British are copying off the fibre optic network isn't clear, but it's likely to be enormous.
The Guardian said the information flowing across more than 200 cables was being monitored by more than 500 analysts from the NSA and its UK counterpart, GCHQ.
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"This is a massive amount of data!" The Guardian quoted a leaked slide as boasting.
The newspaper, whose revelations about America and Britain's globe-spanning surveillance programs have reignited an international debate over the ethics of espionage, said GCHQ was using probes to capture and copy data as it crisscrossed the Atlantic between western Europe and North America.
It said that, by last year, GCHQ was in some way handling 600 million telecommunications every day - although it did not go into any further detail and it was not clear whether that meant that GCHQ could systematically record or even track all the electronic movement at once.
GCHQ declined to comment on Friday, although in an emailed statement it repeated past assurances about the legality of its actions.
"Our work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary, and proportionate," the statement said.
Fibre optic cables - thin strands of glass bundled together and strung out underground or across the oceans - play a critical role in keeping the world connected. A 2010 estimate suggested that such cables are responsible for 95 per cent of the world's international voice and data traffic, and The Guard-ian said Britain's geographic position on Europe's western fringe gave it natural access to many of the trans-Atlantic cables as they emerged from the sea.
The Guardian said GCHQ's probes did more than just monitor the data live; British eavesdroppers can store content for three days and metadata - information about who was talking to whom, for how long, from where, and through what medium - for 30 days.
AP
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New Snowden leak reveals US hacked Chinese cell companies, accessed millions of sms - report.
RT.com
June 23, 2013 06:35
US government has been hacking Chinese mobile operator networks to intercept millions of text messages, as well as the operator of region’s fibre optic cable network, South China Morning Post writes citing Edward Snowden.
More information on National Security Agency activity in China and Hong Kong has been revealed by SCMP on Sunday, shedding light on statements Snowden made in an interview on June 12.
“The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data,” Snowden was quoted as saying on the SCMP's website.
In a series of reports the paper claims Snowden has provided proof of extensive US hacking activity in the region.
The former CIA technician and NSA contractor reportedly provided to the paper the documents detailing specific attacks on computers over a four-year period, including internet protocol (IP) addresses, dates of attacks and whether a computer was still being monitored remotely. SCMP however did not reveal any supporting documents.
The US government has been accused of a security breach at the Hong Kong headquarters of the operator of the largest regional fibre optic cable network operator, Pacnet. Back in 2009, the company’s computers were hacked by the NSA but since then the operation has been shut down, according to the documents the paper claims to have seen.
Pacnet’s network spans across Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore and provides connections to 16 data centers for telecom companies, corporations and governments across the region.
The whistleblower has also allegedly revealed the US had viewed millions of text messages by hacking Chinese mobile phone companies. That is a significant claim since the Chinese sent almost billion text messages in 2012 and China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile network carrier.
In his very first leak to the media, Snowden had already exposed the scale of the American government spying operation on its domestic mobile network operators. He later revealed that the US and the UK possessed technology to access the Blackberry phones of delegates at two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009.
In a third article, SCMP claims that the US on a regular basis has been attacking the servers at Tsinghua University, one of country’s biggest research institutions. The whistleblower said that information obtained pointed to hacking activities, because it contained such details as external and internal IP addresses in the University’s network, which could only have been retrieved by a security breach.
Tsinghua University is host to one of Chinas’ six major backbone networks, the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) containing data about millions of Chinese citizens.
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‘Mad invader, eavesdropper’: China slams US after Snowden accusations.
RT.com
June 25, 2013 06:58
The US has gone from ‘model of human rights’ to manipulator of internet rights, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party wrote. China has struck back at the US over its allegations that Beijing allowed NSA leaker Edward Snowden to leave Hong Kong.
The damning article in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the party’s official newspaper, came in response to Washington’s accusations of the “deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant.”
Addressing Washington’s allegations, the People’s Daily wrote that China could not accept "this kind of dissatisfaction and opposition.”
"Not only did the US authorities not give us an explanation and apology, it instead expressed dissatisfaction at the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region for handling things in accordance with the law,” wrote Wang Xinjun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Science in the People's Daily commentary.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also denounced the US accusations as "groundless and unacceptable.”
"It is unreasonable for the US to question Hong Kong's handling of affairs in accordance with law, and the accusation against the Chinese central government is groundless," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
The Hong Kong government released an official statement on Sunday, saying that US fugitive Edward Snowden had left the Chinese territory for Moscow legally and voluntarily. The statement also mentioned that the extradition documents submitted by the US on charges of espionage were not sufficient to warrant Snowden’s arrest under Chinese law.
The column praises the former CIA contractor for “his fearlessness that tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask."Snowden has been branded by the US as ‘traitor’ by US politicians for the leaking of classified documents to The Guardian newspaper that revealed the existence of the spy program PRISM.
"In a sense, the United States has gone from a model of human rights to an eavesdropper on personal privacy, the manipulator of the centralized power over the international internet, and the mad invader of other countries' networks," the People's Daily said.
The case of Edward Snowden has captivated world media since he fled from the US in May. Although the fugitive’s whereabouts are unknown, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange confirmed to RT that Snowden was en route to Ecuador via Moscow accompanied by WikiLeaks legal representative Sarah Harrison.
Snowden was checked in for a flight from Moscow to Havana, Cuba, yesterday, but there was no sign of him on the plane, according to RT’s correspondent Egor Piskunov. As a consequence, it is now thought that he is still in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
The whistleblower has applied for asylum in Ecuador and the country’s government confirmed that it is processing the application.
Amnesty urges US: ‘Refrain from manhunt’
The US has called on all countries in the northern hemisphere to surrender Snowden to US jurisdiction and has resolved to seek cooperation from his destination country. However human rights organization Amnesty International has launched an appeal, urging the US not to prosecute anyone who discloses data on US government human right violations.
"No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations by the US government. Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression," said Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International.
In addition, the organization also stressed that an individual who has an asylum bid underway cannot legally be extradited.
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China's state newspaper praises Edward Snowden for 'tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask'
State-run People's Daily says whistleblower has exposed US hypocrisy after Washington blamed Beijing for his escape
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 June 2013 10.22 BST
China's top state newspaper has praised the fugitive US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden for "tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask" and rejected accusations Beijing had facilitated his departure from Hong Kong.
The strongly worded front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist party, responded to harsh criticism of China from the US for allowing Snowden to flee.
The Chinese government has said it was gravely concerned by Snowden's allegations that the US had hacked into many networks in Hong Kong and China, including Tsinghua University, which hosts one of the country's internet hubs, and Chinese mobile network companies. It said it had taken the issue up with Washington.
"Not only did the US authorities not give us an explanation and apology, it instead expressed dissatisfaction at the Hong Kong special administrative region for handling things in accordance with law," wrote Wang Xinjun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Science in the People's Daily commentary.
"In a sense, the United States has gone from a 'model of human rights' to 'an eavesdropper on personal privacy', the 'manipulator' of the centralised power over the international internet, and the mad 'invader' of other countries' networks," the People's Daily said.
The White House said allowing Snowden to leave was "a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the US-China relationship".
The People's Daily, which reflects the thinking of the government, said China could not accept "this kind of dissatisfaction and opposition".
"The world will remember Edward Snowden," the newspaper said. "It was his fearlessness that tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask".
The exchanges mark a deterioration in ties between the two countries just weeks after a successful summit meeting between presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. But experts say Washington is unlikely to resort to any punitive action.
A commentary in the Global Times, owned by the People's Daily, also attacked the US for cornering "a young idealist who has exposed the sinister scandals of the US government".
"Instead of apologising, Washington is showing off its muscle by attempting to control the whole situation," the Global Times said.
Snowden gave US authorities the slip by leaving Hong Kong on an Aeroflot plane to Moscow on Sunday. The US had requested his detention for extradition to the US on treason charges but the Hong Kong authorities responded that the papers had not been in order and Snowden was free to leave.
Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said Washington did not believe the explanation that it was a "technical" decision by Hong Kong immigration authorities. "The Hong Kong authorities were advised of the status of Mr Snowden's travel documents in plenty of time to have prohibited his travel as appropriate. We do not buy the suggestion that China could not have taken action."
On Monday Snowden had been expected to board another plane from Moscow for Cuba and ultimately fly from there to Ecuador, which is considering granting him asylum. But journalists who boarded the plane in Moscow soon found Snowden had not taken his seat.
When the plane landed in Cuba there was likewise no sign that Snowden had been on board. The pilot greeted journalists at Havana's Jose Marti international airport by pulling out his own camera, taking pictures of the them and saying: "No Snowden, no."
The harshly worded Chinese commentaries did not appear on the country's main news portals on Tuesday afternoon. Instead most articles focused on hard news, such as Snowden's still-unknown final destination, his relationship with WikiLeaks and the details of his departure from Hong Kong.
Another editorial in the People's Daily on Monday defended the Hong Kong government for allowing Snowden to leave despite a US warrant for his arrest, claiming that it acted according to the law and "will be able to withstand examination".
"The voices of a few American politicians and media outlets surrounding the Prism scandal have become truly shrill," it said. "Not only do some of them lack the least bit of self-reflection but they also arrogantly find fault with other countries for no reason at all."
Shi Yinhong, an expert on China-US relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said the Snowden affair had given China's leaders an opportunity to shore up their own legitimacy domestically by projecting a strong message of US hypocrisy.
Yet behind the scenes, he said, top leaders were probably reluctant to allow the affair to significantly impact bilateral ties. "Maybe this will have an impact on public opinion in China, but for the Chinese government almost nothing has changed," he said. "Even if this damages China-US relations it'll be very temporary."
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EU demands ‘full clarification’ over NSA spying on European diplomats, warns of severe impact on relations.
RT.com
June 30, 2013 10:39
The president of the European parliament has demanded an explanation from US authorities over the latest revelation that EU diplomatic missions in Washington, New York and Brussels were under electronic surveillance from the NSA.
“I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices,” said the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz. “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations.”
“On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations," he added.
Meanwhile, Germany's justice minister also called for an immediate explanation from the United States saying the news that Washington bugged European Union offices was "reminiscent of the Cold War."
"It must ultimately be immediately and extensively explained by the American side whether media reports about completely disproportionate tapping measures by the US in the EU are accurate or not," Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement.
Other EU diplomats also expressed shock concerning the latest batch of revelations in the NSA leak, reported by Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday.
"If these reports are true, it's disgusting,” Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told Der Spiegel.
"The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies,” Asselborn continued. “We must get a guarantee from the very highest level now that this stops immediately."
A spokesman for the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence had no comment on the Der Spiegel story, Reuters reported.
Der Spiegel, quoting from a September 2010 "top secret" US National Security Agency (NSA) document leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, reported on Saturday the NSA was eavesdropping on the EU’s internal computer networks in Washington, as well as at the 28-member bloc UN office in New York.
The German magazine also reported that five years ago, the NSA also targeted telecommunications at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, home to the European Council, where all EU member states have their offices.
Snowden, 30, fled the US for Hong Kong in May, just weeks before The Guardian and Washington Post published details he provided about a top-secret US government surveillance program that accumulated internet and telephone traffic both at home and abroad.
The whistleblower is presently in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, where it is believed he is attempting to gain political asylum in Ecuador.
Lode Vanoost, former deputy speaker of the Belgian parliament, believes that the main purpose of the US surveillance program was “economic spying” on the EU.
“At the moment, the EU is negotiating a new free trade agreement with the United States,” the former deputy speaker noted. “Well, [now the US can gather] what their opponent is already discussing internally of strategy. That is one of the possibilities.”
Vanoost also believes that part of the reason for the spying was due to the decline in US economic strength.
“On the economic level, [the US] is losing ground everywhere,” he said. “Look at what the BRIC countries are doing. The EU is having stronger ties with Russia, with Africa, with Latin America. And the US doesn’t seem to get its economic priorities imposed as it used to. So what I see is a big risk for economic spying.”
He added that there is “too much at stake” for there to be a total breakdown in US-EU bilateral relations, however, “behind closed doors there will be some very tough words” exchanged between EU and American officials.
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After slapping US, France finds itself in spotlight for spying.
Reports says that several EU nations are engaged in surveillance programs similar to PRISM.
csmonitor.com
By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / July 5, 2013
Paris
Judging from the rhetoric alone, it might seem that transatlantic relations are sinking to a low point in the wake of news about alleged spying of the US on its European allies.
French President François Hollande called for the suspension of transatlantic trade talks, set to begin next Monday. European officials across the political spectrum reacted with equal, if not stronger, acrimony, calling the US "Big Brother" and its spy program, revealed by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, a vestige of the cold war.
But behind angry admonishments, Europe has agreed to move forward with Monday’s talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). And although European officials have demanded the US address its concerns over spying and privacy – those talks are also set to begin within days – few expect this most recent revelation to be insurmountable. In fact, many European nations, thrust further into the affair this week when suspicions that Mr. Snowden was aboard a Bolivia-bound airplane that was diverted to Vienna as it traveled from Russia, have acknowledged that they also spy, with France at the center of attention.
Eric Denécé, director of the French Center for Intelligence Studies and a former military intelligence analyst, says he expects the spying allegations on Europe to be little more than a political blip, though he differentiates between intergovernmental spying and Snowden’s revelations of surveillance of American citizens through the PRISM program.
“For 40 or 50 years, we absolutely know the US intelligence agency is listening to everybody, including France,” he says. “This is absolutely normal. It’s the job of intelligence agencies to listen to [one] another.”
French politicians have been among the angriest in terms of reaction, calling for the TTIP negotiations to be put on hold. But in the wake of their criticism of US action, they have faced a barrage of their own.
Revelations of French domestic spying
Le Monde published Thursday a report alleging widespread intelligence spying in France, similar to the US PRISM program. France’s leading daily paper, whose report received widespread international media coverage, alleges that such acts are "outside the law, and beyond any proper supervision.”
And while the European Union Parliament condemned American spying, it rejected Thursday a suspension of TTIP negotiations, as France had sought. Instead it urged trade talks to go forward, as planned, according to a statement.
It acknowledged growing issues of spying among its own member states as well. “Parliament also expresses grave concern about allegations that similar surveillance programs are run by several EU member states, such as the UK, Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, and Poland. It urges them to examine whether those programs are compatible with EU law.”
Meanwhile, US-German ties are under stress amid revelations that the United States spied on Germany more than on any other EU country. Germans are particularly wary about state-driven snooping, given the widespread surveillance under the Stasi in East Germany and earlier under Nazi Germany.
President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed Thursday to a high-level meeting among both nations to discuss US actions.
However, Sergey Lagodinsky, head of the EU/North America department of the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin, says that the real damage to the transatlantic relationship at this point is among the citizenry. “The damage is not intergovernmental, but within our population,” he says. “[The scandal] has made clear to a wide number of citizens that the rhetoric of alliance and partnership is not followed by a degree of mutual trust.”
That sentiment is clear in a recent German poll showing that, in the wake of Snowden’s revelations, only 49 percent of Germans say Americans can be trusted as partners, down from 65 percent, according to ARD-DeutschlandTrend.
Indeed, while Dr. Denécé, the intelligence analyst, says he expects the spying allegations on the EU to become muted, revelations from Snowden on the PRISM program should be a concern to all amid a general decline of democracy in the US since the Patriot Act, he says. “Now we discover that all US citizens are under electronic surveillance,” he says. He calls this a threat to the world at large. “This is dangerous for democracy as a whole.”
For now, it’s hard to know Europe’s exact position on Snowden, among many contradictions.
Shashank Joshi, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, wrote in The Telegraph that France’s condemnation and call to suspend trade talks is “pretty hilarious, given France's penchant for stealing American defense technology, bugging American business executives and generally annoying US counterintelligence officials. If you've been paying attention, you know that France is a proficient, notorious and unrepentant economic spy.”
Positions became even murkier earlier this week when Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to land in Austria, after several European countries, including France, reportedly refused to allow the plane through their air space on suspicion that Snowden had left Russia, where he's been holed up as he unsuccessfully seeks asylum somewhere. It has led to accusations that the US is influencing countries behind the scenes, though it is unclear what access was denied by Europe and why.
If it’s confirmed that the French bowed to American pressure in the incident, says Denécé, “it is absolutely a contradiction” that will hurt President Hollande.
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Snowden: NSA is ‘in bed with the Germans’
RT.com
July 07, 2013 19:36
US fugitive Edward Snowden has accused Germany and the US of partnering in spy intelligence operations, revealing that cooperation between the countries is closer than German indignation would indicate, Der Spiegel magazine reported.
“They are in bed with the Germans, just like with most other Western states,” the German magazine quotes Snowden as saying, adding that the NSA’s has a Foreign Affairs Directorate which is responsible for cooperation with other countries.
Partnerships are orchestrated in ways that allow other countries to “insulate their political leaders from the backlash,” according to Snowden, providing a buffer between politicians and the illegal methods of snooping. He accused the collaboration of grievously “violating global privacy.”
“Other agencies don't ask us where we got the information from and we don't ask them. That way they can protect their top politicians from the backlash in case it emerges how massively people's privacy is abused worldwide,” he said.
Snowden gave the interview to a cipher expert and a documentary filmmaker with the help of encrypted emails shortly before he rose to global fame, Der Spiegel reported.
The publication recollected that the US Army is simultaneously in the process of building a base in Wiesbaden, southwest Germany, claiming it will be used as an intelligence center by the NSA.
The four-story bug-proof spying center is made from imported American materials and costs $119 million. Its construction will allow for the closure of over 40 existing sites across in Heidelberg, Mannheim and Darmstadt, US Army Garrison Wiesbaden spokeswoman Anemone Rueger told Stars and Stripes.
The Der Spiegel report also indicates that the German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and NSA work very closely together.
It was revealed at the end of June that the US combs through half a billion of German phone calls, emails and text messages on a monthly basis.
An earlier report by Der Spiegel, also based on revelations by Snowden, revealed that the NSA bugged EU diplomatic offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks.
Chancellor Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert said that this would constitute intolerable behavior if proven.
“If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert.
“We are no longer in the Cold War,” he said.
Merkel remained quiet regarding the Snowden PRISM leaks when Obama visited Berlin, diplomatically stating that, “the topic of commensurability is important.”
Germans are particularly sensitive about eavesdropping because of the hangover from the intrusive surveillance state which characterized the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Nazi era totalitarianism.
The Der Spiegel report claims that the NSA provides the BND with analysis tools to monitor data passing through German territory. Opposition parties insisted when revelations were made about the extent of espionage that somebody in Merkel's office, where the German intelligence agencies are coordinated, must have known what was going on.
BND head Gerhard Schindler confirmed the existence of the two country’s intelligence partnerships during a meeting with members of the German parliament’s control committee specifically for overseeing intelligence issues, according to Der Spiegel.
The BND is legally allowed to look through 20 percent of transnational communications, in addition to monitoring internet search terms and telecommunications, Deutsche Welle wrote on June 30, while the US can essentially capitalize on Germany’s data collection packets. The cooperation includes the passing of data over areas deemed crisis regions.
The BND lacks the capacity to fully use its legally allowed monitoring. Der Spiegel reported that the agency is currently only monitoring only about 5 percent of data traffic, but is planning to expand its server, capacity and staffing in order to be more effective.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which overlooks domestic counter-espionage, is currently investigating whether the NSA has access to German Internet traffic. A preliminary analysis was inconclusive.
“So far, we have no information that Internet nodes in Germany have been spied on by the NSA,” said Hans-Georg Maassen, the president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden fled the US in May a few weeks before his first leaks were published by the Guardian. He is believed to have been holed up in Moscow airport since June 23 and initially made asylum requests to 20 countries, including Germany, followed by a further six.
Snowden was refused asylum in Germany on the grounds that asylum requests must be made on German soil.
A spokesman of the Interior Minister said, “the German right of residence principally entails the possibility of acceptance from abroad, if this seems necessary for international legal or urgent humanitarian reasons, or for the ensuring of political interests of the federal republic of Germany. This needs to be examined thoroughly in the case of Mr. Snowden.”
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New revelations: Germany sends 'massive amounts' of phone, email data to NSA.
RT.com
August 07, 2013 21:13
Germany’s BND intelligence service sends “massive amounts” of intercepts to the NSA daily, according to a report based on Edward Snowden’s leaks. It suggests a tight relationship has been developed between the two agencies – which the BND claims is legal.
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Snowden and obtained by Der Spiegel revealed that the 500 million pieces of phone and email communications metadata collected by the NSA in Germany last December were “apparently” provided with the BND’s approval.
The data was allegedly handed over at two collection sites as part of the operation titled “Germany – Last 30 days.” One of those collection sites has been identified as the Bavarian BND facility at Bad Aibling, which the NSA is said to have officially left back in 2004.
Der Spiegel’s investigation, which cites BND sources, says that the code name of the Bad Aibling facility is mentioned in Snowden’s papers as one of the signals intelligence activity designators (SIGADs) employed by the US spy agency to collect the data.
The BND source added that the mentioned name is “associated with telecommunications surveillance in Afghanistan.”
Officially, however, Berlin is still waiting for an answer from Washington as to where in Germany the metadata documented in the NSA files was obtained, according to Der Spiegel. The clarification of what and who are behind the so-called SIGADs, and what sort of information was passed on, is an extremely delicate matter for both the BND and the Chancellery - with Angela Merkel’s chief of staff Ronald Pofalla being nominally in charge of coordinating the country’s intelligence agencies.
The details in the recent report have sparked more uneasy questions to be fired at Merkel’s government. Hans-Christian Stroebele of Germany’s Green party has demanded an “immediate investigation” of allegations, reminding that it has been claimed up to now that the Americans had abandoned Bad Aibling years ago and transferred control to Germany.
“Now we are reading that the NSA expanded their facility there, received data on site and also analyzed it there. That is a completely new development; that’s news that we have to follow up on,” said Stroebele, who is also a member of the German parliament’s intelligence oversight committee.
Frustrated that he and other committee members learned about the BND’s data transfers to the NSA from a media report, Stroebele stressed that “the government is playing the wrong game there.”
But officials from the German foreign intelligence service responded by saying the practice is completely legal, adding that the two agencies have been closely working together for decades.
“The BND has worked for over 50 years together with the NSA, particularly when it comes to intelligence on the situation in crisis zones. The cooperation with the NSA in Bad Aibling serves exactly these goals and it has taken place in this form for over ten years, based on an agreement made in the year 2002,” the BND said, as quoted by Deutsche Welle.
According to Snowden’s leaks, not only have the German agents enjoyed access to the NSA’s latest tools, such as XKeyscore, but the US agents have also shown a keen interest in several BND programs – which, according to the report, were deemed even more effective than those of the NSA.
But the BND has assured that no data transferred to the NSA contains information on German citizens – which, according to the German agency’s chief Wolfgang Bosbach, would explain why the government never mentioned the vast data transfers during the testimony they gave to parliamentary committees after the NSA scandal was unveiled.
“The transfer of data clearly did not involve German citizens but rather data that the BND had collected in accordance with its statutory mission,” Bosbach said.
“Before metadata relating to other countries is passed on, it is purged, in a multistep process, of any personal data about German citizens it may contain,” the BND said in response to inquiries, as quoted by Deutsche Welle. The agency added that there is currently “no reason” to believe that “the NSA gathers personal data on German citizens in Germany.”
The BND is strictly forbidden from monitoring the communications of German citizens by the G-10 law, a regulation anchored in the country’s constitution that limits the powers of the intelligence agencies.
However, it does not concern foreign intelligence, which, according to the report, includes hundreds of thousands of records from Middle Eastern satellite telephone providers, thousands of mobile communications, and daily eavesdropping on some 62,000 emails.
“The NSA benefits from this collection, especially the…intercepts from Afghanistan, which the BND shares on a daily basis,” the report says.
Such large-scale data transfer became possible after the BND established a direct electronic connection to the NSA network in Bad Aibling, it claims.
When the scandal initially emerged, German Chancellor Merkel claimed that she learnt about the US surveillance programs through press reports, and that she had had no knowledge of the BND’s collaboration with the NSA.
Merkel, who is under pressure from critics ahead of the September 22 election, also stressed that Germany “is not a surveillance state.”
However, she seemingly justified the NSA’s job, saying that “the work of intelligence agencies in democratic states was always vital to the safety of citizens and will remain so in the future.” While being asked to clear up the situation with the US allegedly bugging the embassies of European countries and EU facilities, Merkel stressed that the US will remain Germany’s “most loyal ally.”
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NSA spied on Latin America for energy and military intel.
RT.com
July 10, 2013 09:23
The NSA’s spy program encompasses most countries in Latin America, new cables released by Edward Snowden have confirmed. The data gathered on military affairs and “commercial secrets” has provoked a flurry of furious rhetoric from regional leaders.
Brazilian daily, O Globo, which obtained the cables released by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, published a report on Tuesday detailed the National Security Agency’s initiatives in Latin America.
The US government retrieved key data on a number of issues including the oil market, drugs trade and political movements. Colombia is a top priority for the US, registering the most spy activity, with Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil following closely behind. In addition, Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and El Salvador are under surveillance, though to a lesser degree.
According to the documents obtained by O Globo, the NSA carried out espionage in Latin America in the first quarter of 2013 using at least two data-snooping programs: ‘PRISM,’ from February 2-8 and ‘Boundless Informant’ from January through to March.
‘PRISM’ recorded metadata through Facebook, Google, Microsoft and YouTube, while ‘Boundless Informant’ monitored telephone calls and access to the internet.
O Globo also reported that the NSA gathered information through private Brazilian telecommunications companies using a program called ‘Silverzephyr.’ The daily was unable to identify the companies, but stated that using the program the US gained access to phone calls, faxes and emails.
Furthermore, the leaked information revealed the existence of data-crunching centers in Bogota, Caracas, Mexico City and Panama City and Brasilia that dealt with information intercepted from satellites.
Brazil is currently investigating telecommunication companies believed to be involved in the massive US surveillance program. The country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, was quick to react to the news, stating that if the reports of spying were confirmed it would definitely be a “violation of our sovereignty, without a doubt, just like it’s a violation of human rights.”
Brazil’s Senate foreign relations committee has requested that US ambassador Thomas Shannon to testify on the allegations. It is unclear whether Shannon, who is not legally obliged to provide testimony, will agree.
Gilberto Carvalho, a top aide to President Rousseff, called for a "very hard" response to the United States .
"If we lower our heads, they will trample all over us tomorrow," he said.
President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said she hopes the US’ actions will be condemned at the next Mercosur (an economic union between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela) summit.
“I feel a shiver going down my spine when I see that they are spying on all of us through their services in Brazil,” she said in reference to the O Globo article.
Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, known for his pro-US stance, stated that the reports were “concerning.”
"We are against these kinds of espionage activities," he said in a televised interview. "It would be good for [Peru's] Congress to look with concern at privacy issues related to personal information."
In turn, Colombia has called on the US for an explanation for an “unauthorized” data collection program.
"In rejecting the acts of espionage that violate people's rights and intimacy as well as the international conventions on telecommunication, Colombia requests the corresponding explanations from the United States government through its ambassador to Colombia," the Colombian Foreign Ministry said in the statement.
Mexico, one of the most surveilled countries, has thus far refrained from commenting on the reports .
US whistleblower Edward Snowden, who currently has an extradition order against his name from Washington, is holed up in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport unable to leave because his passport has been revoked. He has applied for political asylum in a number of Latin American countries. Venezuela and Nicaragua have said they are currently assessing his request.
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US slams Russia for giving 'propaganda platform' to Snowden.
RussiaToday
Jul 13, 2013
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXXshWGrDEQ
The White House says that Russia granting political asylum to Edward Snowden will be on par with providing the National Security Agency leaker with a "propaganda platform" to further harm the United States.
Vid,
rt.com/news/assange-rt-snowden-nsa-prism-545/
Assange to NSA whistleblower Snowden: ‘We are winning, but I hope you have a plan’
RT.com
June 11, 2013 19:19
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has voiced strong support for fellow whistleblower Edward Snowden, but urged him to escape Hong Kong immediately to avoid being “prosecuted for years”.
“I have called for exactly such actions in response to the surveillance state, and it is pleasing to see such simple, concrete proof,” Assange told RT, from the Ecuador embassy in London, where he has been holed up for a year.
Last week Snowden, a highly-paid software contractor, revealed the existence of PRISM, an overarching National Security Agency (NSA) program that collects vast amounts of personal online communication.
Assange said that he was aware that the US government was extensively collecting private citizens’ data, but admitted that he was “shocked” by how means of surveillance are “intermeshed into one single system”.
Classified documents leaked to the Guardian showed that the software, operational since 2007, was collating tens of millions of pieces of information each month from the protected inner servers of leading companies such as Google, Facebook and Apple.
On Monday, 29 year-old Snowden, a resident of Hawaii, disappeared from his hotel room in Hong Kong, where he has been for the past three weeks, and has not been contacted since.
Assange has urged him to leave China, whose government he described as “no friend of whistleblowers”.
Instead he has urged him to seek asylum in Russia (which earlier said “it would consider it”) or South America.
“We have been in contact with Snowden’s people in terms of the possible advice and support we can give him,” said Assange.
The chief of WikiLeaks, which became famous for publishing more than 250,000 classified US diplomatic cables, insisted that the latest leak was part of a new trend, and that in the future, the communication capability of the internet would make it impossible to keep any such program secret.
“I think we are winning, and we are a part of a new international body politic that is developing thanks to the internet,” said Assange.
Assange warned that Snowden and his family would be aggressively pursued by the US prosecutors for “years and years”.
He also compared Snowden’s possible fate to that of Bradley Manning, the US private who was responsible for downloading the diplomatic cables. Manning is currently standing trial on over 20 different charges, including publishing data that was later accessed by Osama Bin Laden.
“The [Manning] trial is trying to set a precedent – that communicating with the media is the same as communicating with the enemy, and that’s a a death penalty offense,” said Assange.
Assange, is stuck in the Ecuadorian embassy, as he faces extradition to Sweden to be questioned over alleged sexual assault the moment he steps out. His lawyers argue that he could then be extradited to the US on more grave charges connected to WikiLeaks, which they say have been prepared against him.
The Australian wished Snowden better luck during his escape.
“Perhaps Snowden has a plan we don’t know about. I hope so,” said Assange.
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Ron Paul: ‘Thankful’ for Edward Snowden.
politico.com
By BREANNA EDWARDS | 6/10/13 5:00 PM EDT
Former Rep. Ron Paul of Texas praised NSA leaker Edward Snowden for his part in exposing how much information the government has been collecting from private citizens.
“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald who see injustice being carried out by their own government and speak out, despite the risk,” Paul said in a statement posted on the website of Campaign for Liberty, a nonprofit political organization which focuses on educating about constitutional issues, which he chairs. “They have done a great service to the American people by exposing the truth about what our government is doing in secret.”
“The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing,” Paul added in obvious criticism of the Obama administration. “The Fourth Amendment is clear; we should be secure in our persons, houses, papers, and effects, and all warrants must have probable cause. Today the government operates largely in secret, while seeking to know everything about our private lives – without probable cause and without a warrant.”
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Russia May Consider US Spy Leaker’s Asylum Request – Media.
MOSCOW, June 11 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian authorities will consider political asylum for Edward Snowden, who risks prosecution in the United States for his recent blockbuster spy leaks, if he sends a proper request, business daily Kommersant said Tuesday, citing the Kremlin spokesman.
“If we receive such a request, we will consider it,” Kommersant quoted presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov as saying.
Snowden, a 29-year-old former employee of the CIA and the National Security Agency (NSA), unmasked himself on Sunday as a source of recent disclosures about US government’s secret surveillance programs.
He said he was aware of possible prosecution but disclosed secret documents in response to America’s systematic surveillance of innocent citizens.
The leaks have led the NSA to ask the US Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation with possible “state treason” charges. The Justice Department did not comment on the issue saying only that it was in the “initial stages of an investigation” into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, according to The Washington Post.
Snowden, who moved to Hong Kong from the United States before revealing secrets to media, earlier told The Washington Post that he was seeking “asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy.”
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, who has been hiding at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since June last year to avoid his extradition to Sweden, on Monday called Snowden a “hero” and urged other countries to grant the US whistleblower political asylum.
“What other countries need to do is line up to give support for him. Everyone should go to their politicians and press and demand that they offer Mr. Snowden asylum in their country,” Sky News quoted him as saying.
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Germany slams US for ‘Stasi methods’ ahead of Obama visit.
RT.com
June 12, 2013 11:07
Germans are expressing outrage as details of a US internet spy program - revealed by a former CIA employee-turned-whistleblower – are prompting comparisons with that of former communist East Germany’s Ministry for State Security.
Unfortunately for Obama’s upcoming trip to Berlin, it was revealed that Germany ranks as the most-spied-on EU country by the US, a map of secret surveillance activities by the National Security Agency (NSA) shows.
German ministers are expressing their outrage over America’s sweeping intelligence-gathering leviathan, with one parliamentarian comparing US spying methods to that of the communist East Germany’s much-dreaded Ministry for State Security (Stasi).
Washington is using "American-style Stasi methods," said Markus Ferber, a member of Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian sister party and member of the European Parliament.
"I thought this era had ended when the DDR fell," he said, using the German acronym for the disposed German Democratic Republic.
Clearly, enthusiasm for the American leader’s upcoming visit will be much more tempered than it was in 2008 when 200,000 people packed around the Victory Column in central Berlin to hear Obama speak of a world that would be dramatically different from that of his hawkish Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.
Merkel will question Obama about the NSA program when he visits in Berlin on June 18, government spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters on Monday. Some political analysts fear the issue will dampen a visit that was intended to commemorate US-German relations on the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech.
Bush excesses, Obama digresses
One year into his second term, Barack Obama seems powerless to roll back the military and security apparatus bolted down by the Bush administration in the ‘War on Terror.’
One consequence of this failure of the Obama administration to reign in Bush-era excesses emerged last week when former National Security Agency employee Edward Snowden, 29, blew the whistle on a top-secret intelligence system named Prism, which collects data on individuals directly from the servers of the largest US telecommunications companies.
According to documents leaked to the Washington Post and Guardian newspapers, PRISM gave US intelligence agencies access to emails, internet chats and photographs from companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Verizon and Skype.
Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said leaked reports that US intelligence services are able to track virtually all forms of Internet communication demanded an explanation.
"The more a society monitors, controls and observes its citizens, the less free it is," she wrote in a guest editorial for Spiegel Online on Tuesday. "The suspicion of excessive surveillance of communication is so alarming that it cannot be ignored. For that reason, openness and clarification by the US administration itself is paramount at this point.”
She has sent a letter to her “US counterpart Eric Holder” seeking clarification on the legal foundation of the PRISM program.
“I’ve observed with great concern reports about a possible program,” Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement emailed by her ministry in Berlin. “This may constitute massive access to telecommunications data without permission on a huge scale.”
All of the facts must be put on the table, the minister added.
Obama has defended the intelligence-gathering system as a "modest encroachment" that Americans should be willing to accept on behalf of security.
"You can't have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience,” he said. “We're going to have to make some choices as a society. There are trade-offs involved."
The United States, however, is not legally restricted from eavesdropping on the communications of foreigners, meaning in theory that Washington could be listening to and collecting the private communications of individuals anywhere in the world.
Peter Schaar, Germany's federal data protection commissioner, said the leaked intelligence was grounds for "massive concern" in Europe.
"The problem is that we Europeans are not protected from what appears to be a very comprehensive surveillance program," he told the Handelsblatt newspaper. "Neither European nor German rules apply here, and American laws only protect Americans."
Meanwhile, German opposition parties hope to gain from the scandal, especially with parliamentary elections approaching in September, and Merkel looking to win a third term.
"This looks to me like it could become one of the biggest data privacy scandals ever," Greens leader Renate Kuenast told Reuters.
Obama is scheduled to hold talks and a news conference with Merkel on Wednesday followed by a speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate, the 18th triumphal arch that is one of Germany’s most recognizable landmarks.
'Cold War' spying: France, Germany want explanation for US leaks ahead of trade talks.
RT.com
July 01, 2013 10:25
French President Francois Hollande has told the US to immediately stop spying on European institutions after reports emerged of US surveillance of European Union diplomatic missions. Germany said such “Cold War-style behavior” was “unacceptable.”
"We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies," Hollande told journalists on Monday. "We ask that this immediately stop."
"There can be no negotiations or transactions in all areas until we have obtained these guarantees, for France but also for all of the European Union, for all partners of the United States," Hollande added.
His statement was reportedly a reference to upcoming talks between the US and EU, which will be aimed at creating the world's largest free trade zone.
The meetings are scheduled to take place next week, but French Minister of Foreign Trade Nicole Bricq said the talks could be jeopardized.
"This is a topic that could affect relations between Europe and the United States," she told AFP. "We must absolutely re-establish confidence...it will be difficult to conduct these extremely important negotiations."
Hollande said he asked French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius to get in touch with US Secretary of State John Kerry immediately "to get all the explanations and all the information."
Meanwhile, Brussels has summoned US the ambassador to Belgium, Howard Gutman, to give an explanation for the alleged spying, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders told Belgian television channel VRT.
The German government also summoned the US ambassador to Germany, Philip Murphy, to Berlin on Monday to explain the incendiary reports. Chancellor Merkel’s spokesperson said the government wants “trust restored."
"If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable," said spokesman Steffen Seibert.
"We are no longer in the Cold War," Seibert added.
Germany is pushing for the formation of a US-EU trade agreement which would encourage economic growth. However, Seibert stressed that “mutual trust is necessary in order to come to an agreement.”
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius also spoke out against the alleged spying program, calling for an explanation “as quickly as possible."
German publication Der Spiegel reported on Sunday that the US National Security Agency (NSA) had bugged EU offices in Brussels, New York and Washington. The reports were based on data released by CIA fugitive Edward Snowden, who is currently believed to be held up in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport awaiting an answer on his asylum plea to Ecuador.
Following the release of the report, the president of the EU parliament demanded an explanation from Washington, stressing that if the allegations were true there would be significant backlash on US-EU relations.
“I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices,” said the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz.
The EU commissioner for justice, Viviane Reding, also intimated that bilateral trade discussions may be put on hold while the accusations are investigated.
"We cannot negotiate over a big transatlantic market if there is the slightest doubt that our partners are carrying out spying activities on the offices of our negotiators," she said.
There have also been calls from French and German politicians for their governments to grant asylum to Edward Snowden.
‘Not unusual’
In the wake of European outrage, US Secretary of State spoke out in defense of the US, maintaining that the mass surveillance of allies was “not unusual.”
“Every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs of national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security and all kinds of information contributes to that,” said Kerry at a press conference. He said he would make no further comments on the matter until he was fully aware of the facts.
Former CIA employee Edward Snowden released a trove of classified data in May, blowing the whistle on the mass US surveillance program, Prism, and inciting the ire of civil rights groups.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange warned the US that no matter what befalls Snowden NSA secrets will continue to be revealed to the public.
“There is no stopping the publishing process at this stage,” he told ABC News program 'This Week,' while holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
"Great care has been taken to make sure Mr. Snowden cannot be pressured by any state to stop the publishing process," Assange added.
WikiLeaks has been reportedly aiding Snowden in his asylum plea to the Ecuadorian government, providing him with legal aid and advice.
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Gore: NSA program 'violates' Constitution.
thehill.com
By Daniel Strauss - 06/14/13 06:06 PM ET
Former Vice President Al Gore strongly criticized the National Security Agency's secret telephone data collection program saying it violates the Constitution.
"I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way," Gore told The Guardian. "Benjamin Franklin famously wrote that those who would give up essential liberty to try to gain some temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Gore's comments contrast from those from a number of national security officials and lawmakers, including President Obama, who have said the program is constitutional and necessary to national security. But Gore disagreed.
"This in my view violates the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment – and the Fourth Amendment language is crystal clear," Gore continued. "It is not acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is."
"This is not right," Gore added.
Gore's comments come as Obama plans to defend the program to European officials during trips to Germany and Ireland next week.
A recent Washington Post/Pew Research poll found a majority of adults say they find the program acceptable. Gore brushed off those findings.
"I am not sure how to interpret polls on this, because we don't do dial groups on the bill of rights," Gore said.
In a separate interview with Bloomberg TV, former President Bill Clinton said Director of National Intelligence James Clapper was correct when he said the NSA program was used to "protect our nation from a wide variety of threats." Clinton said with the NSA and other similar programs, law enforcement officials were just trying to keep track of who was communicating with whom.
"That's essentially what most of these government programs are now trying to do in monitoring telecommunications and e-mail," Clinton said. "And I think that the head of the NSA said it correctly yesterday. They have prevented a very large number of harmful actions."
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rt.com/news/nsa-spied-medvedev-g20-789/
US spied on Russian President Medvedev at 2009 G20 summit – NSA leaks.
RT.com
June 16, 2013 20:30
As Britain readies to host the G8 summit, the documents uncovered by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have revealed that back in 2009 US spies intercepted top-secret communications of then Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, during his visit to London.
The Guardian, which has seen the documents, also revealed that UK intelligence agency GCHQ monitored foreign politicians and intercepted their emails during the 2009 G20 summit held in the British capital, which was attended by Medvedev. Some delegates were tricked into using internet cafes which had been set up by UK intelligence agencies to read their email traffic.
This comes as the 39th G8 summit is scheduled to start on Monday in the small Northern Irish resort town of Lough Erne with all the nations who were present at the 2009 London meeting attending.
According to the leaked documents viewed by the British paper, the details of the intercept of Medvedev’s communications were set out in a briefing prepared by the US National Security Agency (NSA), and shared with high-ranking officials from Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. The document entitled "Russian Leadership Communications in support of President Dmitry Medvedev at the G20 summit in London – Intercept at Menwith Hill station" was drafted in August 2009, four months after the Russian president attended the London G20 summit.
The NSA paper says: "This is an analysis of signal activity in support of President Dmitry Medvedev's visit to London. The report details a change in the way Russian leadership signals have been normally transmitted. The signal activity was found to be emanating from the Russian embassy in London and the communications are believed to be in support of the Russian president."
The interception of Medvedev’s communications by the US intelligence service came hours after his first meeting with the US President Barack Obama where they struck a warm tone and promised a “fresh start” in US-Russia relations.
The latest revelations will be a major embarrassment for Washington, as Obama is set to meet with the incumbent Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G8 summit in Northern Ireland and discuss such tough issues as the Syrian conflict.
In the wake of the scandalous leak of NSA documents, US officials have been defending massive surveillance tactics stressing that they were crucial in the fight against terrorism. However, the recent revelations about the actions of the NSA and Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) suggests this was simply a case of espionage.
The information obtained by the GCHQ analysts was being rapidly passed on to the British representatives in the G20 meetings, giving them a negotiating advantage. "In a live situation such as this, intelligence received may be used to influence events on the ground taking place just minutes or hours later. This means that it is not sufficient to mine call records afterwards – real-time tip-off is essential," read one of the leaked documents.
During the London summit, GCHQ used what one document described as "ground-breaking intelligence capabilities" to intercept the communications of the foreign delegations. The spy agency set up internet cafes where they used an email interception program and key-logging software to monitor delegates' use of computers. The security of delegates’ BlackBerrys had been penetrated to enable GCHQ see their messages and phone calls.
According to the report the surveillance operation was ordered at a senior level in the government of the then prime minister, Gordon Brown, and appears to have run for at least six months before and after the world leaders gathered in London on April 2.
One document reveals that when G20 finance ministers met in London in September 2009, British intelligence again spied on the delegates, including Turkish Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek and possibly 15 other members of his team.
Referring to the NSA spying on the Russian president at that summit, RT contributor Afshin Rattansi says Britain has served as a surveillance platform for the US for decades. “For many years the British people realized that the National Security Agency was basically using the United Kingdom. And the largest spying outfit of the United States is here in Britain,” he said.
“Perhaps the British people will realize that they are living in a state where their media and all institutions surrounding them, all industrial aspects of the civic society are under a kind of surveillance state that is not being covered in the news.”
The 2009 summit came at a critical moment when the crisis in Western capitalism hit its peak, Rattansi notes. “These kind of revelations show that when governments such as Britain and the United States come close to worrying, they will use this to try and persuade different officials at different governments to sway them.”
Snowden files 'show massive UK spying op'
smh.com.au
June 22, 2013
London: British spies are running an online eavesdropping operation so vast that internal documents say it even outstrips the United States' international internet surveillance effort, The Guardian newspaper says.
The paper cited UK intelligence memos leaked by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden to claim that UK spies were tapping into the world's network of fibre optic cables to deliver the "biggest internet access" of any member of the Five Eyes - the name given to the espionage alliance composed of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
That access could in theory expose a huge chunk of the world's everyday communications - including the content of people's emails, calls, and more - to scrutiny from British spies and their US allies. How much data the British are copying off the fibre optic network isn't clear, but it's likely to be enormous.
The Guardian said the information flowing across more than 200 cables was being monitored by more than 500 analysts from the NSA and its UK counterpart, GCHQ.
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"This is a massive amount of data!" The Guardian quoted a leaked slide as boasting.
The newspaper, whose revelations about America and Britain's globe-spanning surveillance programs have reignited an international debate over the ethics of espionage, said GCHQ was using probes to capture and copy data as it crisscrossed the Atlantic between western Europe and North America.
It said that, by last year, GCHQ was in some way handling 600 million telecommunications every day - although it did not go into any further detail and it was not clear whether that meant that GCHQ could systematically record or even track all the electronic movement at once.
GCHQ declined to comment on Friday, although in an emailed statement it repeated past assurances about the legality of its actions.
"Our work is carried out in accordance with a strict legal and policy framework which ensures that our activities are authorised, necessary, and proportionate," the statement said.
Fibre optic cables - thin strands of glass bundled together and strung out underground or across the oceans - play a critical role in keeping the world connected. A 2010 estimate suggested that such cables are responsible for 95 per cent of the world's international voice and data traffic, and The Guard-ian said Britain's geographic position on Europe's western fringe gave it natural access to many of the trans-Atlantic cables as they emerged from the sea.
The Guardian said GCHQ's probes did more than just monitor the data live; British eavesdroppers can store content for three days and metadata - information about who was talking to whom, for how long, from where, and through what medium - for 30 days.
AP
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New Snowden leak reveals US hacked Chinese cell companies, accessed millions of sms - report.
RT.com
June 23, 2013 06:35
US government has been hacking Chinese mobile operator networks to intercept millions of text messages, as well as the operator of region’s fibre optic cable network, South China Morning Post writes citing Edward Snowden.
More information on National Security Agency activity in China and Hong Kong has been revealed by SCMP on Sunday, shedding light on statements Snowden made in an interview on June 12.
“The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data,” Snowden was quoted as saying on the SCMP's website.
In a series of reports the paper claims Snowden has provided proof of extensive US hacking activity in the region.
The former CIA technician and NSA contractor reportedly provided to the paper the documents detailing specific attacks on computers over a four-year period, including internet protocol (IP) addresses, dates of attacks and whether a computer was still being monitored remotely. SCMP however did not reveal any supporting documents.
The US government has been accused of a security breach at the Hong Kong headquarters of the operator of the largest regional fibre optic cable network operator, Pacnet. Back in 2009, the company’s computers were hacked by the NSA but since then the operation has been shut down, according to the documents the paper claims to have seen.
Pacnet’s network spans across Hong Kong, China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Singapore and provides connections to 16 data centers for telecom companies, corporations and governments across the region.
The whistleblower has also allegedly revealed the US had viewed millions of text messages by hacking Chinese mobile phone companies. That is a significant claim since the Chinese sent almost billion text messages in 2012 and China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile network carrier.
In his very first leak to the media, Snowden had already exposed the scale of the American government spying operation on its domestic mobile network operators. He later revealed that the US and the UK possessed technology to access the Blackberry phones of delegates at two G20 summit meetings in London in 2009.
In a third article, SCMP claims that the US on a regular basis has been attacking the servers at Tsinghua University, one of country’s biggest research institutions. The whistleblower said that information obtained pointed to hacking activities, because it contained such details as external and internal IP addresses in the University’s network, which could only have been retrieved by a security breach.
Tsinghua University is host to one of Chinas’ six major backbone networks, the China Education and Research Network (CERNET) containing data about millions of Chinese citizens.
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‘Mad invader, eavesdropper’: China slams US after Snowden accusations.
RT.com
June 25, 2013 06:58
The US has gone from ‘model of human rights’ to manipulator of internet rights, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party wrote. China has struck back at the US over its allegations that Beijing allowed NSA leaker Edward Snowden to leave Hong Kong.
The damning article in the overseas edition of the People’s Daily, the party’s official newspaper, came in response to Washington’s accusations of the “deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant.”
Addressing Washington’s allegations, the People’s Daily wrote that China could not accept "this kind of dissatisfaction and opposition.”
"Not only did the US authorities not give us an explanation and apology, it instead expressed dissatisfaction at the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region for handling things in accordance with the law,” wrote Wang Xinjun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Science in the People's Daily commentary.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying also denounced the US accusations as "groundless and unacceptable.”
"It is unreasonable for the US to question Hong Kong's handling of affairs in accordance with law, and the accusation against the Chinese central government is groundless," Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying.
The Hong Kong government released an official statement on Sunday, saying that US fugitive Edward Snowden had left the Chinese territory for Moscow legally and voluntarily. The statement also mentioned that the extradition documents submitted by the US on charges of espionage were not sufficient to warrant Snowden’s arrest under Chinese law.
The column praises the former CIA contractor for “his fearlessness that tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask."Snowden has been branded by the US as ‘traitor’ by US politicians for the leaking of classified documents to The Guardian newspaper that revealed the existence of the spy program PRISM.
"In a sense, the United States has gone from a model of human rights to an eavesdropper on personal privacy, the manipulator of the centralized power over the international internet, and the mad invader of other countries' networks," the People's Daily said.
The case of Edward Snowden has captivated world media since he fled from the US in May. Although the fugitive’s whereabouts are unknown, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange confirmed to RT that Snowden was en route to Ecuador via Moscow accompanied by WikiLeaks legal representative Sarah Harrison.
Snowden was checked in for a flight from Moscow to Havana, Cuba, yesterday, but there was no sign of him on the plane, according to RT’s correspondent Egor Piskunov. As a consequence, it is now thought that he is still in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
The whistleblower has applied for asylum in Ecuador and the country’s government confirmed that it is processing the application.
Amnesty urges US: ‘Refrain from manhunt’
The US has called on all countries in the northern hemisphere to surrender Snowden to US jurisdiction and has resolved to seek cooperation from his destination country. However human rights organization Amnesty International has launched an appeal, urging the US not to prosecute anyone who discloses data on US government human right violations.
"No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations by the US government. Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression," said Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International.
In addition, the organization also stressed that an individual who has an asylum bid underway cannot legally be extradited.
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China's state newspaper praises Edward Snowden for 'tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask'
State-run People's Daily says whistleblower has exposed US hypocrisy after Washington blamed Beijing for his escape
Jonathan Kaiman in Beijing and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 25 June 2013 10.22 BST
China's top state newspaper has praised the fugitive US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden for "tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask" and rejected accusations Beijing had facilitated his departure from Hong Kong.
The strongly worded front-page commentary in the overseas edition of the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Chinese Communist party, responded to harsh criticism of China from the US for allowing Snowden to flee.
The Chinese government has said it was gravely concerned by Snowden's allegations that the US had hacked into many networks in Hong Kong and China, including Tsinghua University, which hosts one of the country's internet hubs, and Chinese mobile network companies. It said it had taken the issue up with Washington.
"Not only did the US authorities not give us an explanation and apology, it instead expressed dissatisfaction at the Hong Kong special administrative region for handling things in accordance with law," wrote Wang Xinjun, a researcher at the Academy of Military Science in the People's Daily commentary.
"In a sense, the United States has gone from a 'model of human rights' to 'an eavesdropper on personal privacy', the 'manipulator' of the centralised power over the international internet, and the mad 'invader' of other countries' networks," the People's Daily said.
The White House said allowing Snowden to leave was "a deliberate choice by the government to release a fugitive despite a valid arrest warrant, and that decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the US-China relationship".
The People's Daily, which reflects the thinking of the government, said China could not accept "this kind of dissatisfaction and opposition".
"The world will remember Edward Snowden," the newspaper said. "It was his fearlessness that tore off Washington's sanctimonious mask".
The exchanges mark a deterioration in ties between the two countries just weeks after a successful summit meeting between presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. But experts say Washington is unlikely to resort to any punitive action.
A commentary in the Global Times, owned by the People's Daily, also attacked the US for cornering "a young idealist who has exposed the sinister scandals of the US government".
"Instead of apologising, Washington is showing off its muscle by attempting to control the whole situation," the Global Times said.
Snowden gave US authorities the slip by leaving Hong Kong on an Aeroflot plane to Moscow on Sunday. The US had requested his detention for extradition to the US on treason charges but the Hong Kong authorities responded that the papers had not been in order and Snowden was free to leave.
Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said Washington did not believe the explanation that it was a "technical" decision by Hong Kong immigration authorities. "The Hong Kong authorities were advised of the status of Mr Snowden's travel documents in plenty of time to have prohibited his travel as appropriate. We do not buy the suggestion that China could not have taken action."
On Monday Snowden had been expected to board another plane from Moscow for Cuba and ultimately fly from there to Ecuador, which is considering granting him asylum. But journalists who boarded the plane in Moscow soon found Snowden had not taken his seat.
When the plane landed in Cuba there was likewise no sign that Snowden had been on board. The pilot greeted journalists at Havana's Jose Marti international airport by pulling out his own camera, taking pictures of the them and saying: "No Snowden, no."
The harshly worded Chinese commentaries did not appear on the country's main news portals on Tuesday afternoon. Instead most articles focused on hard news, such as Snowden's still-unknown final destination, his relationship with WikiLeaks and the details of his departure from Hong Kong.
Another editorial in the People's Daily on Monday defended the Hong Kong government for allowing Snowden to leave despite a US warrant for his arrest, claiming that it acted according to the law and "will be able to withstand examination".
"The voices of a few American politicians and media outlets surrounding the Prism scandal have become truly shrill," it said. "Not only do some of them lack the least bit of self-reflection but they also arrogantly find fault with other countries for no reason at all."
Shi Yinhong, an expert on China-US relations at Renmin University in Beijing, said the Snowden affair had given China's leaders an opportunity to shore up their own legitimacy domestically by projecting a strong message of US hypocrisy.
Yet behind the scenes, he said, top leaders were probably reluctant to allow the affair to significantly impact bilateral ties. "Maybe this will have an impact on public opinion in China, but for the Chinese government almost nothing has changed," he said. "Even if this damages China-US relations it'll be very temporary."
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EU demands ‘full clarification’ over NSA spying on European diplomats, warns of severe impact on relations.
RT.com
June 30, 2013 10:39
The president of the European parliament has demanded an explanation from US authorities over the latest revelation that EU diplomatic missions in Washington, New York and Brussels were under electronic surveillance from the NSA.
“I am deeply worried and shocked about the allegations of US authorities spying on EU offices,” said the President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz. “If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations.”
“On behalf of the European Parliament, I demand full clarification and require further information speedily from the US authorities with regard to these allegations," he added.
Meanwhile, Germany's justice minister also called for an immediate explanation from the United States saying the news that Washington bugged European Union offices was "reminiscent of the Cold War."
"It must ultimately be immediately and extensively explained by the American side whether media reports about completely disproportionate tapping measures by the US in the EU are accurate or not," Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said in a statement.
Other EU diplomats also expressed shock concerning the latest batch of revelations in the NSA leak, reported by Der Spiegel magazine on Saturday.
"If these reports are true, it's disgusting,” Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn told Der Spiegel.
"The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies,” Asselborn continued. “We must get a guarantee from the very highest level now that this stops immediately."
A spokesman for the Office of the US Director of National Intelligence had no comment on the Der Spiegel story, Reuters reported.
Der Spiegel, quoting from a September 2010 "top secret" US National Security Agency (NSA) document leaked by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, reported on Saturday the NSA was eavesdropping on the EU’s internal computer networks in Washington, as well as at the 28-member bloc UN office in New York.
The German magazine also reported that five years ago, the NSA also targeted telecommunications at the Justus Lipsius building in Brussels, home to the European Council, where all EU member states have their offices.
Snowden, 30, fled the US for Hong Kong in May, just weeks before The Guardian and Washington Post published details he provided about a top-secret US government surveillance program that accumulated internet and telephone traffic both at home and abroad.
The whistleblower is presently in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, where it is believed he is attempting to gain political asylum in Ecuador.
Lode Vanoost, former deputy speaker of the Belgian parliament, believes that the main purpose of the US surveillance program was “economic spying” on the EU.
“At the moment, the EU is negotiating a new free trade agreement with the United States,” the former deputy speaker noted. “Well, [now the US can gather] what their opponent is already discussing internally of strategy. That is one of the possibilities.”
Vanoost also believes that part of the reason for the spying was due to the decline in US economic strength.
“On the economic level, [the US] is losing ground everywhere,” he said. “Look at what the BRIC countries are doing. The EU is having stronger ties with Russia, with Africa, with Latin America. And the US doesn’t seem to get its economic priorities imposed as it used to. So what I see is a big risk for economic spying.”
He added that there is “too much at stake” for there to be a total breakdown in US-EU bilateral relations, however, “behind closed doors there will be some very tough words” exchanged between EU and American officials.
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After slapping US, France finds itself in spotlight for spying.
Reports says that several EU nations are engaged in surveillance programs similar to PRISM.
csmonitor.com
By Sara Miller Llana, Staff writer / July 5, 2013
Paris
Judging from the rhetoric alone, it might seem that transatlantic relations are sinking to a low point in the wake of news about alleged spying of the US on its European allies.
French President François Hollande called for the suspension of transatlantic trade talks, set to begin next Monday. European officials across the political spectrum reacted with equal, if not stronger, acrimony, calling the US "Big Brother" and its spy program, revealed by former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, a vestige of the cold war.
But behind angry admonishments, Europe has agreed to move forward with Monday’s talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). And although European officials have demanded the US address its concerns over spying and privacy – those talks are also set to begin within days – few expect this most recent revelation to be insurmountable. In fact, many European nations, thrust further into the affair this week when suspicions that Mr. Snowden was aboard a Bolivia-bound airplane that was diverted to Vienna as it traveled from Russia, have acknowledged that they also spy, with France at the center of attention.
Eric Denécé, director of the French Center for Intelligence Studies and a former military intelligence analyst, says he expects the spying allegations on Europe to be little more than a political blip, though he differentiates between intergovernmental spying and Snowden’s revelations of surveillance of American citizens through the PRISM program.
“For 40 or 50 years, we absolutely know the US intelligence agency is listening to everybody, including France,” he says. “This is absolutely normal. It’s the job of intelligence agencies to listen to [one] another.”
French politicians have been among the angriest in terms of reaction, calling for the TTIP negotiations to be put on hold. But in the wake of their criticism of US action, they have faced a barrage of their own.
Revelations of French domestic spying
Le Monde published Thursday a report alleging widespread intelligence spying in France, similar to the US PRISM program. France’s leading daily paper, whose report received widespread international media coverage, alleges that such acts are "outside the law, and beyond any proper supervision.”
And while the European Union Parliament condemned American spying, it rejected Thursday a suspension of TTIP negotiations, as France had sought. Instead it urged trade talks to go forward, as planned, according to a statement.
It acknowledged growing issues of spying among its own member states as well. “Parliament also expresses grave concern about allegations that similar surveillance programs are run by several EU member states, such as the UK, Sweden, The Netherlands, Germany, and Poland. It urges them to examine whether those programs are compatible with EU law.”
Meanwhile, US-German ties are under stress amid revelations that the United States spied on Germany more than on any other EU country. Germans are particularly wary about state-driven snooping, given the widespread surveillance under the Stasi in East Germany and earlier under Nazi Germany.
President Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed Thursday to a high-level meeting among both nations to discuss US actions.
However, Sergey Lagodinsky, head of the EU/North America department of the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin, says that the real damage to the transatlantic relationship at this point is among the citizenry. “The damage is not intergovernmental, but within our population,” he says. “[The scandal] has made clear to a wide number of citizens that the rhetoric of alliance and partnership is not followed by a degree of mutual trust.”
That sentiment is clear in a recent German poll showing that, in the wake of Snowden’s revelations, only 49 percent of Germans say Americans can be trusted as partners, down from 65 percent, according to ARD-DeutschlandTrend.
Indeed, while Dr. Denécé, the intelligence analyst, says he expects the spying allegations on the EU to become muted, revelations from Snowden on the PRISM program should be a concern to all amid a general decline of democracy in the US since the Patriot Act, he says. “Now we discover that all US citizens are under electronic surveillance,” he says. He calls this a threat to the world at large. “This is dangerous for democracy as a whole.”
For now, it’s hard to know Europe’s exact position on Snowden, among many contradictions.
Shashank Joshi, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, wrote in The Telegraph that France’s condemnation and call to suspend trade talks is “pretty hilarious, given France's penchant for stealing American defense technology, bugging American business executives and generally annoying US counterintelligence officials. If you've been paying attention, you know that France is a proficient, notorious and unrepentant economic spy.”
Positions became even murkier earlier this week when Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to land in Austria, after several European countries, including France, reportedly refused to allow the plane through their air space on suspicion that Snowden had left Russia, where he's been holed up as he unsuccessfully seeks asylum somewhere. It has led to accusations that the US is influencing countries behind the scenes, though it is unclear what access was denied by Europe and why.
If it’s confirmed that the French bowed to American pressure in the incident, says Denécé, “it is absolutely a contradiction” that will hurt President Hollande.
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Snowden: NSA is ‘in bed with the Germans’
RT.com
July 07, 2013 19:36
US fugitive Edward Snowden has accused Germany and the US of partnering in spy intelligence operations, revealing that cooperation between the countries is closer than German indignation would indicate, Der Spiegel magazine reported.
“They are in bed with the Germans, just like with most other Western states,” the German magazine quotes Snowden as saying, adding that the NSA’s has a Foreign Affairs Directorate which is responsible for cooperation with other countries.
Partnerships are orchestrated in ways that allow other countries to “insulate their political leaders from the backlash,” according to Snowden, providing a buffer between politicians and the illegal methods of snooping. He accused the collaboration of grievously “violating global privacy.”
“Other agencies don't ask us where we got the information from and we don't ask them. That way they can protect their top politicians from the backlash in case it emerges how massively people's privacy is abused worldwide,” he said.
Snowden gave the interview to a cipher expert and a documentary filmmaker with the help of encrypted emails shortly before he rose to global fame, Der Spiegel reported.
The publication recollected that the US Army is simultaneously in the process of building a base in Wiesbaden, southwest Germany, claiming it will be used as an intelligence center by the NSA.
The four-story bug-proof spying center is made from imported American materials and costs $119 million. Its construction will allow for the closure of over 40 existing sites across in Heidelberg, Mannheim and Darmstadt, US Army Garrison Wiesbaden spokeswoman Anemone Rueger told Stars and Stripes.
The Der Spiegel report also indicates that the German Federal Intelligence Service, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) and NSA work very closely together.
It was revealed at the end of June that the US combs through half a billion of German phone calls, emails and text messages on a monthly basis.
An earlier report by Der Spiegel, also based on revelations by Snowden, revealed that the NSA bugged EU diplomatic offices and gained access to EU internal computer networks.
Chancellor Merkel’s spokesman, Steffen Seibert said that this would constitute intolerable behavior if proven.
“If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable,” said Chancellor Angela Merkel's spokesman, Steffen Seibert.
“We are no longer in the Cold War,” he said.
Merkel remained quiet regarding the Snowden PRISM leaks when Obama visited Berlin, diplomatically stating that, “the topic of commensurability is important.”
Germans are particularly sensitive about eavesdropping because of the hangover from the intrusive surveillance state which characterized the communist German Democratic Republic (GDR) and Nazi era totalitarianism.
The Der Spiegel report claims that the NSA provides the BND with analysis tools to monitor data passing through German territory. Opposition parties insisted when revelations were made about the extent of espionage that somebody in Merkel's office, where the German intelligence agencies are coordinated, must have known what was going on.
BND head Gerhard Schindler confirmed the existence of the two country’s intelligence partnerships during a meeting with members of the German parliament’s control committee specifically for overseeing intelligence issues, according to Der Spiegel.
The BND is legally allowed to look through 20 percent of transnational communications, in addition to monitoring internet search terms and telecommunications, Deutsche Welle wrote on June 30, while the US can essentially capitalize on Germany’s data collection packets. The cooperation includes the passing of data over areas deemed crisis regions.
The BND lacks the capacity to fully use its legally allowed monitoring. Der Spiegel reported that the agency is currently only monitoring only about 5 percent of data traffic, but is planning to expand its server, capacity and staffing in order to be more effective.
The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which overlooks domestic counter-espionage, is currently investigating whether the NSA has access to German Internet traffic. A preliminary analysis was inconclusive.
“So far, we have no information that Internet nodes in Germany have been spied on by the NSA,” said Hans-Georg Maassen, the president of the Office for the Protection of the Constitution.
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden fled the US in May a few weeks before his first leaks were published by the Guardian. He is believed to have been holed up in Moscow airport since June 23 and initially made asylum requests to 20 countries, including Germany, followed by a further six.
Snowden was refused asylum in Germany on the grounds that asylum requests must be made on German soil.
A spokesman of the Interior Minister said, “the German right of residence principally entails the possibility of acceptance from abroad, if this seems necessary for international legal or urgent humanitarian reasons, or for the ensuring of political interests of the federal republic of Germany. This needs to be examined thoroughly in the case of Mr. Snowden.”
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New revelations: Germany sends 'massive amounts' of phone, email data to NSA.
RT.com
August 07, 2013 21:13
Germany’s BND intelligence service sends “massive amounts” of intercepts to the NSA daily, according to a report based on Edward Snowden’s leaks. It suggests a tight relationship has been developed between the two agencies – which the BND claims is legal.
Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Snowden and obtained by Der Spiegel revealed that the 500 million pieces of phone and email communications metadata collected by the NSA in Germany last December were “apparently” provided with the BND’s approval.
The data was allegedly handed over at two collection sites as part of the operation titled “Germany – Last 30 days.” One of those collection sites has been identified as the Bavarian BND facility at Bad Aibling, which the NSA is said to have officially left back in 2004.
Der Spiegel’s investigation, which cites BND sources, says that the code name of the Bad Aibling facility is mentioned in Snowden’s papers as one of the signals intelligence activity designators (SIGADs) employed by the US spy agency to collect the data.
The BND source added that the mentioned name is “associated with telecommunications surveillance in Afghanistan.”
Officially, however, Berlin is still waiting for an answer from Washington as to where in Germany the metadata documented in the NSA files was obtained, according to Der Spiegel. The clarification of what and who are behind the so-called SIGADs, and what sort of information was passed on, is an extremely delicate matter for both the BND and the Chancellery - with Angela Merkel’s chief of staff Ronald Pofalla being nominally in charge of coordinating the country’s intelligence agencies.
The details in the recent report have sparked more uneasy questions to be fired at Merkel’s government. Hans-Christian Stroebele of Germany’s Green party has demanded an “immediate investigation” of allegations, reminding that it has been claimed up to now that the Americans had abandoned Bad Aibling years ago and transferred control to Germany.
“Now we are reading that the NSA expanded their facility there, received data on site and also analyzed it there. That is a completely new development; that’s news that we have to follow up on,” said Stroebele, who is also a member of the German parliament’s intelligence oversight committee.
Frustrated that he and other committee members learned about the BND’s data transfers to the NSA from a media report, Stroebele stressed that “the government is playing the wrong game there.”
But officials from the German foreign intelligence service responded by saying the practice is completely legal, adding that the two agencies have been closely working together for decades.
“The BND has worked for over 50 years together with the NSA, particularly when it comes to intelligence on the situation in crisis zones. The cooperation with the NSA in Bad Aibling serves exactly these goals and it has taken place in this form for over ten years, based on an agreement made in the year 2002,” the BND said, as quoted by Deutsche Welle.
According to Snowden’s leaks, not only have the German agents enjoyed access to the NSA’s latest tools, such as XKeyscore, but the US agents have also shown a keen interest in several BND programs – which, according to the report, were deemed even more effective than those of the NSA.
But the BND has assured that no data transferred to the NSA contains information on German citizens – which, according to the German agency’s chief Wolfgang Bosbach, would explain why the government never mentioned the vast data transfers during the testimony they gave to parliamentary committees after the NSA scandal was unveiled.
“The transfer of data clearly did not involve German citizens but rather data that the BND had collected in accordance with its statutory mission,” Bosbach said.
“Before metadata relating to other countries is passed on, it is purged, in a multistep process, of any personal data about German citizens it may contain,” the BND said in response to inquiries, as quoted by Deutsche Welle. The agency added that there is currently “no reason” to believe that “the NSA gathers personal data on German citizens in Germany.”
The BND is strictly forbidden from monitoring the communications of German citizens by the G-10 law, a regulation anchored in the country’s constitution that limits the powers of the intelligence agencies.
However, it does not concern foreign intelligence, which, according to the report, includes hundreds of thousands of records from Middle Eastern satellite telephone providers, thousands of mobile communications, and daily eavesdropping on some 62,000 emails.
“The NSA benefits from this collection, especially the…intercepts from Afghanistan, which the BND shares on a daily basis,” the report says.
Such large-scale data transfer became possible after the BND established a direct electronic connection to the NSA network in Bad Aibling, it claims.
When the scandal initially emerged, German Chancellor Merkel claimed that she learnt about the US surveillance programs through press reports, and that she had had no knowledge of the BND’s collaboration with the NSA.
Merkel, who is under pressure from critics ahead of the September 22 election, also stressed that Germany “is not a surveillance state.”
However, she seemingly justified the NSA’s job, saying that “the work of intelligence agencies in democratic states was always vital to the safety of citizens and will remain so in the future.” While being asked to clear up the situation with the US allegedly bugging the embassies of European countries and EU facilities, Merkel stressed that the US will remain Germany’s “most loyal ally.”
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NSA spied on Latin America for energy and military intel.
RT.com
July 10, 2013 09:23
The NSA’s spy program encompasses most countries in Latin America, new cables released by Edward Snowden have confirmed. The data gathered on military affairs and “commercial secrets” has provoked a flurry of furious rhetoric from regional leaders.
Brazilian daily, O Globo, which obtained the cables released by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, published a report on Tuesday detailed the National Security Agency’s initiatives in Latin America.
The US government retrieved key data on a number of issues including the oil market, drugs trade and political movements. Colombia is a top priority for the US, registering the most spy activity, with Mexico, Venezuela and Brazil following closely behind. In addition, Argentina, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Paraguay, Chile, Peru and El Salvador are under surveillance, though to a lesser degree.
According to the documents obtained by O Globo, the NSA carried out espionage in Latin America in the first quarter of 2013 using at least two data-snooping programs: ‘PRISM,’ from February 2-8 and ‘Boundless Informant’ from January through to March.
‘PRISM’ recorded metadata through Facebook, Google, Microsoft and YouTube, while ‘Boundless Informant’ monitored telephone calls and access to the internet.
O Globo also reported that the NSA gathered information through private Brazilian telecommunications companies using a program called ‘Silverzephyr.’ The daily was unable to identify the companies, but stated that using the program the US gained access to phone calls, faxes and emails.
Furthermore, the leaked information revealed the existence of data-crunching centers in Bogota, Caracas, Mexico City and Panama City and Brasilia that dealt with information intercepted from satellites.
Brazil is currently investigating telecommunication companies believed to be involved in the massive US surveillance program. The country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, was quick to react to the news, stating that if the reports of spying were confirmed it would definitely be a “violation of our sovereignty, without a doubt, just like it’s a violation of human rights.”
Brazil’s Senate foreign relations committee has requested that US ambassador Thomas Shannon to testify on the allegations. It is unclear whether Shannon, who is not legally obliged to provide testimony, will agree.
Gilberto Carvalho, a top aide to President Rousseff, called for a "very hard" response to the United States .
"If we lower our heads, they will trample all over us tomorrow," he said.
President of Argentina Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said she hopes the US’ actions will be condemned at the next Mercosur (an economic union between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela) summit.
“I feel a shiver going down my spine when I see that they are spying on all of us through their services in Brazil,” she said in reference to the O Globo article.
Peruvian President Ollanta Humala, known for his pro-US stance, stated that the reports were “concerning.”
"We are against these kinds of espionage activities," he said in a televised interview. "It would be good for [Peru's] Congress to look with concern at privacy issues related to personal information."
In turn, Colombia has called on the US for an explanation for an “unauthorized” data collection program.
"In rejecting the acts of espionage that violate people's rights and intimacy as well as the international conventions on telecommunication, Colombia requests the corresponding explanations from the United States government through its ambassador to Colombia," the Colombian Foreign Ministry said in the statement.
Mexico, one of the most surveilled countries, has thus far refrained from commenting on the reports .
US whistleblower Edward Snowden, who currently has an extradition order against his name from Washington, is holed up in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport unable to leave because his passport has been revoked. He has applied for political asylum in a number of Latin American countries. Venezuela and Nicaragua have said they are currently assessing his request.
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US slams Russia for giving 'propaganda platform' to Snowden.
RussiaToday
Jul 13, 2013
www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXXshWGrDEQ
The White House says that Russia granting political asylum to Edward Snowden will be on par with providing the National Security Agency leaker with a "propaganda platform" to further harm the United States.
