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by Wombaticus Rex » Fri Jun 21, 2013 9:46 am
Alchemy » Fri Jun 21, 2013 8:02 am wrote:I always suspected they had spooks at all the universities keeping tabs on students who excel in certain areas and recruiting them to the agency after graduation, this confirms it.
by Hunter » Fri Jun 21, 2013 9:53 am
Wombaticus Rex » Fri Jun 21, 2013 9:46 am wrote:Alchemy » Fri Jun 21, 2013 8:02 am wrote:I always suspected they had spooks at all the universities keeping tabs on students who excel in certain areas and recruiting them to the agency after graduation, this confirms it.
For more confirmation and a considerably broader panorama, highly recommend Christopher Simpson's "Universities and Empire." A book I am continually referring back to, an overdose of information & citations.
by Hunter » Fri Jun 21, 2013 10:03 am
Wombaticus Rex » Fri Jun 21, 2013 9:46 am wrote:Alchemy » Fri Jun 21, 2013 8:02 am wrote:I always suspected they had spooks at all the universities keeping tabs on students who excel in certain areas and recruiting them to the agency after graduation, this confirms it.
For more confirmation and a considerably broader panorama, highly recommend Christopher Simpson's "Universities and Empire." A book I am continually referring back to, an overdose of information & citations.
by beeline » Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:37 am
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 21, 2013 3:42 pm
GCHQ taps fibre-optic cables for secret access to world's communications
Exclusive: British spy agency collects and stores vast quantities of global email messages, Facebook posts, internet histories and calls, and shares them with NSA, latest documents from Edward Snowden reveal
Ewen MacAskill, Julian Borger, Nick Hopkins, Nick Davies and James Ball
guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 June 2013 12.23 EDT
Secret document detailing GCHQ's ambition to 'master the internet'
Britain's spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables which carry the world's phone calls and internet traffic and has started to process vast streams of sensitive personal information which it is sharing with its American partner, the National Security Agency (NSA).
The sheer scale of the agency's ambition is reflected in the titles of its two principal components: Mastering the Internet and Global Telecoms Exploitation, aimed at scooping up as much online and telephone traffic as possible. This is all being carried out without any form of public acknowledgement or debate.
One key innovation has been GCHQ's ability to tap into and store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so that it can be sifted and analysed. That operation, codenamed Tempora, has been running for some 18 months.
GCHQ and the NSA are consequently able to access and process vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people, as well as targeted suspects.
This includes recordings of phone calls, the content of email messages, entries on Facebook and the history of any internet user's access to websites – all of which is deemed legal, even though the warrant system was supposed to limit interception to a specified range of targets.
The existence of the programme has been disclosed in documents shown to the Guardian by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as part of his attempt to expose what he has called "the largest programme of suspicionless surveillance in human history".
"It's not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight," Snowden told the Guardian. "They [GCHQ] are worse than the US."
However, on Friday a source with knowledge of intelligence argued that the data was collected legally under a system of safeguards, and had provided material that had led to significant breakthroughs in detecting and preventing serious crime.
Britain's technical capacity to tap into the cables that carry the world's communications – referred to in the documents as special source exploitation – has made GCHQ an intelligence superpower.
By 2010, two years after the project was first trialled, it was able to boast it had the "biggest internet access" of any member of the Five Eyes electronic eavesdropping alliance, comprising the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
UK officials could also claim GCHQ "produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA". (Metadata describes basic information on who has been contacting whom, without detailing the content.)
By May last year 300 analysts from GCHQ, and 250 from the NSA, had been assigned to sift through the flood of data.
The Americans were given guidelines for its use, but were told in legal briefings by GCHQ lawyers: "We have a light oversight regime compared with the US".
When it came to judging the necessity and proportionality of what they were allowed to look for, would-be American users were told it was "your call".
The Guardian understands that a total of 850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had access to GCHQ databases.
The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m "telephone events" each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.
Document quoting Lt Gen Keith Alexander, head of the NSA, during a visit to Britain
Each of the cables carries data at a rate of 10 gigabits per second, so the tapped cables had the capacity, in theory, to deliver more than 21 petabytes a day – equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours.
And the scale of the programme is constantly increasing as more cables are tapped and GCHQ data storage facilities in the UK and abroad are expanded with the aim of processing terabits (thousands of gigabits) of data at a time.
For the 2 billion users of the world wide web, Tempora represents a window on to their everyday lives, sucking up every form of communication from the fibre-optic cables that ring the world.
The NSA has meanwhile opened a second window, in the form of the Prism operation, revealed earlier this month by the Guardian, from which it secured access to the internal systems of global companies that service the internet.
The GCHQ mass tapping operation has been built up over five years by attaching intercept probes to transatlantic fibre-optic cables where they land on British shores carrying data to western Europe from telephone exchanges and internet servers in north America.
This was done under secret agreements with commercial companies, described in one document as "intercept partners".
The papers seen by the Guardian suggest some companies have been paid for the cost of their co-operation and GCHQ went to great lengths to keep their names secret. They were assigned "sensitive relationship teams" and staff were urged in one internal guidance paper to disguise the origin of "special source" material in their reports for fear that the role of the companies as intercept partners would cause "high-level political fallout".
The source with knowledge of intelligence said on Friday the companies were obliged to co-operate in this operation. They are forbidden from revealing the existence of warrants compelling them to allow GCHQ access to the cables.
"There's an overarching condition of the licensing of the companies that they have to co-operate in this. Should they decline, we can compel them to do so. They have no choice."
The source said that although GCHQ was collecting a "vast haystack of data" what they were looking for was "needles".
"Essentially, we have a process that allows us to select a small number of needles in a haystack. We are not looking at every piece of straw. There are certain triggers that allow you to discard or not examine a lot of data so you are just looking at needles. If you had the impression we are reading millions of emails, we are not. There is no intention in this whole programme to use it for looking at UK domestic traffic – British people talking to each other," the source said.
He explained that when such "needles" were found a log was made and the interception commissioner could see that log.
"The criteria are security, terror, organised crime. And economic well-being. There's an auditing process to go back through the logs and see if it was justified or not. The vast majority of the data is discarded without being looked at … we simply don't have the resources."
However, the legitimacy of the operation is in doubt. According to GCHQ's legal advice, it was given the go-ahead by applying old law to new technology. The 2000 Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) requires the tapping of defined targets to be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or foreign secretary.
However, an obscure clause allows the foreign secretary to sign a certificate for the interception of broad categories of material, as long as one end of the monitored communications is abroad. But the nature of modern fibre-optic communications means that a proportion of internal UK traffic is relayed abroad and then returns through the cables.
Parliament passed the Ripa law to allow GCHQ to trawl for information, but it did so 13 years ago with no inkling of the scale on which GCHQ would attempt to exploit the certificates, enabling it to gather and process data regardless of whether it belongs to identified targets.
The categories of material have included fraud, drug trafficking and terrorism, but the criteria at any one time are secret and are not subject to any public debate. GCHQ's compliance with the certificates is audited by the agency itself, but the results of those audits are also secret.
An indication of how broad the dragnet can be was laid bare in advice from GCHQ's lawyers, who said it would be impossible to list the total number of people targeted because "this would be an infinite list which we couldn't manage".
There is an investigatory powers tribunal to look into complaints that the data gathered by GCHQ has been improperly used, but the agency reassured NSA analysts in the early days of the programme, in 2009: "So far they have always found in our favour".
Historically, the spy agencies have intercepted international communications by focusing on microwave towers and satellites. The NSA's intercept station at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire played a leading role in this. One internal document quotes the head of the NSA, Lieutenant General Keith Alexander, on a visit to Menwith Hill in June 2008, asking: "Why can't we collect all the signals all the time? Sounds like a good summer project for Menwith."
By then, however, satellite interception accounted for only a small part of the network traffic. Most of it now travels on fibre-optic cables, and the UK's position on the western edge of Europe gave it natural access to cables emerging from the Atlantic.
The data collected provides a powerful tool in the hands of the security agencies, enabling them to sift for evidence of serious crime. According to the source, it has allowed them to discover new techniques used by terrorists to avoid security checks and to identify terrorists planning atrocities. It has also been used against child exploitation networks and in the field of cyberdefence.
It was claimed on Friday that it directly led to the arrest and imprisonment of a cell in the Midlands who were planning co-ordinated attacks; to the arrest of five Luton-based individuals preparing acts of terror, and to the arrest of three London-based people planning attacks prior to the Olympics.
As the probes began to generate data, GCHQ set up a three-year trial at the GCHQ station in Bude, Cornwall. By the summer of 2011, GCHQ had probes attached to more than 200 internet links, each carrying data at 10 gigabits a second. "This is a massive amount of data!" as one internal slideshow put it. That summer, it brought NSA analysts into the Bude trials. In the autumn of 2011, it launched Tempora as a mainstream programme, shared with the Americans.
The intercept probes on the transatlantic cables gave GCHQ access to its special source exploitation. Tempora allowed the agency to set up internet buffers so it could not simply watch the data live but also store it – for three days in the case of content and 30 days for metadata.
"Internet buffers represent an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ's special source data," one document explained.
The processing centres apply a series of sophisticated computer programmes in order to filter the material through what is known as MVR – massive volume reduction. The first filter immediately rejects high-volume, low-value traffic, such as peer-to-peer downloads, which reduces the volume by about 30%. Others pull out packets of information relating to "selectors" – search terms including subjects, phone numbers and email addresses of interest. Some 40,000 of these were chosen by GCHQ and 31,000 by the NSA. Most of the information extracted is "content", such as recordings of phone calls or the substance of email messages. The rest is metadata.
The GCHQ documents that the Guardian has seen illustrate a constant effort to build up storage capacity at the stations at Cheltenham, Bude and at one overseas location, as well a search for ways to maintain the agency's comparative advantage as the world's leading communications companies increasingly route their cables through Asia to cut costs. Meanwhile, technical work is ongoing to expand GCHQ's capacity to ingest data from new super cables carrying data at 100 gigabits a second. As one training slide told new users: "You are in an enviable position – have fun and make the most of it."
by seemslikeadream » Fri Jun 21, 2013 7:06 pm
U.S. files criminal complaint against Snowden over leaks: report
Wikileaks is pursuing asylum for the NSA leaker. Norah O'Donnell reports.
Reuters
5:55 p.m. CDT, June 21, 2013
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint charging Edward Snowden, who disclosed American telephone and internet surveillance programs, with espionage, theft and conversion of government property, the Washington Post reported on Friday.
The United States also has asked Hong Kong to detain the former National Security Agency contractor on a provisional arrest warrant, the Post reported, citing unnamed U.S. officials. Snowden is reported to be in hiding in Hong Kong.
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The criminal complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, where Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is located, the Post reported.
Documents leaked by Snowden revealed that U.S. security services had monitored data about phone calls from Verizon and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook as part of counterterrorism efforts.
U.S. federal prosecutors, by filing a criminal complaint, lay claim to a legal basis to make the request of the authorities in Hong Kong, the Post reported. The prosecutors now have 60 days to file an indictment and can then take steps to secure Snowden's extradition from Hong Kong for a criminal trial in the United States, the newspaper reported.
Snowden would be able to challenge the U.S. request for his extradition in court in Hong Kong, the Post reported.
The newspaper noted the U.S. extradition treaty with Hong Kong has an exception for political offenses, and that espionage has been viewed as a political offense.
An Icelandic businessman linked to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on Thursday he had readied a private plane in China to fly Snowden to Iceland if Iceland's government would grant asylum.
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden.
by Elvis » Fri Jun 21, 2013 9:20 pm
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57590551/u.s-files-espionage-charges-against-nsa-leaker/CBS/AP/ June 21, 2013, 8:23 PM
U.S. files espionage charges against NSA leaker
Updated 8:23 PM ET
The U.S. government has brought criminal charges against Edward Snowden, the former NSA contract employee who exposed two of the government's top-secret surveillance programs -- one that collected the phone records of millions of Americans, the other monitored internet traffic -- CBS News has learned Friday.
CBS News obtained a copy of the criminal complaint, unsealed Friday.
Criminal complaint against Edward Snowden (.pdf)
Snowden, who is believed to still be in Hong Kong somewhere, is being charged with espionage and the theft of government property relating to files he apparently took from the NSA, reported CBS News correspondent Bob Orr.
A one-page criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Alexandria, Va., says Snowden engaged in unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information. Both are charges under the Espionage Act. Snowden also is charged with theft of government property. All three crimes carry a maximum 10-year prison penalty.
The complaint is dated June 14, five days after Snowden's name first surfaced as the leaker of information about the two programs.
Congressional reaction was swift.
"I've always thought this was a treasonous act. Apparently so does the U.S. Department of Justice," said Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has been outspoken on the Snowden case. "I hope Hong Kong's government will take him into custody and extradite him to the U.S."
Disclosure of the criminal complaint came as President Barack Obama held his first meeting with a privacy and civil liberties board as his intelligence chief sought ways to help Americans understand more about sweeping government surveillance efforts exposed by Snowden.
The five members of the obscure Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board huddled with Obama for an hour in the White House Situation Room, questioning the president on two NSA programs that have stoked controversy.
A contractor at the time with Booz Allen Hamilton, Snowden identified himself as the source of the leaked documents. He gave them to the newspapers the Guardian and the Washington Post. The leaks detailed programs that the NSA swept up vast amount of Internet and telephone data.
U.S. officials have asked Hong Kong authorities to detain Snowden, but it is uncertain of his current status and whether or not he has been taken into custody.
Meanwhile, an Icelandic business executive said Friday that a private plane is on standby to transport Snowden from Hong Kong to Iceland.
Olafur Vignir Sigurvinsson said he has not spoken directly with Snowden but has been in touch with a third party representing him.
The businessman, who has connections to the WikiLeaks secret-spilling organization, said he has access to planes in Hong Kong and mainland China that Snowden could use.
But Iceland's government says it has not received an asylum request from Snowden, who has revealed his role in providing secret NSA documents about widespread surveillance programs.
Iceland Interior Ministry spokesman Johannes Tomasson said Snowden hasn't approached the ministry and could initiate an asylum request if he was already in Iceland.
When asked about the reports of Sigurvinsson chartering a private plane to fly Snowden to Iceland, Tomasson said: "We don't object to that. But we don't have any knowledge other than what has been in the news. We can't comment any further on that."
Sigurvinsson said that Snowden's potential private flight is being funded by private donations.
"There are a number of people that are interested in freedom of speech and recognize the importance of knowing who is spying on us," he said. "We are people that care about privacy."
Money is being raised on Snowden's behalf by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee based in the United States, but it was not expected to be tapped to help with the cost of a possible flight to Iceland.
by 82_28 » Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:10 pm
by KeenInsight » Fri Jun 21, 2013 11:59 pm
by seemslikeadream » Sat Jun 22, 2013 6:58 pm
Snowden To China Paper: US Hacking Millions of Text Messages
"There’s far more than this."
A banner supporting Edward Snowden is displayed at Central, Hong Kong's business district on June 19, 2013. Photo: AP
The US is hacking Chinese mobile phone companies to gather data from millions of text messages, whistleblower Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post in a report published in China Saturday. And Snowden claims he has the evidence to prove it.
National Security Agency (NSA) spies have also been hacking China's prestigious Tsinghua University in Beijing and Asia Pacific fiber-optic network operator Pacnet, the South China Morning Post quoted Snowden.
Snowden has been charged with espionage by the Obama administration after revealing the US governments massive data and phone spying program.
"There’s far more than this. The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data," Snowden said.
Chinese government data shows almost 900 billion text messages were exchanged in China in 2012 alone.
The South China Morning Post also reported that Snowden is not under police protection but is in a “safe place’’ in Hong Kong.
Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak Slams Surveillance State, Hails NSA Whistleblower Edward Snowden
Wozniak: "All these things I thought about the Constitution that made us so good as people -- they're kinda nothing. They all disolved with the Patriot Act."
- Andrea Germanos, staff writer
Steve Wozniak speaking with Piers Morgan this week. (Screenshot)
Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has cheered NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and admonished the rise of the surveillance state.
Speaking with CNN's Piers Morgan on Thursday, Wozniak expressed support for the whistleblower and said, "I felt about Edward Snowden the same way I felt about Daniel Ellsberg, who changed my life, who taught me a lot with a book he wrote..." He continued:
Read the facts—it's a government of, by and for the people. That sorta means we own the government. We're the ones that pay for it, and then we discover something that our money is being used for. That just can't be, that level of crime.
On the proliferation of computers made possible by geniuses like him that enables widespread surveillance, Wozniak told Morgan:
I actually feel a little guilty about that but not totally. We created the computers to free the people up, give them instant communication anywhere in the world, any thought you could share it freely. That it was going to overcome a lot of the government restrictions. We didn't realize that in the digital world there are a lot of ways to use the digital technology to control us, to snoop on us. In the old days of mailing letters, you licked it, and when you got an envelope that was still sealed, nobody had seen it. You could have private communication. Now they say because it's e-mail it cannot be private, anyone can listen.
In another recent interview, however, Wozniak offered a more in-depth look at his thoughts on government snooping.
Photo: The DEMO Conference/cc/flickr
A chance run-in with Wozniak at an airport last week offered Spanish language technological news site FayerWayer the opportunity to get the tech giant's thoughts on the widespread government spying exposed by Snowden. In the interview, Wozniak lamented the current state of surveillance in the U.S..
When asked what he thought about the NSA's PRISM program, Wozniak said:
I was brought up, for example, and my dad taught me that other countries when they got prisoners in a war, they tortured them. But we Americans didn't torture them; we gave them good food and clothing and everything. And I was so proud of my country, you know? And now I find out it's just the opposite, you know.
And I just wish all these things I thought about the Constitution that made us so good as people -- they're kinda nothing. They all disolved with the Patriot Act.
There's all these laws that say we can just sorta call anything terrorism and do anything we want without all these rights of courts to get in and say we aren't doing the wrong things.
There's not even a free, open court anymore. And I read the Constitution and I don't know how all this stuff happened. It's so clear what the Constitution says. It's extremely clear in the Bill of Rights. One thing after another, after another. It just got overturned, and that's what a king does.
The king just goes out and has anyone rounded up, killed, put in secret prisons.
When I was brought up, I was taught that communist Russia was the ones that were gonna kill us and bomb our country and all this. And communist Russia was so bad because they followed their people, they snooped on them, they arrested them, they put them in secret prisons, they disappeared them. These kind of things were part of Russia.
You know, we're getting more and more like that. [...]
Look at the guy who just turned over the information on what the NSA program was.
He said that anyone like him sitting at a terminal could instantly go and grab all the data of anyone they felt like, with no courts [...] no warrants, nobody having to approve it.
That means there's a thousand people in the CIA that could just sit and whoever they want ... they could just go look at.
That sort of structure is wrong. But troubles come from the top.
Watch Morgan's interview with "Woz" below:
by Nordic » Sat Jun 22, 2013 10:57 pm
by stickdog99 » Sun Jun 23, 2013 1:19 am
by Nordic » Sun Jun 23, 2013 4:32 am
by seemslikeadream » Sun Jun 23, 2013 8:24 am
WikiLeaks Statement On Edward Snowden’s Exit From Hong Kong
Sunday June 23, 13:00
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Mr Edward Snowden, the American whistleblower who exposed evidence of a global surveillance regime conducted by US and UK intelligence agencies, has left Hong Kong legally. He is bound for a democratic nation via a safe route for the purposes of asylum, and is being escorted by diplomats and legal advisors from WikiLeaks.
Mr Snowden requested that WikiLeaks use its legal expertise and experience to secure his safety. Once Mr Snowden arrives at his final destination his request will be formally processed.
Former Spanish Judge Mr Baltasar Garzon, legal director of Wikileaks and lawyer for Julian Assange has made the following statement:
"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden’s rights and protecting him as a person. What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people".
Hong Kong lets Snowden leave to Moscow, with Cuba among possible destinations
By James Pomfret
HONG KONG | Sun Jun 23, 2013 7:42am EDT
(Reuters) - A former contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency, charged by the United States with espionage, was allowed to leave Hong Kong on Sunday, his final destination as yet unknown, because a U.S. request to have him arrested did not comply with the law, the Hong Kong government said.
Edward Snowden left for Moscow on Sunday and his final destination may be Cuba, Ecuador, Iceland or Venezuela, according to various reports. The move is bound to infuriate Washington, wherever he ends up.
"It's a shocker," said Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University. "I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate."
Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a source at the Aeroflot airline as saying there was a ticket in Snowden's name for a Moscow-Cuba flight. Itar-Tass news agency cited a source as saying Snowden would fly from Havana to Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.
The South China Morning Post said his final destination might be Ecuador or Iceland.
A spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was unaware of Snowden's whereabouts or travel plans.
The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said it helped Snowden find "political asylum in a democratic country". It did not elaborate, other than to say Snowden was "currently over Russian airspace" with WikiLeaks legal advisers.
The White House had no comment on the WikiLeaks posting.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said last week he would not leave the sanctuary of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London even if Sweden stopped pursuing sexual assault claims against him because he feared arrest on the orders of the United States.
U.S. authorities have charged Snowden with theft of U.S. government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorized person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.
The United States had asked Hong Kong, a special administrative region (SAR) of China, to send Snowden home.
"The U.S. government earlier on made a request to the HKSAR government for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr Snowden," the Hong Kong government said in a statement.
"Since the documents provided by the U.S. government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law, the HKSAR government has requested the U.S. government to provide additional information ... As the HKSAR government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong."
It did not say what further information it needed, but said Snowden left Hong Kong "on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel".
CHINA SAYS U.S. "BIGGEST VILLAIN"
Hong Kong, a former British colony, reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 and although it retains an independent legal system, and its own extradition laws, Beijing has control over Hong Kong's foreign affairs. Some observers see Beijing's hand in Snowden's sudden departure.
Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said earlier this month that Russia would consider granting Snowden asylum if he were to ask for it and pro-Kremlin lawmakers supported the idea, but there has been no indication he has done so.
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden, a former employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton who worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii.
The South China Morning Post earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about the United States' spy activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile telephone companies and targeting China's Tsinghua University.
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
In its statement, the Hong Kong government said it had written to the United States "requesting clarification" of earlier reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by U.S. government agencies.
"The HKSAR Government will continue to follow up on the matter, so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong," it said.
China's Xinhua news agency, referring to Snowden's accusations about the hacking of Chinese targets, said they were "clearly troubling signs".
It added: "They demonstrate that the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyber attacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age."
U.S. SEEMINGLY UNAWARE OF IRONY IN ACCUSING SNOWDEN OF SPYING
POSTED BY ANDY BOROWITZ
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The United States government charged former intelligence analyst Edward Snowden with spying on Friday, apparently unaware that in doing so it had created a situation dripping with irony.
At a press conference to discuss the accusations, an N.S.A. spokesman surprised observers by announcing the spying charges against Mr. Snowden with a totally straight face.
“These charges send a clear message,” the spokesman said. “In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”
Seemingly not kidding, the spokesman went on to discuss another charge against Mr. Snowden—the theft of government documents: “The American people have the right to assume that their private documents will remain private and won’t be collected by someone in the government for his own purposes.”
“Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy,” added the spokesman, apparently serious.
HKSAR Government issues statement on Edward Snowden
***************************************************
The HKSAR Government today (June 23) issued the following statement on Mr Edward Snowden:
Mr Edward Snowden left Hong Kong today (June 23) on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel.
The US Government earlier on made a request to the HKSAR Government for the issue of a provisional warrant of arrest against Mr Snowden. Since the documents provided by the US Government did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law, the HKSAR Government has requested the US Government to provide additional information so that the Department of Justice could consider whether the US Government's request can meet the relevant legal conditions. As the HKSAR Government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.
The HKSAR Government has already informed the US Government of Mr Snowden's departure.
Meanwhile, the HKSAR Government has formally written to the US Government requesting clarification on earlier reports about the hacking of computer systems in Hong Kong by US government agencies. The HKSAR Government will continue to follow up on the matter so as to protect the legal rights of the people of Hong Kong.
Ends/Sunday, June 23, 2013
Issued at HKT 16:05
NSA leaker Snowden arrives in Moscow en route to 'democratic country' with WikiLeaks help
Get short URL Published time: June 23, 2013 07:47
Edited time: June 23, 2013 13:19
The plane carrying whistleblower Edward Snowden has landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport. The former CIA contractor, who left Hong Kong in a bid to elude US extradition on espionage charges, is on his way to a ‘democratic country’ via Russia.
Earlier, a spokesperson from the Hong Kong government confirmed that Edward Snowden had "legally and voluntarily" left the country.
“Mr. Edward Snowden left Hong Kong today (June 23) on his own accord for a third country through a lawful and normal channel,” said the Hong Kong government in a press release. The statement also said the documents for Snowden’s extradition submitted by Washington “did not fully comply with the legal requirements under Hong Kong law.”
“As the HKSAR Government has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for a provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr. Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.”
WikiLeaks legal aid
Whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks has rallied behind Snowden and said they are assisting him in his bid for political asylum in a “democratic country.” The group announced on Twitter that they helped obtain “travel documents” and ensured his safe exit from Hong Kong. A member of the WikiLeaks legal team is also accompanying the NSA leaker on his flight to Moscow.
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