"Russia balks at US call for Snowden’s extradition; Putin says he is ‘free man’; still at Moscow airport" by David M. Herszenhorn, Peter Baker and Rick Gladstone | New York Times, June 26, 2013
MOSCOW — President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia appeared Tuesday to rule out sending Edward J. Snowden back to the United States to face espionage charges, leaving him in limbo even as Moscow and the United States seemed to be making an effort to prevent a Cold War-style standoff from escalating.
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Snowden Stuck at Russian Airport
I don't want to play the "Where's Snowden?" game the AmeriKan media seems to like so much, sorry. I hope he finds his way to safety, but I'm more interested in what he has to say than where he is.
UPDATE: Snowden claims Web companies gave NSA 'direct access' to systems in new video clip
New Snowden leak: Australia’s place in US spying web
In his first public comments on the case, Putin said that Snowden — the former National Security Agency contractor who leaked documents about US surveillance programs — had committed no crime on Russian soil and was “a free man” who could choose his own destination. “We can only extradite some foreign nationals to the countries with which we have the relevant international agreements on extradition,” he added. “With the United States, we have no such agreement.”
Even as US officials remained angry at China for letting Snowden fly to Moscow, however, they and their Russian counterparts toned down the red-hot language that threatened a deeper rupture in relations.
China should be angry at the U.S. for hacking the hell out of them.
Putin said he saw little to gain in the conflict. “It’s like shearing a piglet,” he said. “There’s a lot of squealing and very little wool.” Some US officials interpreted the comment as a positive signal and speculated that Snowden would be sent to another country that could turn him over.
Yet the Russian president’s remarks during an official visit to Finland also underscored what may be the lasting damage the case has caused for US relations with both Moscow and Beijing. In noting that Snowden viewed himself as a “human rights activist” who “struggles for freedom of information,” Putin made clear that it would be harder for President Obama to claim the moral high ground when he presses foreign leaders to stop repressing dissenters and halt cyberattacks.
Not just harder, impossible.
In the days since Snowden fled Hong Kong for Moscow, the Russians and the Chinese have seized both on his revelations about surveillance and the fact that the United States is seeking his arrest to make the case for a you-do-it-too argument. Igor Morozov, a Russian lawmaker, wrote that the case exposed a US “policy of double standards.” Xinhua, the state-owned Chinese news agency, editorialized that “the United States, which has long been trying to play innocent as a victim of cyberattacks, has turned out to be the biggest villain in our age.”
Until lately, the United States seemed to have Beijing on the defensive, with evidence that Chinese military units were behind recent computer attacks. Then Snowden told a Hong Kong newspaper that the United States had been engaged in a vigorous hacking campaign in China.
Related: Sunday Globe Specials: Chinese Chat
Damn Chinese are so calm it is hard to see the anger.
Obama has insisted that there is a difference between common espionage and China’s behavior. “Every country in the world, large and small, engages in intelligence gathering,” he told Charlie Rose in an interview on PBS. But intelligence gathering is different from “a hacker directly connected with the Chinese government or the Chinese military breaking into Apple’s software systems to see if they can obtain the designs for the latest Apple product,” he said.
“That’s theft,” the president added, “and we can’t tolerate that.”
The hypocrisy knows no bounds.
China does not acknowledge the theft, or buy Obama’s argument. “The timing couldn’t be worse for Obama,” one senior Asian diplomat said. “I know he draws distinctions between stealing intellectual property and spying, but for most people that difference is not significant.”
The timing is also bad with Russia, which Obama is depending on to help resolve the war in Syria.
He doesn't have to worry now. That war is lost. Assad won.
When Secretary of State John Kerry criticized Russia on Monday as a repressive country, he personally offended Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov. On Tuesday, Lavrov lashed out at the United States, saying, “There are no legal grounds for this kind of behavior from American officials toward us.”
Our top diplomat!
Oh, well, things like that are going to happen when you have your head up Israel's ass.
Within hours, though, the two sides appeared to pull back. Kerry told reporters traveling with him in Saudi Arabia that the United States was “not looking for a confrontation.”
He was looking for a hug.
See: Slow Saturday Special: Egyptian Epilogue
He got one.
Putin, who is scheduled to host Obama in St. Petersburg and Moscow in September, said he hoped the Snowden case would “not affect in any way the businesslike character of our relations with the United States.”
The Obama administration was relying on Deputy Secretary of State William J. Burns, a low-key, respected former ambassador to Russia, to negotiate with Moscow. The administration argued Tuesday that even though the United States and Russia did not have an extradition treaty, Washington had regularly sent back Russians sought by Moscow. Over the past five years, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday, the United States had returned 1,700 Russian citizens, with more than 500 of them being “criminal deportations.”
In Moscow, Snowden was being compared to Cold War dissidents. “I have never heard of any case when the United States would extradite someone’s fugitive spy,” said Vlacheslav Nikonov, a member of Parliament. “It just never happened. Why would they expect that would happen?”
Snowden remained in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. Putin said Russian intelligence agencies had not questioned him, although some independent analysts cast doubt on that assertion....
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Latest related:
Slow Saturday Special: Globe Leaks Galore
Greenwald Exposes Gregory
So where can Snowden go?
"Snowden mystery deepens; Ecuador considers request" by Maria Danilova and Sean Yoong | Associated Press, June 27, 2013
A diminished possibility.
MOSCOW — Moscow’s main airport swarmed with journalists from around the globe Wednesday, but the man they were looking for, National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, was nowhere to be seen.
The mystery of his whereabouts only deepened a day after President Vladimir Putin said Snowden was in the transit area of Sheremetyevo Airport.
There were ordinary scenes of duty free shopping, snoozing travelers, and tourists sipping coffee but no trace of America’s most famous fugitive. If Putin’s statement is true, it means that Snowden has effectively lived a life of airport limbo since his weekend flight from Hong Kong, especially with his American passport now revoked by US authorities.
Adding to the uncertainty, Ecuador’s foreign minister, Ricardo Patino, said it could take up to two months to decide whether to grant asylum to Snowden, and the Latin American nation would take into consideration its relations with the United States. Patino compared Snowden’s case to that of Julian Assange, the founder of anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, who has been given asylum in London’s Ecuadorean Embassy.
“It took us two months to make a decision in the case of Assange, so do not expect us to make a decision sooner this time,’’ Patino told reporters during a visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. However, later in the day he said on Twitter that the decision could happen ‘‘in a day, a week, or, as happened with Assange, it could take two months.’’
Snowden, who is charged with violating American espionage laws, fled Hong Kong over the weekend and flew to Russia. He booked a seat on a Havana-bound flight Monday en route to Venezuela, but didn’t board the plane. His ultimate destination was believed to be Ecuador.
Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa shot back at critics on Wednesday, taking special aim at a Washington Post editorial that described him as ‘‘the autocratic leader of tiny, impoverished Ecuador’’ and accused him of a double standard for considering asylum for Snowden while stifling critics at home.
As a contractor for the NSA, Snowden gained access to documents that he gave to the Post and the Guardian to expose what he contends are privacy violations by an authoritarian government.
Putin insisted Tuesday that Snowden has stayed in the transit zone without passing through Russian immigration and is free to travel wherever he likes. But the US move to annul Snowden’s passport may have severely complicated his travel plans. Exiting the transit area would require either boarding a plane or passing through border control, both of which require a valid passport or other documentation.
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"Obama seeks to play down Edward Snowden’s importance; Says he has not discussed case with Russia or China" by Ellen Barry, Michael D. Shear and Rick Gladstone | New York Times, June 28, 2013
MOSCOW — President Barack Obama sought on Thursday to minimize the significance of a fugitive former national security contractor wanted for leaking government secrets, calling him a “29-year-old hacker” and suggesting that US frustration with China and Russia for apparently helping him evade extradition was not worth damaging relations with those countries.
Damage control.
Obama’s remarks — his most extensive comments on the fugitive, Edward J. Snowden, who has been ensconced out of sight at a Moscow airport — came as new confusion swirled over Snowden’s ultimate destination....
Obama, speaking to reporters in Dakar, Senegal, at the start of a trip to Africa, said he had not called the presidents of China or Russia on the Snowden case, because he did not want to elevate its importance. He said other nations should simply be willing to return Snowden to the United States as a matter of law enforcement.
“This is something that routinely is dealt with,” Obama said. “This is not exceptional from a legal perspective. I’m not going to have one case suddenly being elevated to the point where I have to do wheeling and dealing and trading.”
He rejected the suggestion that he might order the military to intercept any plane that might be carrying Snowden.
“I’m not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker,” Obama said.
Interesting comment in light of what will soon happen.
Snowden’s disclosures of US surveillance abroad have embarrassed the administration and raised debate about the government’s invasion of privacy.
A matter-of-fact admission that privacy was violated.
Snowden and his supporters, including the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks have called him a whistle-blower and a hero. Federal prosecutors have charged him with violating espionage laws, and some US legislators have said he is a traitor....
Officials in Ecuador also announced they were unilaterally renouncing US preferential trade privileges given to the country. Those privileges, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, were to expire at the end of July, and some doubted Congress would renewed them due to the countries’ strained relationship. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman warned Ecuador on Wednesday its “trade preferences could be revoked” if it granted Snowden’s asylum request.
It's called blackmail.
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That must be why there was nothing about Snowden the next two days.
"European officials rankled by report of US spying; Revelation could jeopardize talks with Washington" by Stephen Castle | New York Times, July 01, 2013
LONDON — European officials reacted angrily Sunday to a report that the United States had been spying on its European Union allies, saying the claims could threaten talks with Washington on an important trade agreement.
The latest allegations surfaced in the online edition of the German news magazine Der Spiegel, which reported that US agencies had monitored the offices of the EU in New York and Washington.
Much to the shame of the AmeriKan media.
Der Spiegel said information about the spying appeared in documents obtained by Edward J. Snowden, the former American intelligence contractor, and seen in part by the magazine.
The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, said in a statement that he was “deeply worried and shocked.”
“If the allegations prove to be true, it would be an extremely serious matter which will have a severe impact on EU-US relations,” he said, adding that he wanted a “full clarification” and would demand “further information speedily from the US authorities.”
****************************
According to Der Spiegel, the National Security Agency installed listening devices in EU diplomatic offices in downtown Washington and tapped into its computer network.
“In this way, the Americans were able to access discussions in EU rooms as well as e-mails and internal documents on computers,” the article said. It said that the bloc’s representative offices at the United Nations in New York were similarly targeted.
The news magazine also suggested that eavesdropping took place in Brussels, in the Justus Lipsius Building, where representatives of EU members have their offices....
We did it to the whole world, and have been for years.
Snowden’s fate remained murky on Sunday....
Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA and National Security Agency, said Sunday the US government should release more information about its secretive surveillance programs to reassure Americans that their privacy rights are being protected.
In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation,’’ Hayden said he believes people would be more comfortable with the programs that gather phone and Internet records from around the world if they knew more about how the process is carried out and why....
Then why were we not told long ago, why is it such a flap, and btw, this isn't the rabble like you and me, folks, this is governments and the EU they spied on.
To longtime European diplomats, the new spying claims may come as little surprise. There were reports in 2003 that foreign intelligence agencies had planted listening devices in the Justus Lipsius Building, and a number of intelligence officers are thought to be among the thousands of diplomats working in Brussels....
And WAY BEFORE!
Rebecca Harms, a president of the Greens Party in the European Parliament, said, “The last few days have shown how urgently we need an international agreement on data protection.”
To be written by the same nations doing all the spying?
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"Obama defends intelligence gathering as allies protest" by David Nakamura | Washington Post, July 02, 2013
DAR ES SALAAM, Tanzania — President Obama defended US intelligence-gathering tactics Monday following a report that the United States conducted electronic monitoring of European Union offices and computer networks.
In Asia, Secretary of State John Kerry said he was taken by surprise when EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton questioned him about the reported eavesdropping.
The lying from this government is really beyond belief. Every word that comes out is a f***ing lie!
The German magazine Der Spiegel said Sunday that the conduct was described in portions of documents from 2010 provided by Edward Snowden, the former US National Security Agency contractor whose earlier revelations about international NSA surveillance have caused a firestorm of questions and criticism in the United States.
And beyond.
The report said the agency had placed listening devices in EU offices in Washington and New York, monitored phone lines at the EU’s Brussels headquarters, and breached its computer network.
Der Spiegel said the NSA described the 27-country bloc as a ‘‘target.’’ The report has prompted outrage from top European officials.
At a news conference Monday during his African tour, Obama said he has asked aides to look more closely at the revelations in the story, and he declined to comment on the specifics.
????? He doesn't know what is going on in his own f***ing government?
But more generally, the president said all spy agencies gather information beyond that which is publicly available from large media organizations.
‘‘They are seeking additional insight beyond what’s available through open sources,’’ he said. ‘‘And if that weren’t the case, then there would be no use for an intelligence service. And I guarantee you that in European capitals, there are people who are interested in, if not what I had for breakfast, at least what my talking points might be should I end up meeting with their leaders. That’s how intelligence services operate.’’
And that makes it okay and right?
The president insisted that there was nothing sinister about the NSA’s methods, emphasizing that any information he is given is less important than his personal conversations with European leaders.
Wow, he is something. Then why spend all the taxpayer money on these not so informative endeavors? Good God, man!
European officials and politicians have reacted furiously to the spying reports, with some saying the revelations may harm efforts that began this month to negotiate a transatlantic free trade zone, a high foreign policy priority for the Obama administration.
‘‘We cannot accept this type of behavior between partners and allies,’’ French President Francois Hollande said Monday, Le Figaro reported. ‘‘We ask that it stop immediately.’’
Nope.
**********************
In Berlin, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she is ‘‘alienated’’ by the alleged eavesdropping. ‘‘We are no longer in the Cold War,’’ spokesman Steffen Siebert said. US Ambassador to Germany Philip Murphy was summoned to the Foreign Ministry for consultations on the issue.
The allegations made by Der Spiegel are the latest in a string of revelations on the tactics of the NSA, which also has been collecting massive amounts of Americans’ cellphone records and monitoring computer records of big Internet companies such as Facebook and Google.
Snowden is presumed to be in Russia. Obama declined to confirm a report that he and Russian President Vladimir Putin have asked their law enforcement agencies to negotiate a return of Snowden to the United States.
Obama also sought to reaffirm the alliance between the United States and the European Union.
What, did he say we will turn over information to their governments?
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"EU trade talks expected, despite spying allegations; Report that US eavesdrops sours mood in Europe" by Raf Casert | Associated Press, July 03, 2013
BRUSSELS — The European Union confirmed Tuesday that free-trade negotiations with the United States would kick off as planned next week, despite widespread concerns about alleged US eavesdropping that targeted EU diplomats.
Meaning all the "anger" was a bunch of huffing and puffing.
The European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, which leads the negotiations on behalf of its 28 members, said the planned start of talks in Washington on Monday ‘‘should not be affected’’ by the surveillance scandal....
I'm so glad the Europeans stood up to tyranny as they have so often in the past.
The talks are likely to take at least a few years....
On Sunday, an apparent leak from former US intelligence systems analyst Edward Snowden, reported in Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, allegedly showed that the National Security Agency bugged the European Union’s diplomatic offices in Washington and infiltrated its computer network.
The magazine said the NSA also listened in on the EU’s mission to the United Nations in New York and used its secure facilities at NATO headquarters in Brussels to dial into telephone maintenance systems, allowing it to intercept senior EU officials’ calls and Internet traffic.
Yeah, they WERE LISTENING to YOUR CALLS!
France’s president, Francois Hollande, on Monday suggested the scandal could derail the free-trade negotiations....
French fart mist.
France had been reluctant to start the talks anyway. It had lobbied to keep the movie and television businesses out of the talks, to shield Europe’s audiovisual industry from Hollywood.
Yet EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht said hinging the start of talks on political issues like surveillance would amount to the European Union’s shooting itself in the foot. The EU, he said, was entering the talks out of self-interest....
He meant $elf-interest.
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"Europe wants to pair talks on trade, NSA; Anger about US surveillance may derail schedule" by Geir Moulson and Sylvie Corbet | Associated Press, July 04, 2013
I love deceptive headlines (or earlier lies), don't you?
BERLIN — European countries agreed Wednesday that talks on a free-trade deal with the United States should start in parallel with discussions about NSA surveillance — addressing concerns raised by France.
President Francois Hollande of France insisted after meeting with Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel, and other European leaders that trade talks can start only ‘‘at the same time, at the same date’’ as talks with the United States on concerns about its intelligence activities.
That raises questions as to whether the launch of the trade talks will go ahead early next week, as originally scheduled. France had called for a two-week delay.
The head of the European Union’s executive commission, which will lead the trade talks, said US Attorney General Eric Holder had offered to set up ‘‘as soon as possible’’ US-European working groups on intelligence issues....
Reports last weekend that the US National Security Agency bugged European Union diplomatic offices in Washington and infiltrated its computer network angered European officials, who noted that mutual trust is needed in talks on such a huge trade deal....
Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany supported efforts to begin the trade negotiations as planned....
That doesn't look like a derailed schedule to me.
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"At July 4 party, French official decries US spying; Paris, too, mines electronic data, report alleges" by Elaine Ganley | Associated Press, July 05, 2013
PARIS — France’s top security official publicly dressed down the United States at the American ambassador’s July 4 garden party, denouncing alleged US ‘‘espionage’’ of France and other countries, while the European Parliament voted to open an investigation.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls was a guest of honor at the fete hosted by Ambassador Charles Rivkin Thursday. In a speech before the guests, he said that ‘‘in the name of our friendship, we owe each other honesty. We must say things clearly, directly, frankly.’’
He said that President Francois Hollande’s demand for clear and precise explanations about reports of US spying are justified because ‘‘such practices, if proven, do not have their place between allies and partners.’’
On the same day that Valls was leveling his criticism, Le Monde reported that France’s intelligence services have put in place a giant electronic surveillance gathering network.
How do you say hypocrisy in French?
Citing no sources, the newspaper said France’s Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, the country’s foreign intelligence agency, systematically collects information about all electronic data sent by computers and telephones in France, as well as between France and abroad.
It's WHAT WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES DO!
According to Le Monde, data on ‘‘all e-mails, SMSs, telephone calls, Facebook and Twitter posts’’ are collected and stored in a massive three-floor underground bunker at the DGSE’s headquarters in Paris.
Remember that global surveillance grid bloggers said was coming? It's here.
The paper specified that it is the communications’ metadata — such as when a call was made and where an author was when she sent an e-mail — that is being archived, not their content.
Officials at the DGSE did not answer phone calls or e-mails seeking comment Thursday.
The vast archive, which Le Monde says amounts to tens of millions of gigabytes, is accessible to France’s other spy agencies, including military intelligence, domestic intelligence, Paris police, and a special financial crimes task force.
Le Monde compared the French digital dragnet to PRISM, the US National Security Agency program which has most caught the imagination of Internet users. But PRISM appears aimed at allowing US spies to peel data off the servers of Silicon Valley firms, whereas the program described in Le Monde appears to be fed through the mass interception of electronic data bouncing across the world.
Also, PRISM can apparently be used to collect content, not just metadata.
Translation: you were lied to, Americans -- again.
Le Monde said the French surveillance program relies on spy satellites, listening stations in French overseas territories or former colonies such as Mayotte or Djibouti, and information harvested from undersea cables; all three methods are long familiar to the NSA.
A French lawmaker played down the report, saying France’s surveillance gathering system is not comparable with the NSA’s.
Is there really anything else to say?
Patricia Adam, a lawmaker who until last year headed Parliament’s intelligence committee, said French spies ‘‘are line fishing, not trawling’’ the vast oceans of data thrown up by mobile phones, e-mails, and Internet communication.
In a separate development Thursday, Valls said France had rejected an asylum request from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. Snowden is believed to be stuck in a Moscow airport transit area, seeking asylum from more than a dozen countries....
Snowden also won’t be getting asylum from Italy....
In Strasbourg, the European Parliament agreed to start an investigation into the allegations that European Union offices were among those bugged and called for more protection for whistleblowers.
But let's talk trade!
European countries agreed Wednesday that planned talks on free trade with the United States must start in parallel with discussions on NSA surveillance. Those talks are still on track to begin next week.
Some Icelandic lawmakers have introduced a proposal in Parliament to grant Snowden citizenship, but the idea has received minimal support.
Ogmundur Jonasson, whose liberal Left-Green Party is backing the proposal along with the Pirate Party and Brighter Future Party, put the issue before the Judicial Affairs Committee.
The tactic of granting citizenship to asylum-seekers helped get eccentric chess master Bobby Fischer to Iceland from Japan in 2005 to escape US prosecution for breaking sanctions imposed on the former Yugoslavia.
Snowden has applied for asylum in Venezuela, Bolivia, and 18 other countries, according to WikiLeaks, a secret-spilling website that has been advising him. Like Iceland, many Eurpean countries on the list said he would have to make his request on their soil.
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Yeah, I had almost forgotten about Snowden.
"No asylum if Snowden leaks continue, Putin says; Insists Russia will not extradite him to the US" by Andrew Roth and Ellen Barry | New York Times, July 02, 2013
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin said Monday that Edward J. Snowden, the former national security staff member accused of espionage, would not receive political asylum in Russia unless he stopped publishing classified documents that hurt US interests.
At a news conference here, Putin said that since it appeared Snowden was going to continue publishing leaks, his chances of staying in Russia were slim. Putin also pushed back against efforts by the United States to persuade the Russian government to extradite Snowden, making it clear that Russia would not comply.
“Russia never gives up anyone to anybody and is not planning to,” Putin said.
Snowden applied for political asylum in Russia late Sunday, according to Kim Shevchenko, an official at the Russian consulate at Sheremetyevo Airport. Shevchenko said Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks activist who is traveling with Snowden, hand-delivered his request to the consulate in Terminal F of the airport....
Snowden appeared to break his silence Monday for the first time since he flew to Moscow eight days ago. WikiLeaks issued a statement attributed to Snowden that denounced President Obama.
“The Obama administration has now adopted the strategy of using citizenship as a weapon,” the statement attributed to Snowden said. “Although I am convicted of nothing, it has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person.’’
The statement posted on the website of WikiLeaks also accused Obama and the US government of seeking to intimidate him and deceive the world because of his disclosures about the vast global surveillance efforts of US intelligence agencies.
With Ecuador, his original destination, evidently wavering, Snowden’s options seem to have narrowed, and his stopover at Sheremetyevo Airport now threatens to stretch into weeks. Putin referred to this uncertainty Monday.
“If he wants to go somewhere and they accept him, please, be my guest,” he said. “If he wants to stay here, there is one condition: He must cease his work aimed at inflicting damage to our American partners, as strange as it may sound from my lips.”
But Putin also noted that Snowden seemed intent on continuing to publish classified documents that damage the United States.
“Because he sees himself as a human rights activist and a freedom fighter for people’s rights, apparently he is not intending to cease this work,” Putin said. “So he must choose for himself a country to go to and where to move. When that will happen, I unfortunately don’t know.”
A Foreign Ministry official told The Los Angeles Times on Monday that Snowden had appealed to 15 countries for asylum, handing over the paperwork at a Monday morning meeting at the airport. The official characterized the applications as “a desperate measure” on Snowden’s part, after Ecuadoran officials said that the Ecuadoran travel document he is using was invalid.
Shevchenko said Snowden’s application for asylum in Russia had not received a response from the Foreign Ministry as of Monday evening.
In mid-June, shortly after Snowden disclosed he was the source of the leak about the government’s widespread collection of private Internet and telephone data, Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri S. Peskov, signaled openness to granting Snowden political asylum, telling a reporter from Kommersant that “if we receive such a request, it will be considered.”
But over the week that Snowden has spent at Sheremetyevo airport, top Russian officials have tried to remain neutral on whether he should be granted asylum, perhaps because they are wary of the damage it would do to their relationship with the United States.
Top officials have said the case does not directly involve them, since Snowden has not passed through immigration control and remains in a part of the airport that is technically not Russian territory.
A spokeswoman for the White House, Caitlin Hayden, asked if a decision by Russia to grant Snowden asylum would upset plans for Obama to visit in September, called that “very hypothetical.”
She is the daughter of the aforementioned Michael Hayden, the former Bush administration member.
“As we’ve said, we do not want this to have a negative impact on the bilateral relationship, and we want to build on our good law enforcement cooperation, particularly since Boston,” Hayden said, referring to the Boston Marathon bombings.
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Related:
"A German court convicted a married couple on Tuesday of spying for Russia over more than two decades and handed them prison sentences for passing European Union and NATO secrets to Moscow. The couple’s activities — including dead-letter drops and radio communications with Russia — sounded like something out of the Cold War, but the case centered to a large extent on their actions in the final years before their arrest in 2011."
And nothing they did damaged national security.
"Few paths left for Snowden as more countries rebuff him" by David M. Herszenhorn and Andrew Roth | New York Times, July 03, 2013
MOSCOW — Venezuela might ultimately agree to shelter Snowden....
“He did not kill anyone, and he did not plant a bomb,” President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela said, according to Russian news services. “He only said a big truth to prevent wars.”
The president of Bolivia, Evo Morales, signaled that Snowden would be welcome there as well.
But Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Norway, and Spain said that requests for asylum must be made in person on their territories and therefore Snowden had not properly submitted an application. India and Brazil said they had rejected Snowden’s request outright. Poland said that it had received an application that was not properly submitted, but that it would have been rejected in any event.
Officials in Italy, which also received an asylum application, said they were evaluating it. But there was little expectation that Italy would grant Snow-den’s request.
Snowden, 30, has been charged in the United States with violations of espionage laws for leaking classified information about the vast global surveillance operations of US intelligence agencies. WikiLeaks, the antisecrecy group that has been assisting Snowden, has described him as a whistleblower who exposed US abuses of privacy. The Obama administration has described him as a hacker who should be extradited and prosecuted.
That's confirmation that he worked for the US government.
There had been speculation that President Vladimir Putin of Russia and Maduro would negotiate terms for Snowden to leave the Sheremetyevo transit area, his home since arriving from Hong Kong on June 23.
He had apparently intended to board a connecting flight headed for Latin America. In the interim, the United States announced that his US passport had been revoked, leaving him in a geopolitical limbo, stripped of any valid travel document and unable to leave the transit zone.
Russia has warm ties with Venezuela, a major arms customer and energy partner, which sees the alliance as a way of countering the United States’ influence in Latin America.
As if we had influence anymore. They all hate us down there.
The newspaper Izvestia speculated Monday that Maduro could spirit Snowden away on his presidential plane when he leaves Russia on Tuesday. Putin responded blankly to that theory.
“As to the possible departure of Mr. Snowden with some official delegation,” he said, “I know nothing.”
A spokesman for Putin, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated that Russia had no intention of extraditing Snowden to the United States, where the death penalty is a possibility for him if he is convicted.
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And remember what Obama said about downing the planes?
"Plane diversion causes uproar; Bolivia denies Snowden was on president’s flight" by William Neuman, Rick Gladstone and Melissa Eddy | New York Times, July 04, 2013
CARACAS, Venezuela — The geopolitical storm churned up by Edward J. Snowden, the fugitive US intelligence contractor, continued to spread Wednesday as Latin American leaders roundly condemned the refusal to let Bolivia’s president fly over several European nations, rallying to his side after Bolivian officials said the president’s plane had been thwarted because of suspicions that Snowden was on board.
Calling it a grave offense to their entire region, Latin American officials said they would hold an emergency meeting of the Union of South American Nations on Thursday.
President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina said the episode had “vestiges of a colonialism that we thought was completely overcome,” describing it as a humiliating act that affected all of South America.
President Rafael Correa of Ecuador said in a post on Twitter that the situation was “EXTREMELY serious” and called it an “affront to all America,” referring to Latin America.
The diplomatic and political tempest over Snowden and his revelations of far-reaching US espionage programs has swept up adversaries and allies from across the globe.
Tensions emerged between the United States and the two major powers to which Snowden has fled, China and Russia, over their refusal to detain him and turn him over to the U.S. authorities.
The discord soon spread to some of America’s closest allies in Europe.
Have you noticed there has been no beef or bitching with or from Israel?
After reports based on documents Showden compiled as a contractor for the National Security Agency showed that the United States had been spying on an array of embassies and diplomatic missions, including the European Union’s offices in Washington and New York, the outrage rattled prospects for a trans-Atlantic free-trade agreement.
The United States and Europe have emphasized the importance of the trade talks, saying they would create the world’s largest free trade zone and stimulate growth. On Wednesday, however, France said it would be “wise” for the talks to be suspended for two weeks to give Washington time to supply information about its spying program, while a German government spokesman, Steffen Seibert, told reporters, “We want a free-trade deal, and we will start the negotiations.’’
Hours later, José Manuel Barroso, head of the union’s governing commission, announced a compromise in which trade talks could start as planned, but only if the United States opened talks at the same time on its intelligence operations.
Now the uproar has encompassed Latin America as well....
The latest burst of outrage came in response to the diversion of a plane carrying Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, as he was flying home from Moscow on Tuesday. He had attended a meeting of natural-gas exporting nations and had told Russian television that he was open to giving asylum to Snowden....
They should be outraged. This is the president of a sovereign nation.
After taking off from Moscow, Morales’s plane sought permission to land in France to refuel, according to Carlos Romero, the minister of government in La Paz. But France refused and denied the plane permission to enter French airspace, Bolivian officials said. Portugal had previously refused to let the plane land for refueling in Lisbon.
Morales was given permission to land in Vienna, where he spent the night.
Yeah, he spent the night there as the PLANE was SEARCHED! Somehow the Globe left that out.
Officials said that, as a new flight plan was being drawn up, Italy also denied permission for Morales’s plane to use its air space. Bolivia’s foreign minister, David Choquehuanca, said the refusals stemmed from “unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on the plane.”
After the plane touched down in Vienna, the foreign minister of Bolivia, David Choquehuanca, said of the refusal by some European countries to allow the president’s plane in their airspace: “They say it was due to technical issues, but after getting explanations from some authorities we found that there appeared to be some unfounded suspicions that Mr. Snowden was on the plane.
“We don’t know who invented this big lie,” Choquehuanca said at a news conference in La Paz....
Yeah we do.
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"Jet diversion ignites ire at US" Associated Press, July 05, 2013
LA PAZ, Bolivia — President Evo Morales said Thursday that the rerouting of his plane over suspicions that National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden was on board was a plot by the United States to intimidate him and other Latin American leaders.
Morales’s return late Wednesday night followed a dramatic, unplanned 14-hour layover in Vienna that ignited an international diplomatic row. Bolivia’s government said France, Spain, and Portugal refused to let the president’s plane through their airspace, forcing it to land in Austria. He was flying home from a summit in Russia.
Latin American leaders were outraged by the incident, calling it a violation of national sovereignty and a slap in the face for a region that has suffered through humiliations by Europe and several US-backed military coups.
I tend to think of it as a blow below the belt line, but....
Several South American presidents were headed to the Bolivian city of Cochabamba on Thursday to show their support for the leftist leader.
Related: Thousands Of Protesters Outside The U.S. Embassy In Bolivia
That's a lot of support.
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"Edward Snowden receives two asylum offers" Associated Press, July 06, 2013
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — The presidents of Nicaragua and Venezuela offered Friday to grant asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, one day after leftist South American leaders gathered to denounce the rerouting of Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane over Europe amid reports that the American was aboard.
Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, said, ‘‘We have the sovereign right to help a person who felt remorse after finding out how the United States was using technology to spy on the whole world, and especially its European allies.’’
That's the story, not where is Snowden.
The offers came following a flap about the rerouting of Morales’s plane in Europe earlier this week amid reports that Snowden might have been on board.
Gee, who would have put those out?
Spain on Friday said it had been warned along with other European countries that Snowden, a former US intelligence worker, was aboard the Bolivian presidential plane, an acknowledgement that the manhunt for the fugitive leaker had something to do with the plane’s unexpected diversion to Austria.
Warned by who?
It is unclear whether the United States, which has told its European allies that it wants Snowden back, warned Madrid about the Bolivian president’s plane. US officials will not detail their conversations with European countries, except to say that they have stated their general position that they want Snowden back.
Ha-ha-ha-ha! Yeah, right, it's unclear.
President Obama has publicly displayed a relaxed attitude toward Snowden’s movements, saying last month that he wouldn’t be ‘‘scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker.’’
No, planes will just be refused permission to land.
But the drama surrounding the flight of Morales, whose plane was abruptly rerouted to Vienna after apparently being denied permission to fly over France, suggests that pressure is being applied behind the scenes.
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo told Spanish National Television that ‘‘they told us that the information was clear, that he was inside.’’
They also said Saddam had nuclear weapons.
Meanwhile, Icelandic lawmakers introduced a proposal on Thursday to grant immediate citizenship to Snowden, but the idea received minimal support.
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"Venezuela called Edward Snowden’s last chance" by Lynn Berry | Associated Press, July 08, 2013
MOSCOW — An influential Russian Parliament member who often speaks for the Kremlin encouraged NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Sunday to accept Venezuela’s offer of asylum.
Alexei Pushkov, who heads the international affairs committee in Russia’s Parliament, posted a message on Twitter saying: ‘‘Venezuela is waiting for an answer from Snowden. This, perhaps, is his last chance to receive political asylum.’’
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Elias Jaua said Saturday his country has not yet been in contact with Snowden, who Russian officials say has been in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since arriving from Hong Kong two weeks ago. He has been unable to travel because the United States annulled his passport.
Jaua said he expects to consult Russian officials Monday on Snowden’s situation.
Pushkov’s comments appeared to indicate that the Kremlin is now eager to be rid of the former National Security Agency systems analyst, whom the United States wants returned to face espionage charges.
For Snowden to leave for South America, he would need Venezuela to issue travel documents, and he would need to find a way to get there. The nearest direct commercial flight from Moscow goes to Havana. The flight goes over Europe and the United States, which could cause complications.
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Oh, about about all those cyberattacks and stuff:
"It’s unclear who exactly was behind the attack, although a man who identified himself as Sven Olaf Kamphuis said he was in touch with the attackers and described them as mainly consisting of disgruntled Russian Internet service providers who had found themselves on Spamhaus’s blacklists. There was no immediate way to verify his claim."
Actually, we NOW KNOW it is the U.S. that is responsible for MOST of the HACKING in this world!
"North, South Korean websites hacked" by Choe Sang-hun | New York Times Syndicate, June 26, 2013
SEOUL — Major government and news media websites in South and North Korea were shut down Tuesday after anonymous hackers claimed to have attacked them on the 63d anniversary of the start of the 1950-53 Korean War.
It remained unclear who the hackers were and whether the attacks on North and South Korea came from the same sources....
Related(?): Cyber-spying ring targeted South Korean, US military
Snowden blew their cover.
Officials from both countries declined to comment on what may have caused the Internet disruptions in the isolated North, where only a handful of people use the Internet and all websites are tightly controlled by the state.
But people who claim to be a global network of hackers called “Anonymous” had warned through Twitter that they would attack North Korean websites Tuesday. Among other things, they criticized North Korea for keeping most of its people off the Internet.
Anonymous, Wikileaks, and the like are obvious intelligence operations.
--more--"
"Workers’ apps have companies on edge; Security issues grow as data get harder to control" by Quentin Hardy | New York Times, March 04, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO —Chinese hackers are one problem. But so are employees who put company information online with their smartphones and tablets.
Once the data leaves the corporate network, protecting it becomes much harder....
Almost no service is invulnerable. In 2011, Chinese hackers obtained access to hundreds of US government accounts on Google’s Gmail. On Saturday, Evernote said user names, e-mail address, and encrypted passwords had been stolen in an attack, requiring the passwords of more than 50 million accounts to be reset.
Even without proof of compromised accounts, such losses can cost a company both money and reputation. According to the Securities and Exchange Commission, unauthorized disclosures of confidential information, whether from unsecured devices, leaky apps, or bad cloud security, must be announced publicly if the information could affect a company’s stock price.
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"Journalist charged with helping hackers" by Paul Elias | Associated Press, March 14, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — Federal officials on Thursday charged a social media editor for the Reuters news service with conspiring with the group ‘‘Anonymous’’ to hack into and alter an online Los Angeles Times news story.
Matthew Keys gave Anonymous members login credentials to the computer network of Tribune Co., which owns the Times, in December 2010, the FBI said. Keys had been fired from a Tribune-owned television station in Sacramento two months earlier.
According to the federal grand jury indictment handed down in Sacramento, a hacker altered a Times news story posted Dec. 14 and 15, 2010, to read ‘‘Pressure builds in House to elect CHIPPY 1337.’’
--more--"
Related: Reuters fires editor accused in hacking
Also see:
Six Zionist Companies Own 96% of the World's Media
Declassified: Massive Israeli manipulation of US media exposed
Operation Mockingbird
Why Am I No Longer Reading the Newspaper?
Double-crossed Keys did they?
And why not turn the violation of your privacy to your benefit?
"Privacy becomes a selling point for Web companies" by Somini Sengupta | New York Times, March 04, 2013
SAN FRANCISCO — Privacy is no longer just a regulatory headache. Increasingly, Internet companies are egging each other on to prove to consumers that their data are safe and in their control.
Too late.
In some instances, established companies are trying to gain market advantage by casting themselves as more privacy-friendly than their rivals. For example, Mozilla, an underdog in the browser market, suggested last week that it would allow its users to disable third-party tracking software altogether.
This looks like so much bulls*** in light of the Snowden revelations. They all handed your stuff over to the government.
At the same time, Web platform companies are setting limits on other companies with which they do business. Last year, for instance, Apple began requiring applications in its operating system to get permission from users before tracking their location or peering into calendars and contacts stored on an iPhone. Also, a host of companies big and small are offering a variety of privacy tools, ranging from ways to encode Facebook posts to ways to secure personal data stored in the cloud.
NSA has the key though.
During a panel at the RSA Conference, a security-focused industry gathering here last week, Brendon Lynch, the chief privacy officer at Microsoft, declared that companies like his had come to appreciate the ‘‘market forces at play with privacy.’’
Microsoft, huh?
‘‘It’s not just privacy advocates and regulators pushing,’’ Lynch said. ‘‘Increasingly, people are concerned more about privacy as technology intersects their life.’’
That statement might sound somewhat rich to those who recall Microsoft’s troubles 10 years ago with European regulators. At that time, it was compelled to make substantial changes in how its online login system, .Net Passport, stored addresses, ages, and other personal details.
Nonetheless, the Redmond, Wash.-based company earlier this year signaled its sensitivity to user privacy by turning on, in the default setting, an antitracking signal in its latest Internet Explorer browser.
Microsoft also took aim at Google with a marketing campaign declaring that consumers were being ‘‘scroogled’’ with targeted advertisements based on their e-mails and search histories. Lynch’s counterpart at Google, Keith Enright, called that marketing campaign ‘‘intellectually dishonest.’’ At the RSA Conference, Enright said Google took pains to secure consumer information and simplify privacy settings.
Joel R. Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham Law School, said Microsoft had made a 180-degree turn in emphasizing consumer data protection.
‘‘You’re seeing more companies trying to do that — develop privacy protecting services,’’ said Reidenberg, whose Center on Law and Information Policy at Fordham has received donations from both Microsoft and Google. ‘‘Platforms recognize they have to deal with privacy. They’re looking at how they can be competitive.’’
‘‘What does privacy mean?’’ Facebook’s chief privacy officer, Erin Egan, asked at the RSA Conference. ‘‘It’s understanding what happens to your data and having the ability to control it.’’
Then there no longer is privacy in AmeriKa.
That very imperative seems to be buoying a cottage industry of privacy start-ups.
A Boston company, Abine, is testing what is effectively the opposite of a Facebook single sign-in for the Web. Instead of exposing your Facebook login credentials to dozens of websites, the company offers a proxy e-mail address or phone number for every transaction. You sign in with the e-mail address and a password you remember; Abine creates one address for an e-commerce site you visit, another for a news site, another for a dating site.
And this is going to co$t how much?
--more--"
I'm so sick of the agenda-pu$hing corporate pre$$.
Related: The Globe and the New Media: Making Profit Off Your Invasion of Privacy
"Microsoft discloses requests from law enforcement agenies worldwide" by Kevin J. O’Brien | New York Times, March 22, 2013
NEW YORK — Microsoft on Thursday disclosed for the first time the number of requests it had received from government law enforcement agencies for data on its hundreds of millions of customers around the world, joining the ranks of Google, Twitter, and other Web businesses that publish so-called transparency reports.
The report, which Microsoft said it planned to update every six months, showed that law enforcement agencies in five countries — Britain, France, Germany, Turkey, and the United States — accounted for 69 percent of the 70,665 requests the company received last year.
In 80 percent of requests, Microsoft provided elements of what is called noncontent data, like an account holder’s name, sex, e-mail address, IP address, country of residence, and dates and times of data traffic.
In 2.1 percent of requests, the company disclosed the actual content of a communication, like the subject heading of an e-mail, the contents of an e-mail, or a picture stored on SkyDrive, its cloud computing service.
Microsoft said it disclosed the content of communications in 1,544 cases to law enforcement agencies in the United States, and in 14 cases to agents in Brazil, Canada, Ireland and New Zealand.
“Government requests for online data are like the dark matter of the Internet,’’ said Eva Galperin, a global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San Francisco, which has campaigned for greater disclosure.
Galperin said that even with Microsoft’s disclosures, fewer than 10 companies published the extent of their cooperation with law enforcement agencies.
‘‘Only a few companies report this, but they are only a very small percent of the online universe,’’ she said, ‘‘so any one company that joins the disclosure effort is good news. The faster this becomes a standard for all Web businesses, the better.’’
The law enforcement requests concerned users of Microsoft services including Hotmail, Outlook.com, SkyDrive, Skype, and Xbox Live, where people are typically asked to enter their personal details to obtain service.
Google was the first major Web business, in 2010, to report the number of legal requests it had received for information. Since then, Twitter, LinkedIn and some smaller companies have also begun reporting, but big businesses like Apple and Yahoo have not.
Microsoft also resisted at first. In January, a group of more than 100 Internet activists and digital rights groups signed a petition asking the company to disclose its data-handling practices for Skype, the Internet voice and video service it bought in 2011....
--more--"
Also see:
Software company helps firms save on data centers
Bay State is a ‘sweet spot’ for Big Data
He means $weet $pot.
Firm hopes Big Data can personalize health care
Researchers see new uses for Wi-Fi technology
Yeah, BIG DATA is ALL GOOD, didn't you know? Now I know why my bu$ine$$ section loves big data!
See your metadata the way the NSA does
Cellphone data mined to create personal profiles
Heck, they will know you better than yourself.
"Two Boston tech leaders fund ACLU privacy project" by Michael B. Farrell | Globe Staff, March 12, 2013
Two luminaries of the Boston tech community have contributed $1 million to launch an initiative at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts meant to safeguard privacy in an era when government agencies have greater access than ever before to personal data.
The initial donation from Paul Sagan, former chief executive officer of the Internet services company Akamai Technologies Inc., and Joshua Boger, founder of Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc., will help fund the Technology for Liberty & Justice for All project. The initiative will examine how rapid advancements in technology and the pervasiveness of the Web could be used to impinge upon individual civil liberties.
The effort will initially focus on such hot topics as the government’s use of drones for surveillance and how police departments obtain information about people by tapping into data logged on smartphones or searching through private e-mails....
Over the past several years, the ACLU of Massachusetts has increasingly focused on issues of surveillance and privacy. Last year, the organization released a report charging the Boston Police Department with improperly monitoring and storing information on antiwar activists.
But the new project marks the first time the ACLU is bringing together business executives and its own lawyers and researchers together on a project of this nature....
Carol Rose, executive director of the ACLU of Massachusetts, said in many cases laws meant to protect privacy are lagging far behind technology. Rose said the ACLU was concerned about how often government agencies asked Web companies such as Google Inc. for information about users. She said it was increasingly worrisome how law enforcement agencies deployed advanced techniques known as “predictive policing,” which uses computer algorithms to forecast potential criminal activity.
“It’s not that the technology is always good or bad, the question is how the technology is used,” she said. “Suddenly we have a 21st-century challenge brought about by new technology.”
Boger and Sagan, both longtime supporters of the ACLU, are encouraging other members of the business community to help fund the project. In addition to their donation, they will match other contributions to the project, up to a maximum of $1 million....
--more--"
"Mass. Internet activists plan protest of NSA; Plan rallies for 4th; opposed to secret surveillance in US" by Michael B. Farrell | Globe Staff, July 03, 2013
Massachusetts Web activists are helping to organize protests against the National Security Agency surveillance program at some of the Internet’s most popular websites and on the ground in cities across the country on the Fourth of July.
The nonprofit known as Fight for the Future was instrumental in rallying tech companies and social media sites in protests last year that helped defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act, a congressional bill that would have given the government new powers to regulate the Internet.
Thursday’s online protests are meant to rally support against NSA surveillance activities that have been revealed in leaked government documents. It is Fight for the Future’s largest online mobilization effort since its actions against the piracy bill.
“We are creating a moment when the American public can do something about the NSA,” said Tiffiniy Cheng, cofounder of the group that formed in 2011 in Worcester. “We are seeing unreasonable search and seizure, we are seeing investigation without probable cause.”
The coordinated online effort is expected to include thousands of websites, tech companies, and advocacy organizations, including reddit, WordPress, and Mozilla. Rallies are expected in Boston, Washington, D.C., New York, and other US cities....
According to secret documents leaked by former government contractor Edward Snowden, the NSA has developed sophisticated tools for gathering data on phone calls, e-mails, and social media posts of US citizens.
“We are asking the NSA to delete our data and never do this again,” said Cheng, who lives in Northampton.
Revelations of the NSA surveillance program have caused a firestorm of criticism on the Web aimed at the Obama administration and government officials. More than 500,000 people have signed an online petition demanding that Congress investigate the NSA.
A group called Restore the Fourth — a reference to the constitutional amendment, not the holiday — is attempting to turn much of that criticism on the Web into protests on the street. In Boston, supporters plan to rally at the Old State House on Thursday at 9:30 a.m.
Some websites on Thursday will post the text of the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure, in hope that it will spread virally on social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
“In Massachusetts, we have a deep and heady relationship with the Fourth Amendment,” said Kade Crockford, director of the technology for liberty project at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. The origins of the amendment are in Colonial Massachusetts’ legislation against British search and seizure.
Protesters are also seizing on the symbolism of the Fourth of July.
“It’s an invitation to think about what the day actually means,” said Crockford, who is organizing a rally against the NSA for Dewey Square at 1 p.m. on Thursday. She is holding the protest independently of her ACLU role.
It remains to be seen whether Thursday’s protests — online or off — have as much impact as the movement against the Stop Online Piracy Act. At that time, some of the Web’s biggest sites such as Wikipedia blacked out Web pages and major corporations such as Google Inc. participated in a dramatic day of protest that prompted Congress to back down from the legislation.
Cheng said Fight for the Future expects to stage more protests in the coming weeks.
I will be scouring my Globe for any reports.
--more--"
"Boston joins in national protest of NSA policies; Hundreds rally to support Web privacy" by Derek J. Anderson | Globe Correspondent, July 05, 2013
A group of more than 200 gathered near South Station in Boston Thursday afternoon and made its way down the Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Greenway to protest data gathering by the National Security Agency.
Earlier, a smaller number of protesters had gathered around Boston’s Old State House as others listened to a reading of the Declaration of Independence....
The Boston protests were among many organized across the country by activists who seized the opportunity of the Independence Day holiday to highlight their concerns about whether the surveillance programs are contrary to the Fourth Amendment, which prohibits unreasonable government searches and seizures.
As if they were sitting around waiting to do this. The fact is we don't want to have to protest this stuff!
Massachusetts Web activists helped to organize protests that included some of the Internet’s most popular websites....
Antisurveillance protests cropped up in a number of cities. In Philadelphia, more than 100 people marched downtown to voice their displeasure, chanting, ‘‘NSA, go away!’’
--more--"
Btw, whatever happened to all those other scandals?
"Progressive groups say they also faced IRS delays; Official wants to offer payments to organizations" by Stephen Ohlemacher and Alan Fram | Associated Press, June 27, 2013
WASHINGTON — Leaders of progressive groups say they, too, faced long delays in getting the Internal Revenue Service to approve their applications for tax-exempt status but were not subjected to the same level of scrutiny that Tea Party groups complained about.
Several progressive groups said it took more than a year for the IRS to approve their status while others are still waiting as IRS agents press for details about their activities. The delays have made it difficult for the groups to raise money — just as it has for Tea Party groups that were singled out for extra scrutiny.
But even with the delays, leaders of some progressive groups said they didn’t feel like they were being targeted.
‘‘This is kind of what you expect. You expect it to take a year or more to get your status because that’s just what the IRS goes through to do it,’’ said Maryann Martindale, executive director of Alliance for a Better Utah, a small nonprofit that advocates for progressive causes. ‘‘So I don’t know that we feel particularly targeted.’’
This is about making the whole impeachable IRS offenses go away as if it were business as usual.
The IRS has been under siege since the agency revealed last month that agents had improperly targeted Tea Party and other conservative groups for additional, often burdensome scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
Oh, the poor IRS.
This week, the IRS released documents showing that progressive and liberal groups may have been singled out as well.
And many were quickly approved!
On Wednesday, Nina Olson, the National Taxpayer Advocate, said in her annual report to Congress that culture continues today, despite the scandal that has rocked the tax agency for more than a month.
Olson recommended that Congress authorize her to make ‘‘apology payments’’ of up to $1,000 to groups in cases in which ‘‘the IRS has caused excessive expense or undue burden to the taxpayer, and the taxpayer has experienced a significant hardship.’’
J. Russell George, the agency’s inspector general, released a widely read report on the targeting of conservative groups last month. A day later President Obama forced acting IRS Commissioner Steven Miller to resign.
George is now coming under fire from congressional Democrats because his report made no mention of progressive groups being targeted....
To help flag groups for additional scrutiny, agents in a Cincinnati office developed lists of terms to look for in applications. These ‘‘be on the look-out’’ lists were commonly called BOLOs.
The orders came from the Washington office, and this distorted bulls*** background is pathetic.
George’s audit discovered a list from August 2010 that included the terms ‘‘Tea Party,’’ “Patriots,’’ and ‘‘9/12 Project.’’ The report said these conservative groups were asked inappropriate questions about their donors, their affiliations, and their positions on political issues, resulting in delays averaging nearing two years for applications to be processed.
On Monday, Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee released 15 BOLO lists, which changed over time and were dated between August 2010 and April 2013. The lists included the terms ‘‘Progressive,’’ “Medical Marijuana,’’ “Occupied Territory Advocacy,’’ “Healthcare legislation,’’ “Newspaper Entities,’’ and ‘‘Paying National Debt.’’
Oh, so they were crawling up everyone's ass.
Either way the politicization of the IRS stinks!
--more--"
Related: IRS Published Online Thousands of Social Security Numbers
Didn't see it in the Boston Globe.
NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"IRS cites spending cuts in canceling bonuses
WASHINGTON — Citing budget cuts, the Internal Revenue Service is canceling this year’s bonuses for managers and is working to cancel bonuses for union workers, the agency said Tuesday. Acting IRS head Danny Werfel told workers in an e-mail that he is canceling the bonuses because of automatic spending cuts enacted this year."
Why am even bothering with them anymore?
Meanwhile, spying on the corporate pre$$ and Benghazi-gate has gone down the memory hole.
And that other famous leaker you may have forgotten about:
"WikiLeaks ‘most wanted’ list admitted in trial" Associated Press, July 02, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — A military judge Monday allowed prosecutors to argue that an Army private used a most-wanted list compiled by the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks as a guide for leaking classified information.
The ‘‘Most Wanted Leaks of 2009’’ was admitted as evidence in the court-martial of Private First Class Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.
The judge ruled the list is relevant to the government’s most serious charge that Manning aided the enemy by causing intelligence to be published on the WikiLeaks website. Prosecutors are trying to prove the information Manning leaked helped Al Qaeda.
The most wanted list included a request for documents about detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Manning has acknowledged sending WikiLeaks a file containing Guantanamo detainee records in March 2010.
He has said he leaked the documents of his own accord and didn’t consider them a national security risk.
The evidence came as prosecutors neared the end of their case in Manning’s court-martial on charges he aided the enemy by sending hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks while working as an intelligence analyst in Iraq in 2009 and 2010. By Monday, prosecutors had presented 28 witnesses in the trial.
Other evidence presented by the prosecution Monday suggested that Al Qaeda leaders reveled in WikiLeaks’ publication of reams of classified US documents, urging its members to study them before devising ways to attack the United States. ‘‘By the grace of God the enemy’s interests are today spread all over the place,’’ a spokesman for the terrorist group said in a 2011 Al Qaeda propaganda video....
Oh, Al-CIA-Duh" was happy about the leaks, huh?
--more--"
"Manning seeks dismissal of key charge" New York Times, July 09, 2013
FORT MEADE, Md. — Defense lawyers for Private First Class Bradley Manning asked a military judge on Monday to acquit him of the most serious charge he faces, that of aiding the enemy by providing classified information to WikiLeaks, as they began to present their witnesses at his court-martial....
The judge, Colonel Denise Lind, did not immediately rule on the matter, and she asked for a response from the government by Thursday.
Early in the day, the defense showed the now-familiar video footage from a helicopter gunship in Iraq as it fired on people on the ground who turned out to include two Reuters journalists, who were killed.
The news agency unsuccessfully sought access to video and other records of the shooting until Manning provided it to WikiLeaks, which edited it and posted it on the Web under the title “Collateral Murder.”
The first defense witness, Chief Warrant Officer 2 Joshua Ehresman, who worked with Manning in Iraq, described relatively relaxed computer security rules that permitted soldiers to download classified information onto CDs, in part because their regular computers crashed on a regular basis.
--more--"
Related: Government Snow Job?
It's stopped snowing. I guess the Zimmerman trial has been taking up too much time.
NEXT DAY SNOWFLAKE:
"Bolivian Interior Minister Carlos Romero on Tuesday denounced what he called ‘‘act of aggression.’’ Bolivia, backed by Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Venezuela, called on the Organization of American States’ permanent council to approve a declaration demanding that such an incident never be repeated. WikiLeaks later tweeted that ‘‘tomorrow the first phase of Edward Snowden’s ‘Flight of Liberty’ campaign will be launched.’’ It wasn’t clear what it meant, and WikiLeaks did not immediately respond to requests for details."
If Wikileaks is supposed to be helping him why would they announce that?
