Category Archives: Edward Snowden

Glenn Greenwald NSA Imminent Leaks | Edward Snowden New Reports | Shock and Awe – Video

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Glenn Greenwald NSA Imminent Leaks | Edward Snowden New Reports | Shock and Awe
Glenn Greenwald Devulgues Snowden NSA Imminent Leaks | No Place To Hide . Journalist Glenn Greenwald says he #39;s about to drop the biggest bombshell yet from leaked NSA documents. Today marks...

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Glenn Greenwald NSA Imminent Leaks | Edward Snowden New Reports | Shock and Awe - Video

Snowden defends mega spy blab: ‘Public affairs have to be …

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Master spy blabbermouth Edward Snowden defended his NSA whistleblowing actions to the Council of Europe today.

He told the human rights' parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg, via video link from Moscow, that he had a "personal duty to country, government and family" to reveal details about snooping methods employed by the US and British governments.

"Public affairs have to be known by the public," Snowden said, in justifying his decision to blow the whistle on the National Security Agency. "When citizens are reduced to the status of subjects, where we're not active participants ... that diminishes us as a free people, as a society and as a culture."

The one-time NSA sysadmin added that he was "willing to pay the price" for leaking that information even if it did damage national security interests.

"I was aware and I did my best to ensure that balance would be enforced," he told the CoE. He claimed that no specific damage and in fact occurred as a result of his actions. It "may have caused some good," he argued.

Snowden explained to the committee during his testimony that he had worked with journalists to help ensure that the information would be responsibly reported.

"That was why I didn't publish it myself. I chose not to, instead I worked with the press," he said.

Snowden added that he had been in the best position, having worked in signals intelligence and electronic spying at the NSA, to understand the material that was leaked to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

"I left behind notes, put them in context, organised them and categorised them [for journalists]," said Snowden.

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Snowden defends mega spy blab: 'Public affairs have to be ...

Snowden defends mega spy blab: ‘Public affairs have to be known by the public’

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Gartner critical capabilities for enterprise endpoint backup

Master spy blabbermouth Edward Snowden defended his NSA whistleblowing actions to the Council of Europe today.

He told the human rights' parliamentary assembly in Strasbourg, via video link from Moscow, that he had a "personal duty to country, government and family" to reveal details about snooping methods employed by the US and British governments.

"Public affairs have to be known by the public," Snowden said, in justifying his decision to blow the whistle on the National Security Agency. "When citizens are reduced to the status of subjects, where we're not active participants ... that diminishes us as a free people, as a society and as a culture."

The one-time NSA sysadmin added that he was "willing to pay the price" for leaking that information even if it did damage national security interests.

"I was aware and I did my best to ensure that balance would be enforced," he told the CoE. He claimed that no specific damage and in fact occurred as a result of his actions. It "may have caused some good," he argued.

Snowden explained to the committee during his testimony that he had worked with journalists to help ensure that the information would be responsibly reported.

"That was why I didn't publish it myself. I chose not to, instead I worked with the press," he said.

Snowden added that he had been in the best position, having worked in signals intelligence and electronic spying at the NSA, to understand the material that was leaked to the Guardian and the Washington Post.

"I left behind notes, put them in context, organised them and categorised them [for journalists]," said Snowden.

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Snowden defends mega spy blab: 'Public affairs have to be known by the public'

Robot Edward Snowden Rescued a Reporter When She Had a Seizure

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Hero/traitor/cyberman Edward Snowden is physically still stuck in Russia, but he gives talks and interviews in the U.S. via a telepresence robot that shows his face in real time and allows him to see his interviewers. And help rescue them during seizures.

As part of a longer piece on Snowdenbot and his human handlers, Tagesspiegel reporter Julia Prosinger recounted an incident at the ACLU offices in New York City when her epilepsy triggered and Snowden, Skyping in from Russia, knew exactly what to do.

When he saw Prosinger about to faint, he quickly told his ACLU lawyer, Ben Wizner, to catch her before she could hit her head on the metal filing cabinets.

"The first fits are always the worst," he said when she came to.

Prosinger writes:

I am lucky: Snowden is not only a patriot or traitor, he is also an epileptic. He instantly recognised what was happening to me. He tells me that he was only diagnosed when he was 28 years old. When he fled the US a little more than a year ago, he told his employer that he had to go away for a few weeks for treatment for his epilepsy. Then Snowden apologises for making me look at the flickering screen, it had triggered the fit, he says.

Snowden also made sure that Wizner put the reporter in the recovery position and brought her a glass of juice.

"For a moment," Prosinger wrote, "Edward Snowden became three-dimensional."

[H/T Daily Dot, Photo: TED]

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Robot Edward Snowden Rescued a Reporter When She Had a Seizure

Background check firm that vetted Snowden faces fraud …

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The background check company that vetted Edward Snowden and faces fraud accusations from the Justice Department has refused a congressional request for details about executive bonus payouts and the identities of some former officials.

The company does not anticipate making a further response, a lobbyist for USIS wrote in an April 10 email to Democratic staffers on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

SEE ALSO: Contractor that vetted Snowden gets load of work after paying lobbyists

The previously undisclosed email correspondence, obtained by The Washington Times last week, was in response to requests to USIS by Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, Maryland Democrat and ranking member of the oversight committee.

He wanted to know, among other things, how the company awarded bonuses, whether it conducted any internal investigations into fraud accusations and what, if any, actions officials took to claw back six- and seven-figure bonuses to former executives.

Those questions were raised in the wake of a Justice Department civil lawsuit accusing USIS of claiming it completed about 650,000 background investigations that actually remained unfinished, while receiving millions of dollars in performance awards from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

The company has addressed some of the issues raised by Mr. Cummings publicly, but not all of the information sought by the congressman has been disclosed. So far, the company has resisted providing answers.

Mr. Cummings inquiry was forwarded to USIS in March by Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican and chairman of the House oversight panel, which held a hearing in February into last years Washington Navy Yard shootings. The gunman, Aaron Alexis, was vetted by USIS, which is a part of Virginia-based Altegrity Inc.

Months after requesting information from USIS CEO Sterling Phillips both at a hearing and in his follow-up letter Mr. Cummings is increasingly frustrated that his questions remain unanswered.

The CEO of USIS committed under oath that he would answer questions from the committee, but now his lobbyists say he refuses, Mr. Cummings told The Washington Times.

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Inside Edward Snowden’s Life as a Robot

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Snowden appears via Beam bot in the ACLUs New York offices with (from left) journalist Laura Poitras, Freedom of the Press Foundation director Trevor Timm and security technologist Micah Lee. Photo: Courtesy of Freedom of the Press Foundation

Since he first became a household name a year ago, Edward Snowden has been a modern Max Headroom, appearing only as a face on a screen broadcast from exile in Hong Kong or Russia. But in the age of the telepresence robot, being a face on a screen isnt as restrictive as it used to be.

For at least the past three months, Snowden and his supporters have been experimenting with a Beam Pro remote presence system, a Wi-Fi-connected screen and camera on wheels that Snowden can use to communicate with the staffers in the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union, according to his ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner. From a computer in Moscow, Snowden can turn on the video bot and wheel around the ACLUs office on a whim. And Snowdens supporters hope the Beam system might be the first of several that could bring the distant whistleblower into the room with colleagues around the world, partially erasing the isolation enforced by the Espionage Act charges awaiting him if he leaves the relative safety of Russia.

Hes used it to roll out into the hallway and generously interact with large numbers of ACLU staff, says Wizner. I think it can be a profound response to exile.

Snowdens Beam bot has been in the ACLU offices since before his TED talk in March, when he used the same $16,000 wheeled robot to speak on stage. Wizner says the TED organizers wanted to test the robot in New York before it was used at the Vancouver conference. They brought a couple models to the office, and gave us a login, says Wizner. We found that it worked really well.

Snowden can drive his in-office telepresence system with his keyboards arrow keys at around two miles an hour. It has an eight hour battery life before it needs to dock into a $950 charging station, and even comes with a party mode that activates more ambient microphones and elevates the volume of its speaker.

Edward Snowden is interviewed by TED Curator Chris Anderson via Beam during the 2014 TED conference. Photo: Steven Rosenbaum/Getty

Since its first appearance at TED, Snowdens Beam came into the spotlight again Wednesday in a story in the German newspaper Tagesspiegel. But while Tagesspiegel described Snowden as using the Beam system on a regular basis, Wizner says Snowdenbot has been a more occasional visitor to the ACLU office. Once, the non-profits executive director Anthony Romero gave the Snowden-possessed machine a walking tour of the building. Another time, Wizner had to jump on a phone call during a meeting with his whistleblower client. When he got off the phone, he found that Snowden had rolled the bot into civil liberties lawyer Jameel Jaffers office and was discussing the 702 provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It was kind of cool, Wizner says.1

Trevor Timm, the director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation where Snowden sits on the board, says Snowden had been interested in trying the telepresence bot even before his TED talk. He was telling people for a while that it could be this game-changing technology, says Timm. I dont think anyone quite believed him until we saw it in actionAll he needs is arms to open doors, and he can go wherever he wants.

Timm met with Snowden-as-robot last April, along with journalist and Snowden-chronicling filmmaker Laura Poitras. It lights up and he shows up on the screen, Timm describes. When it started moving towards us, everyone kind of jumped back.

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Inside Edward Snowden’s Life as a Robot