Last month, the private security firm FireEye discovered a widespread breach of government and corporate computer networks through a so-called "supply chain" exploit of the network management firm SolarWinds, conducted by nation-state-level hackers, widely thought to be Russia. Most coverage of the breach featured ominous headlines and quotes from current and former government officials describing it as the biggest hack of modern times. Occasionally, buried in one of the closing paragraphs, there was an official quoted admitting that, so far, only "business networks" were known to be compromisedsensitive but unclassified email systems and data on job descriptions and HR functions.

"Like our nuclear policy before it, the stated goal is deterrence, but the actual goal is to create a cover for unchecked aggression and dominance."

These stories lack context of the true state of cyber espionage over the last few decades. The SolarWinds hack is certainly a large and very damaging breach, but one could almost pick at random any five or ten of the hundreds of codename programs revealed in the Snowden documents that would top it. The mother of all supply chain attacks (that we know of publicly) may have been the clandestine American role behind CryptoAGwhich allowed the NSA to sell scores of foreign governments broken cryptographic systems through which it was possible to crack the encryption on their top-level government and military communications for decades. And of course the first, and one of the only, actual cyberattacks in history was the Stuxnet program conducted by Israeli and American services against Iranian nuclear centrifuges.

Yet the American public may be left with the impression that Russian hacking poses a uniquely aggressive and destabilizing threat to the international order, and therefore must be punished. News coverage has been leadened with apoplectic quotes from senior officials and lawmakers that the breach represents "virtually a declaration of war," that we need to "get the ball out of their hands and go on offense," that "we must reserve our right to unilateral self-defense," and even that "all elements of national power must be placed on the table" (All elements? Tanks? Nuclear weapons?). This kind of hyperbolic reaction cannot be driven by sincere shock at the idea of a government hacking into and spying on another governments networks. More plausibly, it is driven by outrage at the idea of any other nation challenging the United States' overwhelming dominance to date in network espionage.

The Pentagon has so far responded to the breach by proposing a rearrangement of the organizational chart for our cyber army. And if history is any guide, Congress will respond as they have to past intelligence failures: by throwing more money at the bureaucracy to feed its legion of private contractors. In other words: more of what contributed to this breach in the first place. The ever-growing feeding frenzy for beltway bandits not only increases the attack surface for foreign hackers, it ensures that Congress does not have the capacity (even if it had the will) to understand and oversee increasingly complex supply chains to ensure basic security standards for the very companies who will be called on to fix these vulnerabilities. Few were even aware of the ubiquity of SolarWinds presence across so many of our government networks, and the lax security practices of this key software provider have only come under scrutiny retroactively. According to reports, the update server for SolarWinds softwarean incredibly sensitive key piece of any software supply chainwas publicly accessible by a default password that had leaked to the internet in 2019, and the company had been warned both by its employees and by independent security researchers.

Here another tragic irony emerges: whatever internal channels were used to warn of these security lapses were clearly not effective, but if a whistleblower had taken this kind of sensitive national security information to the presspublication of which perhaps could have forced action and prevented a major act of espionage against our governmentthey would have put themselves at risk of prosecution under the Espionage Act.

"If reports are true that Russia was behind SolarWinds, and was using its access to case physical infrastructure networks in the U.S., their motivation may have been to gain a small measure of deterrence against the overwhelming superiority of American offensive capabilities."

So while the pundits clamor for retaliation and Washington bickers about rearranging the desks at Fort Meade, we still do not get a debate on alternatives that might better serve the American people. In secret, and without public consultation, the NSA long ago decided to use our privileged position sitting atop the internet backbone not to secure it; to level up the safety of key systems for all its users (but to poke more holes in it); and to stockpile exploits and hoard vulnerabilities in order to dip its hands into nearly every network, communications protocol, and computer system of consequence on the planet, both foes and allies alike.

Even our defensive strategy has become a policy of aggression. Dubbed "defend forward," it has us maintaining backdoors and software implants on key infrastructure systems around the world, as a way of keeping a loaded gun pointed at any real or potential adversary. Like our nuclear policy before it, the stated goal is deterrence, but the actual goal is to create a cover for unchecked aggression and dominance. If reports are true that Russia was behind SolarWinds, and was using its access to case physical infrastructure networks in the U.S., their motivation may have been to gain a small measure of deterrence against the overwhelming superiority of American offensive capabilities.

The wisdom of such an aggressive posture towards the global internet was one of the key questions Edward Snowden posed to the public after his disclosures. We should not fail to consider it as we increasingly get a taste of what the rest of the world has been subjected to by American spies for decades.

Read more here:
SolarWinds Is Not the 'Hack of the Century.' Its Blowback for the NSA's Longtime Dominance of Cyberspace - Common Dreams

Paddy Cosgrave, CEO of tech conference Web Summit, recently sat down with Tarsus Group CEO and SISO Chair Douglas Emslie, to discuss the future of virtual and hybrid events.

As CEO of one of the worlds largest tech conferences, Web Summit, Paddy Cosgrave is familiar with the world of virtual and hybrid events. His company has been creating software to streamline the process of running large-scale, digitally connected events since it was founded in 2009, while also integrating that technology into the extremely successful Web Summits themselves.

Since the first Web Summit in 2010, the event has now grown to a global brand that welcomes 70,000 people to Lisbon every year. The company also runs sister events RISE Conference in Hong Kong, Collision in Toronto, SURGE in Bangalore and MoneyConf in Dublin.

Since the pandemic began, Web Summit has been forced to take all of its exhibitions and conferences into the virtual space, but it has more experience doing so than most. Web Summit is a highly tech-integrated show, where everything from registration to ticketing and interacting with stands is done through phone apps, QR codes and other kinds of technology.

Cosgrave recently sat down with Doug Emslie, CEO of Tarsus Group and SISO Chair, to discuss how his company organized a successful virtual edition of one its shows Collision at Home and how organisers and exhibitors can maximise their return on investment for virtual events.

Minglingand virtual tomatoes

Cosgraves key message was that the value of virtual events is to be found in one-to-one networking, not in endless streams of digital content. He stressed that what all exhibitors want from any event is lead generation, and this can still be achieved without face-to-face interaction. In fact, Cosgrave said that in many ways a purely digital event can provide more opportunities for one-to-one networking than a physical event.

You can hold more meetings online, when youre not walking from one end of a giant hall to another, so certainly it can be more efficient, he said. He then outlined how Collision at Home made use of a mingle feature which delegates could use at any time, whether during sessions or in dedicated networking breaks.

You can press a button and it launches a three minute call with who we think is the best person available at that moment for you to meet. And at the end of three minutes itll close and you can rate the call, and we use that feedback to refine the algorithm that matches you with other delegates.

We actually found the majority of people who attended Collision at Home were using these one-to-one interactions. People loved the idea that theres a three-minute clock, and when it runs out the conversation is just over. Because lets be honest, weve all been in conversations on show floors with people where youre thinking ok great great, I actually need to go youre too polite to cut it short. People loved the efficiency and the volume of people they could meet. And also we keep a record of who you met, so following up is very easy.

Alongside the mingle feature, Collision at Home allowed delegates to provide realtime feedback on speakers at the event. This included the ability to throw virtual tomatoes at speakers by posting tomato emojis in the chat. I think watching long streams of content on these platforms can get a bit dull, so just adding a bit of fun was important. It adds another realtime dimension, says Cosgrave.

Virtual return on investment

Moving on to the more serious topic of how online events can provide return on investment, Doug Emslie noted that many virtual events have struggled to provide value to exhibitors. Cosgrave agreed, and said that the first thing Web Summit did after cancelling their in-person events was to provide all exhibitors a full refund if they wanted, or the option to transfer to 2021.

We wanted to force ourselves to create value in our online conference. Its a false economy to partially charge people we needed to create a compelling experience that people were willing to pay for, he said. Because we build software as well as running events, we knew intuitively that Microsoft, Amazon, Mercedes, etc are primarily after lead generation. And we were able to deliver that with Collision from Home.

Perhaps it is this laser focus on providing digital networking opportunities that has allowed the company to continue thriving even during the Covid-19 pandemic. Cosgrave points out that Web Summit has let nobody go since March, and were continuing to hire relatively aggressively. Weve hired about 35 more people between March and now, overwhelmingly in engineering and related roles.

Online conferences can make money. The lights are still on. If you run a big event, you have to be able to create these bespoke experiences for your partners, and I think a lot of that is around giving people the chance to meet one on one.

Bono, Blair and Edward Snowden

Web Summit has grown into a very successful event, especially considering its relatively short history. Cosgrave says that in 2018, his team were offered 17m a year by the city of Valencia to relocate their event from Lisbon, and also received bids from cities in France, Germany and Italy. They ultimately decided to stay put in Portugal: Lisbon is an amazing city, and we know the people.

Emslie noted that Web Summit attracts a regular crop of high-profile celebrities both from the tech industry and further afield. The event has welcomed Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, U2 frontman Bono, Tony Blair and Edward Snowden among others in previous years. But Cosgrave says he doesnt plan to use this popularity to expand outside of tech events. Instead, he sees things moving in the other direction.

I think every company is increasingly a software company. 120 years ago there were companies who said oh, well never use electricity. But of course everyone uses electricity, and youre daft if you dont.

In a dream world for me, the online conference platform is the first step to helping some of the biggest events in the world do everything from ticketing to registration to badging. Hopefully by 2022 or 2023 well be helping some very big shows with all the software needs they have. I think one of the problems with big shows is they have different software for ticketing, registration, an attendee app. They dont really talk to each other.

Youre using half a dozen different providers, but were trying to build the whole ecosystem. If anything comes out of all this, hopefully its that our software will start to be used by other people that organise large shows.

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Ascending the summit - Exhibition World

As a retired 34-year intelligence professional who made a career recruiting foreign spies and stealing secrets, my aversion to a pardon for Edward Snowden goes beyond the damage he wrought and is unrelated to hurt pride. Its rooted in the Espionage Act and the dynamic between the government and media over the boundaries concerning the publics right to know. That is, do all parties share responsibility that transcend legal interpretations to safeguard the nations security?

Im hardly a legal scholar, but my work required judgment concerning risk versus gain against a gray and dynamic landscape in which the consequences routinely were life and death. I was charged with determining whether or not the value in any lawfully executed intelligence activity was worth the risk to our sources and the continuity of ongoing collection. Until retirement, my insight into the media was limited to failed efforts at monitoring my teenagers social media activity while personally staying well clear of journalists. Still, I expected that reputable journalists calculated the publics right to know and First Amendment freedoms against the cost of exposure to the very people they intended to protect and inform.

Having read any number of compelling narratives, those arguing for unrestricted freedom to publish anything and everything that might come their way such as the voluminous, unedited, original documents that Snowden stole are undermined by their black-and-white take on the rather opaque world in which I long dwelled. Personally, while I do not condone the exposure of classified information, even under circumstances intended to highlight a wrong and hold our leaders accountable, I acknowledge its likewise not a black-and-white matter and demands a two-way street with the media.

We live in an open society that requires confidence in a system of checks and balances through congressional oversight and the transparency legislated by the 2004 Intelligence Reform Act as a means to correct the systemic problems that contributed to 9/11s intelligence failure. Moreover, we trust that national security agencies support robust internal dissent and whistleblower channels with empowered inspectors general.

Over the past four years, though, its hard to argue that elected representatives had the necessary insight and authority to hold the White House and the intelligence community accountable. Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard GrenellRichard GrenellEdward Snowden, the media, and the Espionage Act Kentucky governor calls vandalism to McConnell's home 'unacceptable' Pelosi's, McConnell's homes vandalized as K stimulus check bill fails to pass MORE and his successor, John RatcliffeJohn Lee RatcliffeEdward Snowden, the media, and the Espionage Act Overnight Defense: Top US general meets with Taliban | House panel launches probe into cyberattack |Army to issue face masks for soldiers in 2021 House panels launch probe into massive cyberattack that breached federal agencies MORE, hardly have facilitatedtransparency and confidence that the intelligence community was free from politicalization. And President TrumpDonald TrumpHouse GOP leader tells members to quit spreading lies on riot, antifa DC attorney general says Trump Organization improperly paid K bill incurred during inauguration 70K QAnon Twitter accounts suspended in the wake of Capitol riot MOREs purge undermined the reliability of inspectors general and the faith of those prepared to come forward officially to report transgressions.

Only, Snowden was no whistleblower. In fact, according to the timeline offered in the 33-page House Permanent Select Committee (HPSCI)s September 2016 damage assessment, theres no evidence Snowden made any effort to use the protected channels enabling either whistleblowing or dissent. Rather, after being reprimanded for inappropriate workplace behavior that reflected his professional history, Snowden began a premeditated effort to download as many damaging files as he could access as part of a plan to travel to Hong Kong, from where he aspired to reap financial gain and exact revenge for his hurt pride.

Moreover, the HPSCI report affirmed that the vast majority of the documents he [Snowden] stole have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests they instead pertain to military, defense and intelligence programs of great interest to Americas adversaries. The report further notes that this resulted in the loss of intelligence streams that saved American lives, and he handed over secrets that protect American troops overseas and secrets that provide vital defenses against terrorists and nation-states.

The reports most extensive redactions concern the details of foreign influence and damage, which suggest theres far more reason to question Snowdens noble narrative concerning his motives, the reality of what capabilities he actually sought to expose, and for whose benefit. Indeed, the report makes a convincing case that Snowden, like any number of foreign agents I personally recruited, acted purely out of a thirst for revenge, money and the desire to weaken his countrys security.

Was Snowdens approach to journalists newsworthy? Regardless of his means and motivation, did he reveal an issue concerning civil liberties in the monitoring of Americans worth publishing at the risk of national security? I suggest its a matter of boundaries. Journalists who facilitated the wholesale exposure of that which Snowden stole went well beyond what might have been necessary in highlighting the privacy issues and making their point. The level of detail these documents provided hostile state actors and terrorist organizations ended vital collection streams, compromised sensitive operations, and killed agents, leaving Americans vulnerable. Was there some alternative, happy medium?

The current reality, unfortunately, allows for ample blame on all sides. In our toxic political environment, intelligence agencies are muzzled from responsibly engaging the media, and journalists eschew civil responsibilities so as to scoop their competitors and gain notoriety. Occasionally, such sensational stories are reported without the media adequately vetting their sources, as recently acknowledged by the New York Times, whose source for its Caliphate podcast fabricated the details.

Journalists should be expected to behave responsibly enough to provide national security agencies fair and timely opportunities to explain the bigger picture and consequences concerning that which they as reporters cant be expected to know, nor the second and third order consequences to their revelations. In turn, the government can acknowledge the practical value of damage control by finding areas in which to compromise concerning that which is ultimately published.

The world I speak of is hardly utopian. In the not too distant past, I prepared talking points concerning sensitive operational activity used by national security leaders to engage journalists reporters who, in several cases, appreciating the full consequences of their impending stories, agreed not to publish, to delay, or withhold certain details in their final copy, premature exposure of which would otherwise inflict irreparable damage or loss of life.

Like the world of intelligence itself, where ones understanding is formulated from the incomplete mosaic of available information, theres no one size fits all solution. The public is best served by the governments and medias resumed embrace of a calculus in which both assesses the risk versus gain, case by case. All concerned would do well to put first those whom they serve in order to coexist in the reality of a rather unforgiving world.

As a retired spy, I can attest to the fact that we all interpret truth through the rather frosted and often fragile glass windows from which we see the world. The bottom line should be protecting the American people.

Douglas London retired from the CIAs Clandestine Service in 2019 after a 34-year career, during which he served as a chief of station and held executive positions concerning counterterrorism, the Near East, South Asia and Iran, and a role related to cybersecurity. He is an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown Universitys School of Foreign Services Center for Security Studies and a nonresident fellow at the Middle East Institute. Follow him @douglaslondon5.

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Edward Snowden, the media, and the Espionage Act | TheHill - The Hill

Edward Snowden and others have reacted to news, and ensuing celebration, that Facebook will ban content from Donald Trump for two weeks by warning that giving such power to social media platforms sets a dangerous precedent.

Many are celebrating the announcement by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg that President Trump will be banned from posting content on the social media platform, as well as Instagram, for at least the next two weeks following violence at the US Capitol but others are warning that this moment could have dire consequences for free speech in the near future.

Facebook officially silences the President of the United States, Snowden tweeted on Thursday in reaction to the news. The whistleblower said the decision will be remembered as a turning point in the battle for control over digital speech.

In a followup message, Snowden warned that those celebrating the suspension should imagine a world that exists for more than the next 13 days, and this becomes a milestone that will endure.

In response to the argument that Facebook is a private platform, something that has become an heated topic of debate as politicians argue for and against censorship, Snowden cryptically acknowledged platforms like Facebook currently have the right to enact such bans and they will increasingly do so.

He also blasted the company for having zero regard for the opinions of either regulators or consumers.

While Snowden received plenty of pushback from those who saw his tweets as a defense of Trump, others took the same stance and warned of the precedent being set by Facebooks very general reasoning for the ban.

The legality of this decision is clear, but I find it deeply troubling as a precedent, Reason editor-at-large Nick Gillespie tweeted.

Zuckerberg said in his announcement that Trump would continue to be banned for the remainder of his presidency and that allowing the president to post content was simply too great a risk and could provoke violence between supporters and enemies.

Zuckerbergs decision follows Twitter suspending the president for 12 hours amid chaos at the US Capitol and Trumps responses. Despite calling for calm multiple times, Trump did acknowledge in a video message that he understood how his supporters felt. He continues to insist voter fraud is behind Joe Bidens presidential victory.

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Turning point in the battle for control: Edward Snowden, others warn of consequences to Trumps Facebook ban - RT

Lindsay Mills is an American Acrobat and blogger. She has been married to Edward Snowden. She was born on 23rd February, 1985.

People got to know about Lindsay Mill when she became girlfriend of Edward Snowden in 2013. She came to spotlight at the time of the Global Surveillance disclosures. She left the United States to join Edward in Moscow in the year 2014 during the month of October.

Both married secretly in Russia in 2017. Mills father Jonathan Mills lives in Maryland. She was habit of blogging where she used to post pictures of herself posing and performing acrobats. In June 2013, she refrained from blogging and then deleted all her posts within a day.

She is a American citizen who graduated from the Maryland institute college of art. She is also active on social networking sites such as Twitter and Instagram where she used to show only portraits of herself and sometimes she also post pictures of her husband. Lindsay is now pregnant and the couple is expecting a baby boy.

Edward Snowden has written on social networking site Twitter, After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son, thats why in the era of pandemics and lock down they are applying for United States and Russia dual citizenship.

Snowden is wanted in the United State on espionage charges after he leaked information about the agents from the national security agency (NSA) that the agents were collecting telephone records of millions of US citizens.

Also he published a book last year without governments approval the book has breached the contracts which he had signed with the CIA and the National security agency ( NSA).

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Who is Lindsay Mills? Everything You Need to Know About Edward Snowdens Wife - Stanford Arts Review

Facebook told staff on Monday to avoid wearing company-branded clothing in public out of concern for their safety, after the social media platform suspended President Donald Trump's account.

"In light of recent events, and to err on the side of caution, global security is encouraging everyone to avoid wearing or carrying Facebook-branded items at this time," an internal memo sent Monday, reviewed by The Information, said.

Facebook didn't immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

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Trump posted a video on Facebook and Twitter on the day, telling the rioters to "go home" but didn't condemn their actions. "We love you; you're very special," he said. Both platforms later removed the video.

Read more: Banning Trump from social media is just 'a Band-Aid on a bullet wound,' critics say - but no one can agree on the best way to wipe out the disinformation contagion

Facebook isn't the only social media platform to crack down on Trump's accounts following the Capitol siege. A day after Facebook banned him, Twitter did too, "due to the risk of further incitement of violence," the company said.

San Francisco police officers were preparing for a pro-Trump protest outside Twitter's headquarters on Monday - in the end, only two people showed up.

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Facebook tells staff to avoid wearing company-branded clothing in public for their own safety after it booted - Business Insider India

Edward Snowden born June 21, 1983, in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, US, a former American intelligence contractor who in 2013 disclosed the existence of confidential data collection programs developed by the National Security Agency ( NSA) and provoked a cultural discussion about national security and individual privacy.

Snowden was born in North Carolina, and his family moved to central Maryland, a short distance from NSA headquarters in Fort Meade when he was a child. He dropped out of high school and studied part-time between 1999 and 2005 at a community college; completed his GED but did not receive a college degree.

He enlisted in the army as a member of a special unit in May 2004 but was released four months later. In 2005 he worked as a security guard at the Center for Advanced Study of Language, a research center at the University of Maryland in partnership with the NSA.

Despite the lack of education and training, Snowden demonstrated computer skills and was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2006. He was granted a top-secret permit and in 2007 was sent to Geneva, where he worked as a secret communications security specialist.

Snowden left the CIA and went to the NSA in 2009. There he worked as a private contractor for Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton. During this time, he began collecting information about many of the NSAs activities in particular, the secret surveillance systems he believed were large in size and scope.

In May 2013 Snowden applied for leave to go to the aviation industry and traveled to Hong Kong, where the following month he conducted a series of interviews with reporters for The Guardian newspaper. Illustrations have already been shown in the documentary Citizenfour (2014).

Among the NSA secrets revealed by Snowden is a court order forcing telecommunications company Verizon to change the metadata (such as dial numbers and phone lengths) of millions of subscribers.

Snowden also pointed out the existence of PRISM, a data mining system that has reportedly provided the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Government Communications Office equivalent to the British NSA direct access to major Internet servers such as -Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.

In August 2014, as the end of Snowdens provisional asylum expiration, the Russian government granted him a three-year residence permit (effective August 1), which would allow him to leave the country for up to three months. He was also allowed to request the extension of that permit and, after five years of residence, to apply for Russian citizenship if he chose to do so.

In September 2019 Snowden released a memo Permanent Record. On the same day, the U.S. Department of Justice He accused her of returning all the money she had received in the letter, claiming that she had violated her confidentiality agreements with the CIA and the NSA by not submitting the work for review before publication.

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Who is Edward Snowden and Where is he Now? Life, Whistleblower & Prison Time - Stanford Arts Review

The multi-domain quality of the conspiracy theory also helps to explain its cyclical and adaptable nature: Once a narrative has established a pattern of creating such large leaps, the creation of further or newer leaps to even more disparate domains is considerably eased.

A deeper question is why these disease narratives circulate at all. One argument, advanced in the book Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories, is that conspiracy theories are often shared among people who lackor feel that they lacksocial power. In an age of wealth inequality and partisan politics, the majority of Americans potentially fall into this category.

Another, more general, answer is that the amount of time between the start of an epidemic and the point at which science can provide clear explanations creates an information vacuum for a concerned public that demands immediate response. These vacuums are easily filled both by the individual turning to familiar narratives from previous epidemics, and by anti-vaccination and conspiracy-theory groups actively working to promote their own narratives.

If spreading rumors is easy, combatting them is hard. As folklorists such as Bill Ellis have proposed, some legends may not die so much as they dive, remaining latent for long periods of time until a new situation arises that fits the scope and nature of the narrative. It is equally the case, as the sociologist John Gagnon has argued, that the difference between a scientific theory and a conspiracy theory is that a scientific theory has holes in it.

Just as problematic, whether you want to call the current era postmodern or post-truth: Public trust in both government and fellow citizens is at or near historic lows. In the face of such opposition, public figures may not be capable of turning the tide. A recent Pew Research Center poll of U.S. adults found that 39 percent definitely or probably would not get a coronavirus vaccine, and that 21 percent do not intend to get vaccinated and are pretty certain more information will not change their mind. How many of these respondents were reacting to any given narrativewhether false claim, conspiracy theory, or otherwiseis unclear, but the narratives are certainly massaging these responses.

That doesnt mean community leaders shouldnt try to debunk conspiracy theories and chip away at resistance. Pastors, prominent business owners, local sports figures, and so on should work in conjunction with local doctors to provide solid information. Such efforts should be frequent and, for best results, done in person, as when Anthony Fauci personally Zoomed into a Boston-area church to talk directly to parishioners.

Conspiracy theories will always be among us, but the pandemic doesnt have to be.

Originally posted here:
The Utter Familiarity of Even the Strangest Vaccine Conspiracy Theories - The Atlantic

December 26, 2020, 4:25 PM

3 min read

London, Moscow -- Edward Snowden has become a father, his lawyer Anatoly Kucherenatold Interfax.

Former CIA and NSA agent Edward Snowden and his wife Lindsay Mills announced the birth of their first child on social media, a baby boy.

"The greatest gift is the love we share" tweeted Snowden, posting a photo of the couple kissing while holding the newborn.

The couple posted photos on Instagram and Twitter on Christmas day and decided to hide their childs face with an emoji.

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden poses for a photo during an interview in an undisclosed location in Moscow, Dec. 2013.

In another photo taken shortly before their child was born, Snowden can be seen hugging his wife showing a baby bump.

"As we expected, his family is growing. Edward and [his wife] Lindsay [Mills] had a baby boy. The mother and the child are in excellent health," Kucherena told Interfax.The birth announcement comes just two months after Snowden, 37, was granted permanent residence in Russia.

Snowden had decided to keep his U.S. passport and to simultaneously become a citizen of Russia.

Edward Snowden appears on a live video feed broadcast from Moscow at an event sponsored by the ACLU Hawaii in Honolulu, Feb. 14, 2015.

"After years of separation from our parents, my wife and I have no desire to be separated from our son. That's why, in this era of pandemics and closed borders, we're applying for dual US-Russian citizenship," said Snowden on Twitter.

Snowden, who claimed in 2013 that the U.S. government was spying on its citizens, has been living in exile in Russia since leaking National Security Agency files.

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US whistleblower Edward Snowden becomes a father - ABC News

The most surprising thing about the failure of U.S. intelligence to discover for nearly nine months the SolarWinds penetration of U.S. government agencies, reportedly including the State, Energy, and Homeland Security Departments as well as private contractors, is that anyone is surprised. After all, the National Security Agency, responsible for protecting the communications of the U.S. government, had such a massive hole punched in its capabilities by a breach in 2013 that Michael McConnell, the former director of first the NSA and then the Office of National Intelligence, assessed This [breach] will have an impact on our ability to do our mission for the next 20 to 30 years.

The proximate cause of the damage was Edward Snowdens theft of NSA files in June 2013. He was never apprehended because he fled first to Hong Kong, where he met with journalists, and then Russia, where he received sanctuary from Putin. How could such a loss of intelligence not do immense damage to the NSAs counterintelligence for many years?

According to the unanimous report of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Snowden removed from the NSA digital copies of 1.5 million files, including 900,000 Department of Defense documents concerning, among other things, the newly created joint Cyber Command. Other stolen files contained documents from GCHQthe British signal intelligence service to which Snowden had access. One NSA file, a 31,000-page database, included requests to the NSA made by the 16 other agencies in the Intelligence Community for coverage of foreign targets.

NSA Deputy Director Rick Ledgett, who headed the NSAs damage assessment, warned that this database reveals the gaps in our knowledge of Russia, thus provides our adversaries with a roadmap of what we know, what we dont know, and gives themimplicitlya way to protect their information from the U.S. intelligence communitys view.

Snowdens theft dealt a savage blow to U.S. intelligence. Whenever sensitive compartmentalized information (SCI) is removed without authorization from the NSAs secure facilities, as it was by Snowden, it is, by definition, compromised, regardless of what is done with it. Whether Snowden gave these files to journalists, Russians, or Chinese intelligence, or whether he erased them or threw them in the Pacific Ocean, all the sources in them had to be considered compromisedand shut down. So did the methods they revealed.

The Pentagon did a more extensive damage assessment than the NSA, assigning hundreds of intelligence officers, in round-the-clock shifts, to go through each of the 1.5 million files to identify all the fatally compromised sources and methods they contained, and shut them down. This purge reduced the capabilities of the NSA, the Cyber Command, the British GCHQ, and other allied intelligence services to see inside Russia and China.

The damage was deepened by Snowdens defection to Russia. In a televised press conference on September 2, 2013, Vladimir Putin gloated, I am going to tell you something I have never said before, revealing that, while in Hong Kong, Snowden had been in contact with Russian diplomats. While Snowden denies giving any stolen secrets to Russia, U.S. intelligence further determined, according to the bipartisan House Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, that he was in contact with the Russian intelligence services after he arrived in Moscow and continued to be so for three years. Both Mike Rogers, the committees chair, and Adam Schiff, its ranking minority member, confirmed this finding to me. Fiona Hill, an intelligence analyst in both the Obama and Trump administrations, told the The New Yorker in 2017 that The Russians, partly because they have Edward Snowden in Moscow, possess a good idea of what the U.S. is capable of knowing. They got all of his information. You can be damn well sure that [Snowdens] information is theirs.

After the NSA, CIA, and the Cyber Command shut down the sources and methods Snowden had compromised, McConnell pointed out that entire generations of information had been lost. The resulting blind spots in our surveillance of Russia gave Moscows intelligence services full latitude to carry out mischief. Russian intelligence services have no shortage of operatives and tools to carry out long-term operations in cyberspace and elsewhere.

In the 2020 SolarWinds penetration, which Secretary of State Mike Pompeo attributes to Russian intelligence, the gaps allowed Russian spies to masquerade as authorized system administrators and other IT workers. The spies could use their forged credentials to copy any material of interest, plant hidden programs to alter the future operations of thousands of workstations in networks inside and outside the government, cover their tracks, and plant hidden backdoors for future access. Though it may take years to find and unravel all the malicious code implanted in these systems, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has already determined that this threat poses a grave risk to the Federal Government and state, local, tribal, and territorial governments as well as critical infrastructure entities and other private sector organizations.

This immense compromise of government networks is the inevitable price for allowing a large part of our counterintelligence capability to be compromised in 2013. The perverse irony here is that while Vladimir Putin rewarded Snowden for his contributions with permanent residency, Donald Trump says that he is looking into pardoning Snowden for his intrusion into NSA files and betrayal of American secrets.

Edward Jay Epsteins most recent book was How America Lost Its Secrets: Edward Snowden, the Man and the Theft.

Photo by Rosdiana Ciaravolo/Getty Images

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Edward Snowden Pardon and the SolarWinds Hack - City Journal