Category Archives: Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden Elected Rector At University Of Glasgow

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Edward Snowden, who made headlines last year for revealing details about U.S. phone and Internet surveillance, is now the student rector at UKs Glasgow University. The post is a symbolic one, and is decided by a student election. As rector, Snowden represents the student populace and is expected to work with the student representative council, bring student concerns to the attention of university management, and attend the university court.

Snowden was nominated by a group of students who had received his prior approval through his legal representative. The group stated that Glasgow University has a tradition of making noteworthy and relevant statements through their rectors. Electing Snowden to the post was their way of showing him and other whistleblowers that they stand in solidarity with them and their causein this case, the opposition to surveillance, the immoral and pervasive intrusion by the state into the private lives of its people.

Whistleblowers should be honored and theyre heroes rather than traitors, Lubna Nowak said in an interview. She is part of the student group who nominated Snowden to the post.

The other nominees to the post were author Alan Bissett, local clergyman Kelvin Holdsworth, and champion cyclist Graeme Obree. Snowden succeeds former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy. Previous Glasgow University student rectors include Mordechai Vanunu and Winnie Mandela.

Snowden will hold the post for three years, after which there will be another round of nominations for the next rector. This years election was done using a single transferable vote system. During the first round, he received 3,124 votes, and got 3,347 in the second round of voting.

Snowden, a former analyst for the United States National Security Agency, became known for disclosing classified documents to the media. The documents revealed that the NSA had been running surveillance on Internet use and telecommunications on a global scale. He has been granted temporary asylum in Russia after fleeing the US in May 2013.

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Edward Snowden Elected Rector At University Of Glasgow

Hong Kong British Parliamentary Debating Championship 2014 – Grand Final – Video

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Hong Kong British Parliamentary Debating Championship 2014 - Grand Final
Hong Kong British Parliamentary Debating Championship 2014 - Grand Final Motion: This House believes that Edward Snowden deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Open...

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Hong Kong British Parliamentary Debating Championship 2014 - Grand Final - Video

Whistleblower Edward Snowden elected rector of Glasgow University

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The computer analyst was nominated by a group of students at the University of Glasgow who said they had received Mr Snowden's approval through his lawyer.

The result of the ballot, which opened to students yesterday, was revealed in Glasgow today.

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He defeated former champion cyclist Graeme Obree, author Alan Bissett and the Rev Kelvin Holdsworth who also stood.

Mr Snowden became a wanted man when his leaks brought to light secret National Security Agency documents which revealed widespread US surveillance of phone and internet communications.

He is staying in Russia where he was given temporary asylum.

A statement from the group which nominated Mr Snowden said: "We are incredibly delighted to see Edward Snowden elected as the new Rector of Glasgow University.

"We have a proud and virtuous tradition of making significant statements through our rectors and today we have once more championed this idea by proving to the world that we are not apathetic to important issues such as democratic rights.

"Our opposition to pervasive and immoral state intrusion has gone down in the records. What is more, we showed Edward Snowden and other brave whistleblowers that we stand in solidarity with them, regardless of where they are.

"In the following weeks we will continue to campaign for the NSA and GCHQ to cease their assault on our fundamental right to privacy and for Edward Snowden to be recognised as the courageous whistleblower he is, rather than a traitor.

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Whistleblower Edward Snowden elected rector of Glasgow University

Three former NSA workers accused of aiding Snowden

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WASHINGTON Three people at the National Security Agency have been implicated in Edward Snowden's efforts to copy classified material, including a civilian employee who resigned last month after acknowledging he allowed Snowden to use his computer ID, according to an NSA memo sent to Congress.

The other two were an active-duty member of the military and a civilian contractor. The memo does not describe their conduct, but says they were barred from the NSA and its systems in August.

The memo from the director of the NSA's legislative affairs office, Ethan L. Bauman, to the House Judiciary Committee staff does not identify the three or say whether they all worked with Snowden at an NSA post in Hawaii last year. But it offers a glimpse into the internal investigation of what intelligence officials have called the largest theft of classified material in U.S. history.

The NSA employee who resigned did not know that Snowden, an agency contractor employed by the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, planned to reveal classified NSA operations and systems to the media. But the employee admitted to the FBI in June that he had used his Public Key Infrastructure certificate, a special digital ID, to give Snowden access to material he was not authorized to see on an internal network called NSA Net.

The employee used his password to sign onto the network and Snowden secretly captured the password without the employee's knowledge, Bauman wrote, and later used it to download additional material.

The employee had his security clearance revoked in November and resigned on Jan. 10, according to the memo. Bauman's memo was first reported Thursday by NBC News.

An NSA spokeswoman declined to comment Friday.

Snowden, who is living in Moscow, has denied that he stole colleagues' passwords to gain access to classified documents. U.S. officials have confirmed reports that he used so-called Web crawler software to automatically troll the spy agency's networks and secretly access up to 1.7 million documents without being detected. It's still unclear how many he copied. News organizations have published a few dozen at most so far.

U.S. officials say Snowden mostly took documents that explained how NSA surveillance programs work, rather than fruits of eavesdropping and code-breaking operations. The officials say he was walled off from many NSA secrets, including recordings of private calls or conversations by world leaders.

But he appears to have accessed documents that could compromise military communications systems, satellite orbits and even the names of clandestine agents, officials say. Mitigating the damage, they say, will take years and cost billions of dollars.

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Three former NSA workers accused of aiding Snowden