Gov. Holcomb's action on equality appreciated

I was encouraged by Brian Howey's recent column reporting on Gov. Holcomb's address on the racial divide in America. Gov. Holcomb did historical research, had many conversations with others, and thought deeply, in developing the conviction that we as a state and nation need to work diligently toward equality for all. He knows that change will happen and the key is to shape that change nonviolently. He proposed policy to carry this forward. I admire him for taking the political courage to advance his views. You can listen to his speech, given on August 18, on YouTube.

LuEtta Friesen, Goshen

According to the CDC, there have been 177,759 deaths in this country due to COVID-19 out of a population of over 330 million. Do the math. People are not keeling over dead all around us as the media, and the so-called experts would have us believe. And yet, there are people running around everywhere wearing masks like the end of the world is at hand.

Welcome to the Twilight Zone. We're living in a time like no other. Critical thinking skills have gone out the window as many Americans seem willing to believe anything the "authorities" tell them.

Is all of this fear, hype and hysteria really warranted? Think about it. If this virus is so dangerous, why do so many people have to be tested to know they have it? Moreover, why are they exaggerating the numbers and inflating the death count if this is a legitimate threat?

Many Europeans are waking up to the tyranny being imposed upon them in the name of COVID-19 as large protests are taking place across Europe. Will enough Americans wake-up before it's too late? So far, the gullibility of most people appears to be limitless.

Edward Snowden recently warned that government is using COVID-19 as an excuse to enhance the surveillance state while relieving us of many of our freedoms.

Perhaps the real threat to our health, wealth and civil liberties isn't a pandemic. What if it's our own government?

Chad Maurer, Goshen

Welcome to God Bless America,Land That I Love day.

I had hoped that I would have a very good uplifting message for you today but right now my heart is grieving. I hurt for our leaders; I hurt for our police officers; I hurt for our people; and I hurt for our country.

One of my favorite musical groups, Casting Crowns, has a song that includes the lyrics at the end of our pointed fingers. This song goes on to talk about the problems that often are caused when we point fingers at others.

I cant speak for you, but I can speak for myself and I want America to be great.For that to happen I know that I must do my part.I want to be a part of the solution and not a part of the problem.I know that I must not point fingers. I may peacefully protest, but I may not participate in activities of violence and destruction.I may disagree with my fellow man, but I may not devalue them as a person or be disrespectful to them.I must do what is right and act accordingly or face the consequences of my actions.I know this to be an eternal truth.

I, Mark Huser promise to do my part to help America be great.I promise to treat all people fairly and with respect. Will you?

Mark Huser, Goshen

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR: Gov. Holcomb's action on equality appreciated; Is government the real threat to our liberties and health?; Writer promises to...

BOOK REVIEW

Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russias Remaking of the WestBy Luke HardingHarper, June 2020Luke Harding, a journalist with The Guardian and a prolific author of books, mostly Russia-related, but also about Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, published his latest saga, Shadow State: Murder, Mayhem and Russias Remaking of the West as a sequel to his earlier text Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win (2017), before the release of the Russia report by the Intelligence and Security Committee of the U.K. Parliament (ISC). The primary goal of Hardings book is to highlight the obvious to the nearly 50 percent of Britons, according to a recent poll, who believe that Russia messed with British democracy, including Brexit, the Scottish referendum and the general elections. But the ISC report, just as Robert Muellers investigative report, which Harding called a historical miss, came as a disappointment to Harding after British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in his response had refused to investigate the Kremlins meddling in the 2016 EU referendum for the lack of evidence.

Shadow State is one of those books that can be extolled by one political camp and dismissed as a fake conspiracy theory by another. Harding tends to the hypothesis that Putin controls both U.S. President Donald Trump and Johnson as stooges through money and kompromat. This hypothesis has generated hype and a significant body of circumstantial evidence, and Harding scrupulously presents every bit of it. One of the central pieces is the dossier on then-candidate Trump, compiled by retired British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. (Harding considers Steele to be the most famous MI6 officer since James Bond, even though two weeks after his book had been published, the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary released declassified documents that raised further serious questions about the reliability of this controversial dossier.)

Throughout the 14 chapters and epilogue of the book, Harding employs a docu-thriller narrative on the role of Russian espionage in re-shaping the West. In the preface, Harding explains the value-add of his story about a dozen or so dramatis personaefrom the tourists in Salisbury to Manaforts aide Konstantin Kilimnik and the shady dealer-wheeler characters of Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. He posits on the very first page, if America is to push back Moscows aggression, it needs to understand its adversaries better. Hardings intention to understand adversaries is commendable. After all, in the field of strategy, be it chess or negotiation, this exercise in empathy remains crucial. But aside from a few minor details, I didnt find anything in the book that has not been in the public domain, often extensively covered by media. For example, the troubled criminal teen years of Yevgeny Prigozhin, Putins chef and the mastermind and cash dispenser for the Internet Research Agency troll factory, is only a few clicks away, along with details on his family members, their properties and businesses, and even on the origins of his passion for exquisite Russian culinary delights. To add color to his docu-thriller, Harding devotes pages to providing the reader with a lengthy history of the building that houses the Russian military intelligence (GRU). The books excessive supply of such colorful information only clutters the understanding of the adversary for pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate (plurality should not be posited without necessity), as stated by the philosophical principle of Occams razor.

This brings me to the most critical point about the book. Instead of referencing sources for various claims and assertions, the author provides notes on sources on two and half pages at the end of the book. In addition to Muellers report, Harding mentions his own experience with individuals whom he describes as GRU spies and SVR operatives in Moscow; his contacts (none named) in Moscow from the days when he was The Guardians correspondent there; Russian migrs in LondonBoris Berezovsky (died in 2013) and his associate Nikolai Glushkov (died in 2018), Marina Litvinenko and a GRU defector (1978) Viktor Suvorov; a wide range of expert sources in the U.S. (none named, except George Papadopoulos, former Trump foreign affairs adviser); the Panama Papers; Bellingcat; Mikhail Khodorkovskys the Dossier Center; and journalists from the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, the New York Times, Sddeutsche Zeitung and many other publications.

To give Harding credit, he poses some good questions, and one of them is almost invariably avoided in this discourse. If it is true that Russian President Vladimir Putins espionage was so successful, what does it say about the intelligence communities of the U.K. and U.S.? Harding is less concerned with the intelligence community of the U.S., comprised of 17 organizations with annual budgets of up to $70 billion. However, he believes the U.K.s intelligence community was asleep at the wheel, and when they finally reportedly reported to Downing Street 10, the political decision from Prime Minister Theresa May, and later from Boris Johnson, was a no to further investigations. Another achievement of the book is the extensively researched London laundromat scene in the last couple of decades that has served as a fertile ground for espionage and active measures. These pages of the book fully resonate with the findings in the ISC report that the Russian influence in the U.K. is the new normal, and there are a lot of Russians with very close links to Putin who are well integrated into the U.K. business and social scene, and accepted because of their wealth. This level of integrationin Londongrad in particularmeans that any measures now being taken by the Government are not preventative but rather constitute damage limitation.

Still, according to Harding, out of the failures of the intelligence community and politicians sprung a bright, rising star of open-source reporting: Bellingcat. The British nerd army took advantage of the digital revolution and has broken a number of GRU scoops. Yet, Harding admits that not all data used by Bellingcat came from open sources. Russian data bases with private information about Russian citizens were obtained through bribes and Russian corruption, the perennial weakness of the Russian state, and became an equalizing factor, Harding writes.

"Meanwhile, Russian markets sold CDs of mass official information: home addresses, car registrations, telephone directories and other bulk indexes. For $100 or so you could buy traffic police records. With the right contacts, and a modest cash payment, it was even possible to gain access to the national passport database. Paradoxically, this low-level corruption made Russia one of the most open societies in the world. Corruption was the friend of investigative journalism. And the enemy of government military secrets."

Despite the fallacy of the incomplete evidence, Hardings hypothesis is embraced enthusiastically by many. After all, it may very well be that for lack of direct evidence, the treasonous crime has gone unpunished. It will take time, but above all, political re-configurations in the U.S. and U.K. allowing new investigations to provide proof and refutations, to establish not the intentwhich very few argue even in Russianot the interferencewhich has been establishedbut the impact on political processes. This only means that the book will be in high demand for the foreseeable future especially among readers who are seeking data to confirm their conclusion that Putin somehow controls Trump and Johnson.

The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead.

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The Role of Russian Espionage in Re-Shaping the West - Russia Matters

Theres a great deal of talk these days about cancel culture. The concept itself is somewhat nebulous, but it mostly involves people being criticized, held accountable, and sometimes facing consequences for things theyve done and said, in some cases in tweets and text messages in the distant past. The specter of cancel culture has also been repeatedly raised in politics, including numerous times this week at the Republican National Convention.

A new entry to the App Store, called KLOAKr, appears to be the first of its kind to pitch itself directly to smartphone users concerned with being canceled. Its press release uses the headline Cancel Culture is coming for you.

KLOAKr is a service which, per the press release, keeps text messages secret by cloaking iMessages. Its available now in the App Store, as an integrated application with iMessage.

The application, the release says, uses multiple levels of security that allow the message or image to be viewed once before it is deleted and unrecoverableforever.

KLOAKr works inside of iMessage, and offers encryption, biometric security, and, it says, deleting the messages forever.

The moment the receiver removes their finger from the screen the message is instantly destroyed, leaving no trace on the either Sender's or Receivers iPhones, or the cloud, the release says.

The company says its targeting, among others, businesses and organizations that require professional confidentially, teenagers concerned with future embarrassment, as well as public figures: politicians, celebrities, athletes, etc.

Messaging is notoriously insecure, and the consequences of confidential communications being misappropriated are high, JD Vaughn, KLOAKr Co-Founder, said in the announcement.These days, were using digital communications for all types of sensitive conversations from politics to social justice to finances, and we need to know they are secure.

There are other, similar apps and features that offer disappearing messages, such as Confide, and Signal, an app thats been endorsed by Edward Snowden, and Snapchat was a pioneer in ephemeral content. There was a controversy in 2017 when it was found that White House aides were using Signal, which led to concerns about potential violations of the Presidential Records Act. However, its not believed that any of those apps have ever pitched their product as a way to avoid cancel culture.

KLOAKr may prevent its users from having embarrassing texts or photos surface, to their detriment later on. However, when it comes to other actions not confined to texts that have been known to lead to cancellations, whether its tweets, direct messages, voicemails, or bad or embarrassing in-person behavior, users are on their own.

The app is free for the first sixty days, with the option to upgrade to KLOAKr Pro.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for the National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters

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Can An Integrated App Stop You from Being 'Canceled'? - The National Interest

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The United States has recently stepped up its attacks on Chinas government, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), to levels not seen since the heyday of Cold War-era anti-communist hysteria. In just one recent speech, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke of Chinas virulent strain of communism that is aggressive in its hostility to freedom everywhere else. His point was clear: because China is communist, it is ipso facto not a normal, law-abiding nation.

Although the question has been raised and discussed repeatedly, it still deserves to be asked one more time: Why, at this particular moment, is Washington so persistently intent on fighting Beijing, especially the so-called evil communist regime?

Chinas political system has remained holistic and stable for quite a long time. China has never concealed the fact to the international community, including the United States, that the country will stick to the uniqueness of the path it has taken.

Nonetheless, the Americans are coming, from pivoting to Asia, to rebalancing, and finally to the current pushback against China on almost all fronts. The United States comprehensive pushback against China is driven by the combined interaction of complex international relations, U.S. domestic politics, changes to the world economic landscape, Chinas continued expansion of foreign influence, and of course the enduring COVID-19 pandemic.

Lets choose the perspective of the U.S.-China trade war out of those multiple lenses. The U.S. blow to Chinese high-tech companies like Huawei can be examined in the context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, as I discussed in an earlier piece that tried to suggest a macro and strategic perspective and explanation. Meanwhile, the banning of TikTok probably comes out of the United States concerns about its citizens privacy and U.S. national security in the context of big data operation and management at least Washington wants the world to believe so, despite peoples clear memory of Prism, the Edward Snowden revelations, and Cambridge Analytica. This also can be a macro and strategic perspective and explanation.

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But is that the whole story? Obviously not.

In fact, whenever I bump into the term of U.S. pushback against China, I always recall the 2011 BBC documentary The Chinese Are Coming. There is a quote in it that especially impressed me. A White man, solemnly patriotic, who lost his job which was among thousands supposedly stolen by the Chinese gave a melancholy sigh: What we are losing is much more than just a product that can be found in a store. We are losing a culture and a way of life.

When the Sino-U.S. relationship has deteriorated to such an extent as we see today, recalling that scene may help us to see certain traces of an internal crisis for the American Dream and U.S. self-confidence over the past decade. As a White man, he should have had every advantage in the United States. He kept committed to traditional American values, worked hard, loved his family, and upheld his loyalty to his country and still found himself sighing with regret at a dream denied.

But who should be blamed for all this? Is it the globalization initiated and led by the United States and Western countries? Or is it China, which has always insisted on its unique political system and is demonstrating vibrant productivity and creativity as the world economy and the corresponding systems undergo a deep transformation? If both are to be blamed, then is the current pushback a remedy?

The point here is this: On the one hand, Chinas current political system overall rests upon its unique civilization and culture. On the other hand, China has never stopped changing and creating, especially as a rising world economy. China has emerged as a world leader in fields as widely varied as mobile payments, the sharing economy, high-speed railway, digital currency, world-leading communication facilities and technologies, and lately the eye-catching commercial successes of a number of emerging Chinese private companies like DJI and Bytedance, both of which have won the favor of hundreds of millions of consumers around the world, especially among the young generations.

Washington cannot stop technological creation, innovation, and fashion, nor can it prevent the future direction and trends of social and economic development in the coming new era. But it sees an opportunity to attack creations, innovations, and fashions brought about by companies, private or not, from China, a country that is ruled by a communist regime. All Washington needs to do is stigmatize Beijing and its ruling Communist Party. Then everything, from the broader pushback to bans and targeted sanctions on individual companies, can be defended as ideologically and politically correct, or even crucial.

But attacking China just for having a communist regime misses the reality of its vibrant economy. At a time when the world economy is facing a major transformation, China and its huge market seem to be more open and diversified than ever. In particular, some leading Chinese private companies have seized opportunities and gained market momentum. According to a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, among the Chinese companies that have entered the worlds top 500, Chinese private companies are fully ahead of Chinese state-owned enterprises in respect to both average return on assets and average profit margin. Could this happen if the CCP opposed the market economy and free competition?

Get first-read access to major articles yet to be released, as well as links to thought-provoking commentaries and in-depth articles from our Asia-Pacific correspondents.

Lets take TikTok as an example one more time. In the past, U.S. criticisms of Chinese companies overseas behaviors were mostly focused on the Chinese governments guidance, dominance, and subsidies. But Bytedance, the parent company of TikTok, is a privately owned start-up that has acquired huge market shares, including in the United States. This gives Americans, who are used to dominating the internet and social media sectors, a new, complex, and difficult situation. Whoever leads entertainment culture in the internet age will strongly affect people, and particularly the next generation. This could be the latest manifestation of the worry I quoted earlier from the BBC documentary: We are losing a culture and a way of life. But technological innovations and popularity cannot be attacked directly. How to brand U.S. opposition with political purpose and thereby regain tech dominance and the lost market shares?

Washington has apparently found its solution. If something is innovative, trendy, or cutting-edge, and it comes from China, the assumption is that it has been genetically modified for the political purposes of the so-called evil CCP regime, and therefore needs to be resolutely censored and resisted.

This is an extension of the original sin under the China Threat Theory Chinese companies, no matter their actions, cannot escape the stigma of their origin. Currently, the message from Washington seems to be very clear: as long as the CCP insists on the uniqueness of its development path, everything comes out of China would automatically be branded as a threat, if not evil.

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Why Is America Dusting off Its Anti-Communist Playbook? - The Diplomat

By: Explained Desk | New Delhi | Updated: August 18, 2020 12:19:11 pmEdward Snowden, former National Security Agency contractor, speaks during a virtual conversation at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas, US, March 10, 2014. (Bloomberg Photo: David Paul Morris)

Last Saturday (August 15), US President Donald Trump said he was considering a pardon for Edward Snowden, former employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor, who exposed a surveillance programme under which the US government was collecting data on millions of people.

Trump has previously called Snowden a traitor and a spy who should be executed. In 2013, Trump tweeted, ObamaCare is a disaster and Snowden is a spy who should be executed-but if he could reveal Obamas records, I might become a major fan.

Since he was charged in 2013, Snowden has been in exile in Russia. A pardon could mean he can finally return to the US.

In 2013, The Guardian broke the news that the NSA was collecting phone records of millions of Americans from telecom service provider Verizon. It was further revealed that the intelligence agency was tapping servers of Facebook, Google and Microsoft to track Americans online activities.

Subsequently, The Guardian revealed its source of information, and named Snowden as the whistle-blower who leaked information on these surveillance programmes.

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The documents leaked by Snowden showed the NSA and its counterpart in the UK, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had found ways to bypass the encryption offered to consumers by various companies on the Internet.

The NSAs ability to decipher the data of millions of Americans was one of its closest-guarded secrets. Knowledge of this was restricted to those who were a part of a highly classified programme, called Bullrun.

The surveillance programme was not only limited to ordinary American citizens, but also foreign leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

In 2013, Snowden was charged with theft of US government property and unauthorised communication of national defence information, in violating of the 1917 Espionage Act, and providing classified information to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

The leaks had triggered a debate on surveillance and privacy. While critics accused Snowden of treason, his supporters, including privacy activists, lauded him for releasing the documents.

In 2019, a lawsuit was filed against him by the US for publishing a book, titled Permanent Record, which was in violation of the non-disclosure agreements he had signed with the NSA and CIA. The lawsuit alleged Snowden published the book without submitting it to agencies for pre-publication review, in violation of his agreements with the two agencies.

According to a report in The New York Times, the data intelligence agencies were able to access included sensitive information like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, the documents show.

In an interview Snowden gave to The Guardian in 2014, he said through the arrangement between the NSA and private Internet companies, such as Facebook, the agency was able to get copies of ones Facebook messages, Skype conversations and Gmail inboxes.

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Explained: Who is Edward Snowden? - The Indian Express

President Trump, who exhibits unrestrained contempt for proper authority, including his own, recently declared that he may soon grant a pardon for Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has lived in Moscow since 2013 after leaking information on the nations most secretive spy agencies. This would be the culmination of a years-long relationship that Trump and his entourage has cultivated with Snowden (and Julian Assange) since it became clear that these forces shared Trumps unalloyed hostility for the American order and all its works.

The prospect of a presidential pardon for Snowden, whose revelations about the National Security Agencys foreign and domestic surveillance techniques were disclosed at his personal whim rather than through democratic audit, is a befitting offering from a chief executive whose flagrant criminality and contempt for the democratic process will be his most enduring legacy.

The controversy over Snowden calls to mind an episode from revolutionary America in which Alexander Hamilton laid down an important standard about the appropriate balance between justice and principle. In May 1775, when a nasty mob gathered at Kings College to tar and feather Myles Cooper, the colleges loyalist president, Hamilton interceded to lecture the crowd on the disgrace such unwarranted violence would bring on the cause of liberty. Thanks to this effort to hold the agitated crowd at bay, Cooper was able to escape to the safety of a British warship, but Hamilton was nonetheless shaken by the experience. He wrote to John Jay soon afterwards, I am always more or less alarmed at every thing which is done of mere will and pleasure, without any proper authority.

It seems never to have occurred to Snowden that his shabby conscience does not and never did constitute a proper authority. He abrogated to himself the responsibilities of governance under the dubious ruse of exposing unconstitutional methods, and his media allies assumed the same responsibilities under the equally dubious ruse of investigative journalism. It has been widely suggested that Snowdens stolen secretsand his unscrupulous acolytes in media who have lustily distributed them on multiple continentsrepresent a valiant defense of individual liberties against mighty and minatory states. This narrative could not be further from the truth.

The apologists for and beneficiaries of Vladimir Putins regime have suggested that Americans civil liberties are held in contempt by their own government. And yet it is the United States government that has seen fit to obtain such a sturdy legal footing before venturing to gather user information from Verizon and other private companies that so offended Snowdens delicate sensibilities. Far from being a violation of the Fourth Amendment guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures, the collection of sensitive information by the NSAexpressly permitted by Congress and extensively reviewed by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Courthas been fully consistent with longstanding judicial precedent.

In United States v. Choate, for instance, the courts decided that the Postal Service may record mail cover, i.e., whats written on the outside of an envelopethe addresses of sender and receiver. As Charles Krauthammer argued at the time of Snowdens revelations, the NSAs recording of U.S. phone data merely extends the logic of this ruling to telephone records. The program is not a mass, roving tap, as it has been widely characterized, because it only records the numbers dialed and time stampsthe outside of the envelope, as it were. The content of the conversation, however, is like the letter inside the envelope. It may not be opened without a court order.

In Smith v. Maryland, the Supreme Court addressed this method of surveillance more directly. It held that the warrantless state installation of a pen register that collected telephone information, known as metadata, could not be construed as an unreasonable search by the standards of the Fourth Amendment. This was decided on the grounds that people have no expectation of privacy in records that plainly belong to another party.

Once the case of government trampling civil liberties is demonstrated to be an obnoxious fiction, the critics tend to fall back on challenging the notion that its surveillance measures even foil the countrys enemies. After all, we are knowingly assured, the enemy already understood the danger of placing calls. This argument has gained a surprising amount of traction given the obvious flaw in its reasoning. A moments thought should tell us that if we, an informed citizenry, didnt know about the details of such operations, our enemies probably didnt know either.

This argument calls to mind the deceitful habit cultivated by detractors of Americas post-September 11 regime of enhanced interrogation. They frequently insisted that torture was not merely immoral; it was ineffective. At times it seemed as if they could not mount a case against it if it were proven to yield benefits to American security. The suggestion that Snowden ever exposed wrongdoing is at least tenable, if not compelling. What strains credulity is that his imprudent action has not done real harm to American security. The ability to hinder terrorists communications is a vital American advantage in a war where the asymmetric benefits so often reside on the other side.

At this point one simply has to reiterate the initial questions: To justify Snowdens wanton disregard for democratic procedure, what laws were ever shown to have been broken? What liberties were violated? This is what Snowdens defendersor, if you like, defenders of the act of bringing these classified materials to lighthave never adequately explained. Indeed, this is what they have doggedly refused to answer. And for good reason. In the vast labyrinth of the American security state, there are numerous possibilities of illegal activity being brought to light.

And yet even at this late date, not a shred of evidence has been produced suggesting chronic abuse, let alone law-breaking, by the NSA. Even if there were such evidence, there is an established and credible process in place to reform government intelligence gathering techniques without arbitrarily leaking classified informationa process that Snowden shows no sign of having availed himself.

Anyone who recalls this sordid affair will not fail to notice the cavalier contempt for authority that propelled Snowden to splash his ill-gotten goods onto the world stage has been replicated every day of the Trump administration. (At least once, this happened literally, when Trump disclosed high-level U.S. secrets to the Russian foreign minister in the Oval Office.) It is this exercise in mere will and pleasure that most urgently needs to be ruled out of courtthe court of public opinion. If the president decides to grant him a pardon anyway, in open defiance of the spirit of his executive authority, it will not be the least of reasons for the American public to turn him out of office this November.

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Trump and Snowdens War on Proper Authority - The Bulwark

Snowdens biggest speaking payday disclosed is the very first on the list: $50,000 for a speech to Hong Kong-based brokerage firm CLSA in 2015. Other pricey appearances include a turn at Piston ad agency in Kuwait for $35,000, a $32,000 gig for a Portugese tourism bureau and $30,000 each for a Get Motivated lineup of motivational speakers and an appearance at the Park City Performing Arts Foundation.

The list also includes payouts Snowden got from colleges and universities. He got $25,000 from the University of Waterloo, $20,000 each for speaking to audiences at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Winnipeg, $18,000 each from Middlebury College and the University of Alberta, $15,000 from the University of Pittsburgh, $14,000 from Ontario Colleges and $12,000 each from Georgetown and Ohio Wesleyan Universities.

While critics will likely view the payments as the computer specialist capitalizing on his alleged crimes, the stream of income he has managed to establish could also dispel suspicions that hes being supported financially by the Russian government, which granted him temporary asylum in 2013 and has repeatedly extended that status.

The sums the hosts paid were larger than what Snowden received, as the speakers bureau took a cut. However, a federal magistrate judge ruled last week that APB can keep the amount of its commissions confidential.

The federal lawsuit filed last August accuses Snowden of breaching various agreements regarding classified information by failing to clear his speeches and his recent book, Permanent Record, with the NSA and CIA in advance.

Snowdens attorneys have acknowledged he did not do so, but have said those agencies would not have dealt with him fairly. Theyve also noted widespread complaints from former government officials about the pre-publication review process.

However, U.S. District Court Judge Liam OGrady ruled in favor of the government in the case last December, holding that the government is entitled to the proceeds of the book and Snowdens profits from the speeches. The remaining issues in the case involve determining just how much money the government is entitled to.

Snowden spurned formal requests from the government for information about his earnings and the contents of his speeches, despite advice from his attorneys that he comply. That prompted U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan to enter sanctions against him earlier this month that essentially bar him from disputing most of the calculations the government has made about his earnings.

In April, Macmillan Publishing Group agreed to direct to the government all future royalties due to Snowden. However, the firm was not required to recover or pay back to the government the undisclosed advance Snowden received for Permanent Record.

Snowdens disclosures about NSA surveillance practices prompted an end of some agency programs and major reforms to others. Stories based on his revelations fueled a global backlash against surveillance and led Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act in 2015, which reined in bulk collection of communications data without individualized suspicion.

Critics have faulted Snowden for indiscriminately releasing top-secret information, even about legitimate programs targeting terrorists, nuclear proliferation and regimes hostile to the U.S. He has said he transferred the data he took to journalists and allowed them to judge what merited release.

Federal prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Snowden in June 2013, charging him with three felonies: conveying classified information to an unauthorized party, disclosing communications intelligence information and theft of government property.

The new court filing confirms a Yahoo News report in August 2016 that said sources familiar with Snowdens business dealings said he had pulled in more than $200,000 in the past year. The disclosure shows that income kept pace over the past several years, but seemed to slow down earlier this year.

APBs submission said its personnel believe Snowden directed about $51,000 in donations to charity from his speaking fees, although the firm's records regarding some of those gifts are not clear. A nonprofit group that has been outspoken in support of Snowden, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, got at least $35,000 of that money, the speakers bureau said.

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Edward Snowden raked in over $1.2 million in speaking fees, agent says - POLITICO

President Trump polled his aides on Thursday about whether he should let anti-surveillance whistleblower and leaker Edward Snowden return to the US from Russia without going to prison, saying he was open to it.

There are a lot of people that think that he is not being treated fairly. I mean, I hear that, Trump told The Post in an exclusive interview in the Oval Office, before soliciting views from his staff.

Trump commented on Snowden for the first time as president after accusing former President Barack Obama of spying on his 2016 campaign.

When you look at [former FBI Director James] Comey and [former FBI Deputy Director Andrew] McCabe, and [former CIA Director John] Brennan and, excuse me, the man that sat at this desk, President Obama, got caught spying on my campaign with [former Vice President Joe] Biden. Biden and Obama, and they got caught spying on the campaign, Trump said.

Trumps comments reflect a remarkable softening in his views about the man he once deemed a traitor worthy of execution. Republican lawmakers and the Justice Departments inspector general recently highlighted misuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the secret FISA court to surveil former Trump adviser Carter Page.

Snowden is one of the people they talk about. They talk about numerous people, but he is certainly one of the people that they do talk about, Trump said on Thursday, before turning to his aides. I guess the DOJ is looking to extradite him right now? Its certainly something I could look at. Many people are on his side, I will say that. I dont know him, never met him. But many people are on his side.

The president then asked his staff: How do you feel about that, Snowden? Havent heard the name in a long time.

After polling the room, Trump added: Ive heard it both ways. From traitor to hes being, you know, persecuted. Ive heard it both ways.

Snowdens legal team has tried in vain to negotiate a prison-free return to the US for the former National Security Agency contractor, who in 2013 exposed the fact that the FISA court was secretly approving the dragnet collection of domestic call records.

Before taking office, Trump tweeted at least 45 times denouncing Snowden as a traitor and calling for his execution.

In a 2013 tweet, Trump wrote: Snowden is a spy who should be executed-but if it and he could reveal Obamas records, I might become a major fan.

Originally posted here:
Trump: 'A lot of people' think Edward Snowden 'not being treated fairly' - New York Post

Editors, USA TODAY Published 4:46 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2020 | Updated 9:58 p.m. ET Aug. 16, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on the House to return into session later this week to vote on a bill that would prevent changes the Trump administration has made to the Postal Service, alterations Democrats say will cause a slowing of the flow of mail and potentially jeopardize the November election. Pelosi said Sunday that "American Democracy" is under threat from President Donald Trump, who last week said he opposed giving the USPS more money while at the same time acknowledging the lack of funding may hamper the office's ability to process mail-in ballots.Pelosi wants the House to vote later this week on Rep. Carolyn Maloney's Delivering for America Act, which prohibits changes to Postal Service operations in place on Jan. 1, 2020.

Hours before Pelosi's call to return to session, Democrats urged the postmaster general to testify before a House committee nearly a month earlier than initially requested, saying the "urgent" hearing is neededto address the"dangerous operational changes" to the United StatesPostal Service.

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - AUGUST 05: A United States Postal Service (USPS) truck is parked on August 05, 2020 in New York City. The USPS, the nations national mail carrier service, is under increased scrutiny from politicians who are warning that the agency is not prepared to handle the tens of millions of mail-in ballots which are expected to be sent for the November election. President Trump in recent weeks has called the Postal Service a joke as the agency is experiences delays in mail delivery due to the coronavirus pandemic and financial pressures. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) ORG XMIT: 775543359 ORIG FILE ID: 1264142090(Photo: Spencer Platt, Getty Images)

President Donald Trump's younger brother Robertdied Saturday of an undisclosed illness. He was 71. "He was not just my brother, he was my best friend,"the president said in a statement issued late Saturday. "He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever."The youngest of the Trump siblings, Donald Trump once described Robertas much quieter and easygoing than I am, and the only guy in my life whom I ever call honey.The White House announced Friday that Robert Trumphad been hospitalized with an undisclosed illness and the president visited him that afternoonin Manhattan.

Robert Trump (left) is pictured joining then real estate developer and presidential hopeful Donald Trump (right) at an event in New York. Robert Trump died on Saturday after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement. He was 71.(Photo: Diane Bondaress, AP Images)

A saliva-based COVID-19 testdeveloped by researchers at Yale withfunding from the NBA and National Basketball Players Association was approved on Saturdayfor emergency use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The method is called SalivaDirect and researchers say it isless expensive and less invasive than nasopharyngeal swabbing. Testing overall, however, has dropped nationwidedespite the virus picking up in many states. Daily nationwidecase counts appear to have dropped in the last couple weeks, butreduced testing in some states makes it hard to confidently determinethat infection rates are improving.

Nearly a week after aferocious derecho storm roared across the Midwest, Iowans are still reeling with the disaster left in its wake. Iowa homes, cornfields, utility companies and government agencies have losses estimated at nearly $4 billion from Monday's unusual storm, Gov. Kim Reynolds said Sunday as she announced she's filing an expedited presidential major disaster declaration with the federal government seeking that much money to rebuild and repair. The derecho, with hurricane-force wind gusts exceeding 100 mph, destroyed or extensively damaged 8,200 homes and 13 million acres of corn, about a third of the state's crop land, she said. More than a half million people were without electricity in the immediate aftermath of the storm. Utility companies reported about 83,000 people remained without power as of Sunday night.

Iowa Department of Transportation workers help with tree debris removal as grain bins from the Archer Daniels Midland facility are seen severely damaged in Keystone, Iowa, on Wednesday, Aug. 12, 2020. A storm slammed the Midwest with straight-line winds of up to 100 mph on Monday.(Photo: Jim Slosiarek, AP)

President Donald Trump said Saturday that he's considering granting a pardonto whistleblowerEdward Snowden. Im going to take a look at that very strongly, Trump said during a news conference at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey. Snowden, a former contractor for the National Security Agency, has been living in exile in Moscow since fleeing the U.S. six years ago after leaking information on the nation's most secretive spy agencies and their programs. Trump said that he is not that aware of the Snowden situation but that people on both theleft and the right are divided over the former contractor.In late 2016, then-President Barack Obama said he wouldn't consider a pardon until Snowden stopped running from the law.

P.S. Like this round up of stories?We send it to inboxes every afternoon. Sign up for "The Short List" newsletter here.

This is a compilation of stories from across the USA TODAY Network.Contributing: Associated Press.

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Here's the biggest news you missed this weekend - USA TODAY

The world just received the newest pronouncement from the EU Court of Justice, in a decision known as Schrems II, and the legal opinion extends the data war declared on the United States in the first Schrems decision. Interpreting these decisions together, European privacy regulators are beginning to suggest that there will be no practical manner of transferring EU to the US that meets EU data privacy requirements.

If the Schrems II decision truly leads to a stoppage of data traffic from Europe, 1) this would be a logical conclusion to the dangerous, unnecessary and unprincipled arguments asserted in Schrems I, and 2) it could be disastrous to commerce between two of the worlds largest trading partners.

The Current Decision. Schrems II invalidated the EU/US Privacy Shield program that many US companies use to demonstrate compliance with EU data laws, leaving a scant few options within the control of U.S. companies wishing to serve EU customers not all of them practical. And the court in Schrems II even raised significant questions on the legally authorized methods of transfer that remained.

Many company data transfers from the EU to the US are effectuated under the Standard Contract Clauses approved for foreign data access by the EU. While the court in Schrems II upheld these clauses as valid, it also threw a wrench in the works, demanding that exporting parties must account for the relevant aspects of the data importers legal system, in particular any access by public authorities to the data transferred. If the exporter cannot guaranty a level of data protection that would be approved by the EU, the exporter is required to terminate the transfer and possibly be required to terminate the entire contract with the receiving party.

So the EU court is forcing all data controlling businesses to assess the trustworthiness of the U.S. government before any relevant transaction. How does that work? The Court of Justice has specifically held that the US government cant be trusted to keep its hands off of EU data, so are businesses supposed to find otherwise? Or do companies wait for their local Data Protection Authority to opine on the matter? In addition, the Court of Justice is requiring companies to breach their commercial contracts based on their evaluation not just of the data protection regime of the contracting company but of the U.S. government. Expect extensive litigation if this requirement is followed in real life (and EU regulatory attacks if it isnt).

Who decides whether regular commerce can be conducted with the U.S. now that the Court of Justice has allowed for use of Standard Contract Clause, yet thrown shade on whether the behavior of the U.S. government may invalidate the effectiveness of the clauses? Keep in mind, that unlike the U.S., the EU has a broad and deep privacy-focused system of city, state and national government bureaucracies who interpret and enforce the data laws. Already, some of these bodies are warning that Schrems II no longer allows transfers of data to the U.S., even under the Standard Contract Clauses.

The Data Commissioner in Berlin suggests that local companies storing personal data in the US immediately transfer the data to Europe and stop sending EU personal data to the US under current US law. The Hamburg data authority welcomed Schrems II castigation of the U.S. and wrote that the Standard Contract Terms are equally unsuitable to the Privacy Shield. The Dutch authority states that the clauses were ruled valid, but also notes they are only valid in places that adequately protect data under EU standards and the U.S. is not such a place. Even Ireland, where many U.S. tech companies are headquartered or have a significant corporate presence, saw its data protection commissioner question whether the Standard Contract Teems or other transfer mechanisms were still available for transfers to the U.S. OneTrust publishes a chart of EU Data Protection Authority reactions to Schrems II, complete with links, as does the IAPP.

Many of the various data protection authorizes wrote in a more business-friendly and conciliatory tone, including the UK, which stands in sort of legal data limbo in regard to EU policy after Brexit. But the logic of Schrems II is unavoidable: the U.S. government is willing and able to access private data, so EU data should not be placed in its clutches.

Schrems I. Shutting off all data EU personal data access to the U.S. follows the clear logic of conclusions offered by the Court of Justice in its first Schrems decision back in 2015. The first Schrems decision killed the EU/U.S. safe harbor system, a leaner predecessor to the Privacy Shield, and while it did not specifically address other forms of data transfer to the U.S., the decision clearly condemned the U.S. government for aggressively protecting its ability to access personal data.

Schrems I was written in the aftermath of Edward Snowdens disclosures about the depth of spying and data analysis performed by the United States government. The decision reads like the most intentionally boring temper tantrum ever put to paper. Buried deep in the midst of thousands of words of legal citation and analysis, the court found that the United States could not ensure that EU data residing in the U.S. would not be accessed for government reasons. It conceded that Mr. Schrems had no evidence that the NSA had accessed information about him, but noted that Edward Snowden had demonstrated a significant over-reach on the part of the NSA and other federal agencies. The court threw out the data privacy safe harbor because it found the U.S. government could access data beyond what was strictly necessary and proportionate to the protection of national security.

This decision was troublesome on multiple levels. The court could easily have invalidated the safe harbor simply for not being enforced effectively the safe harbor wasnt or for not providing EU citizens a practical appeal mechanism the safe harbor didnt. Decisions on these grounds would have restricted damage to only the safe harbor, which was quickly renegotiated to address some of these concerns. However, by speaking down from its high horse judging the U.S. governments anti-terrorism activity to be significant over-reach the court essentially questioned any method of transferring data to the U.S. If the government of the United States is hell-bent on data over-reach, nothing a U.S. company could do in contract terms or binding corporate rules could counter this deficiency from a European perspective. So the natural conclusion would be that no personal data should flow from the EU to the U.S.

This logic is dangerous in that it threatens the core of billions of Euros of commerce between the EU and U.S., and it is unnecessary because the same safe harbor invalidating result could have been reached based on a narrower set of reasons. It is also hypocritical and unprincipled because the security services of EU member countries were (and are) taking the same actions toward foreign (and probably local) data as the United States was taking. Immediately after the Schrems I decision was released, the French government enacted a new surveillance law similar to the USA PATRIOT Act that had so disturbed the EU Court of Justice.

According to Vox, the French law allows law enforcement to surreptitiously install keyloggers on suspects computers and requires Internet service providers to install black boxes that are designed to vacuum up and analyze metadata on the Web-browsing and general Internet use habits of millions of people using the Web and to make that data available to intelligence agencies. And the law allows the government to deploy what are called ISMI catchers to track all mobile phone communications in a given area. These catchers are basically designed to impersonate cell towers, but they intercept and record communications data from phones within its range, and can also track the movements of people carrying the phones. This is the very definition of collecting data indiscriminately beyond what is strictly necessary and proportionate to the protection of national security.

According to Human Rights Watch the French law provides little political oversight to police and vague triggers to its application. Sounds like over-reach to them, but apparently not to the EU Court of Justice, who has not questioned allowing personal data to be housed in France. I have not researched other EU member nation surveillance activities from the UKs millions of CCTV cameras to the Belgian general requirements for data to be held by providers for law enforcement but I am certain dozens of examples could be mined of anti-terror (or even politically-based) surveillance that deeply resemble what the Court of Justice decries about the U.S. system.

Political/Business Purposes? So what is the end-game? If the EU stops allowing personal data transfers to the US, what happens to this data? Maybe Europe is moving toward a method to keep the data under its own control. Politico reports that Germany and France have launched a platform of trusted cloud providers called Gaia-X. Launched in June with the backing of Berlin and Paris, Gaia-X is one of Europes most far-reaching attempts to assert sovereignty over how its data is stored and protected. The program seeks to give EU companies and edge over U.S. and Chinese cloud providers. 22 French and German companies and organizations are founding members of the project and they will write the projects by-laws and policy rules.

While Gaia-X currently involves some non-EU based cloud providers, its function seems be promotion of home-grown solutions. The Schrems logic judging the U.S. inadequate on a standard the EU courts are unwilling to apply to its own governments may be the basis of building an EU-based cloud for EU information.

Maybe the EU just plans to invalidate negotiated agreements with the U.S. twice each decade and then replace them with something more to Europes liking. Maybe it simply hasnt considered (or cared about) how law-abiding companies suffer when the EU changes the size and location of the goal posts at regular intervals during the match. Or maybe the EU just wants to build its own cloud industry with EU data and assistance from the regulators.

Data localization may be the next step.

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The Logical Conclusion to an Illogical Conclusion: Schrems May Forbid Data Commerce from the EU to the US - Lexology