Francis is an extraordinary human being and an extraordinary pope. But to be Planet Earths person of the year, to be extraordinary is not enough.

You must be superlativethe years most surprising, most consequential, most transformative figure alive. And by that standard, the only possible standard, Pope Francis is not the person of the year. That is a title that can only belong to Edward Snowden.

Many people do not want this, or this kind of thing, to be true, but it iswhether measured by scope of change, depth of change, or something even deeper.

Consider the breadth of change wrought by Francis and Snowden. If the pope, writes TIME magazine, could bring the church into a new relationship with its critics and dissidentsagreeing to disagree about issues that divide them while cooperating in the urgent mission of spreading mercyhe might unleash untold good. Perhaps. So far, he has created the possibility.

And possibilities, once created, are powerful things.

But Snowden has created an even more powerful possibilityby shocking America and the rest of the world into apprehending what a truly global tyranny would be. Francis is showing the world a new way of approaching the good news of the gospel. Snowden has given us access to bad news of a kind we never knew existed.

From his platform, Francis is free to dazzle. From within the machinery of the surveillance state, Snowdens freedom was radically confinedreduced to the single, world-altering choice to leak or not to leak. While a life outside the papacy would leave Francis no less full and forceful a Christian, a life unleaked would have made Snowden far more a burial ground for secrets than many a Catholic priest.

While the faithful preach the Bible openly, nearly every person alive and aware of the secrets Snowden released sitsstill!beneath a coercive cone of silence. Members of Congress withhold the truth while those they call to testify lie under oath. Without Francis, a cosmopolitan civilization a billion strong would rise to its own defense. Without Snowden, who knows how long Americans would grope around in gloomy ignorance of our true relationship with our own government? Without Snowden, the global character of total information awareness would be no more than a superstitionno doubt assiduously dismissed by all the powers that be.

Now the depth of Snowdens change comes into focus. Francis is not a revolutionary. As TIME observes, Francis signals great change while giving the same answers to the uncomfortable questions. Now, becoming person of the year is not about winning a change-agent contest. Defeat the Confederacy, survive the Blitz, and youve got pretty good odds on the honor. As an agent against a certain sort of change, Francis is, again, extraordinary. But again, Snowden has him beat. Who has done so much, in so short a time, to return the human mind to the most basic questions of libertywhat it is, how to keep it, how to know if it is lost?

Yet at the same time, there is no topping the radical quality of the Snowden-led rebellion against omniscient rule. You are right to wonder if it might not turn out for the best, especially outside America, where the false alternatives of a return to innocence and a perpetual revolution so stubbornly vex the spirit. But inside America, we should not be deceived by the riots and assassinations that havent followed on Snowdens monstrous disclosures. Organized resistance against Washingtons permanent collection of all datawhether among elites or the rest of uswould be unthinkable in a world without Snowden.

Even more significant, however, is the reorientation of anti-establishment politics that follows. Before Snowden, the prospect of a successful bipartisan alliance for radical reform was a fantasy, a laugh. Today it is real, and the closest we come to an answer to the cynicism and despair draped around popular opinion. Meanwhile, no matter how profound Franciss response to human discontent, no pope can fully attend to earthly justice, as students of Catholic history know all too well.

Dramatic as the scope and depth of Snowdens impact may be, the case for him does not end here. There is a darker, yet more transcendent, sense in which he is our unchallengeable person of the year.

Francis greatly moves and inspires many of us. (No, not all.) But the way he does is defined by a simple fact: It flatters our favorite prejudices. He is humble; he loves all; hes unafraid of unattractive people; he knows how to smile. Pope Francis appeals to some of the deepest Christian intuitions about how to live into the brotherhood of Man. Inevitably, he also appeals to the vanities of our warm, fuzzy, quasi-spiritual popular culture.

In that happy place of the collective imagination, Snowden is practically an avatar of our secular devilnegativity incarnate. Snowden is a bummer; Snowden is a rule-breaker; Snowden is non-compliant; Snowden is not constructive. Some say he is even a traitor. Either way, Snowdens acts place the possibility for awakening our moral imagination at our own feet and for that, in a secret part of our hearts, we might just hate him.

But in that anger and disappointment, we are pulled back from the kind of shared delight that can become a conspiracy of consolation for the death of our deeper dreams. As enchanting as the experience of heavenly servitude may be, Americans know that when it is offered together with earthly subjection, our instinct for life turns against itself.

The celebration of Pope Francis should not become just such a therapy for the unfree. Nor should our recognition of Edward Snowden occasion our rejection of peace and joy as a wellspring of our lives. Fortunately for us all, to confront the darkness is still not to curse the light.

Originally posted here:
Edward Snowden, Not Pope Francis, Is the Person of the Year

There are a number of narratives being floated by the usual suspects to attempt to demonstrate that Edward Snowden is a traitor who has betrayed secrets vital to the security of the United States. All the arguments being made are essentially without merit. Snowden has undeniably violated his agreement to protect classified information, which is a crime. But in reality, he has revealed only one actual secret that matters, which is the United States governments serial violation of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution through its collection of personal information on millions of innocent American citizens without any probable cause or search warrant.

That makes Snowden a whistleblower, as he is exposing illegal activity on the part of the federal government. The damage he has inflicted is not against U.S. national security but rather on the politicians and senior bureaucrats who ordered, managed, condoned, and concealed the illegal activity.

First and foremost among the accusations is the treason claim being advanced by such legal experts as former Vice President Dick Cheney, Speaker of the House John Boehner, and Senator Dianne Feinstein. The critics are saying that Snowden has committed treason because he has revealed U.S. intelligence capabilities to groups like al-Qaeda, with which the United States is at war. Treason is, in fact, the only crime that is specifically named and described in the Constitution, in Article III: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

Whether Washington is actually at war with al-Qaeda is, of course, debatable since there has been no declaration of war by Congress as required by Article I of the Constitution. Congress has, however, passed legislation, including the Authorization for Use of Military Force, empowering the President to employ all necessary force against al-Qaeda and associated groups; this is what Cheney and the others are relying on to establish a state of war.

But even accepting the somewhat fast and loose standard for being at war, it is difficult to discern where Snowden has been supporting the al-Qaeda and associated groups enemy. Snowden has had no contact with al-Qaeda and he has not provided them with any classified information. Nor has he ever spoken up on their behalf, given them advice, or supported in any way their activities directed against the United States. The fallback argument that Snowden has alerted terrorists to the fact that Washington is able to read their emails and listen in on their phone conversationsenabling them to change their methods of communicationis hardly worth considering, as groups like al-Qaeda have long since figured that out. Osama bin Laden, a graduate in engineering, repeatedly warned his followers not to use phones or the Internet, and he himself communicated only using live couriers. His awareness of U.S. technical capabilities was such that he would wear a cowboy hat when out in the courtyard of his villa to make it impossible for him to be identified by hovering drones and surveillance satellites.

Attempts to stretch the treason argument still further by claiming that Snowden has provided classified information to Russia and China are equally wrong-headed, as the U.S. has full and normally friendly diplomatic relations with both Moscow and Beijing. Both are major trading partners. Washington is not at war with either nation and never has been apart from a brief and limited intervention in the Russian Civil War in 1918. Nor is there any evidence that Snowden passed any material directly to either countrys government or that he has any connection to their intelligence services.

Then there is the broader national security argument. It goes something like this: Washington will no longer be able to spy on enemies and competitors in the world because Snowden has revealed the sources and methods used by the NSA to do so. Everyone will change their methods of communication, and the United States will be both blind and clueless. Well, one might argue that the White House has been clueless for at least 12 years, but the fact is that the technology and techniques employed by NSA are not exactly secret. Any reasonably well educated telecommunications engineer can tell you exactly what is being done, which means the Russians, Chinese, British, Germans, Israelis, and just about everyone else who has an interest is fully aware of what the capabilities of the United States are in a technical sense. This is why they change their diplomatic and military communications codes on a regular basis and why their civilian telecommunications systems have software that detects hacking by organizations like NSA.

Foreign nations also know that what distinguishes the NSA telecommunications interception program is the enormous scale of the dedicated resources in terms of computers and personnel, which permit real time accessing of billions of pieces of information. NSA also benefits from the ability to tie into communications hubs located in the continental United States or that are indirectly accessible, permitting the U.S. government to acquire streams of data directly. The intelligence community is also able to obtain both private data and backdoor access to information through internet, social networking, and computer software companies, the largest of which are American. Anyone interested in more detail on how the NSA operates and what it is capable of should read Jim Bamfords excellent books on the subject.

The NSAs capabilities, though highly classified, have long been known to many in the intelligence community. In 2007, I described the Bush administrations drive to broaden the NSAs activities, noting that

The president is clearly seeking open-ended authority to intercept communications without any due process, and he apparently intends to do so in the United States House Republican leader John Boehner (OH), citing 9/11, has described the White House proposal as a necessary step to break down bureaucratic impediments to intelligence collection and analysis. It is not at all clear how unlimited access to currently protected personal information that is already accessible through an oversight procedure would do that. Modernizing FISA would enable the government to operate without any restraint. Is that what Boehner actually means?

It was clear to me that in 2007 Washington already possessed the technical capability to greatly increase its interception of communications networks, but I was wrong in my belief that the government had actually been somewhat restrained by legal and privacy concerns. Operating widely in a permissive extralegal environment had already startedsix years before, shortly after 9/11, under the auspices of the Patriot Act and the Authorization for Use of Military Force.

The White Houses colossal data mining operation has now been exposed by Edward Snowden, and the American people have discovered that they have been scrutinized by Washington far beyond any level that they would have imagined possible. Many foreign nations have also now realized that the scope of U.S. spying exceeds any reasonable standard of behavior, so much so that if there are any bombshells remaining in the documents taken by Snowden they would most likely relate to the specific targets of overseas espionage.

Here in the United States, it remains to be seen whether anyone actually cares enough to do something about the illegal activity while being bombarded with the false claims that the out of control surveillance program has kept us safe. It is interesting to observe in passing that the revelations derived from Snowdens whistleblowing strongly suggest that the hippies and other counter-culture types who, back in the 1960s, protested that the government could not be trusted actually had it right all along.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, is executivedirector of the Council for the National Interest.

See the original post:
Edward Snowden Is No Traitor | The American Conservative

Updated at 4:50 p.m. ET

MOSCOW National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden wants asylum in Russia and is willing to stop sharing information as a trade-off for such a deal, according to a lawmaker who was among a dozen activists and officials to meet with him Friday at the Moscow airport where he has been marooned for weeks.

Snowden appeared nervous, but in apparently good health during the meeting behind closed doors in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport, Duma member Vyacheslav Nikonov told reporters.

Human Rights Watch provided a photo of Snowden at the meeting, the first new image to appear of the former NSA systems analyst since the Guardian newspaper broke the story of widespread U.S. Internet surveillance based on his leaks.

Whether Russia would be willing to take Snowden up on his request is unclear. The Kremlin has signaled that it wants Snowden out. But granting asylum would be a diplomatically risky move, threatening to worsen Moscow-Washington already strained by U.S. criticism of President Vladimir Putin's crackdown on the country's opposition and Putin's allegation that the U.S. is meddling in Russian affairs.

But it would allow Putin to portray Russia as a principled defender of human rights and openness, despite the fact that it allows its security agencies to monitor the Internet.

In Washington, the White House criticized Russia for allowing activists to meet with Snowden. Spokesman Jay Carney said Friday's meeting amounted to a "propaganda platform" for the man the Obama administrations wants Russia to return to the U.S. to face multiple charges of leaking classified information.

Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, told Russian news agencies after the announcement that Russia has not yet received a new bid for asylum and that Putin would continue with his insistence that Snowden stop leaking information.

Anatoly Kucherena, a well-known lawyer in Russia, said that he would be helping Snowden with the necessary paperwork to officially request asylum, CBS News' Svetlana Berdnikova reports from Russia.

"Mr. Snowden is a courageous person," Kucherena told Russian television station Russia Today. "He is a hero."

Kucherena said he would meet with Snowden again in the near future to expedite the process, which was estimated to take at least another two weeks, Berdnikova reports.

Both Nikonov and Genri Reznik, a lawyer who participated in the meeting, said Snowden was willing to stop leaks.

"He said he was informed of this condition and that he can easily accept it. He does not intend to damage the United States' interests given that he is a patriot of his country," Nikonov said. However, it is unclear whether Snowden still is holding onto potentially sensitive information about U.S. intelligence operations.

Snowden is believed to have been stuck in the transit zone since June 23, when he arrived on a flight from Hong Kong, where he had gone before his revelations were made public. He had been expected to transfer in Moscow to a Cuba-bound flight, but did not get on the plane.

A brief video of the meeting's opening shown on the Russian news site Life News showed Snowden speaking, then being interrupted by a flight announcement on the airport's public-address system.

"I've heard that a lot in the past weeks," Snowden said, smiling ironically.

Snowden made an initial bid for Russian asylum, but Putin said he would have to agree to stop leaking before asylum would be considered. Snowden then withdrew his bid.

Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua recently have offered him asylum, but it is unclear if he could fly to any of those countries from Moscow without passing through airspace of the United States or its allies. Some European countries allegedly refused to allow Bolivian President Evo Morales to fly through their airspace on his way home from Moscow last week because of suspicions that Snowden was on his plane.

In a text of his opening statement at the meeting released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, Snowden said he wanted to accept all asylum offers and travel to the countries that have made them "to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders."

"I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably," Snowden said in the statement released late Friday morning.

He also denounced the United States for what he said was pressuring its allies to block him from their airspace. Snowden could be hoping that Washington would not risk trying to block a flight he was on if he had Russian asylum.

In the short term, he could also be seeking Russian asylum simply as a way of being able to get out of the airport and move freely.

How long a decision would take is unclear. Anatoly Kucherena, a member of a Kremlin advisory body who was at the meeting, said the process could take two to three weeks. But Putin's imprimatur could accelerate the process, as it did when French actor Gerard Depardieu was granted Russian citizenship in a matter of a few days.

The activists at the meeting included Sergei Nikitin, head of Amnesty International's Russia office, and Tatiana Lokshina, deputy head of the Russian office of Human Rights Watch. Also taken into the meeting room was Russia's presidential human rights ombudsman Vladimir Lukin.

Amnesty International considers Snowden a "whistleblower," according to a statement released to CBS News by Widney Brown, the group's senior director of international law and policy.

"He has revealed evidence of the U.S. government's unlawful behavior -- unlawful under international human rights law (the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the right to privacy) and unconstitutional with regard to the 4th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which also guarantees the right to privacy and protections against unreasonable search and seizure," Brown said.

The activists came after an email in Snowden's name was sent on Thursday. On Facebook, Lokshina posted the text of the email, which says in part that Snowden wants to make "a brief statement and discussion regarding the next steps forward in my situation."

Hundreds of journalists flocked to the airport, but were kept in a hallway outside the meeting area which was behind a gray door marked "staff only." It was not clear if Snowden would have to come out that door or if he could exit by another route.

Russia has said it cannot extradite him because by remaining in the transit zone he is technically outside Russian territory.

Although the meeting left Snowden's fate still uncertain, it at least confirmed where he was; speculation had swirled that he had been spirited out of the country.

"We found for ourselves that he is real, he's no phantom," said Kuchurena.

Go here to see the original:
Edward Snowden emerges, wants asylum in Russia - CBS News

Edward Snowden has no regrets five years on from leaking the biggest cache of top-secret documents in history. He is wanted by the US. He is in exile in Russia. But he is satisfied with the way his revelations of mass surveillance have rocked governments, intelligence agencies and major internet companies.

In a phone interview to mark the anniversary of the day the Guardian broke the story, he recalled the day his world and that of many others around the globe changed for good. He went to sleep in his Hong Kong hotel room and when he woke, the news that the National Security Agency had been vacuuming up the phone data of millions of Americans had been live for several hours.

Snowden knew at that moment his old life was over. It was scary but it was liberating, he said. There was a sense of finality. There was no going back.

What has happened in the five years since? He is one of the most famous fugitives in the world, the subject of an Oscar-winning documentary, a Hollywood movie, and at least a dozen books. The US and UK governments, on the basis of his revelations, have faced court challenges to surveillance laws. New legislation has been passed in both countries. The internet companies, responding to a public backlash over privacy, have made encryption commonplace.

Snowden, weighing up the changes, said some privacy campaigners had expressed disappointment with how things have developed, but he did not share it. People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.

The most important change, he said, was public awareness. The government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.

He said he had no regrets. If I had wanted to be safe, I would not have left Hawaii (where he had been based, working for the NSA, before flying to Hong Kong).

His own life is uncertain, perhaps now more than ever, he said. His sanctuary in Russia depends on the whims of the Putin government, and the US and UK intelligence agencies have not forgiven him. For them, the issue is as raw as ever, an act of betrayal they say caused damage on a scale the public does not realise.

This was reflected in a rare statement from Jeremy Fleming, the director of the UK surveillance agency GCHQ, which, along with the US National Security Agency. was the main subject of the leak. In response to a question from the Guardian about the anniversary, Fleming said GCHQs mission was to keep the UK safe: What Edward Snowden did five years ago was illegal and compromised our ability to do that, causing real and unnecessary damage to the security of the UK and our allies. He should be accountable for that.

The anger in the US and UK intelligence communities is over not just what was published fewer than 1% of the documents but extends to the unpublished material too. They say they were forced to work on the assumption everything Snowden ever had access to had been compromised and had to be dumped.

There was a plus for the agencies. Having scrapped so much, they were forced to develop and install new and better capabilities faster than planned. Another change came in the area of transparency. Before Snowden, media requests to GCHQ were usually met with no comment whereas now there is more of a willingness to engage. That Fleming responds with a statement reflects that stepchange.

In his statement, he expressed a commitment to openness but pointedly did not credit Snowden, saying the change predated 2013. It is important that we continue to be as open as we can be, and I am committed to the journey we began over a decade ago to greater transparency, he said.

Others in the intelligence community, especially in the US, will grudgingly credit Snowden for starting a much-needed debate about where the line should be drawn between privacy and surveillance. The former deputy director of the NSA Richard Ledgett, when retiring last year, said the government should have made public the fact there was bulk collection of phone data.

The former GCHQ director Sir David Omand shared Flemings assessment of the damage but admitted Snowden had contributed to the introduction of new legislation. A sounder and more transparent legal framework is now in place for necessary intelligence gathering. That would have happened eventually, of course, but his actions certainly hastened the process, Omand said.

The US Congress passed the Freedom Act in 2015, curbing the mass collection of phone data. The UK parliament passed the contentious Investigatory Powers Act a year later.

Ross Anderson, a leading academic specialising in cybersecurity and privacy, sees the Snowden revelations as a seminal moment. Anderson, a professor of security engineering at Cambridge Universitys computer laboratory, said: Snowdens revelations are one of these flashbulb moments which change the way people look at things. They may not have changed things much in Britain because of our culture for adoring James Bond and all his works. But round the world it brought home to everyone that surveillance really is an issue.

MPs and much of the UK media did not engage to the same extent of their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, the US, Latin America, Asia and Australia. Among the exceptions was the Liberal Democrat MP Julian Huppert, who pressed the issue until he lost his seat in 2015. The Snowden revelations were a huge shock but they have led to a much greater transparency from some of the agencies about the sort of the things they were doing, he said.

One of the disclosures to have most impact was around the extent of collaboration between the intelligence agencies and internet companies. In 2013, the US companies were outsmarting the EU in negotiations over data protection. Snowden landed like a bomb in the middle of the negotiations and the data protection law that took effect last month is a consequence.

One of the most visible effects of the Snowden revelations was the small yellow bubble that began popping up on the messaging service WhatsApp in April 2016: Messages to this chat and calls are now secured with end-to-end encryption.

Before Snowden, such encryption was for the targeted and the paranoid. If I can take myself back to 2013, said Jillian York, the director for international freedom of expression at the digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation, I maybe had the precursor to [the encrypted communication app] Signal on my phone, TextSecure. I had [another email encryption tool] PGP, but nobody used it. The only major exception was Apples iMessage, which has been end-to-end encrypted since it was launched in 2011.

Developers at major technology companies, outraged by the Snowden disclosures, started pushing back. Some, such as those at WhatsApp, which was bought by Facebook a year after the story broke, implemented their own encryption. Others, such as Yahoos Alex Stamos, quit rather than support further eavesdropping. (Stamos is now the head of security at Facebook.)

Without Snowden, said York. I dont think Signal would have got the funding. I dont think Facebook would have had Alex Stamos, because he would have been at Yahoo. These little things led to big things. Its not like all these companies were like we care about privacy. I think they were pushed.

Other shifts in the technology sector show Snowdens influence has in many ways been limited. The rise of the smart speaker, exemplified by Amazons Echo, has left many privacy activists baffled. Why, just a few years after a global scandal involving government surveillance, would people willingly install always-on microphones in their homes?

The new-found privacy conundrum presented by installing a device that can literally listen to everything youre saying represents a chilling new development in the age of internet-connected things, wrote Gizmodos Adam Clark Estes last year.

Towards the end of the interview, Snowden recalled one of his early aliases, Cincinnatus, after the Roman who after public service returned to his farm. Snowden said he too felt that, having played his role, he had retreated to a quieter life, spending time developing tools to help journalists protect their sources. I do not think I have ever been more fulfilled, he said.

But he will not be marking the anniversary with a victory lap, he said. There is still much to be done. The fightback is just beginning, said Snowden. The governments and the corporates have been in this game a long time and we are just getting started.

Read the original:
Edward Snowden: 'The people are still powerless, but now they ...

I was in a Russian hotel room, waiting for the biggest photo shoot of my life. My suite's blackout curtains were drawn, the better to conceal the several hundred thousand dollars worth of high-powered lighting and gear we had brought with us. I sat very still; next to me, Platon, one of the world's most accomplished and respected photographers, paced back and forth. Patrick Witty, WIRED's director of photography, stood near the doorway, looking through the peephole at the empty hall. Reflexively, I reached into my left pants pocket for my iPhone, but it wasn't there. For half a second, my heart fluttered, but then I remembered that I had left the phone at home so it couldn't be tapped. For the purposes of this trip, I only had an 800-ruble burner, now sitting quietly on the hotel nightstand, its Cyrillic menu unintelligible to me.

Just a few people on earth knew where I was and whyin Moscow, to sit down with Edward Snowden. It was a secret that required great efforts to keep. I told coworkers and friends that I was traveling to Paris, for some work. But the harder part was covering my digital tracks. Snowden himself had shown how illusory our assumption of privacy really is, a lesson we took to heart. That meant avoiding smartphones, encrypting files, holding secret meetings.

SNOWDEN HELD THE FLAG IN HIS HANDS AND DELICATELY UNFOLDED IT. YOU COULD SEE THE GEARS TURNING.

It took nearly a year of work and many months of negotiation to win Snowden's cooperation. Now the first meeting was just minutes away. I've led a lot of cover shoots in my 20 years in magazines: presidents, celebrities, people I've admired, and people I've reviled. Cowboys and stateswomen. Architects and heroes. But I'd never felt pressure like this.

At 12:15 pm, Snowden knocked on the door of our suite. He had done his homework; he knew Patrick's title before he had a chance to introduce himself. We motioned for him to join us over on the couch, and I took a seat in an armchair to his left. After the introductions (Call me Ed) and a few pleasantries, Platon asked him the question I know we were all thinking: How are you doing? It quickly became clear that, as nervous as we all were, Snowden was completely at ease. He described, in vivid detail, how he was feeling, what his days were like. He talked politics and policy, constitutional law, governmental regulation, and personal privacy. He said he was really glad to see usAmericansand he said he was homesick. He held forth for nearly an hour, meandering from subject to subject but always precise in his vocabularyquoting statutes and bill numbers, CIA regulations and actions, with what seemed to be total recall.

Eventually we moved into what had been the formal dining room. Platon asked Snowden to sit down on an apple box, a small wooden crate that he had used in his shoots of nearly every world leader alive today, including Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama. Platon squatted in front of his subject, as he often does, making himself small and unthreatening. He explained his process very slowly and told Snowden that he'd be asking him to reveal his innermost feelings for the camera. I moved to the back of the room and took in the scene as Platon began to shoot. The two men experimented with a number of poses, angles, and postures, and nearly an hour into shooting it was clear that Snowden was enjoying the process.

It took nearly a year of work before we finally had our first meeting with Snowden (left).

Platon

Back in New York, Platon had done some shopping at a little bodega near his studio. Now he pulled out a knotted plastic bag with his finds: a black T-shirt with the word SECURITY emblazoned in all-caps on both the front and back; another black T, featuring a giant, screaming eagle with flared talons beneath a patriotic slogan; giant red and blue poster markers; an unlined notepad; American flag patches; and an American flag (actually, the same flag brandished by Pamela Anderson in Platon's iconic 1998 George magazine cover). Platon spread the items out on the table and asked Snowden if any of the props resonated with him. Snowden laughed and picked up the SECURITY T-shirt. That's funny, he said. I think it would be fun to wear that. He went into the bathroom and changed into the shirt, and when he emerged he had his chest puffed out a bit, enjoying the joke of it. We all laughed and Platon shot a few rolls of film.

We returned to the prop table, and Snowden picked up the flag. Platon asked him what he'd do with it in a picture. Snowden held the flag in his hands and delicately unfolded it. You could see the gears turning as he weighed his year in exile against the love of country that motivated him in the first place. He said he was nervous that posing with the flag might anger people but that it meant a lot to him. He said that he loved his country. He cradled the flag and held it close to his heart. Nobody said a word, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. We all sat there for a long moment, studying him. Then Platon yelled, Don't move! He clicked off frame after frame, making tiny adjustments to both the lighting and Snowden's posture, sometimes asking for him to look into the lens, sometimes just above it. We had our cover.

After that, there wasn't much else to do. We sat and talked a bit more. Snowden said he didn't really have anyplace to be, but I could tell the shoot had worn him outand with good reason. Including a short lunch break, we'd been going for four hours. At that very moment our writer, James Bamford, was on a plane bound for Moscow; he and Snowden would meet a few days later and talk over the course of three more days.

It was time to go. Platon had brought a copy of each of his two books as a gift. Snowden asked for an inscription, and I snapped a picture of the moment. We shook hands, each of us wishing the other luck as we gathered in the foyer. I hope our paths cross again someday, Platon said. I hope I get to see you back at home, in the US. Snowden looked straight at him as he threw his backpack over his shoulder and said, You probably won't. With that, he closed the door and was gone.

Excerpt from:
Call Me Ed: A Day With Edward Snowden | WIRED

MOSCOWNational Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden on Tuesday submitted a request for temporary asylum in Russia, his lawyer said, claiming he faces persecution from the U.S. government and could face torture or death.

WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling site that has been advising Snowden, and Russia's Federal Migration Service both confirmed the application request.

CBS News' Svetlana Berdnikova reports that, according to legal analysts in Moscow, the Russian government will be able to issue Snowden with temporary documentation to allow him to move freely around Russia once the application is processed by the Migration Service. It can take up to five days for that preliminary review of the application to be completed.

The full examination of his request for refugee status can take the Migration Service three months -- and that period can be doubled if the agency feels more time is necessary to weigh the merits of his request. If asylum is granted, it would permit Snowden to live and work in Russia for up to one year, and could then be renewed.

Snowden, who revealed details of a U.S. intelligence program to monitor Internet activity, argued in his application that the reason he needs asylum is "he faces persecution by the U.S. government and he fears for his life and safety, fears that he could be subjected to torture and capital punishment," lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said on Rossiya 24 television.

Kucherena told The Associated Press that he met the former NSA systems analyst in the transit zone of Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport to give him legal advice and that Snowden made the request after the meeting.

Snowden has been stuck there since he arrived on a flight from Hong Kong on June 23. He's had offers of asylum from Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia, but because his U.S. passport has been revoked, the logistics of reaching whichever country he chooses are complicated.

He said Friday at an airport meeting with Russian rights activists and public figures, including Kucherena, that he would seek at least temporary refuge in Russia until he could fly to one of the Latin American nations that have offered him asylum.

The temporary asylum would allow Snowden to freely travel and work in Russia, Kucherena said. He chose to apply for temporary asylum and not political asylum because the latter takes longer to consider.

Kucherena added that Snowden said he had no immediate plans to leave Russia. According to Russian law, temporary asylum is provided for a period of one year and could be extended each year.

Snowden's stay in Russia has strained already chilly relations between Moscow and Washington. Granting him asylum would further aggravate tensions with the U.S. less than two months before Russia's President Vladimir Putin and President Barack Obama are to meet in Moscow and again at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg.

Putin on Monday described Snowden's arrival as an unwelcome present foisted on Russia by the U.S. He said that Snowden flew to Moscow intending only to transit to another country, but that the U.S. intimidated other countries into refusing to accept him, effectively blocking the fugitive from flying further.

Snowden previously had sought Russian asylum, which Putin said would be granted only if he agreed not to leak more information. Snowden then withdrew the bid, the Kremlin said.

During Friday's meeting in the transit zone, Snowden argued that he hadn't hurt U.S. interests in the past and has no intention of doing that. Putin did not say Monday if that would be sufficient grounds for asylum.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday, according to the Interfax news agency, that while Snowden voiced his agreement with Putin's condition, he has made "no confirmation of that in writing."

Putin noted that Snowden apparently did not want to stay in Russia permanently. Asked where the former NSA systems analyst could go, Putin responded: "How would I know? It's his life, his fate."

Mikhail Fedotov, the head of Russia's presidential Human Rights Council, said Tuesday that Snowden should be granted temporary asylum until the U.N. refugee agency could ensure his transit to a country that has offered him permanent asylum.

It was not clear what the likelihood of that was. Dan McNorton, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said Tuesday the agency's rules prevent him from commenting directly on any individual's case.

In Washington, White House spokesman Jay Carney said he was unaware of any communications between the U.S. and Russian government regarding Snowden on Tuesday.

"Our position on this remains what it was," he said. Our interest has always been in seeing him expelled from Russia and returned to the United States."

The Kremlin has been anxious to be rid of Snowden, whom the U.S. wants returned to face espionage charges.

He is charged with unauthorized communication of national defense information, willful communication of classified communications intelligence information and theft of government property. The first two are under the Espionage Act and each of the three crimes carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison on conviction.

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Edward Snowden files asylum request in Russia - CBS News

Edward J. Snowden, the American who has probably left the biggest mark on public policy debates during the Obama years, is today an outlaw. Mr. Snowden, a former National Security Agency contractor who disclosed to journalists secret documents detailing the United States mass surveillance programs, faces potential espionage charges, even though the president has acknowledged the important public debate his revelations provoked.

Mr. Snowdens whistle-blowing prompted reactions across the government. Courts found the government wrong to use Section 215 of the Patriot Act to justify mass phone data collection. Congress replaced that law with the USA Freedom Act, improving transparency about government surveillance and limiting government power to collect certain records. The president appointed an independent review board, which produced important reform recommendations.

Thats just in the American government. Newspapers that published Mr. Snowdens revelations won the Pulitzer Prize. The United Nations issued resolutions on protecting digital privacy and created a mandate to promote the right to privacy. Many technology companies, facing outrage at their apparent complicity in mass surveillance, began providing end-to-end encryption by default. Three years on, the news media still refer to Mr. Snowden and his revelations every day. His actions have brought about a dramatic increase in our awareness of the risks to our privacy in the digital age and to the many rights that depend on privacy.

Yet President Obama and the candidates to succeed him have emphasized not Mr. Snowdens public service but the importance of prosecuting him. Hillary Clinton has said Mr. Snowden shouldnt be brought home without facing the music. Donald J. Trump has said, I think hes a total traitor and I would deal with him harshly.

Eric H. Holder Jr. struck a more measured tone in May, about a year after he left office as Mr. Obamas attorney general. He recognized that while Mr. Snowden broke the law, he actually performed a public service by raising the national debate on surveillance practices.

The law the Obama administration wants to use to prosecute him takes no account of whether revealing this information was a public service. Under the antiquated Espionage Act of 1917, the only issue is whether national defense information was given to someone not authorized to receive it. It doesnt matter if the secrets revealed wrongdoing or if they endangered the national defense, whether they were passed to an American journalist or to a foreign enemy.

There is obviously a public interest in enabling the government to keep some national security information secret. But under international human rights law, the public interest not any particular governments interest is crucial. The protection of national security and public order may provide legitimate reasons for not disclosing certain sensitive information, but suppressing embarrassing or disturbing news does not. No one should be prosecuted for exposing human rights violations. At the very least, there has to be a genuine opportunity to offer a public interest defense.

The enormous value of Mr. Snowdens revelations is clear. What was their harm? Scant evidence has been provided for many officials ominous statements. Some officials have warned that the terrorism-related activity of certain groups has become harder to monitor, but the most dangerous adversaries have always taken precautions against surveillance, with at least one independent study showing little impact from the Snowden revelations.

What has changed is that since the staggering extent of government surveillance became known, the public has sought greater privacy, and corporations have begun to provide it on widely used platforms. No doubt, among the millions of users of encrypted technologies there are a few who hide criminal activity. But the rest of us just want our privacy back.

Since the United States canceled his passport, stranding him in the Moscow airport, Mr. Snowden has continued to demonstrate the principles that led him to disclose profoundly disturbing facts about surveillance overreach. He is the head of a human rights group, the Freedom of the Press Foundation; hes developing technology to protect journalists in dangerous zones around the world from life-threatening surveillance; and he has frequently criticized the human rights and technology policies of Russia, the only country that stands between him and a high-security prison in the United States.

From George Washington onward, the pardon power has enabled American presidents to further the national interest. Whistle-blowers can perform a vital role in protecting human rights, and those who disclose rights violations that are shielded by an official cloak of secrecy are among the most important of all. As Mr. Snowden put it, if people reporting wrongdoing of the most serious nature have to basically stand up and light themselves on fire, we are very quickly going to find ourselves out of volunteers the very moment when society needs them the most.

In his biography on Twitter, Mr. Snowden says: I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public. That should not be something that gets you locked up for a lifetime or compels you to live in exile. The president has an opportunity to correct that injustice. Its time to pardon Mr. Snowden and bring him home, not to face the music but to work for the security and privacy of us all.

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Opinion | Pardon Edward Snowden - The New York Times

Assange holding a photo of SnowdenFree Software FoundationAmid calls for the clemency of Edward Snowden, many questions remain about the 30-year-old's flight from America and asylum in Russia.

One major unresolved issue is the relationship between "the most dangerous leaker in American history" and WikiLeaks, an organization with an admitted antagonism toward the U.S. and a cozy history with the Kremlin.

Given WikiLeaks' penchant for facilitating U.S. government leaks, its early involvement in the Snowden saga deserves scrutiny.

After the NSA contractor outed himself in Hong Kong on June 9, he parted ways with the journalists he met there and went underground.

On June 12, the same day he leaked specific details of NSA hacking in China to the South China Morning Post, Snowden contacted WikiLeaks. The organization subsequently paid for his lodgings and sent top advisor Sarah Harrison to help.

(Some suspect Russia and/or WikiLeaks contacted Snowden before June 12, but there is no clear evidence of that.)

Harrison accompanied Snowden as he met with Russian officials reportedly in the Kremlin consulate and WikiLeaks bought his ticket to Moscow on June 23.

Snowden and his closest supporters contend that he was on his way to Latin America when the U.S. government stranded him in Moscow, but there are several reasons to doubt that claim.

First, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Janet Reitman of Rolling Stone that he advised Snowden against going to Latin America because "he would be physically safest in Russia."

Second, the U.S. revoked Snowden's passport by June 22, and the unsigned Ecuadorian travel document acquired by Assange was void when Snowden landed in Moscow.

WikiLeaks told BI that the Ecuadorian document was meant to help Snowden leave Hong Kong, which raises the question of why he would need it if his passport was still good. The organization has not explained why it would send the NSA-trained hacker to Russia knowing he would land with a void passport and a bunk travel document.

On July 12, Snowden's Moscow lawyer Anatoly Kucherena explained that Snowden "is in a situation with no way out. He has no passport and can travel nowhere; he has no visa."

Third, even if Snowden had proper travel documentation, it's unclear if Russia's post-Soviet security services (FSB) would have allowed a systems administrator who beat the NSA vetting system and stole a bunch of intel to simply "pass through the business lounge, on the way to Cuba."

On Aug. 1 Kucherena, who is employed by the FSB, explained why Russia granted Snowden temporary asylum: "Edward couldn't come and buy himself tickets to Havana or any other countries since he had no passport."

Beyond its role in Snowden's getaway and its friendliness with Russia, WikiLeaks is also connected to three of the main people with access to the leaked NSA files. This fact does not necessarily tarnish their reporting, but it is intriguing in light of Wikileaks' deep involvement with Snowden.

Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, two journalists contacted by Snowden and then given tens of thousands of documents by Snowden in Hong Kong, sit on the board of a foundation that launched in December 2012 to crowd-source funding for WikiLeaks.

Jacob Appelbaum, a close friend of Poitras and lead author of at least one Der Spiegel story citing the Snowden leaks, is known as "The American WikiLeaks Hacker" and has co-authored other articles drawing from "internal NSA documents viewed by SPIEGEL." He interviewed Snowden in "mid-May," which is right before (or right after) Snowden left Hawaii on May 20.

Appelbaum is not a journalist and does not hide his disdain for the NSA. This week he ended a talk during which he presented never-before-seen NSA documents by saying: "[If] you work for the NSA, I'd just like to encourage you to leak more documents."

Assange told the same audience to "join the CIA. Go in there. Go into the ballpark and get the ball and bring it out ... all those organizations will be infiltrated by this generation."

That is the same man largely credited with extricating Snowden from extradition to the U.S. by sending him to Moscow. The 42-year-old Australian has also hosted a Kremlin-funded TV show. And his political party recently met with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, who is staunchly backed by the Kremlin.

No wonder Greenwald told Rolling Stone that "Julian stepping forward and being the face of the story wasn't great for Snowden."

Snowden also hurt his own cause. Although he initiated an important debate, his statements and actions also pushed him beyond being an honest whistleblower.

All things considered, Snowden's affiliation with Assange and WikiLeaks raises a legitimate question: Is the fact that his life is now overseen by a Russian security detail more than an extraordinary coincidence?

Given that we still don't know how many classified documents Snowden stole or when he gave up access, that question should concern everyone.

Editor's note: Here's a graphic that we put together in November to summarize the Snowden saga:

Mike Nudelman/Business Insider

Excerpt from:
Edward Snowden And WikiLeaks - Business Insider

It's an ordinary summer morning in Hong Kong. The smog is shining; some guys in a CIA office are shuffling papers. But then, the word comes: An NSA contractor has just landed from Hawaii. Exit ordinary summer, enter Edward Snowden.

And now, thanks to a small film company in Hong Kong, we have these tense moments in movie form.

In just four days, J. Shotin association with Fallout Media and Immortal Peach (which is a great name for anything)put together a five-minute film depicting Edward Snowden's first days in Hong Kong, culminating in his unveiling in his interview with The Guardian. The film, called Verax, isin its entirety below. But if you don't have the five minutes to spare, here's all the analysis of the short movie you'll ever need.

The movie opens with the kind of intense bass and synth soundscape that Chris Nolan dreams of. The visuals here are presumably supposed to evoke data floating around the Internet. But they much more closely evoke exploding electronic jellyfish.

The first words we see, after the names of the people and production companies involved, are "Based on the Events of Edward Snowden." Because Edward Snowden is an events.

After a sweep of the Hong Kong scenery, we enter a CIA office. The thumping synths haven't yet stopped playing, so we are quickly greeted to the most intense cup of coffee placed on film.

From here, we get the first real dialogue and scene-setting action. Welcome to your ordinary morning meeting gone wrong:

The first line of the movie, "Alright, let's get started," is just a cool first line for a movie. This is where one of the CIA workers informs the others that an NSA contractor from Hawaii has landed, without reporting his travel plans in advanced. "S***, that's not good," replies a CIA worker with reasonably astute intuition.

The scene then devolves into a reading of Snowden's resume, including "Booz Hamilton," because the CIA hates that Allen guy.

...pretty much looks like a blogger. Although this blogger's soundtrack is set to DRAMA.

Here we get a little sample of the journalism surrounding the Snowden affair. This scene is complete with one very unimpressed editor:

"Stop chasing nonsense, OK?" the editor tells a staffer who was in communication with Snowden in the most convincing "I'm a newsman" impression that he can muster.

Can a five-minute film have a quick montage? Of course it can have a quick montage. Here's what Edward Snowden is up to while waiting for his big moment.

Snowden is bored by this giant green chair:

Snowden does "I'm in isolation" pushups:

Snowden, whiz that he likely is, solves a Rubik's Cube:

Here we get into some of the conflict that Hong Kong's government is facing with Snowden hanging around. "Don't we have a rendition treaty with the United States?" a police employee asks. Cue close-up police commander:

In one of the last shots of the film, we catch a full glimpse of the actor playing Edward Snowden. And oh man does he look a lot like Edward Snowden.

The movie closes with a voice-over of Edward Snowden's interview with The Guardian. The first days of his story are now complete.

Really though, it's hard to think anyone could do better than this collective did in just four days of filming. And no doubt others will throw millions of dollars at this plot within a few years to try. But even with four days and about a $540 budget, this is going to be a stiff baseline to top. No matter how hard Jerry Bruckheimer/Oliver Stone/Michael Bay try.

Give the whole thing a look here:

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The Edward Snowden Movie Already Exists - news.yahoo.com

The question of whether Edward Snowden might one day win amnesty in the US or political asylum elsewhere may hang largely on whether a reported cache of 1.5 million still-unreleased top-secret documents exists and remains under wraps.

Nobody, not apparently even the National Security Agency, knows how many top-secret documents the former NSA contractor copied into his own encrypted archives. But an NSA official on CBSs 60 Minutes on Sunday would not deny that Snowden may have taken as many as 1.7 million documents.

If Snowden has released to the press between 50,000 and 200,000 documents, as NSA chief Gen. Keith Alexander said in October, that leaves some 1.5 million documents unaccounted for. More significantly, those documents are likely to be much more harmful to American security interests than what has been released so far, several cyber espionage experts say.

That means US officials might be more willing to consider amnesty or other nations might be open to Mr. Snowdens pleas for asylum if they can get their hands on Snowdens remaining stash.

Most of the revelations of Snowden so far are programs that foreign governments knew or suspected we were doing, so these revelations dont do much more than confirm their suspicions, says a former senior NSA official speaking on condition of anonymity in order to maintain good relations with former colleagues at the agency. But some specific revelations, if they surfaced from remaining documents, could embarrass people into shutting down relationships with the NSA. It would have an adverse operational impact.

On 60 Minutes, Richard Ledgett, who is under consideration to become the agencys top civilian, said hed at least consider amnesty for the return of the remaining documents if he could be convinced that the documents have not been released of perused by a third party.

My personal view is, yes, its worth having a conversation about, Mr. Ledgett said, acknowledging that his bar would be very high.

For its part, the Obama administration has disavowed the amnesty idea. Snowden faces felony charges here, he ought to be returned to the United States, again, where he will face full due process and protection under our system of justice, that we hope he will avail himself of, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday.

But if Snowden has more than a million additional documents, they could be of crucial importance to US intelligence operations.

For instance, one of the documents leaked by Snowden highlighted Xkeyscore, an NSA program that allows the agency to sift through the haystack of digital global communications to find the needle of terrorist activity. One particular document reported by The Washington Post and the Guardian in late July showed a world map with red dots denoting Xkeyscore nodes or collection points.

What was not revealed were specifics about those collection points.

Most of the red dots in the Xkeyscore map are probably countries that are cooperating with the US and the NSA, says James Bamford, an author who has spent most of his life investigating the NSA and written several books. But some may be covert operations where US has bribed someone to get bugged equipment into that location or the agency is tapping into it in a different way.

Indeed, the dots on the map indicate some international locations where the US wouldnt logically have any cooperative agreements, including countries like Brazil and Argentina, Mr. Bamford notes. Some dots may represent locations where they subverted workers at a telecommunications or other facilities.

The remaining trove of documents could also detail specific sources and methods of code-breaking in potentially hostile nations.

With all thats been released so far about NSA activity in the US, there really hasnt been anything related to North Korea or Iran, Russia, Bamford says. This is what really worries the NSA having documents released that show specifically how were doing our spying on those countries.

Snowden has maintained that his primary intent has been to reveal mass surveillance directed at Americans and other Western democracies by the NSA, not to help Americas adversaries.

But if thats true, he might find it hard to publish the rest of his potential trove. He could release documents to media operations unlikely to reveal sources and methods indiscriminately. Or he could just sit on the remaining pile.

Complicating matters is the question of how much of the trove Snowden still controls exclusively. How much do journalists Glen Greenwald and Laura Poitras have? How secure is the rest, given that hes almost certainly under tight surveillance in Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum?

The Russian FSB [intelligence agency] doubtless has him completely under their control, says James Lewis, a cyber conflict expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. If he tries to type in a password into a computer in his room, they will intercept it.

Whether the US eventually negotiates over the unreleased documents may depend on what officials think he has. If they think his documents imperil the many billions of dollars the NSA has spent during the past decade to develop its global surveillance networks, that could be a strong incentive to play ball.

We might have seen the political effect of these document leaks peak, while the operational effect might not have done so just yet, Mr. Lewis says. Ledgetts comment about amnesty might have been an effort to find out what he actually has left. Its a way of telling Snowden, OK, its your turn. You have to bid.

One thing is clear, the Obama administration has been the toughest administration in history when it comes to going after national security leaks using the Espionage Act, which can result in life in prison.

The White Houses options might also shift if Snowden gets into a bidding war. Snowden has been soliciting offers for permanent asylum. Earlier this year, he appealed to Germany, saying he would like to testify before parliament there, but couldnt so as long as he was threatened with arrest. On Monday, he published an open letter to Brazil in the Guardian.

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Documents Snowden released this fall show that Brazil was a top NSA target in Latin America. The agency was monitoring Brazilian President Dilma Rousseffs cellphone, as well as Petrobras, the national oil company.

In a letter released Tuesday, Snowden offered to help Brazil investigate NSA spying against it but needed political asylum, because the US government will continue to interfere with my ability to speak.

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Amnesty for Edward Snowden? Might depend on what secrets he's ...