Live from TEDGlobal

October 7, 2014

As one of the first reporters to see Edward Snowden's files, Glenn Greenwald has faced personal repercussions for his professional work -- yet continues to speak publicly about mass surveillance issues. In this searing talk, Greenwald makes the case for why privacy matters.

Technology

June 20, 2014

Edward Snowden hasnt forgotten about the remote presence robot that allowed him to speak on the TED2014 stage and roam the halls of the conference, chatting with attendees. While in exile in Russia, Snowden has apparently used this system, affectionately dubbed the Snowdenbot, on a semi-regular basis. Andy Greenberg writes in Wired about how Snowden []

Live from TED

March 20, 2014

Rick Ledgett is the deputy director of theNational Security Agency. Hes here to give a response to Edward Snowdens onstage/virtual appearance at TED earlier in the week. (See the talk, Heres how we take back the Internet.) On Tuesday, the former NSA sysadmin made the case for open government and private lives, arguing that we []

Excerpt from:
Edward Snowden | Speaker | TED.com

The NSA, or National Security Agency, is one of 15 intelligence agencies in the US and is responsible for protecting and encrypting confidential government communications. It is also in charge of the collection, encoding and transmission of all types of electronic messages coming from foreign countries. According to the agencys website the missions they carry out are consistent with U.S. laws and the protection of privacy and civil liberties

The NSA was created by former president Harry Truman at the height of the Cold War in 1952. It was born out of the reorganisation of the military agency AFSA (Armed Forces Security Agency) which combined Navy and Air Force encoding techniques. For several years it remained a secret agency, to the point that American journalists nicknamed it No Such Agency.

The NSAs exact figures and turnover are classified but the latest estimations by the CSBA, an American NGO concerned with defense strategies and military questions, attribute the NSA with a budget of 10 billion dollars.

PRISM is the programme that enables the NSA to gather and carry out research using data or rather, metadata - issued by nine Internet companies that are used daily by millions of people the world over: Microsoft; Google; Yahoo!; Facebook; Youtube; Skype; AOL; Apple; and PalTalk. The NSA does not so much examine the site, as survey each sites content: who is talking to whom; from when; where; using which software; on which theme; IP addresses visited, etc. Authorised by federal judges responsible for overseeing the use of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the collection of this type of data does not require a mandate.

NSA employees working on specific targets dont only use PRISM. One of the documents provided by Edward Snowden and published in the Washington Post draws attention to Upstream, a programme which gathers data from wire tapping: both inside fibre optic wires and other information infrastructure.

One of the principal research practices used by PRISM and Upstream is the use of a simplified version of the theory of six degrees of separation. According to The Guardian, this has been reduced to two degrees. This means the NSA are authorised to study the data of somebody who is conversing with another person who is in contact with one of their targets.

During an assignment, the NSA must only survey communication coming from abroad and an analysts choice to add another target must be founded on reasonable belief. Analysts are required to be 51 percent certain that the target is a foreign citizen who is outside of the USA at the time the information is collected. This definition is sufficiently vague to cause a debate.

Edward Snowden is a 30-year-old American IT engineer who lived in Hawa before taking refuge in Hong Kong in May, followed by Russia in June. He worked at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), then left to work at the NSA in 2009. There, he worked for different NSA subcontractors such as Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton.

In a Guardian interview from his hideout in Hong Kong, Snowden explained that his decision to reveal the information was neither a sudden decision, nor one designed to harm the US, claiming that America is a fundamentally good country. Furthermore, he claimed to have held on to the information, without divulging it, from 2008 until now, in the hope that the Obama administration would correct the excesses of government. But the Obama administration has allegedly continued in the same vein.

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Edward Snowden | euronews

By Sarah Griffiths for MailOnline and Ellie Zolfagharifard For Dailymail.com

Published: 05:47 EST, 21 September 2015 | Updated: 06:27 EST, 21 September 2015

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Many of us believe in aliens and that they may be trying to communicate across the universe.

But what if we are unable to decode their messages?

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told Neil deGrasse Tyson he thinks aliens encrypt their communications and we dont have the ability to detect or decode them.

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (stock image) says aliens could be trying to contact us on Earth, but we may never detect them because their messages are likely encrypted so we unable to spot them

Snowden was a guest on the astrophysicists StarTalk podcast and spoke via video link from Moscow.

He said: If you look at encrypted communication, if they are properly encrypted, there is no real way to tell that they are encrypted.

Snowden explained that if aliens exist and they are intelligent, they will already be encrypting their communications, meaning humans may miss out on detecting them, let alone decoding their content

Snowden said:When we think about everything we're hearing through our satellites (stock image) and everything that they're hearing from our civilisation ... all of their communications are encrypted by default so what we are hearing ... is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation

You can't distinguish a properly encrypted communication from random behaviour.

Snowden was a guest on Neil deGrasse Tyson's StarTalk podcast and spoke via video link from Moscow. A file image of the astrophysicist is shown

He explained that if aliens exist and they are intelligent, they will already be encrypting their communications, but this means, if you have an alien civilisation trying to listen for other civilisations, or our civilisation trying to listen to other aliens, there's only one small period in the development of their society when all of their communications will be set at the most primitive and unprotected means.

He pointed out that perfectly encrypted messages wouldnt be detected by a security agency looking for such communications, and would instead seem like background noise.

Therefore aliens may be communicating but humans are deaf to any messages being broadcast.

When we think about everything we're hearing through our satellites and everything that they're hearing from our civilisation - if there are indeed aliens out there - all of their communications are encrypted by default so what we are hearing that's actually an alien television show or a phone call or a message between their planet and their own GPS constellation (or whatever it happens to be), is indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation, he said.

Tyson said: You're assuming they [aliens] have the same security issues that we have here on Earth, to which Snowden replied: Maybe they're a little more enlightened'.

Snowden is not the only person who believes aliens may be trying to make contact with us, but we are unable to hear them.

Dr Nathalie Cabro (pictured right), who is leading the hunt for alien life at the Seti Institute has previously said we could be oblivious to their messages from aliens, because humanity is not yet able to pick up the signals. Pictured on the left is the Parkes Radio Telescope that has picked up strange radio bursts from space

Dr Nathalie Cabrol, who is leading the hunt for alien life at the Seti Institute in California, told MailOnline that while in our lifetime we'll find simple alien organisms close to Earth and a replica of our planet in another galaxy, detecting intelligent life may not be as easy because of our limited view of the universe.

'If there is a civilisation out there that is only 1,000 years older than we are, who knows what type of technology, or what type of process, theyve put into communicating with others,' she said.

'Were just scratching the surface here. Were looking at the universe from our own standpoint.

'We tend to ask questions in the way we do. But what kind of thought process an alien civilisation may have, we really dont know.'

Dr Nathalie Cabrol was recently appointed as the lead for the Seti Institute multidisciplinary research programmes into the search for life beyond Earth. She currently heads the Institutes Carl Sagan Centre for the Study of Life in the Universe and is confident we will detect alien organisms close to Earth in our lifetime

In their hunt for alien life, astronomers have so far focused on looking for Earth-like planets around smaller, cooler suns.

But these exoplanets - despite having a chance of holding water - are believed to be locked in a rotation around their sun which causes only one side of their surface face the star.

Now astronomers claim that such exoplanets actually rotate around their stars, and spin at such a speed that they exhibit a day-night cycle similar to Earth increasing the chance of finding alien life.

Planets with potential oceans could have a climate that is much more similar to Earth's than previously expected,' said Jrmy Leconte, a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) at the University of Toronto.

'If we are correct, there is no permanent, cold night side on exoplanets causing water to remain trapped in a gigantic ice sheet,' he said.

'Whether this new understanding of exoplanets' climate increases the ability of these planets to develop life remains an open question.'

Currently, the search for ET is based on picking up optical and radio signals.

For instance, earlier this year, scientists picked up a series of mysterious pulsing signals coming from outside our solar system.

Known as Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs), just 10 of these signals have been discovered to date.

Dr Cabrol says searching for radio signals is just one of the ways we may be able to pick up alien life.

'We are hoping that ET has done the same thing as us, but there are other ways,' she said.

'Some people have talked about ET technology, sending vessels or robots in space.

'We have to rely a bit on our imagination right now to figure out what ET will be doing, and not being afraid to develop new research avenues as well.'

One of the ways we may be able to spot alien civilisations is through the destruction of their own planet, she says.

'Seti is, at this moment in time, about radio astronomy, and optical. But its also about what a civilisation does to its environment as it grows older.

'We are somewhat advanced, but we are a teenage civilisation. We are playing with toys and technologies but we dont know the rules very well yet.

Her views echo that of former astronaut, John Grunsfeld, who earlier this year said if aliens are out there, they already know we exist.

He said an advanced alien civilisation may spot humans from afar from the changes we've made to Earth's environment.

Former astronaut, John Grunsfeld (pictured), says that an advanced alien civilisation may spot humans from afar from the changes we've made to Earth's environment. 'We put atmospheric signatures that guarantee someone with a large telescope 20 light years away could detect us,' he claims

'We put atmospheric signatures that guarantee someone with a large telescope 20 light years away could detect us,' said Grunsfeld at the Astrobiology Science Conference in Chicago.

'If there is life out there, intelligent life, they'll know we're here.'

In April, Nasa's chief scientist Ellen Stofan said we could find evidence of extraterrestrial life in 20 to 30 years.

'We know where to look, we know how to look, and in most cases we have the technology.'

Jeffery Newmark, interim director of heliophysics at the agency, added: 'It's definitely not an if, it's a when.'

Stofan added: 'We are not talking about little green men.We are talking about little microbes.'

The rest is here:
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden says aliens could be ...

Many actors in biographical movies will interview the real people they're portraying to get a feel for their mannerisms and values. However, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt is going the extra mile to make sure that he's correctly representing NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden in Oliver Stone's upcoming movie. The star has revealed to The Guardian that he held a secret, four-hour meeting with Snowden in Russia to understand the fugitive. How secret? Gordon-Leavitt was not only advised to avoid recording the conversation, but (for a while) to avoid even acknowledging that it took place -- not surprising when the US likely wants to watch Snowden's every move.

Gordon-Leavitt isn't saying a lot about what happened during the chat, but he believes that Snowden acted out of a genuine concern that American mass surveillance was going too far. There's no guarantee that the sit-down will lead to a truly accurate movie, of course. You've probably seen at least a few "based on a true story" dramas that take a lot of poetic license, some of them from Stone himself (see the controversy over JFK's conpsiracy-laden plot). Still, it hints that the movie producers are making at least some effort to faithfully depict Snowden and the motivations behind his leaks.

[Image credit: Michael Buckner/Getty Images for Motion Picture & Television Fund]

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Edward Snowden held a secret chat with the actor ...

Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden says encryption could get in the way of any communication with aliens. Photograph: Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images

Related: Joseph Gordon-Levitt: Snowden is a patriot

The US government whistleblower Edward Snowden believes encryption might make it difficult or even impossible to distinguish signals from alien species from cosmic background radiation.

On Friday night, Snowden appeared from Moscow on the astrophysicist and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tysons StarTalk podcast, via a robot video link called a beam remote presence system.

In 2013, after leaking documents on National Security Agency surveillance to media outlets including the Guardian, and under threat of US prosecution under the Espionage Act, Snowden sought asylum in Russia.

In a candid interview with Tyson, Snowden said he signed up for the US army following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.

It took a very long time for me to develop any kind of skepticism at all even to the most over-extended claims of the extension of programs or policies [by the US security services], he said.

The conversation turned to the possibility that data encryption might be making it harder to intercept communications from aliens.

Related: The Edward Snowden story - from inside the Guardian

If you look at encrypted communication, if they are properly encrypted, there is no real way to tell that they are encrypted, Snowden said. You cant distinguish a properly encrypted communication from random behaviour.

Therefore, Snowden continued, as human and alien societies get more sophisticated and move from open communications to encrypted communication, the signals being broadcast will quickly stop looking like recognisable signals.

So if you have an an alien civilization trying to listen for other civilizations, he said, or our civilization trying to listen for aliens, theres only one small period in the development of their society when all their communication will be sent via the most primitive and most unprotected means.

After that, Snowden said, alien messages would be so encrypted that it would render them unrecognisable, indistinguishable to us from cosmic microwave background radiation. In that case, humanity would not even realise it had received such communications.

Only, Tyson replied jovially, if they have the same security problems as us.

Original post:
Edward Snowden: we may never spot space aliens thanks to ...

Published September 11, 2015

Parliament members holds posters while European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker delivers his State of the Union address at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, Wednesday, Sept.9, 2015. Juncker called on EU countries to agree by next week to share 160,000 refugees, warning that Greece, Italy and Hungary can no longer cope alone. (AP Photo/Christian Lutz)(The Associated Press)

BRUSSELS Assassinated Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and leaker Edward Snowden are among the candidates later this month for the European Union's top human rights prize.

Nemtsov, a former deputy prime minister turned critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was assassinated Feb. 27, 2015, near the Kremlin.

With Russia relations already at a low, the EU legislature said that Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian pilot currently held in Russia, will also be among the eight candidates presented on Sep. 28 for the Sakharov Prize.

The nominees also include Snowden, the U.S. intelligence leaker who also was among the candidates two years ago.

Previous winners include Nobel Peace Prize laureates Aung San Suu Kyi and Nelson Mandela.

The rest is here:
The late Boris Nemtsov, Edward Snowden among candidates ...

"It's wrong in Russia, and it would be wrong anywhere," said Snowden, 32, who was granted asylum by the Kremlin two years ago after Washington filed a warrant for his arrest.

Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden - who has been granted asylum by Russia - criticised the country's crackdown on human rights and online freedom on Saturday as "wrong... disappointing and frustrating".

Snowden called Moscow's restrictions on the web "a mistake in policy" and "fundamentally wrong" as he accepted a Norwegian freedom of expression prize by videophone from Russia.

"It's wrong in Russia, and it would be wrong anywhere," said Snowden, 32, who was granted asylum by the Kremlin two years ago after Washington filed a warrant for his arrest for having leaked documents that revealed the vast scale of US surveillance programmes.

Pushed on Moscow's deteriorating human rights record, the whistleblower said the situation is "disappointing, it's frustrating" and described restrictions on the Internet as part of a wider problem in Russia.

"I've been quite critical of (it) in the past and I'll continue to be in the future, because this drive that we see in the Russian government to control more and more the internet, to control more and more what people are seeing, even parts of personal lives, deciding what is the appropriate or inappropriate way for people to express their love for one another...(is) fundamentally wrong," he said.

Snowden said he had "never intended to go to Russia", and that he had been transiting the country en route for Latin America when US officials cancelled his passport.

"I applied for asylum in 21 countries," Snowden told the audience at the ceremony for the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression's Bjornson Prize. "They were all silent. Russia was actually one of the last countries in that sequence that I applied for."

Despite his extraordinary situation, Snowden described his life as "normal", even if he'd rather be living in his own country."Exile is exile," he said.

And his criticism of Russian Internet restrictions and laws encroaching on freedom of speech notwithstanding, Snowden said he feels he is allowed to express himself in Russia.

"I do. And I think it's primarily in the context of the fact that most activities happen online. I mean, when people ask me where I live, the most honest answer is on the Internet."

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NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden attacks Russia for human ...

WASHINGTON -- More than two years after former National Security Agencycontractor-turned-whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed the U.S. governments mass surveillance program, his chief critic and his chief defender met on stage Wednesday morning at the annual Hewlett-Packard cybersecurity conference.

There was no bloodshed, raised voices or thrown tables as Glenn Greenwald, the journalist to whom Snowden provided his trove of documents, and former NSA Director Keith Alexander squared off. But even after two years of public outcry -- culminating with Congress voting this year to end the sweeping data programs Snowden revealed in 2013 -- tension was palpable when the whistleblowers name came up.

Around the world, hes regarded overwhelmingly as a hero, Greenwald said. He came to established media outlets... he deserves our collective gratitude for enable us to have the discussion that were having.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Alexander, who led the NSA through the tumultuous revelations, didnt agree.

I see it slightly differently, he said after a pregnant pause.

You say you took an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic... he did not do that, Alexander said. So as a consequence, I think he should face justice with a jury of his peers.

Alexander did say he thought Snowden could have achieved a similar end if he had simply revealed the court documents justifying what was known as the 215 program, which sweeps up the telephone data of millions of Americans, including the numbers they dial and the length and time of the calls. But rather than just revealing the court records, Snowden provided Greenwald with millions of documents on the intricacies of programs and operations of the NSA, other intelligence agencies and U.S. allies.

If he had taken the one court document and said, This is what Im going to do... I think this would be a whole different discussion, Alexander said. I do think he had the opportunity [to be] what many could consider an American hero.

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Edward Snowden, American Hero? His Greatest Defender And ...

Edward Snowden,in full Edward Joseph Snowden (born June 21, 1983,Elizabeth City, North Carolina, U.S.),American intelligence contractor who in 2013 revealed the existence of secret wide-ranging information-gathering programs conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).

Snowden was born in North Carolina, and his family moved to central Maryland, a short distance from NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, when he was a child. He dropped out of high school and studied intermittently between 1999 and 2005 at a community college; he completed a GED but did not receive a college degree. He enlisted in the army reserve as a special forces candidate in May 2004, but he was discharged four months later. In 2005 he worked as a security guard at the Center for Advanced Study of Language, a University of Maryland research facility affiliated with the NSA. Despite a relative lack of formal education and training, Snowden demonstrated an aptitude with computers, and he was hired by the Central Intelligence Agency in 2006. He was given a top secret clearance and in 2007 was posted to Geneva, where he worked as a network security technician under a diplomatic cover.

Snowden left the CIA for the NSA in 2009. There he worked as a private contractor for the companies Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton. During this time, he began gathering information on a number of NSA activitiesmost notably, secret surveillance programs that he believed were overly broad in size and scope. In May 2013 Snowden requested a medical leave of absence and flew to Hong Kong, where during the following month he conducted a series of interviews with journalists from the newspaper The Guardian. Footage filmed during that period was featured in the documentary Citizenfour (2014). Among the NSA secrets leaked by Snowden was a court order that compelled telecommunications company Verizon to turn over metadata (such as numbers dialed and duration of calls) for millions of its subscribers. Snowden also disclosed the existence of PRISM, a data-mining program that reportedly gave the NSA, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Government Communications HeadquartersBritains NSA equivalentdirect access to the servers of such Internet giants as Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple.

On June 9, 2013, days after stories were initially published in The Guardian and The Washington Post without revealing the identity of their source, Snowden came forward, stating that he felt no need to hide because he had done nothing wrong. In a subsequent interview with the South China Morning Post, he claimed that the NSA had been hacking into Chinese computers since 2009 and that he had taken a job with Booz Allen Hamilton expressly to obtain information about secret NSA activities. The U.S. charged Snowden with espionage on June 14, and Justice Department officials, including Attorney General Eric Holder, began negotiating with authorities in Hong Kong in an attempt to initiate extradition procedures. The Hong Kong government declined to act, and Snowden, with the assistance of the media organization WikiLeaks, flew to Moscow, where his exact whereabouts became the source of intense speculation. Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin confirmed that Snowden, whose passport had been revoked by the U.S., remained within the confines of the international transit zone of Moscows Sheremetyevo airport.

Putin resolutely stated that Russia would take no part in his extradition to the United States, and Snowden applied for asylum in some 20 countries, including Russia. Putin also made clear that he did not wish for Snowdens presence to damage relations with the United States, and he said that if Snowden wished to remain in Russia, he must stop his work aimed at bringing harm to our American partners. After having spent more than a month in the Sheremetyevo transit zone, Snowden was granted temporary refugee status by Russia, and he left the airport in the company of a WikiLeaks staffer.

Although U.S. Pres. Barack Obama was critical of Snowdens methods, in August 2013 he announced the creation of an independent panel to examine the U.S. governments surveillance practices. That panels findings, published in December 2013, recommended that the mass collection of telephone records be suspended and advised greater oversight of sensitive programs, such as those targeting friendly foreign leaders. Obama acted on a number of these suggestions and recommended congressional review of others, but the role of the NSA and its data-collection efforts remained a bone of contention between the intelligence community and privacy advocates. In April 2014 The Guardian U.S. and The Washington Post were awarded the Pulitzer Prize for public service for their roles in reporting on the NSA leaks. Snowden characterized the award as a vindication of his efforts to bring the secret surveillance programs to light.

In August 2014, as Snowdens grant of temporary asylum expired, the Russian government awarded him a three-year residence permit (effective August 1), which would allow him to leave the country for up to three months. He was also granted the opportunity to request an extension of that permit and, after five years of residence, to apply for Russian citizenship should he choose to do so.

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Edward Snowden - Britannica.com

Weve fact-checked statements in the media about Edward Snowden and the NSA before, but by far the biggest falsehood being spread by government advocates is the alleged fact that he took 1.7 million documents from the NSA.

All the parties involvedSnowden, the journalists, and even the governmenteither deny it or have said they have no reason to believe it is true, yet it has become the go-to number when discussing Snowden's case. It's time news organizations start issuing corrections.

Glenn Greenwald wrote about this last week, showing that news outlets have taken the statement by an NSA official on 60 Minutes that Snowdenat one point or another in his careeraccessed or touched millions of documents and warped it into a claim that hed stolen that many:

Ever since then, that Snowden stole 1.7 or 1.8 million documents from the NSA has been repeated over and over again by US media outlets as verified fact. The Washington Posts Walter Pincus, citing an anonymous official source, purported to tell readers that among the roughly 1.7 million documents he walked away with the vast majority of which have not been made public are highly sensitive, specific intelligence reports. Reuters frequently includes in its reports the unchallenged assertion that Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents. Just this week, the global news agency told its readers that Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents.

As Greenwald pointed out, in an interview given to the Australian Financial Review, former NSA chief Keith Alexander was asked point blank if the NSA can really say how many documents Snowden took. Here's what he said:

Well, I dont think anybody really knows what he actually took with him, because the way he did it, we dont have an accurate way of counting. What we do have an accurate way of counting is what he touched, what he may have downloaded, and that was more than a million documents.

Read that again. They do not know how many documents he took. But this actually isnt anything new, weve known this for months. After the New York Times reported Snowden accessed 1.7 million files in February, they also wrote, albeit a dozen paragraphs later, that DIA head General Michael Flynn admitted in Congressional testimony they still had a great deal of uncertainty about what Mr. Snowden possessed. Everything that he touched, we assume that he took, said General Flynn. In other words, they have no idea.

Despite these known facts, even this week, the Wall Street Journal has published an incredibly irresponsible piece by Edward Jay Epstein, who based an entire op-ed around the false 1.7 million statement as a way to claim that Snowden is working for a foreign goverment. And look what happens when you Google the phrase Snowden 1.7 million: He either took, has, or stole nearly 2 million documents is all over the entire front page.

So to sum up, Edward Snowden has said the number is made up, the journalists involved deny they have 1.7 million documents, and the government has stated multiple times they do not know how many documents he took. Literally no party in the NSA story believes the 1.7 million number is true, yet most media organizations claim its a fact.

We look forward to Reuters, the Wall Street Journal, and others who have been peddling this fictitious number issuing corrections.

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edward snowden - Boing Boing