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Edward Snowden: whistleblower, criminal … Nobel Peace Prize winner?

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Oslo, Norway The US government says he's a criminal. Others call him a hero. But will Edward Snowden soon be described as a Nobel Peace Prize winner?

Some experts are predicting that the former US contractor for the National Security Agency now living under asylum in Russia will be announced on Friday as this year's honoree. But Mr. Snowden's selection would give new fuel to an ongoing debate in Norway about just how independent the Nobel Committee there really is.

Experts say Snowden, who alerted the publicto the US government's widespread surveillance through the release of enormous volumes of documentation last year, tops their predictions of Nobel contenders.

He has been nominated by Socialist Left parliamentarians, and supported in several editorials in leading Norwegian papers and by lawyers and academics internationally, points out Asle Sveen, a Norwegian Nobel historian at Nobeliana. Giving the prize to Snowden would also underline the independence of the parliament-appointed Norwegian Nobel Committee, which selects the winner.

Questions over the autonomy of the committee were resurrected earlier this year when the Norwegian government refused to meet with Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama on the 25th anniversary of his Peace Prize over fears of irking China.

Giving it to Snowden would run against all political instincts, says Kristian Harpviken, director at the Peace Research Institute in Oslo. He is, after all, considered a traitor to one of Norways closest allies."

Indeed, awarding the prize to Snowden would rock US relations. Norway is still dealing with the fallout from awarding the prize four years ago to Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo. China stalled bilateral trade talks and cut trade with Norway in retaliation. Though awarding Snowden this year's prize would likely not draw as harsh a rebuke from the US, it would still shake the relationship.

And under treaty agreements with the US, Norway could be obliged to arrest Snowden at the award ceremony at Oslo City Hall in December, according to Michael Tetzschner, a Conservative member of parliament.

"We would have another empty chair, Mr. Harpviken added, referring to Mr. Liu, who was prevented from attending the award ceremony in Oslo.

The committee has alternatives, of course, some of which are just as controversial. Novaya Gazeta, the independent Russian newspaper set up in 1993 at the initiative of Mikhail Gorbachev, has been a favorite among speculators for some time. The paper has seen the killings of its journalists and been the subject of numerous cyberattacks. A prize to the media watchdogs would be topical given Russias current involvement in the Ukraine conflict.

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Edward Snowden: whistleblower, criminal ... Nobel Peace Prize winner?

Oliver Stone’s Edward Snowden Spec Auctions Friday; Joseph Gordon-Levitt Stars As Whistleblower

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EXCLUSIVE: Around the same time that the Edward Snowden documentary Citizenfour premieres at the New York Film Festival on Friday, studio heads will be reading the drama script that Oliver Stone and producing partner Moritz Borman have been working on about the hot-button subject of a leaker some call gutsy while others call a traitor. Stone will direct Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the role of the American who fled to Russia seeking asylum after making public more classified documents than anyone since Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War.

The film has indie financing with Canal Plus involved, so they are going to make this in Munich in January, with Moritz Borman producing with Eric Kopeloff. Deadline revealed last month that Gordon-Levitt would play Snowden; he just played Philippe Petit in the Robert Zemeckis-directed The Long Walk for TriStar and now is shooting Xmas with Seth Rogen at Sony.

As Deadline has reported, Stone and Borman have a deal with Snowdens Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, for film rights to his novel Time Of The Octopus. That is the basis for the story of an American whistle blower who heads to Russia and the back and forth between the leaker and his lawyer as he waits while that country considers his request for asylum. Stone and Borman also bought the screen rights to The Snowden Files: The Inside Story Of The Worlds Most Wanted Man, a book by Guardian journalist Luke Harding thats published by Guardian Faber. Like Julian Assange, Snowden is a polarizing figure that some would call brave, and others including the U.S. government would call a turncoat.

The script is being auctioned by Stones reps at CAA, and only a small circle of studio heads will get to read it. Given the notoriety of Snowden and the nature of the project, they will do their best to make sure the script doesnt leak. Feels like this one will sell very quickly.

Stone is positioned to beat several other movie projects based on the Snowden story. Sony Pictures acquired film rights to Pulitzer-winning journalist Glenn Greenwalds upcoming book No Place To Hide: Edward Snowden, The NSA, And The U.S. Surveillance State, with 007 producers Michael G Wilson and Barbara Broccoli attached.

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Oliver Stone’s Edward Snowden Spec Auctions Friday; Joseph Gordon-Levitt Stars As Whistleblower

Snowden and Pope Tipped for ‘Wide Open’ Nobel Peace Prize

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File photo of Edward Snowden. (Agence France-Presse)

Mr Snowden, the former intelligence analyst who revealed the extent of US global eavesdropping, was one of the joint winners of the "alternative Nobel peace prize" last month. A hero to some and a traitor to others, he would be a highly controversial choice for the 878,000-euro ($1.11-million) award.

The Pakistani girls' education campaigner Malala Yousafzai, who was also a favourite last year, is also said to be in the running along with Pope Francis and a Japanese pacifist group.

Predicting the winner is even harder than usual this year, as the Nobel committee has received a record 278 candidates, so experts only have the names of those made public by their sponsors to go on.

Mr Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) analyst, was proposed by two Norwegian members of parliament. Last month he shared the "alternative" $210,000 Norwegian Right Livelihood Award with The Guardian newspaper and human rights and environmental activists.

But from his exile in Russia, the US fugitive said during a recent press conference that "it is somewhat unlikely that the Nobel committee would back..." him winning the real Nobel.

However, other Russian-based individuals or groups could be a popular choice for the Nobel Committee.

For the Nobel committee president Thorbjoern Jagland, "sanctioning Moscow would be a way to prove that he acts independently, since (Jagland) is (also) the Secretary General of the Council of Europe, which counts Russia as a member," Mr Jacob told AFP.

Co-founded by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1993 with part of his peace prize money, the pro-democracy Moscow newspaper Novaya Gazeta has been tipped as a possible laureate. It is one of the few independent media outlets left in Russia and has seen several of its journalists murdered, including Anna Politkovskaya who exposed huge human rights abuses in Chechnya.

Malala 'still very young'

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Snowden and Pope Tipped for 'Wide Open' Nobel Peace Prize

NSA spying will shatter the internet, Silicon Valley bosses warn

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Secure remote control for conventional and virtual desktops

Top Silicon Valley execs have warned that the NSA's continued surveillance of innocent people will rupture the internet which is bad news for business.

Oh, and bad news for hundreds of thousands of workers, and America's moral authority, too.

The suits were speaking at a roundtable organized by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) in Palo Alto, California, on Wednesday. Google's chairman Eric Schmidt and John Lilly, a partner at venerable VC firm Greylock Partners, were on the panel, along with Microsoft's general counsel Brad Smith and his counterpart at Facebook, Colin Stretch, and Dropbox, Ramsey Homsany.

"It is time to end the digital dragnet, which harms American liberty and the American economy without making the country safer. The US government should stop requiring American companies to participate in the suspicionless collection of their customers data, and begin the process of rebuilding trust both at home and abroad," said Senator Wyden.

"The United States here in Silicon Valley, up in the Silicon Forest of the State of Oregon that I am so proud to represent, and in tech campuses and garage start-ups across the country has the best technologies and the best ideas to drive high-tech innovation. It is policy malpractice to squander that capital for no clear security gain."

The assembled speakers echoed Wyden's sentiments, and agreed that unless the US government reined in its intelligence agencies, American business would suffer badly.

"The simplest outcome [of NSA spying] is that we end up breaking the internet," Google's Schmidt said.

"What's going to happen is that governments will bring in bad laws and say 'we want our own internet and we dont want to work with others.' The cost of that is huge to knowledge and science, and has huge implications."

Schmidt said he had spent the summer in Germany talking to, among others, Chancellor Angela Merkel. She had told him of her youth growing up in East Germany and said that the knowledge that the NSA were listening to her calls to her mother reminded her of chilling Cold War surveillance.

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NSA spying will shatter the internet, Silicon Valley bosses warn

Tech leaders lash out at government’s electronic spying

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Government spying on electronic communications has outraged Internet users and now threatens to harm technology firms' ability to do business internationally, tech leaders said during a roundtable discussion.

Executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Dropbox attended the discussion with Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), held in the gymnasium of Palo Alto High School on Wednesday.

Wyden, who sits on the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called the meeting to discuss how U.S. mass surveillance programs exposed last year by Edward Snowden have challenged tech innovation and global competitiveness.

"It's clear the global community of Internet users doesn't like to be caught up in the American surveillance dragnet," Wyden said. "They've embraced technology, but they don't like it turned against them in a way that doesn't increase anyone's security.... In my view, our policy is out of whack."

Government spying has been a prickly issue among Silicon Valley's biggest tech firms, and the panelists didn't hold back their frustrations in the post-Snowden era, including the economic effect of NSA spying on the tech sector.

"What occurred was a loss of trust between America and other countries," Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said. "It's making it very difficult for American firms to do business."

Tech leaders said they feared being shut out of the Internet economy if foreign countries, suspicious of the U.S. government's actions, opt for "data localization," meaning they would mandate that their citizens' data be stored within their own countries.

Such a move would cripple U.S. tech firms used to operating on a global scale. A shutout by European countries in particular would have enormous consequences for Silicon Valley, they said.

Colin Stretch, Facebook's general counsel, said data localization is "fundamentally at odds with the way the Internet is architected" and would mean slower and less efficient servers because companies wouldn't be able to take advantage of cloud-based storage systems.

"More access points around the world make it harder for your network to be secure, so it makes us more vulnerable, not less," Stretch said. "Data localization takes us exactly in the wrong direction."

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Tech leaders lash out at government's electronic spying

Apple Says iOS Encryption Protects Privacy; FBI Raises Crime Fears

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The FBI says Apple encryption software could make it harder for the police to solve crimes. But Apple CEO Tim Cook disagrees, saying this is about people's right to privacy. iStockphoto hide caption

The FBI says Apple encryption software could make it harder for the police to solve crimes. But Apple CEO Tim Cook disagrees, saying this is about people's right to privacy.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies are up in arms about new technology now available from Apple and soon to be released by Google.

The software encrypts the data on smartphones and other mobile devices so that not even the companies themselves will be able to access the information.

It's a response by technology companies to revelations by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that the government was monitoring Americans' Internet and cellphone use.

Apple's new iOS 8 operating system for its iPhone and iPad tablets features encryption software so secure that no one not even Apple has the key to it. And it's become a selling point.

In an appearance on PBS's Charlie Rose, Apple CEO Tim Cook said, "people have a right to privacy, and I think that's going to be a very key topic over the next year or so."

FBI Director James Comey says new encryption features allow people "to place themselves beyond the law." Alex Wong/Getty Images hide caption

FBI Director James Comey says new encryption features allow people "to place themselves beyond the law."

It's already become a key topic for FBI Director James Comey. He told reporters recently he doesn't understand why companies would "market something expressly to allow people to place themselves beyond the law."

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Apple Says iOS Encryption Protects Privacy; FBI Raises Crime Fears

Apple’s iPhone Encryption Is a Godsend, Even if Cops Hate It

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It took the upheaval of the Edward Snowden revelations to make clear to everyone that we need protection from snooping, governmental and otherwise. Snowden illustrated the capabilities of determined spies, and said what security experts have preached for years: Strong encryption of our data is a basic necessity, not a luxury.

And now Apple, that quintessential mass-market supplier of technology, seems to have gotten the message. With an eye to market demand, the company has taken a bold step to the side of privacy, making strong crypto the default for the wealth of personal information stored on the iPhone. And the backlash has been as swift and fevered as it is wrongheaded.

At issue is the improved iPhone encryption built into iOS 8. For the first time, all the important data on your phonephotos, messages, contacts, reminders, call historyare encrypted by default. Nobody but you can access the iPhones contents, unless your passcode is compromised, something you can make nearly impossible by changing your settings to replace your four-digit PIN with an alphanumeric password.

Rather than welcome this sea change, which makes consumers more secure, top law enforcement officials, including US Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI director James Comey, are leading a charge to maintain the insecure status quo. They warn that without the ability to crack the security on seized smartphones, police will be hamstrung in critical investigations. John Escalante, chief of detectives for Chicagos police department, predicts the iPhone will become the phone of choice for the pedophile.

The issue for law enforcement is that, as with all strong crypto, the encryption on the iPhone is secure even from the maker of the device. Apple itself cant access your files, which means, unlike in the past, the company cant help law enforcement officials access your files, even if presented with a valid search warrant.

That has lead to a revival of a debate many of us thought resolved long ago, in the crypto wars of the 1990s. Back then, the Clinton administration fought hard to include trapdoor keys in consumer encryption products, so law enforcement and intelligence officialsNSA being a chief proponentcould access your data with proper legal authority. Critics argued such backdoors are inherently insecure. Trapdoor keys would be an irresistible target for corrupt insiders or third-party hackers, and would thus make Americans more vulnerable to criminals, foreign intelligence services, corrupt government officials, and other threats. Additionally, foreign technology companies would gain a competitive advantage over the US, since theyd have no obligation to weaken their crypto.

The feds lost the crypto wars, but without serious consumer demand, strong encryption has crept onto our gadgets only for narrow purposes, like protecting Internet transactions. The iPhone encrypted email and calendar entries, but little else. Now that Snowdens revelations have reinforced just how vulnerable our data is, companies like Apple and Google, who were painted as NSA collaborators in the earliest Snowden leaks, are newly motivated to demonstrate their independence and to compete with each other on privacy.

However it got there, Apple has come to the right place. Its a basic axiom of information security that data at rest should be encrypted. Apple should be lauded for reaching that state with the iPhone. Google should be praised for announcing it will follow suit in a future Android release.

And yet, the argument for encryption backdoors has risen like the undead. In a much-discussed editorial that ran Friday, The Washington Post sided with law enforcement. Bizarrely, the Post acknowledges backdoors are a bad ideaa back door can and will be exploited by bad guys, tooand then proposes one in the very next sentence: Apple and Google, the paper says, should invent a secure golden key that would let police decrypt a smartphone with a warrant.

The paper doesnt explain why this golden key would be less vulnerable to abuse than any other backdoor. Maybe its the name, which seems a product of the same branding workshop that led the Chinese government to name its Internet censorship system the golden shield. Whats not to like? Everyone loves gold!

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Apple’s iPhone Encryption Is a Godsend, Even if Cops Hate It

Four-digit passcodes remain a weak point in iOS 8 data encryption

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The strength of Apples revised encryption scheme in iOS 8 hinges on users choosing a strong passcode or password, which they rarely do, according to a Princeton University fellow.

Apple beefed up the encryption in its latest mobile operating system, protecting more sensitive data and employing more protections within hardware to make it harder to access. The new system has worried U.S. authorities, who fear it may make it more difficult to obtain data for law enforcement since Apple has no access to it.

Despite the new protections, data is still vulnerable in certain circumstances, wrote Joseph Bonneau, a fellow at theCenter For Information Technology Policy at Princeton, who studies password security.

Users with any simple passcode have no security against a serious attacker whos able to start guessing with the help of the devices cryptographic processor, he wrote.

If an iPhone is seized when its turned off, its unlikely that the keys can be derived from its cryptographic co-processor called the Secure Enclave, which does the heavy lifting to enable encryption.

But if an attacker can boot the phone and get access to the Secure Enclave, it would be possible to start guessing passwords in a brute-force attack, and thats where the weakness lies.

Apple doesnt make it easy to completely copy all of the data on a device and boot it up using external firmware or another operating system, which would be an attackers first step, Bonneau wrote.

His theory of how easy it would be to obtain the data from a device is dependent on an attacker being able to bypass the complicated secure boot sequence of an iOS 8 device.

Well assume this can be defeated by finding a security hole, stealing Apples key to sign alternate code or coercing Apple into doing so, he wrote.

If that is possible, the attacker can begin guessing passcodes or passwords against the Secure Enclave. Apples documentation suggests that such guesses could be conducted at a rate of either 12 guesses per second or 1 guess every five seconds.

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Four-digit passcodes remain a weak point in iOS 8 data encryption


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