Edward Snowden ‘being manipulated into giving vital secrets to Russians in return for being allowed to stay there’

Snowden stole hundreds of thousands of documents exposing NSA spying Congress heard in March that documents contained US military secrets He fled to Russia where officials say he's paying for board with information Senator claims Putin is 'exploiting' Snowden until he 'reaches max on that' Also claimed Snowden may have been feeding Russians and Chinese information all along without knowing it

By Ian Drury

Published: 06:36 EST, 16 May 2014 | Updated: 17:23 EST, 16 May 2014

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Turned? Western security officials believe Snowden has become a Russian informant for fear he will be extradited to America to face espionage charges.

EDWARD Snowden put British agents lives at risk, it was claimed yesterday, as it was alleged he spied for Russia while in the U.S.

Intelligence chiefs believe the whistleblower is passing secrets to Vladimir Putin in return for sanctuary.

Snowden, 30, became one of the worlds most wanted men last June when he broke cover as the civilian CIA worker who stole classified documents from the US National Security Agency.

Originally posted here:
Edward Snowden 'being manipulated into giving vital secrets to Russians in return for being allowed to stay there'

Our enemies are stronger because of Edward Snowden’s treacherous betrayal

Modern-day code-breaking is immensely more challenging than it was in the Bletchley Park era during the Second World War, when the capture of German code books enabled British mathematicians such as Alan Turing to read vital enemy communications. Todays encryption software automatically encodes data, making it difficult to decipher without outside assistance. To this end most Western spy agencies have formed close working relationships with many of the worlds leading internet providers, helping them to monitor the communications of hostile governments and organisations. In the past, this close-knit relationship has enabled Western surveillance organisations such as the NSA and GCHQ to provide vital intelligence that has helped to disrupt al-Qaeda plots and support efforts by Nato forces to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan, as well as providing vital information about the military ambitions of emerging powers such as China and India.

But thanks to Snowden and his acolytes, our ability to maintain high-level surveillance on potential threats to our security has been severely affected.

For, during the few months he spent working at the NSAs Signals Intelligence Centre in Hawaii, Snowden did not simply confine himself to acquiring information on the agencys mass surveillance techniques, which attracted most of the headlines when the Guardian first published his revelations last year. Many of the 1.7 million documents that Snowden copied and stole relate to top-secret American spying operations on countries like Russia and China. They also, as US General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has testified, relate directly to Americas military capabilities, operations, tactics, techniques and procedures. As one official familiar with Snowdens activities remarked, This is a treasure trove of material for any adversary of the West.

The alarming scope of the leaking operation, and the fact that he specifically targeted a large number of top secret US databases, has led some American commentators to conclude that he was engaged in espionage on behalf of a foreign power, with Russia and China identified as the most likely culprits. But even if Snowden was acting on his own initiative, it is safe to assume that, having claimed asylum in Russia, both the Kremlin and Beijing are now well-acquainted with the intricacies of Western intelligence-gathering, enabling them to amend their own operational activities accordingly.

British and American security officials are certainly working on that assumption, and have now been forced to embark on the massive task of recalibrating their intelligence operations, so that they no longer relate to the model provided by Snowden. British officials estimate it will cost tens of millions of pounds just to change GCHQs eavesdropping facilities.

In the meantime, hostile groups such as al-Qaeda have lost no time in exploiting the gap in our intelligence-gathering capabilities to strengthen their position, with all the implications that is likely to have for our own future security.

Certainly, if countries like Russia and China were to gain the advantage at our expense, or groups such as al-Qaeda launched a successful terror attack, then Snowdens treacherous betrayal might not seem to have been such a good idea after all.

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Our enemies are stronger because of Edward Snowden's treacherous betrayal

NSA Spying Has a Disproportionate Effect on Immigrants

The consequences of eliminating Fourth Amendment protections for all international communication with foreigners

Reuters

The U.S. government concedes that it needs a warrant to eavesdrop on phone calls between Americans, or to read the body of their emails to one another. Everyone agrees that these communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment. But the government also argues that Fourth Amendment protections don't apply when an American calls or writes to a foreigner in another country.

Let's say, for example, that the head of the NAACP writes an email to a veteran of the South African civil-rights struggle asking for advice about an anti-racism campaign; or that Hillary Clinton fields a call from a friend in Australia whose daughter was raped; or that Jeb Bush uses Skype to discuss with David Cameron whether he should seek the 2016 presidential nomination for the Republican Party. Under the Obama administration's logic, these Americans have no reasonable expectation of privacy with regard to these conversations, and it is lawful and legitimate for the NSA to eavesdrop on, record, and store everything that is said.

The arguments Team Obama uses to justify these conclusions are sweeping and worrisome, as the ACLU's Jameel Jaffer capturesin his analysis of the relevant legal briefs:

... the government contends that Americans who make phone calls or send emails to people abroad have a diminished expectation of privacy because the people with whom they are communicatingnon-Americans abroad, that isare not protected by the Constitution. The government also argues that Americans' privacy rights are further diminished in this context because the NSA has a "paramount" interest in examining information that crosses international borders.

... the government even argues that Americans can't reasonably expect that their international communications will be private from the NSA when the intelligence services of so many other countries ... might be monitoring those communications, too. The government's argument is not simply that the NSA has broad authority to monitor Americans' international communications. The US government is arguing that the NSA's authority is unlimited in this respect. If the government is right, nothing in the Constitution bars the NSA from monitoring a phone call between a journalist in New York City and his source in London. For that matter, nothing bars the NSA from monitoring every call and email between Americans in the United States and their non-American friends, relatives, and colleagues overseas.

All I'd add is that the Obama administration's encroachments on the Fourth Amendment disparately affect naturalized citizens of the United States, almost all of whom still have friends or family members living in their countries of origin. When I call my parents, email my sister, or text my best friend, my private communications are theoretically protected by the Bill of Rights. In contrast, immigrants contacting loved ones often do so with the expectation that every word they say or write can be legally recorded and stored forever on a server somewhere.

Xenophobia is one factor driving this double-standard. It does real harm to immigrants whose speech is chilled, as is clear to anyone who has made an effort to speak with them.

Yet there has been little backlash against the Obama administration for affording zero constitutional protections to Americans engaged in speech with foreigners, and little sympathy for the innocent Americans, many of them immigrants, who are hurt by the approach Obama and many in Congress endorse.

See original here:
NSA Spying Has a Disproportionate Effect on Immigrants

Bill to curb NSA spying looks like change, but isn’t really

WASHINGTON The bipartisan bill that aims to put serious curbs on the National Security Agencys mass collection of Americans communications is being hailed by Republicans and Democrats as a big breakthrough.

Its not.

The bottom line: This is largely faux reform and a surveillance salve, said Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior official turned whistle-blower whos critical of the agencys collection programs. To date, neither the House nor Senate attempts go far enough.

Thats not easy to discern, thanks to an outpouring of raves for the legislation. Democrats, Republicans and traditionally skeptical watchdog groups have put their muscle behind the USA Freedom Act.

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on its version of the bill next week, the first time since news about the surveillance broke last year that major legislation supported by top congressional leaders like this has come to the floor. The Senate might take up its own version as early as this summer.

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee even issued a joint statement praising the bipartisan cooperation, a rarely seen trait around Congress these days.

But peek just past all the good will and theres serious concern that Congress has much more to do. Not only are loopholes easy to find but also the government has other ways of collecting the data.

The House bill would bar the NSA from relying on one part _ Section 215 _ of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to conduct bulk data collection.

Under the bill, the NSA would no longer be allowed to collect records of data such as phone numbers or the duration of all Americans calls. Phone companies would retain that data, but only for the same length of time they usually keep the material.

The Justice Department, though, could get such material in an emergency _ an important political concession, since many lawmakers were concerned that the government wouldnt be able to react quickly if needed.

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Bill to curb NSA spying looks like change, but isn’t really

Skeptics on NSA Reform: Beware the ‘Backdoors and Loopholes’

(Credit: EFF / cc / Flickr)'Bill to curb NSA spying looks like change, but isnt really.'

That's the headline on the latest McClatchy reporting focused an a series of legislative efforts now passing through both houses of Congress that are purportedly designed to rein in the National Security Agency and its mass domestic surveillance apparatus.

Among the experts and critics of the NSA programs the newspaper spoke with, former NSA employee Thomas Drake said, "The bottom line: This is largely faux reform and a surveillance salve. To date, neither the House nor Senate attempts go far enough.

That sentiment was shared by experts at both the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation who have been among the most outspoken critics of the NSA itself and the so-far tepid reforms that have received traction thus far in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Though support has been forthcoming for the USA Freedom Act, as many have stated: 'The devil is in the details.'

The ACLU's assessment, offered by Laura Murphy, the group's legislative director in Washington, explains that "while [USA Freedom Act] is lacking some of the key privacy protections included in the original, it is an important step to reining in the surveillance state. At base, the bill attempts to stop the government from sweeping up personal information without having to present a compelling reason to a judge."

And McClatchy reports:

The House of Representatives is expected to vote on its version of the bill next week, the first time since news about the surveillance broke last year that major legislation supported by top congressional leaders like this has come to the floor. The Senate might take up its own version as early as this summer.

The top Republican and Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee even issued a joint statement praising the bipartisan cooperation, a rarely seen trait around Congress these days.

But peek just past all the good will and theres serious concern that Congress has much more to do. Not only are loopholes easy to find but also the government has other ways of collecting the data.

See original here:
Skeptics on NSA Reform: Beware the 'Backdoors and Loopholes'