Michael Balsamo and Eric Tucker, Associated Press Published 2:09 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2020 | Updated 8:48 p.m. ET Aug. 21, 2020

The suit doesn't seek a halt to distribution of his book, released in more than 20 countries, but does press for recovery of all proceeds. USA TODAY

WASHINGTON (AP) Attorney General William Barr said he would be vehemently opposed to any attempt to pardon former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, after the president suggested he might consider it.

The attorney generals comments in an interview with The Associated Press come days after President Donald Trump said he would look at whether to pardon Snowden, who was charged under the Espionage Act in 2013 with disclosing details of highly classified government surveillance programs.

There are many, many people it seems to be a split decision that many people think that he should be somehow treated differently, and other people think he did very bad things, Trump said of Snowden at a news conference on Saturday. And Im going to take a very good look at it.

The Justice Departments criminal complaint against him was dated just days after Snowdens name first surfaced as the person who had leaked to the news media that the NSA, in classified surveillance programs, gathered telephone and Internet records to ferret out potential terror plots.

Justice Department suing Edward Snowden over his new memoir 'Permanent Record'(Photo: Getty)

He was a traitor and the information he provided our adversaries greatly hurt the safety of the American people, Barr said. He was peddling it around like a commercial merchant. We cant tolerate that.

Snowden remains in Russia to avoid prosecution even as the federal charges against him are pending.

It was unclear how serious Trump was, particularly given that years earlier he had denounced Snowden as a spy deserving of execution. But Trumps distrust of his own intelligence community has been a staple of his tenure, particularly because of its conclusion that Russia intervened in the 2016 presidential election on his behalf, and he has at times bemoaned the broad surveillance powers that the intelligence agencies have at their disposal.

Attorney General William Barr(Photo: Jack Gruber/USA TODAY)

Any effort to pardon Snowden would unquestionably infuriate senior intelligence officials, who say his disclosures caused extraordinary damage and will have repercussions for years to come.

In a memoir published last year, Snowden wrote that his seven years working for the NSA and CIA led him to conclude that the U.S. intelligence community had hacked the Constitution and put everyones liberty at risk and that he had no choice but to turn to journalists to reveal it to the world.

I realized that I was crazy to have imagined that the Supreme Court, or Congress, or President Obama, seeking to distance his administration from President George W. Bushs, would ever hold the IC legally responsible for anything, he wrote, using an abbreviation for the intelligence community.

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AG William Barr says he is 'vehemently opposed' to pardoning Edward Snowden - USA TODAY

Gov. Holcomb's action on equality appreciated

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

LuEtta Friesen, Goshen

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chad Maurer, Goshen

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

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

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

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

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

Mark Huser, Goshen

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

BOOK REVIEW

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Image: Reuters

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

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

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

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

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

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

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But is that the whole story? Obviously not.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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