In an editorial, The Guardian says: No government or bureaucracy loves a whistleblower. Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared. The more serious the leak, the fiercer the pursuit and the greater the punishment. Edward Snowden knew as much before contacting this newspaper to reveal some of the things that troubled him about the work, scope and oversight of the US and British intelligence agencies. He is unlikely to be surprised at the clamour to have him locked up for life, or to have seen himself denounced as a traitor.

It was also quite predictable that Snowden would be charged with criminal offences, even if there is something shocking in the use of the 1917 Espionage Act – a measure intended to prevent anti-war speech in the first world war by treating it as sedition. On the available evidence Snowden’s almost certain motive for speaking out was far removed from anything resembling espionage, sedition or anti-Americanism. His attempts to stay beyond the clutches of US law may involve travel to countries with a poor record on freedom of expression. But his choice of refuge does not, of itself, make him a traitor. As Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith has written (“You don’t have to like Edward Snowden“): “Snowden’s personal story is interesting only because the new details he revealed are so much more interesting. We know substantially more about domestic surveillance than we did, thanks largely to stories and documents printed by The Guardian. They would have been just as revelatory without Snowden’s name on them.”

America is blessed with a first amendment, which prevents prior restraint and affords a considerable measure of protection to free speech. But the Obama administration has equally shown a dismaying aggression in not only criminalising leaking and whistleblowing, but also recently placing reporters under surveillance – tracking them and pulling their phone and email logs in order to monitor their sources for stories that were patently of public importance. [Continue reading…]

Glenn Greenwald writes: When I made the choice to report aggressively on top-secret NSA programs, I knew that I would inevitably be the target of all sorts of personal attacks and smears. You don’t challenge the most powerful state on earth and expect to do so without being attacked. As a superb Guardian editorial noted today: “Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared. The more serious the leak, the fiercer the pursuit and the greater the punishment.”

One of the greatest honors I’ve had in my years of writing about politics is the opportunity to work with and befriend my long-time political hero, Daniel Ellsberg. I never quite understood why the Nixon administration, in response to his release of the Pentagon Papers, would want to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychoanalyst and steal his files. That always seemed like a non sequitur to me: how would disclosing Ellsberg’s most private thoughts and psychosexual assessments discredit the revelations of the Pentagon Papers?

When I asked Ellsberg about that several years ago, he explained that the state uses those tactics against anyone who dissents from or challenges it simply to distract from the revelations and personally smear the person with whatever they can find to make people uncomfortable with the disclosures. [Continue reading…]

The Associated Press reports: Hong Kong officials say the U.S. government got National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden’s middle name wrong in documents it submitted seeking his arrest.

Snowden hid in Hong Kong for several weeks after revealing secret U.S. surveillance programs. Hong Kong allowed him to fly to Moscow on Sunday, saying a U.S. request for his arrest did not fully comply with its requirements.

Justice Secretary Rimsky Yuen said that discrepancies in the paperwork filed by U.S. authorities were to blame, although the U.S. Justice Department denied that Wednesday.

Yuen said Hong Kong immigration records listed Snowden’s middle name as Joseph, but the U.S. government used the name James in some documents and referred to him only as Edward J. Snowden in others.

“These three names are not exactly the same, therefore we believed that there was a need to clarify,” he said Tuesday.

Remember Buttle being confused for Tuttle in Brazil?

Sometimes news reporting gets so twisted, it demands to be re-written. The beginning of a Washington Post report follows with the original sentences in italics and my re-writes in between.

It may be years before the full cost of Edward Snowden’s intelligence leaks can be measured.

It may be years before the full effect — both the costs and benefits — of Edward Snowden’s intelligence leaks can be measured.

But his disclosures about top-secret surveillance programs have already come at a price for the U.S. government: America’s foes have been handed an immensely powerful tool for portraying Washington as a hypocritical proponent of democratic values that it doesn’t abide by at home.

But his disclosures about top-secret surveillance programs have already placed the U.S. government in an awkward position: America’s critics now find it much easier to portray Washington as a hypocritical proponent of democratic values that it doesn’t abide by at home.

As Snowden continues his extraordinary flight from U.S. authorities, hopscotching the globe with the acquiescence of other governments, Washington’s critics have savored the irony of the world’s human rights champion being tripped up by revelations about its monitoring of phone and Internet communications.

As Snowden continues his extraordinary flight from U.S. authorities, hopscotching the globe without the intervention of other governments, Washington’s detractors have savored the irony of a country that sees itself as the world’s human rights champion being tripped up by revelations about its disregard for the constitutional rights of its own citizens through the monitoring of their phone and Internet communications.

Meanwhile, China, Russia, Cuba, and Ecuador — countries with dismal human rights records — have cast themselves as the champions of political freedom.

When the hypocrisy of the United States captures the world’s attention, it becomes increasingly difficult for the U.S. to lead the charge in the defense of human rights.

The Guardian reports: Two senators on the intelligence committee on Monday accused the National Security Agency of publicly presenting “inaccurate” information about the privacy protections on its surveillance on millions of internet communications.

However, in a demonstration of the intense secrecy surrounding NSA surveillance even after Edward Snowden’s revelations, the senators claimed they could not publicly identify the allegedly misleading section or sections of a factsheet without compromising classified information.

Senators Ron Wyden (Democrat, Oregon) and Mark Udall (Democrat, Colorado) wrote to General Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, to correct “inaccurate” portrayals about restrictions on surveillance published in a factsheet available on the NSA’s homepage. The factsheet, concerning NSA’s powers under Section 702 of the 2008 Fisa Amendments Act, was also supplied to members of Congress.

“We were disappointed to see that this factsheet contains an inaccurate statement about how the section 702 authority has been interpreted by the US government,” Wyden and Udall wrote to Alexander, in a letter dated 24 June and acquired by the Guardian. [Continue reading…]

What’s the easiest way of getting government officials to open up and provide you with a story? Just repeat whatever they say and call it “news.” Here’s an example from Associated Press and the word “said” in the headline is the subtle disclaimer — it signals to those who are paying attention that there may be no factual basis for the claims being made in the report.

“Al-Qaida said to be changing its ways after leaks”

U.S. intelligence agencies are scrambling to salvage their surveillance of al-Qaida and other terrorists who are working frantically to change how they communicate after a National Security Agency contractor leaked details of two NSA spying programs. It’s an electronic game of cat-and-mouse that could have deadly consequences if a plot is missed or a terrorist operative manages to drop out of sight.

Two U.S. intelligence officials say members of virtually every terrorist group, including core al-Qaida, are attempting to change how they communicate, based on what they are reading in the media, to hide from U.S. surveillance — the first time intelligence officials have described which groups are reacting to the leaks. The officials spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to speak about the intelligence matters publicly.

The officials wouldn’t go into details on how they know this, whether it’s terrorists switching email accounts or cellphone providers or adopting new encryption techniques, but a lawmaker briefed on the matter said al-Qaida’s Yemeni offshoot, al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, has been among the first to alter how it reaches out to its operatives.

While this report is completely unsubstantiated, the report itself can be seen as transparent evidence that the intelligence community and members of Congress are using the press to characterize Edward Snowden as a traitor who is aiding and abetting terrorism.

Sandra Coliver writes: Is Edward Snowden, the national security consultant turned leaker, a heroic whistleblower or a traitor? The question has fueled a storm of punditry this month, even as America’s other most famous deep throat source, Bradley Manning, is on trial for sending 700,000 classified documents to Wikileaks two years ago.

The Defence Department is throwing the book at Manning. The Justice Department is likely to do the same to Snowden. The rush to prosecute, or applaud, shows us one big thing: that Americans are deeply divided over the tension between the public’s right to know, and the government’s efforts to keep us safe from potential external, or internal, threats.

It might be worth pausing to take a look across the Atlantic to see how our allies handle similar questions. In the United Kingdom, the United States’ closest military and intelligence ally, the maximum penalty for public disclosure of intelligence or security information is two years. Since Britain’s Official Secrets Act (OSA) of 1989 entered into force, 10 public servants with authorized access to confidential information have been prosecuted under the act. [Continue reading…]

The Daily Beast reports: As the U.S. government presses Moscow to extradite former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, America’s most wanted leaker has a plan B. The former NSA systems administrator has already given encoded files containing an archive of the secrets he lifted from his old employer to several people. If anything happens to Snowden, the files will be unlocked.

Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who Snowden first contacted in February, told The Daily Beast on Tuesday that Snowden “has taken extreme precautions to make sure many different people around the world have these archives to insure the stories will inevitably be published.” Greenwald added that the people in possession of these files “cannot access them yet because they are highly encrypted and they do not have the passwords.” But, Greenwald said, “if anything happens at all to Edward Snowden, he told me he has arranged for them to get access to the full archives.”

The fact that Snowden has made digital copies of the documents he accessed while working at the NSA poses a new challenge to the U.S. intelligence community that has scrambled in recent days to recover them and assess the full damage of the breach. Even if U.S. authorities catch up with Snowden and the four classified laptops the Guardian reported he brought with him to Hong Kong the secrets Snowden hopes to expose will still likely be published. [Continue reading…]

As Vladamir Putin confirms that Edward Snowden is indeed in the transit lounge at Moscow airport, the most interesting detail in today’s news is the useful Russian saying in the headline above.

Putin lashed out at US accusations that the Kremlin was harbouring a fugitive. “Any accusations against Russia are nonsense and rubbish,” Putin said.

He also appeared to throw his support behind Snowden, as well as the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, currently holed up at Ecuador’s embassy in London.

“Assange and Snowden consider themselves human rights activists and say they are fighting for the spread of information,” he said. “Ask yourself this: should you hand these people over so they will be put in prison?

“In any case, I’d rather not deal with such questions, because anyway it’s like shearing a pig – lots of screams but little wool.”

Julia Ioffe writes: Okay, so Putin doesn’t want to shear a pig — great? Poor, relieved pig? And: what?

What it means is that it is useless, thankless work: pigs, after all, have no fleece. It is an old, if rather obscure Russian saying that comes from a series that can be best described as “the Devil is a moron” series. The original is: “The devil sheared a pig—lots of squealing, but little fleece.” (Also: “The devil struck flint against rock, and got a shower of goblins and mermaids.”)

The pig shearing comment, as it was presented to the American public, sounded like something Borat would say, and that is because most things sound ridiculous when translated literally—which is why, yes, I’m about to say it, Borat’s speech was so funny to our American ears. I frequently run into this issue myself when, offhand, I caution an American friend about someone’s “cockroaches” (psychological issues scurrying around the recesses of a normal-seeming brain), or describe someone as a “dick descended from the mountain” (a stranger or interloper), or describe someone as a “cunt with ears” (a ridiculous, useless human), or warn them that they’ll be “biting their elbows later.” (If you’ve ever tried it, you’ll know it’s pretty much impossible and it is a folksy Russian way of saying “you’ll regret it.” As in, you’ll be so twisted by the coulda, shoulda, you’ll be trying, futilely, to bite your elbows.)

They sound ridiculous, right? Well, sure, but only to a foreign ear. [Continue reading…]

Leonid Bershidsky writes: The debate over the U.S. government’s monitoring of digital communications suggests that Americans are willing to allow it as long as it is genuinely targeted at terrorists. What they fail to realize is that the surveillance systems are best suited for gathering information on law-abiding citizens.

People concerned with online privacy tend to calm down when told that the government can record their calls or read their e-mail only under special circumstances and with proper court orders. The assumption is that they have nothing to worry about unless they are terrorists or correspond with the wrong people.

The infrastructure set up by the National Security Agency, however, may only be good for gathering information on the stupidest, lowest-ranking of terrorists. The Prism surveillance program focuses on access to the servers of America’s largest Internet companies, which support such popular services as Skype, Gmail and iCloud. These are not the services that truly dangerous elements typically use.

In a January 2012 report titled “Jihadism on the Web: A Breeding Ground for Jihad in the Modern Age,” the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service drew a convincing picture of an Islamist Web underground centered around “core forums.” These websites are part of the Deep Web, or Undernet, the multitude of online resources not indexed by commonly used search engines. [Continue reading…]