Category Archives: News

Snowden says he took no secret files to Russia

The New York Times reports: Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, said in an extensive interview this month that he did not take any secret N.S.A. documents with him to Russia when he fled there in June, assuring that Russian intelligence officials could not get access to them.

Mr. Snowden said he gave all of the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong, before flying to Moscow, and did not keep any copies for himself. He did not take the files to Russia “because it wouldn’t serve the public interest,” he said.

“What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward?” he added.

He also asserted that he was able to protect the documents from China’s spies because he was familiar with that nation’s intelligence abilities, saying that as an N.S.A. contractor he had targeted Chinese operations and had taught a course on Chinese cybercounterintelligence.

“There’s a zero percent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents,” he said.

American intelligence officials have expressed grave concern that the files might have fallen into the hands of foreign intelligence services, but Mr. Snowden said he believed that the N.S.A. knew he had not cooperated with the Russians or the Chinese. He said he was publicly revealing that he no longer had any agency documents to explain why he was confident that Russia had not gained access to them. He had been reluctant to disclose that information previously, he said, for fear of exposing the journalists to greater scrutiny.

In a wide-ranging interview over several days in the last week, Mr. Snowden offered detailed responses to accusations that have been leveled against him by American officials and other critics, provided new insights into why he became disillusioned with the N.S.A. and decided to disclose the documents, and talked about the international debate over surveillance that resulted from the revelations. The interview took place through encrypted online communications. [Continue reading…]

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Why Pierre Omidyar decided to join forces with Glenn Greenwald for a new venture in news

Following news that Glenn Greenwald will be leaving the Guardian to help create a new news organization funded by Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay, Jay Rosen spoke to Omidyar to find out more:

In the spring of this year, Pierre Omidyar was one of the people approached by the Washington Post Company about buying the Post. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, wound up with the prize. But as a result of exploring that transaction, Omidyar started thinking seriously about investing in a news property. He began to ask himself what could be done with the same investment if he decided to build something from the ground up. #

As he was contemplating the Post purchase, he began to get more alarmed about the pressures coming down on journalists with the various leak investigations in Washington. PierreCB2Then the surveillance stories started appearing and the full scope of the threat to independent journalism became clear. His interest in launching a new kind of news organization — capable of sustaining investigative work and having an effect with it — intensified throughout the summer as news from the Snowden files continued to pour forth.

Attempts to meet with Greenwald to discuss these plans and to find out more about how he operates were unsuccessful until this month. When they finally were able to talk, Omidyar learned that Greenwald, his collaborator Laura Poitras, and The Nation magazine’s Jeremy Scahill had been planning to form their own journalism venture. Their ideas and Omidyar’s ideas tracked so well with each other that on October 5 they decided to “join forces” (his term.) This is the news that leaked yesterday. But there is more.

Omidyar believes that if independent, ferocious, investigative journalism isn’t brought to the attention of general audiences it can never have the effect that actually creates a check on power. Therefore the new entity — they have a name but they’re not releasing it, so I will just call it NewCo — will have to serve the interest of all kinds of news consumers. It cannot be a niche product. It will have to cover sports, business, entertainment, technology: everything that users demand.

At the core of Newco will be a different plan for how to build a large news organization. It resembles what I called in an earlier post “the personal franchise model” in news. You start with individual journalists who have their own reputations, deep subject matter expertise, clear points of view, an independent and outsider spirit, a dedicated online following, and their own way of working. The idea is to attract these people to NewCo, or find young journalists capable of working in this way, and then support them well. [Continue reading…]

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New global index exposes ‘modern slavery’ worldwide

BBC News reports: Nearly 30 million people around the world are living as slaves, according to a new index ranking 162 countries.

The Global Slavery Index 2013 says India has the highest number of people living in conditions of slavery at 14 million.

But Mauritania has the highest proportional figure with about 4% of its population enslaved.

The report’s authors hope it will help governments tackle what they call a “hidden crime”.

The index was compiled by Australian-based rights organisation Walk Free Foundation using a definition of modern slavery that includes debt bondage, forced marriage and human trafficking. [Continue reading…]

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Al Qaeda’s rise in northern Syria leaves Turkey with dilemma

Reuters reports: The rise of al Qaeda in parts of Syria’s north has left Turkey facing a new security threat on its already vulnerable border and raised questions about its wholesale support for rebels battling President Bashar al-Assad.

Turkey has long championed more robust backing for Syria’s fractious armed opposition, arguing it would bring a quicker end to Assad’s rule and give moderate forces the authority they needed to keep more radical Islamist elements in check.

But with Islamist groups such as Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) taking territory in parts of the north near the border in recent weeks, it is a strategy that increasingly looks to have been a miscalculation.

Ankara has found itself facing accusations that indiscriminate support for the rebels has allowed weapons and foreign fighters to cross into northern Syria and facilitated the rise of radical groups.

“We are being accused of supporting al Qaeda,” a source close to the Turkish government said, adding that U.S. officials had raised concerns on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly meetings in New York last month.

“They were politely but aggressively critical. The attention has focused away from Assad to al Qaeda,” the source said, echoing frustration voiced by other officials in Ankara that this was playing into Assad’s hands.

As if on cue, the Turkish army said on Wednesday it had fired on ISIL fighters over the border after a stray mortar shell hit Turkish soil. It has retaliated in the past in such cases but this appeared to be the first time its response had targeted al Qaeda-linked fighters. [Continue reading…]

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Dozens of Syrian fighting groups break ties with main opposition, says rebel commander

The Associated Press reports: Several dozen rebel groups in southern Syria have broken with the main political opposition group in exile, a local commander said in a video posted Wednesday, dealing a potential new setback to Western efforts to unify moderates battling President Bashar Assad’s regime.

The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition, the political arm of the Free Syrian Army rebel group, has long struggled to win respect and recognition from the fighters. It is widely seen as cut off from events on the ground and ineffective in funneling aid and weapons to the rebels.

In the video, a rebel in military fatigues read a statement with about two dozen fighters standing behind him, some holding a banner with FSA emblems.

FSA spokesman Louay Mikdad told The Associated Press that the video is authentic and identified the man speaking as a captain in one of the rebel groups, Anwar al-Sunna, which posted the video.

The rebel in the video said political opposition leaders have failed to represent those trying to bring down Assad.

“We announce that we withdraw our recognition from any political group that claims to represents us, first among them the Coalition and its leadership which have relinquished the principles of the homeland and the revolution,” he said.

He named 66 groups that he said support his statement. The man suggested rebel groups would reorganize, saying that “we are unifying the forces of the revolution militarily and politically,” but did not explain further. [Continue reading…]

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British MPs set to investigate Guardian’s involvement in Snowden leaks

The Guardian reports: A powerful group of MPs will investigate the Guardian’s publication of stories about mass surveillance based on leaks by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, as part of a wider inquiry into counter-terrorism.

Keith Vaz, the Labour head of the Commons home affairs committee, said he would look into “elements of the Guardian’s involvement in, and publication of, the Snowden leaks” hours after the prime minister suggested a select committee might look at the issue.

It had emerged the matter would be considered by Vaz’s parliamentary committee after former Tory cabinet minister Liam Fox asked him to investigate what damage the Guardian may have caused to national security.

“I have received a letter from Liam Fox requesting that the home affairs select committee consider elements of the Guardian’s involvement in, and publication of, the Snowden leaks,” Vaz said.

“I will be writing to assure Dr Fox that the committee is currently conducting an inquiry into counter-terrorism and we will be looking at this matter as part of it.”

A spokesman for Vaz could not confirm whether Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor-in-chief, would be called to give evidence, saying this would be a matter for all committee members to decide. [Continue reading…]

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Court rejects appeal bid by Risen in leak case

The New York Times reports: A federal appeals court on Tuesday declined to hear an appeal by James Risen, an author and a reporter for The New York Times, who was ordered in July to testify in the trial of a former Central Intelligence Agency official accused of leaking information to him.

The decision, by the full United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, is expected to set up an appeal by Mr. Risen to the Supreme Court in what has become a major case over the scope and limitations of First Amendment press freedoms.

“We are disappointed by the Fourth Circuit’s ruling,” said Joel Kurtzberg, a lawyer for Mr. Risen. “My client remains as resolved as ever to continue fighting.”

In July, a three-judge panel of the appeals court ruled in a 2-to-1 decision to order Mr. Risen to testify in the trial of the C.I.A. officer, Jeffrey Sterling. It is rare for a full appeals court to grant petitions to rehear cases that have already been decided by a panel. Still, the vote count was notably lopsided: 13 voted to reject the petition, while only Judge Roger L. Gregory, who had cast the dissenting vote in July, wanted to grant it. [Continue reading…]

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Qaeda suspect’s shipboard fast brings halt to U.S. interrogation

Reuters reports: An elite U.S. interrogation team abandoned its questioning of an al-Qaeda militant who was snatched in Libya after he stopped eating and drinking regularly on board a U.S. Navy ship where he was being held, a U.S. official familiar with the matter said.

As his health deteriorated, U.S. authorities decided to fly the suspect known as Abu Anas al-Liby to New York last weekend, where he was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Al-Liby, whose real name is Nazih al-Ragye, was expected to be arraigned in Federal Court in Manhattan on Tuesday on long-standing charges related to the bombings of U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.

Upon arrival in the United States, al-Liby became subject to the rules of the civilian American court system. That means he can no longer be interrogated without being advised of his constitutional right to avoid incriminating himself, the official said. [Continue reading…]

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Snowden leaks: David Cameron urges committee to investigate Guardian

The Guardian reports: David Cameron has encouraged a Commons select committee to investigate whether the Guardian has broken the law or damaged national security by publishing secrets leaked by the National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

He made his proposal in response to a question from former defence secretary Liam Fox, saying the Guardian had been guilty of double standards for exposing the scandal of phone hacking by newspapers and yet had gone on to publish secrets from the NSA taken by Snowden.

Speaking at prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, Cameron said: “The plain fact is that what has happened has damaged national security and in many ways the Guardian themselves admitted that when they agreed, when asked politely by my national security adviser and cabinet secretary to destroy the files they had, they went ahead and destroyed those files.

“So they know that what they’re dealing with is dangerous for national security. I think it’s up to select committees in this house if they want to examine this issue and make further recommendations.” [Continue reading…]

The Guardian knew that they were dealing with goons acting on the orders of Cameron’s intelligence chiefs who wouldn’t take no for an answer. They also knew that destroying the hard drives in question had no security significance whatsoever, given that copies of the files on those drives were all safe outside the UK.

On July 18th, [editor, Alan] Rusbridger received a call from Oliver Robbins, the U.K.’s deputy national-security adviser, alerting him that agents would be coming to the Guardian’s offices to seize the hard drives containing the Snowden files. Rusbridger again explained that the files were also on encrypted computers outside England, but his reasoning did not sway Robbins. Rusbridger asked if, instead, his staff members could destroy the files themselves, and Robbins consented. That Saturday, Rusbridger told associates to take the five laptops from the bunker to the basement and to smash the hard drives and circuit boards in front of two agents from the GCHQ.

If Cameron wants to draw any lesson from the incident, it should be that the editor of The Guardian is smarter than his own deputy national security adviser. By agreeing to let the drives get destroyed, the British government threw away its best opportunity to discover which files Snowden had taken — something that neither the NSA nor GCHQ has ever been able to establish.

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Greenwald exits Guardian for new Omidyar media venture

Reuters reports: Glenn Greenwald, who has made headlines around the world with his reporting on U.S. electronic surveillance programs, is leaving the Guardian newspaper to join a new media venture funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, according to people familiar with the matter.

Greenwald, who is based in Brazil and was among the first to report information provided by one-time U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday that he was presented with a “once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity” that he could not pass up.

He did not reveal any specifics of the new media venture but said details would be announced soon. Greenwald did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Two sources familiar with the new venture said the financial backer was Omidyar. It was not immediately clear if he was the only backer or if there were other partners.

Omidyar could not immediately be reached for comment.

Omidyar, who is chairman of the board at eBay Inc but is not involved in day-to-day operations at the company, has numerous philanthropic, business and political interests, mainly through an investment entity called the Omidyar Network.

Forbes pegged the 46-year-old Omidyar’s net worth at $8.5 billion.

Among his ventures is Honolulu Civil Beat, a news website covering public affairs in Hawaii. Civil Beat aimed to create a new online journalism model with paid subscriptions and respectful comment threads, though it is unclear how successful it has been.

Omidyar, a French-born Iranian-American, also founded the Democracy Fund to support “social entrepreneurs working to ensure that our political system is responsive to the public,” according to its website.

Omidyar’s active Twitter account suggests he is very concerned about the government spying programs exposed by Greenwald and Snowden.

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Eat cats and dogs, imam tells starving Syrians

The Telegraph reports: An imam in a rebel-held district of Damascus has issued a fatwa allowing residents to eat cats and dogs, in a desperate bid to ward off starvation after months under siege by the Assad regime.

Salah al-Khatib, the cleric who issued the edict, said he had been left with no choice but to lift the usual restrictions under Islamic law, after government forces and pro-regime militias choked off food and medical supplies to three rebel-held suburbs of Damascus and to a camp housing Palestinian refugees.

This is “not because it is religiously permitted, but because it is a reflection of the reality we are suffering”, Mr Khatib told AFP on Tuesday.

Tens of thousands of civilians remain trapped in these areas, some of them living under siege for more than a year. Residents have told The Telegraph that as food has run out, they have been forced in recent weeks to survive on stray dogs, rotting animal carcasses, tree leaves and weeds.

“I have watched the poorer families eat stray dogs because they have nothing else,” said Ehab, a resident of the Yarmouk camp, speaking to The Telegraph via Skype. “There is no food here now.” [Continue reading…]

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Crush of Syrian refugees overwhelming efforts to help, aid groups say

McClatchy reports: Only weeks ahead of what forecasters say could be a brutal winter, humanitarian aid agencies working on the Syrian conflict are sounding the alarm that little is being done to provide assistance to a refugee population that’s expected to reach 3 million by the end of the year.

The United Nations has collected only half of the $5 billion it needs to provide assistance, and humanitarian aid groups say they’re resigned that they’ll be able to provide help to only a portion of the 2 million refugees outside Syria and the millions more who’ve fled their home but remain in Syria.

“The reality is, a huge amount of aid is needed and as long as countries are sending guns and ammunition rather than food or blankets, the crisis is only going to worsen,” said Noah Gottschalk, senior humanitarian policy adviser for Oxfam America, an international aid group that focuses on poverty and hunger.

“It’s not too late, but it’s getting closer and closer. The clock is ticking,” Gottschalk added, referring to the narrow window of opportunity to mobilize winter aid before communities begin to suffer and roads to some areas become impassable. [Continue reading…]

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Iran presents ‘timetable’ to end nuclear talks deadlock

The Guardian reports: The Iranian delegation to international talks in Geneva has presented proposals which it claims will end the longstanding deadlock over its nuclear programme.

Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, gave an hour-long PowerPoint presentation of the proposals, entitled “Closing an unnecessary crisis: Opening new horizons”, to senior diplomats from the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China at the Palace of Nations in Geneva on Tuesday.

The presentation was not made public, but it is believed to lay out a timetable for a confidence-building deal that would place limits on Iran’s nuclear programme in return for relief from sanctions and international recognition of the country’s right to enrich uranium.

The presentation marked the opening gambit in the first round of negotiations between the new Iranian government of President Hassan Rouhani and the six-nation negotiating group chaired by the EU foreign policy chief, Lady Ashton. All sides have described the talks as the most constructive for years.

Unlike previous negotiations, the two days of talks are being carried out in English, as Zarif and his deputy, Abbas Araqchi, are fluent, so they moved at at least twice the speed, without the need for interpreters.

Speaking to reporters after the presentation, Araqchi said: “We believe our proposal has the capacity to make a breakthrough.”

He said the Iranian plan set out a timeline of six months to get to a deal and that Iran hoped the next step, a new round of talks on the details of a deal, would take place within a month. [Continue reading…]

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Assad expresses respect for the West and contempt for Arabs and Hamas

The Lebanese Al-Akhbar English interviewed Bashar al-Assad:

Assad is bitter. “Not one Arab official has contacted us with a plan for mediation or for an Arab solution,” he says. The Arabs, he says, were always only an echo of their Western “masters,” if not worse.

The Syrian president adds that the West, despite all its flaws, “Always dealt with us more honorably than some Arabs.” Kofi Annan was honest and resigned, he remarks, while his Arab aides were not.

The conversation moves to Hamas when the president is asked about the reports regarding Meshaal’s visit to Tehran, and whether Damascus, specifically the presidential palace, would be his next stop. But Assad is keen on clarifying everything in this regard, ending all equivocation.

First, Assad says that the Muslim Brotherhood, for 80 years, has been known for its opportunism and betrayal, but stresses that Damascus did not treat Hamas in the beginning as being part of the international Islamist organization. “The Europeans would come to us and ask what Hamas was doing here, and we would say that it was a resistance movement,” the Syrian president says, adding that only that capacity made Syria welcome and sponsor Hamas.

Assad says, “When the crisis began, [Hamas officials] claimed that they gave us advice. This is a lie. Who are they to give Syria advice? Then they said that we asked for their help, which is also not true. What business do they have in internal Syrian affairs?”

Later, the president of the World Federation of Muslim Scholars, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, made his insulting statements about Syria. Assad says, “Yes, we demanded that they take a stance. A while later, they came and said that they spoke with Qaradawi. We said that those who want to take a political stance should do so publicly. What value does a stance have if taken in closed rooms?”

Estrangement between Hamas and the Syrian regime ensued. Assad holds that Hamas ultimately decided to abandon resistance and to fully merge with the Muslim Brotherhood. He adds, “This was not the first time they had betrayed us. It happened before in 2007 and 2009. Their history is one of treachery and betrayal.” Assad then wished “someone would persuade them to return to being a resistance movement,” but says that he doubts this will happen. “Hamas has sided against Syria from day one. They have made their choice,” he adds.

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Egypt’s military ruler: ‘Islam is now synonymous to killing, blood and destruction’

Al-Masry Al-Youm interviewed General Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi:

I remember asking you after Morsy won the presidency if he was going to be able to break free of the Brotherhood’s control over him and become a president for all Egyptians. You said it was not about whether he was able to do that, but rather about whether he was willing to do that in the first place.

So you predicted that he was not going to let the interests of the country take priority over the interests of the Brotherhood. How did you arrive at that conviction?

Let me be frank with you. I did not want my expectations to come true. I wanted to see a new rule that would protect the country from surrounding threats, provide an atmosphere of security and stability and achieve development that satisfies the ambitions of the people. My conviction that the president was not going to let the interests of the country take priority over the interests of the group was based on an in-depth study of several factors, including the general features of the president’s personality and his relationship with the group [the Muslim Brotherhood] and its genuine goals.

The problem here– and I do not mean to offend anybody– emanates from the intellectual and ideological structure of the Brotherhood. This does not belittle them but it affects their efforts in managing a state. There is a big difference between the intellectual and ideological system of any group and that of a state. Both have to be in harmony. Problems occur when they clash. In order for the two to be harmonious, one of the two has to rise to the level of the other–so either the state rises to the level of the group, which is impossible, or the group rises to the level of the state by giving up its ideological, religious system, which I think is something they will not be able to do because it goes against the intellectual structure of their group. The discrepancy between the two systems will continue to generate differences and, sensing it, the people will take to the streets in protest.

Just like a group has an intellectual and ideological system, individuals also do. However, the intellectual system an individual has may be harmonious with that of the state because an individual may choose to rise to the level of the state. This is more difficult in the case of a group because a group has one ideology and it believes that giving up one individual is akin to giving up its ideology.

The answer to the question on whether the former president wanted to be a president for all Egyptians or not was not based on an opinion but a good reading of the situation because I knew what the reality of the situation was. When the Brotherhood reached power, the question was not whether Morsy was going to be a president for all Egyptians, but rather if he wanted to be a president for all Egyptians. I am not saying this to criticize anyone. In fact, this problem will face any current [leader] that is not aware of this issue. Islam for an individual is different from Islam for a group or for a state. There are things that an individual might accept while keeping his beliefs, but in the case of groups, we have a number of people who share some thoughts, which they are free to believe in. However, a group cannot force the people to have the same thoughts. This is particularly the problem with Islam for a group. Islam for a state, meanwhile, is more flexible and wider in scope, with room for diligence.

Can anybody question the Islamists’ keenness on Islam? No, but the problem is they cannot distinguish between the practices of an individual of them as a human being, his practices as a member of a group, and his practices as part of a state. It is the lack of harmony between the systems governing the individual, the group and the state that has led to the current situation. They have made people see Islam as destruction. I want to tell you that those so-called Islamists have done harm to the image of Islam. Those who seem to be keen on religion have harmed Islam like never before. Islam is now synonymous to killing, blood and destruction. We have to assess the situation in an objective way and see how the world and other countries see Islam. The problem is definitely with implementation, not with the approach. It is implementation that has done harm to Islam.

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Who was James Henry Lunn? — Updated

Update: A reader in Malaysia claims to have known James Lunn and provides what sounds to me like a very credible explanation about who he was and how he ended up in Egypt — a tragic story:

Jim Lund was a retired truck driver from San Diego, living in Malaysia. Some years ago Jim was in a bad car wreck and suffered organic brain damage. For years he has pretended that he is an ‘undercover’ US Army general and had written his name in his passport as ‘Gen. James Lunn’. For some years he has had delusions that he would save the world. Two years ago Jim ‘invented’ a hundred-mile-long seagoing device that could transport water to dry climates. In August he left for Egypt with a small model of the device to ‘give to the Palestinians’. That was the ‘unknown electronic device’ he was carrying. A harmless nut but one who loved to be thought of as a secret agent.

A further note: The James Lunn dead in Egypt is definitely the James Lunn living in Malaysia. I read the quote from his web blog that you published and noted the reference to the arc of the covenant. That was one of his obsessions. If you read further you might find references to an asteroid that will hit the earth in 20 years. That was another of his obsessions. Egyptian Jim is Malaysian Jim is San Diego Jim the head-injured truck driver.

The Guardian reports: A US citizen has been found dead in a provincial Egyptian jail, six weeks after being arrested in Egypt’s restive north Sinai peninsula, Egyptian officials have confirmed.

James Henry Lunn, 66, is the second foreigner to die in police custody since the July overthrow of Mohamed Morsi, and one of several to have fallen foul of Egypt’s brutal and labyrinthine judicial system this summer.

Lunn was first detained on 29 August in Sheikh Zuweid, North Sinai, an area in which the Egyptian army is currently waging a controversial counter-insurgency against Islamist extremists.

Lunn aroused suspicion because he had allegedly broken curfew, and because he was carrying “a map of Egypt and a very hi-tech electronic device”, said Badr Abdellatty, a spokesman for Egypt’s foreign ministry.

Following his arrest, Lunn was taken to a jail in Ismailia, a city on the Egyptian mainland, where he had been detained without trial ever since. Thousands of Egyptians also remain detained without charge following this summer’s mass arrests of Morsi supporters.

Egyptian prosecutors said Henry was found dead in a prison bathroom on Sunday morning, and appeared to have taken his own life.

Lunn’s death will naturally provoke all kinds of speculation. Was he a spy? Was he simply a victim of the xenophobia now rampant across Egypt? Did he kill himself or was he murdered?

The only clues that might suggest possible answers to any of these questions can be found at Amazon where Lunn published three e-books. Descriptions of those books make it sound like whatever mission Lunn was on had nothing to do with any government and perhaps nothing to do with this world.

His description of Blogging with Muhammad says:

The following anthology is composed of a variety of blog comments and stories which were posted over a two year period (2008-2010) under my Islamic name Muhammad on the My Space page entitled Flying Puppet. The general thrust of these threads was to provide for myself a platform where I could give voice to the most glorious news that I have had the good fortune to receive…this being that the Ark of the Covenant of Moses existed still and was well and truly enshrined within the Kaaba in Mecca.

Along with this revelation came a sense of purpose and euphoria which would be most commonly identified as a messianic delusion. I must admit that even though this news came to me through diplomatic channels from the office of the Prime Minister of Malaysia in the scope of my duties as an intelligence officer of the United States Army, I was not really prepared to receive it and the emotional response that it provoked lays, still today, just under the surface of my demeanor. Indeed, I tremble at the magnitude of this disclosure. Who am I to manhandle the cross of Jesus Christ, for heaven’s sake?

In the intervening years I have tried to pass the burden of this knowledge off to others better placed to reveal it…those more educated and better trained and with greater credibility than me, to no avail.

I am left, after many attempts and with the most profound apologies for my many shortcomings, with the following mismatched jumble of attempts to keep a grasp on reality with one hand as the other reached for the stars:

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NSA collects millions of e-mail address books globally

The Washington Post reports: The National Security Agency is harvesting hundreds of millions of contact lists from personal e-mail and instant messaging accounts around the world, many of them belonging to Americans, according to senior intelligence officials and top-secret documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

The collection program, which has not been disclosed before, intercepts e-mail address books and “buddy lists” from instant messaging services as they move across global data links. Online services often transmit those contacts when a user logs on, composes a message, or synchronizes a computer or mobile device with information stored on remote servers.

Rather than targeting individual users, the NSA is gathering contact lists in large numbers that amount to a sizable fraction of the world’s e-mail and instant messaging accounts. Analysis of that data enables the agency to search for hidden connections and to map relationships within a much smaller universe of foreign intelligence targets.

During a single day last year, the NSA’s Special Source Operations branch collected 444,743 e-mail address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook, 33,697 from Gmail and 22,881 from unspecified other providers, according to an internal NSA PowerPoint presentation. Those figures, described as a typical daily intake in the document, correspond to a rate of more than 250 million a year. [Continue reading…]

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