Where did our ‘inalienable rights’ go?

Max Frankel writes: I envy the commentators who, after a few days of vague discussion, think they have heard enough to strike the balance between liberty and security. Many seem confident that the government is doing nothing more than relieving Verizon and AT&T and Facebook of their storage problems, so that government agents can, on occasion, sift through years of phone and Internet records if they need to find a contact with a suspicious foreigner. Many Americans accept assurances that specific conversations are only rarely exhumed and only if the oddly named Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court allows it. Such sifting and warrants — in unexplained combination with more conventional intelligence efforts — are now said, by President Obama and his team, to have prevented several dozen potential terrorist attacks, with elliptical references to threats against New York City’s subways and stock exchange.

Even if true and satisfying, these assurances are now being publicized only because this huge data-gathering effort can no longer be denied. Whatever the motive for the leaks by Edward J. Snowden, they have stimulated a long-overdue public airing. Although the government’s extensive data-hauling activity was partly revealed by diligent reporters and a few disapproving government sources over the last seven years, the undeniable proof came only from Mr. Snowden’s documents. Until then, the very existence of the enterprise was “top secret” and publicly denied, even in Congressional hearings. Even now, the project remains a secret in every important respect.

As those of us who had to defend the 1971 publication of the secret Pentagon Papers about the Vietnam War have been arguing ever since, there can be no mature discussion of national security policies without the disclosure — authorized or not — of the government’s hoard of secrets.

How many thousands have access to these storage bins? Who decides to open any individual file and who then gains access to its content? Is there ever a chance to challenge the necessity of opening a file? And what happens to gleaned information that has no bearing whatsoever on terrorism?

Given the history of misused “secrets” in Washington, such questions are by no means paranoid. J. Edgar Hoover used F.B.I. investigations and files to smear the reputations of individuals — even to the point of intimidating presidents. Throughout the government, “security” monitors leaked personnel files to Congressional demagogues like Senator Joseph R. McCarthy to wreck the careers of officials and blacklisted citizens with claims of disloyalty. President Lyndon B. Johnson and other officials used secret files from the Internal Revenue Service to harass and intimidate political opponents. President Richard M. Nixon tried to use the C.I.A. to cover up his Watergate crimes.

Information that is gathered and managed in secret is a potent weapon — and the temptation to use it in political combat or the pursuit of crimes far removed from terrorism can be irresistible.

Facebooktwittermail

Amnesty: U.S. must not hunt down Snowden

Amnesty International: The US authorities must not prosecute anyone for disclosing information about the government’s human rights violations, Amnesty International said after Edward Snowden was charged under the Espionage Act.

The organization also believes that the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower could be at risk of ill-treatment if extradited to the USA.

“No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations by the US government. Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression,” said Widney Brown, Senior Director of International Law and Policy at Amnesty International.

“It appears he is being charged by the US government primarily for revealing its and other governments’ unlawful actions that violate human rights.”

Facebooktwittermail

Hong Kong apparently welcomed Snowden’s departure

The New York Times reports: For Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has acknowledged leaking numerous documents about American surveillance operations around the world, the path to a sudden departure from Hong Kong late Sunday began over a dinner days before of a large pizza, fried chicken and sausages, washed down with Pepsi.

Albert Ho, one of Mr. Snowden’s lawyers, said that before the Tuesday night dinner began, Mr. Snowden insisted that everyone hide their cellphones in the refrigerator of the home where he was staying, to block any eavesdropping. Then began a two-hour conversation during which Mr. Snowden was deeply dismayed to learn that he could spend years in prison without access to a computer during litigation over whether he would be granted asylum here or surrendered to the United States, Mr. Ho said.

Staying cooped up in the cramped Hong Kong home of a local supporter was less bothersome to Mr. Snowden than the prospect of losing his computer.

“He didn’t go out, he spent all his time inside a tiny space, but he said it was O.K. because he had his computer,” Mr. Ho said. “If you were to deprive him of his computer, that would be totally intolerable.”

The outcome of that meeting, Mr. Ho said, was a decision by Mr. Snowden to have Mr. Ho pose two questions to the Hong Kong government: would he be released on bail if he were detained in Hong Kong at the request of the United States, and would the Hong Kong government interfere if Mr. Snowden tried to go to the airport and leave Hong Kong instead.

A person with detailed knowledge of the Hong Kong government’s deliberations said that the government had been delighted to receive the questions. Leung Chun-ying, the chief executive, and his top advisers had been struggling through numerous meetings for days, canceling or postponing most other meetings, while trying to decide what to do in response to an American request for Mr. Snowden’s detention, even as public opinion in Hong Kong seemed to favor protecting the fugitive.

Facebooktwittermail

Snowden took job to gather evidence of surveillance

USA Today reports: NSA leaker Edward Snowden says he took his job with the National Security Agency for the sole purpose of obtaining evidence on Washington’s cyberspying networks, the South China Morning Post reported Monday.

Snowden, who was in Hong Kong before fleeing to Moscow this weekend, told the newspaper that he sought a position as an analyst with the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the NSA’s secret surveillance program ahead of planned leaks to the media.

“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post in a June 12 interview that was published Monday. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

In his interview with the Post, Snowden divulged information that he claimed showed hacking by the NSA into computers in Hong Kong and mainland China.

“I did not release them earlier because I don’t want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content,” he said. “I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists.”

Asked by the Post if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton as a computer systems administrator to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: “Correct on Booz.”

His intention was to collect information about the NSA hacking into “the whole world” and “not specifically Hong Kong and China,” he said.

Facebooktwittermail

How Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian have offended the Washington media establishment

David Sirota writes: Two weeks into the hullaballoo surrounding whistleblower Edward Snowden and Guardian reporter Glenn Greenwald, one thing is clear: they did not just reveal potentially serious crimes perpetrated by the government — including possible perjury, unlawful spying and unconstitutional surveillance. They also laid bare in historic fashion the powerful double standards that now define most U.S. media coverage of the American government — the kind that portray those who challenge power as criminals, and those who worship it as heroes deserving legal immunity. Indeed, after “Meet the Press” host David Gregory’s instantly notorious performance yesterday, it is clear Snowden’s revelations so brazenly exposed these double standards that it will be difficult for the Washington press corps to ever successfully hide them again.

The best way to illustrate these double standards are through 10 simple questions.

1. During that “Meet the Press” discussion yesterday of Greenwald publishing stories about Snowden’s disclosures, Gregory asked Greenwald, “Why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” Beyond the odiousness of a supposed journalist like Gregory seeming to endorse criminal charges against journalists for the alleged crime of committing journalism, there’s an even more poignant question suggested by Mother Jones’ David Corn: Why hasn’t David Gregory asked reporters at the Washington Post, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News the same question, considering their publication of similar leaks? Is it because Greenwald is seen as representing a form of journalism too adversarial toward the government, while those establishment outlets are still held in Good Standing by Washington?

2. Trevor Trimm of the Freedom of the Press Foundation asks a question that probably won’t be asked of Gregory: Should Gregory himself be prosecuted? After all, as Trimm notes, “when interviewing Greenwald, he repeated what government officials told him about classified FISA opinions.” So will anyone of Gregory’s stature in Washington go on national television and ask if Gregory should now be charged with a crime?

3. Later during “Meet the Press’” discussion of Greenwald’s reporting, NBC’s Chuck Todd demanded to know “How much was (Greenwald) involved in the plot?…What was his role — did he have a role beyond simply being a receiver of this information? And is he going to have to answer those questions?” Why did Todd not ask that same question of reporters at Washington Post, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News? Again, is it because Greenwald is seen as representing a form of journalism too adversarial toward the government, while those establishment outlets are still held in Good Standing by Washington?

It has to be a source of embarrassment — even humiliation — that the biggest story in Washington in years, gets broken by a foreign newspaper. All those journalists — from Bob Woodward downwards — who for decades have built their careers around their possession of privileged access to the government’s most senior officials, have spent much of the last three weeks recycling information that first appeared in The Guardian. They are bound to feel as though their power has been usurped. Even worse, it’s been usurped by a pesky blogger who doesn’t even live in DC.

Facebooktwittermail

What do global protests signify?

Christopher Dickey writes: Not long before he went to the altar of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris last month and put a pistol to his head and killed himself, the French historian Dominique Venner was contemplating the contagion of revolt that occasionally sweeps around the globe like a pandemic. “How are revolutions born?” he asked.

Despite Venner’s radical right-wing background the principles he listed in a blog post were not so much ideological as sociological. And as we look at the tumult in the streets from Brazil to Turkey; the ferocious politics of post-uprising Egypt and the sucking wound of the Syrian civil war, I’m struck by a maxim in Venner’s essay that’s so floridly French, it’s hard to utter, unless you’re sitting at Café de Flore in Paris with a cup of espresso and a Gauloises. “The effervescence,” Venner wrote, “is not the revolution.”

Effervescence may mean fizz as in English but in French it also means excitement or turmoil, and effervescence often wells up when a regime — often caught completely by surprise — suddenly has to face several different conflicts. The fizz is the screw-the-system, we’re-all-in-this-together, down-with-whoever, up-with-whatever part of the process that takes place when the government starts to lose its grip on power, and disorder becomes endemic.

You see that in Brazil right now, where a million people turned out to protest on Thursday. There was violence, sure, and one person died, but there was samba, too, and the kind of adrenaline rush that comes from massive collective excitement. A lot of people find the effervescence fun in its early stages. But as Chairman Mao famously said, a revolution is not a dinner party. Effervescence doesn’t become a revolution until it’s organized and lead by a party or a person, and then things start to get really serious, and can get really ugly. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

In WikiLeaks probe, feds used a secret search warrant to get volunteer’s Gmail

Wired: The Justice Department used a secret search warrant to obtain the entire contents of a Gmail account used by a former WikiLeaks volunteer in Iceland, according to court records released to the volunteer this week.

The search warrant was issued under seal on October 14, 2011 by the Alexandria, Virginia federal judge overseeing the WikiLeaks grand jury investigation there. The warrant ordered Google to turn over “the contents of all e-mails associated with the account, including stored or preserved copies of e-mails sent to and from the account, draft e-mails, deleted e-mails […] the source and destination addresses associated with each e-mail, the date and time at which each e-mail was sent, and the size and length of each e-mail.” The warrant also ordered Google not to disclose the search to anyone.

The target of the search was Herbert Snorrason, an Icelandic activist who helped manage WikiLeaks’ secure chat room in 2010. Snorrason was one of the WikiLeaks volunteers who resigned from the organization en masse in September 2010. But that evidently didn’t stop the government from grabbing Snorrason’s email a full year later.

The search is the first confirmed case of the government obtaining the contents of a WikiLeaks-connected e-mail account. The government won a public court battle in January 2012 to obtain non-content metadata from the Twitter accounts of three WikiLeaks associates: Seattle coder and activist Jacob Appelbaum; Birgitta Jonsdottir, a member of Iceland’s parliament; and Dutch businessman Rop Gonggrijp. The feds also got metadata on Appelbaum from Google and the ISP Sonic.net.

Facebooktwittermail

How Obama is becoming an insider threat to democracy

It seems like we’re getting snowed in by Snowden — if you’ll forgive the pun.

On Thursday, McClatchy published an investigative report, “Obama’s crackdown views leaks as aiding enemies of U.S..”

By now, the term, “Insider Threat Program,” should be getting just as much attention in the mainstream media and the blogosphere as anything to do with Edward Snowden, and yet the story has largely been ignored.

While the NSA story is in large part a story about the potential dangers that can stem from mass surveillance, the Insider Threat Program describes the ways in which the day-to-day operations of government are changing now through a neo-McCarthyist attack on whistle-blowing.

The fact that this program is being instituted across all government agencies and not just those handling national security issues, reflects the degree to which we now live in a security state — one in which democratic processes have been made subservient to security and security has become the lens through which virtually everything gets viewed.

Changes that are most insidious and most difficult to reverse are those which shape culture. They don’t have to be encoded in laws and regulations.

While Obama came into office promising to change the culture of secrecy in Washington, his actions have had the opposite effect and the Insider Threat Program is another phase in a process through which government becomes more paranoiac, less innovative, more subject to group-think, and less representative of the interests of the people.

The most dangerous forms of change are often the least dramatic. They are incremental. What might become an intolerable trend, develops from small steps each of which might seem benign or reasonable at the time it occurs.

Obama in November approved “minimum standards” giving departments and agencies considerable leeway in developing their insider threat programs, leading to a potential hodgepodge of interpretations. He instructed them to not only root out leakers but people who might be prone to “violent acts against the government or the nation” and “potential espionage.”

The Pentagon established its own sweeping definition of an insider threat as an employee with a clearance who “wittingly or unwittingly” harms “national security interests” through “unauthorized disclosure, data modification, espionage, terrorism, or kinetic actions resulting in loss or degradation of resources or capabilities.”

“An argument can be made that the rape of military personnel represents an insider threat. Nobody has a model of what this insider threat stuff is supposed to look like,” said the senior Pentagon official, explaining that inside the Defense Department “there are a lot of chiefs with their own agendas but no leadership.”

The Department of Education, meanwhile, informs employees that co-workers going through “certain life experiences . . . might turn a trusted user into an insider threat.” Those experiences, the department says in a computer training manual, include “stress, divorce, financial problems” or “frustrations with co-workers or the organization.”

An online tutorial titled “Treason 101” teaches Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration employees to recognize the psychological profile of spies.

A Defense Security Service online pamphlet lists a wide range of “reportable” suspicious behaviors, including working outside of normal duty hours. While conceding that not every behavior “represents a spy in our midst,” the pamphlet adds that “every situation needs to be examined to determine whether our nation’s secrets are at risk.”

The Defense Department, traditionally a leading source of media leaks, is still setting up its program, but it has taken numerous steps. They include creating a unit that reviews news reports every day for leaks of classified defense information and implementing new training courses to teach employees how to recognize security risks, including “high-risk” and “disruptive” behaviors among co-workers, according to Defense Department documents reviewed by McClatchy.

“It’s about people’s profiles, their approach to work, how they interact with management. Are they cheery? Are they looking at Salon.com or The Onion during their lunch break? This is about ‘The Stepford Wives,’” said a second senior Pentagon official, referring to online publications and a 1975 movie about robotically docile housewives. The official said he wanted to remain anonymous to avoid being punished for criticizing the program.

Facebooktwittermail

The NSA’s metastasised intelligence-industrial complex is ripe for abuse

Valerie Plame Wilson and Joe Wilson write: Let’s be absolutely clear about the news that the NSA collects massive amounts of information on US citizens – from emails, to telephone calls, to videos, under the Prism program and other Fisa court orders: this story has nothing to do with Edward Snowden. As interesting as his flight to Hong Kong might be, the pole-dancing girlfriend, and interviews from undisclosed locations, his fate is just a sideshow to the essential issues of national security versus constitutional guarantees of privacy, which his disclosures have surfaced in sharp relief.

Snowden will be hunted relentlessly and, when finally found, with glee, brought back to the US in handcuffs and severely punished. (If Private Bradley Manning’s obscene conditions while incarcerated are any indication, it won’t be pleasant for Snowden either, even while awaiting trial.) Snowden has already been the object of scorn and derision from the Washington establishment and mainstream media, but, once again, the focus is misplaced on the transiently shiny object. The relevant issue should be: what exactly is the US government doing in the people’s name to “keep us safe” from terrorists?

Prism and other NSA data-mining programs might indeed be very effective in hunting and capturing actual terrorists, but we don’t have enough information as a society to make that decision. Despite laudable efforts led by Senators Ron Wyden and Mark Udall to bring this to the public’s attention that were continually thwarted by the administration because everything about this program was deemed “too secret”, Congress could not even exercise its oversight responsibilities. The intelligence community and their friends on the Hill do not have a right to interpret our rights absent such a discussion. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Is America in a death spiral?

Global warming may have caused irreversible damage to the environment; cigarette smoking can cause irreversible damage to the lungs; lead poisoning can cause irreversible damage to a child’s brain; and Edward Snowden’s intelligence leaks have caused irreversible damage to America — at least that’s what NSA director General Keith Alexander claimed today.

Irreversible damage? The end is nigh? Talk about hyperbole!

Edward Snowden has apparently now leaped to the top of the league among threats to America. Did Bush or Cheney or anyone else declare after 9/11 that al Qaeda had caused irreversible damage to America? Not that I recall. And yet a disaffected NSA system administrator has now supposedly caused more harm to America than even Osama bin Laden accomplished.

Facebooktwittermail

Global protest grows as citizens lose faith in politics and the state

Peter Beaumont writes: The demonstrations in Brazil began after a small rise in bus fares triggered mass protests. Within days this had become a nationwide movement whose concerns had spread far beyond fares: more than a million people were on the streets shouting about everything from corruption to the cost of living to the amount of money being spent on the World Cup.

In Turkey, it was a similar story. A protest over the future of a city park in Istanbul – violently disrupted by police – snowballed too into something bigger, a wider-ranging political confrontation with prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which has scarcely been brought to a close by last weekend’s clearing of Gezi Park.

If the recent scenes have seemed familiar, it is because they shared common features: viral, loosely organised with fractured messages and mostly taking place in urban public locations.

Unlike the protest movement of 1968 or even the end of Soviet influence in eastern Europe in 1989, these are movements with few discernible leaders and often conflicting ideologies. Their points of reference are not even necessarily ideological but take inspiration from other protests, including those of the Arab spring and the Occupy movement. The result has seen a wave of social movements – sometimes short-lived – from Wall Street to Tel Aviv and from Istanbul to Rio de Janeiro, often engaging younger, better educated and wealthier members of society.

What is striking for those who, like myself, have covered these protests is often how discursive and open-ended they are. People go not necessarily to hear a message but to take over a location and discuss their discontents (even if the stunning consequence can be the fall of an autocratic leader such as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak). [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Latest Brazil protests bring 250,000 on to streets

The Associated Press reports: More than 250,000 anti-government protesters have again taken to the streets in several Brazilian cities and engaged police in isolated intense conflicts. Demonstrators vowed to stay in the streets until concrete steps are taken to reform the political system.

Across Brazil protesters gathered to denounce legislation known as PEC 37 that would limit the power of federal prosecutors to investigate crimes. Many fear the laws would hinder attempts to jail corrupt politicians.

Federal prosecutors were behind the investigation into the biggest corruption case in Brazil’s history, the so-called “mensalão” cash-for-votes scheme that came to light in 2005 and involved top aides of former president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva buying off members of congress to vote for their legislation.

Facebooktwittermail

Egypt opposition reaches out to Mubarak supporters ahead of mass protests

The Associated Press reports: Egypt’s largest opposition bloc on Saturday reached out to former members of the deposed president’s party, ahead of mass protests on June 30 demanding the ouster of his successor.

The opposition’s move came a day after some 100,000 supporters of current President Mohammed Morsi, an Islamist and the country’s first elected leader, packed a main square in Cairo to support him and challenge the largely liberal opposition that demands he step down.

Morsi won a four-year term as president with some 52 percent of the vote in a run-off last June against Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister of now-ousted Hosni Mubarak. Shafiq is now contesting the election results.

“I can’t isolate millions of Egyptian people because they were part of the National Democratic Party,” said Mohamed ElBaradei, a top leader of the opposition National Salvation Front, referring to Mubarak’s now-dissolved party. He said the invitation to Mubarak supporters did not extend to those who had been convicted of crimes under the old regime.

“The masses of Egyptian people are calling for change,” he said, adding that the plan now was to discuss national reconciliation. He made his remarks during a two-day conference entitled “After Departure,” which aims to draw up a road map in case Morsi resigns as the opposition demands.

Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the leftist Popular Current opposition group, said a six-month transitional period would start the day Morsi steps down, during which a new constitution would be drafted and a new president elected. Others proposed that the head of the Supreme Constitutional Court should become the country’s transitional leader until new elections.

Facebooktwittermail

New wave of foreigners in Syrian fight

The Washington Post reports: He was young and bright, with an education from Egypt’s premier school of Islamic studies and lucrative job offers in the Gulf.

But Bilal Farag chose a different path, friends say, one that led him to die on a distant Syrian battlefield while fighting Shiite Muslims he regarded as infidels.

“Everybody has their own goal in life,” said a close friend, Hosam Ali. “Bilal’s was to be a martyr.”

Waves of Egyptians are now preparing to follow, fired by the virulently sectarian rhetoric of Sunni preachers and encouraged by the newly permissive policies of Egypt’s Islamist government. In recent days, this city’s ancient mosques have crackled with calls for jihad, as hard-line Sunni Muslim leaders command the faithful to respond to recent escalations in Syria by the Shiite forces of Iran and Hezbollah.

The Sunni backlash has echoed far beyond Egypt, penetrating every corner of the region, where divisions between the rival Muslim sects are hardening fast. At the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, the top cleric broke down in tears on pan-Arab television last week as he pleaded with his fellow Muslims to help the Syrian rebels “by all means.”

Foreign militants have long played a critical role in the Syrian uprising, but the prospect of a fresh flow of radicalized fighters bent on waging sectarian war threatens to complicate the Obama administration’s recently announced strategy to arm the rebellion’s moderate factions. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Organic mathematics

BBC News reports: Plants have a built-in capacity to do maths, which helps them regulate food reserves at night, research suggests.

UK scientists say they were “amazed” to find an example of such a sophisticated arithmetic calculation in biology.

Mathematical models show that the amount of starch consumed overnight is calculated by division in a process involving leaf chemicals, a John Innes Centre team reports in e-Life journal.

Birds may use similar methods to preserve fat levels during migration.

The scientists studied the plant Arabidopsis, which is regarded as a model plant for experiments.

Overnight, when the plant cannot use energy from sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into sugars and starch, it must regulate its starch reserves to ensure they last until dawn.

Experiments by scientists at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, show that to adjust its starch consumption so precisely, the plant must be performing a mathematical calculation – arithmetic division.

“They’re actually doing maths in a simple, chemical way – that’s amazing, it astonished us as scientists to see that,” study leader Prof Alison Smith told BBC News. [Continue reading…]

Facebooktwittermail

Hong Kong authorities reject U.S. request for Snowden’s arrest as he departs for Moscow

Reuters reports: A former U.S. security contractor charged by Washington with espionage was allowed to leave Hong Kong on Sunday, his final destination not confirmed, because a U.S. request to have him arrested did not comply with the law, the Hong Kong government said.

Edward Snowden, who worked for the National Security Agency, had been hiding in Hong Kong since leaking details about U.S. surveillance activities to news media.

The United States wanted him to be extradited to face trial and is likely to be furious about reports that he was travelling to Moscow on Sunday before flying on to Cuba and Venezuela.

“It’s a shocker,” said Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University. “I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate.”

A source at Russia’s Aeroflot airline said Snowden would fly from Moscow to Cuba on Monday and then planned to go on to Venezuela. The South China Morning Post earlier said his final destination might be Ecuador or Iceland.

The WikiLeaks anti-secrecy website said it helped Snowden find “political asylum in a democratic country”.

It added in an update on Twitter that he was accompanied by diplomats and legal advisers and was travelling via a safe route for the purposes of seeking asylum.

“The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden’s rights and protecting him as a person,” former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for the group’s founder Julian Assange, said in a statement. [Continue reading…]

Updates following Snowden’s arrival in Moscow.

Facebooktwittermail

Snowden spy row grows as U.S. is accused of hacking China

The Guardian reports: Within hours of news breaking that the US had filed charges against Snowden, the South China Morning Post reported that the whistleblower had handed over a series of documents to the paper detailing how the US had targeted Chinese phone companies as part of a widespread attempt to get its hands on a mass of data.

Text messaging is the most popular form of communication in mainland China where more than 900bn SMS messages were exchanged in 2012.Snowden reportedly told the paper: “The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cellphone companies to steal all of your SMS data.”

The paper said Snowden had also passed on information detailing NSA attacks on China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, the hub of a major digital network from which data on millions of Chinese citizens could be harvested.

As Snowden made his latest disclosures, the US issued an extradition request to Hong Kong and piled pressure on the territory to respond swiftly. “If Hong Kong doesn’t act soon, it will complicate our bilateral relations and raise questions about Hong Kong’s commitment to the rule of law,” a senior Obama administration official said.

Snowden appeared to be gaining support from politicians in Hong Kong who said China should support him against any extradition application from the US, which on Friday charged him under its Espionage Act. One legislator, Leung Kwok-hung, said Beijing should issue instructions to protect Snowden from extradition before his case was dragged through the courts. Leung urged the Hong Kong people to “take to the streets to protect Snowden”. Another politician, Cyd Ho, vice-chairwoman of the pro-democracy Labour party, said China “should now make its stance clear to the Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region] government” before the case goes before a court.

Facebooktwittermail