The main question now is whether he [Snowden] will accept Putin’s precondition for asylum. Having been stuck in the purgatory of a Moscow airport for more than a week, Snowden’s position seems desperate enough to take the deal. Over the weekend, his best shot at political asylum fell through when the President of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, said Snowden’s fate was now in Moscow’s hands.

But for Snowden, it may not be as easy as destroying his hard drives full of secrets and finding a cottage in the Russian countryside. Julian Assange, the founder of the whistle-blowing organization WikiLeaks, has said Snowden’s revelations are now on autopilot. “There is no stopping the publishing process at this stage,” Assange, who has been helping Snowden find safe haven, told ABC on Sunday. “Great care has been taken to make sure that Mr. Snowden can’t be pressured by any state to stop the publication process.”

If that’s the case, Putin’s asylum offer may have come with a false bottom — he would be able to revoke it if Snowden’s revelations continue to be published. At his press conference on Monday, Putin suggested as much. “Since [Snowden] sees himself as a rights activist, a defender of human rights, it seems he has no intention of stopping his work. So he needs to pick a country and make his way over there,” Putin said. “When that will happen, unfortunately, I have no idea.”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/07/01/putin-to-offer-snowden-asylum-but-with-a-catch/#ixzz2XrMz1qWA

Fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden has suffered a setback in his attempts to avoid extradition to the US, as a number of countries have rejected his requests for asylum.

Eight European states including Spain and Germany said asylum applicants had to be on their soil.

India has also said no.

Mr Snowden, who is at Moscow airport, sent requests to 21 countries in total, Wikileaks said, but he later withdrew a request to Russia.

A Kremlin spokesman said his decision came after Russian President Vladimir Putin set conditions for him staying.

The former intelligence systems analyst is wanted by the US on charges of leaking secrets.

He accuses US President Barack Obama of putting pressure on the countries to which he has applied for asylum.

Meanwhile French President Francois Hollande called for the European Union to take a common stand over allegations by Mr Snowden that Washington is spying on its European allies.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23145887

Typical French cop-out... acting on the knowledge but not on the misfortune of the informant... Meanwhile one could not believe that the Europeans NEVER spied on the US... But in cases like these, one needs the PROOFS... ZE PROOFS... 

Bolivia threw a possible lifeline to the surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden on Tuesday, telling Russian television it would consider granting him political asylum to escape from what it called the espionage network of the US "empire".

As other options began to fade for Snowden, trapped in the transit zone of a Moscow airport, Bolivian president Evo Morales said his country was keen to "shield the denounced".

Snowden's father, meanwhile, stepped up the rhetoric in favour of his son's actions on Tuesday, publishing an open letter that compared him to colonial independence fighter Paul Revere.

The letter was signed by Lon Snowden and his lawyer, Bruce Fein, who also reported receiving a phone call from WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Fein told the Associated Press that Assange, in the phone call on Saturday, delivered what he said was a message from Snowden to his father, asking him to keep quiet.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jul/02/edward-snowden-bolivia-lifeline-asylum/print

Bolivia has said President Evo Morales' plane was forced to land in Austria after France and Portugal refused air permits, apparently because they suspected it was carrying Edward Snowden, the former US spy agency contractor wanted by Washington on espionage charges.

Bolivian Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca on Tuesday furiously accused France and Portugal of putting Morales' life at risk and insisted that Snowden was not on Morales' plane.

Choquehuanca told reporters that Portugal and France had abruptly cancelled the air permits, forcing the unscheduled Vienna stopover as Morales was returning on a Bolivian government aircraft from Russia.

"They say it was due to technical issues, but after getting explanations from some authorities we found that there appeared to be some unfounded suspicions that Mr Snowden was on the plane ... We don't know who invented this lie," he said.

"We want to express our displeasure because this has put the president's life at risk."

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/07/20137223438967870.html

 

See toon at top...

Edward Snowden has done us all a great service. In the past two weeks Europeans have been made aware of massive data collection from their private and business communications by American and British security services. The extent of this surveillance has been staggering. We have also learned that the US is apparently spying on EU representations in Brussels, Washington and New York, and the embassies of European member states. These practices have nothing to do with the war on terror.

We can only speculate about the real motivation. What type of information is being extracted, and what is being done with it? The European Commission is supposed to start negotiations with the US on a transatlantic free trade agreement. Should our delegations choose to meet at secret locations in future and prepare meetings using encrypted code, because otherwise the US National Security Agency will know their every move in advance? On top of that, German and other European businesses' secrets cannot be secure any more. For years the US has been accusing China of stealing intellectual property. Do we need to redirect our attention over industrial espionage?

If even a few of these revelations are true, our worst Orwellian nightmares have become reality. Already trust between the EU and the US, and between the EU and its member state Britain has been violated. Both governments need to react to these accusations, clarify the activities of their secret services and, if true, stop these programmes immediately. Surveillance without suspicion to this extent constitutes a violation of the right to privacy laid down, for instance, in the international covenant on civil and political rights.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/02/edward-snowden-shelter-in-germany

 

The audience laughed out loud because Barack Obama-- the man who carried so much hope and was long believed to be a very European US president -- has become the butt of jokes. Some view him as the embodiment of the very "Big Brother" once sketched by George Orwell, the dictator who spies on, monitors and controls every citizen without any scruples.

But how much of that is a cliché, and how much truth is there to it? Given the revelations published by SPIEGEL in recent days showing evidence of a US spying program that is directed at European Union institutions, and monitoring an almost inconceivable number of communications connections -- 500 million a month in Germany alone -- you can't blame a person for thinking the worst. Even if Obama has explicitly ensured that Americans needn't fear some kind of "Big Brother," the "3rd Party Partners," as Germany was categorized in top secret NSA documents, are now asking if the same applies to Europeans.

Americans See the Positive in 'Big Data '

In no other country is this question being asked as loudly as in Germany, a country that, through its own painful history during the Nazi era and under communist East Germany, has learned just what an overly curious state and paternalism can lead to. The Germans cherish their privacy and fear absolute control. That's why Facebook's facial recognition software is uncomfortable for us, and the reason that many Germans have had a positively allergic reaction to Google Street View cameras. It's the reason Germans visiting the United States get annoyed when they call a hair salon for an appointment and are asked not only for a telephone number, but an email address and a credit card number too.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/editorial-obama-must-offer-answers-on-nsa-spying-in-eu-a-909019.html

 

Bolivian officials said that France, Portugal and Italy blocked the plane from flying over their territories based on unfounded rumors that Snowden was on board. Bolivia said Spain agreed to allow the plane to refuel in the Canary Islands — but only if Bolivian authorities agreed to allow it to be inspected.

French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said Wednesday that Morales’ plane had authorization to fly over France. French officials would not comment on why Bolivian officials said otherwise.

Spain’s foreign ministry said in a statement Wednesday that the country on Tuesday authorized Morales’ plane to fly within its airspace and to make the Canary Islands refueling stop and gave the authorization again on Wednesday morning after Bolivian authorities repeated the request.

A foreign ministry official declined comment when asked if Spain demanded the right to inspect the plane. The Spanish spoke on condition of anonymity because of ministry rules.

read more: http://world.time.com/2013/07/03/snowden-case-france-didnt-block-bolivia-plane/

France has apologised to Bolivia for refusing to allow President Evo Morales' jet into its airspace, blaming "conflicting information".

Bolivia accused France, Italy, Spain and Portugal of blocking the plane.

It said some wrongly believed US fugitive Edward Snowden was on board.

Speaking in Berlin, French President Francois Hollande said he granted permission as soon as he knew it was Mr Morales' plane.

President Morales was flying back to Bolivia from Moscow when the plane was forced to stop in Vienna.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23174874

 

Résumé Shows Snowden Honed Hacking Skills

By CHRISTOPHER DREW and SCOTT SHANE

In 2010, while working for a National Security Agency contractor, Edward J. Snowden learned to be a hacker.

He took a course that trains security professionals to think like hackers and understand their techniques, all with the intent of turning out “certified ethical hackers” who can better defend their employers’ networks.

But the certification, listed on a résumé that Mr. Snowden later prepared, would also have given him some of the skills he needed to rummage undetected through N.S.A. computer systems and gather the highly classified surveillance documents that he leaked last month, security experts say.

Mr. Snowden’s résumé, which has not been made public and was described by people who have seen it, provides a new picture of how his skills and responsibilities expanded while he worked as an intelligence contractor. Although federal officials offered only a vague description of him as a “systems administrator,” the résumé suggests that he had transformed himself into the kind of cybersecurity expert the N.S.A. is desperate to recruit, making his decision to release the documents even more embarrassing to the agency.

“If he’s looking inside U.S. government networks for foreign intrusions, he might have very broad access,” said James A. Lewis, a computer security expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “The hacker got into the storeroom.”

In an age when terabytes of data can be stashed inside palm-size devices, the new details about Mr. Snowden’s training and assignments underscore the challenges that the N.S.A. faces in recruiting a new generation of free-spirited computer experts with diverse political views.

Mr. Snowden, who is now marooned at an airport in Moscow waiting to see if another country will grant him asylum, has said he leaked the documents to alert the public to the sweeping nature of the American government’s surveillance. He took a job as an “infrastructure analyst” with Booz Allen Hamilton in April at an N.S.A. facility in Hawaii, he has said, to gain access to lists of computers that the agency had hacked around the world.      

read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/05/us/resume-shows-snowden-honed-hacking-skills.html?hp&_r=0  

 

After the ban on flying over French airspace Tuesday July 2, of the plane of the Bolivian President Evo Morales, the fur is flying within the French government ... "People" are accusing Matignon (the French prime minister's office). 
Camille Putois, Deputy Chief of Staff Jean-Marc Ayrault (prime Minister) took the decision, say several sources, one at the Elysée (Presidential Palace).
Saturday night, Putois and Chantepuy confirmed that decisions to ban the flight over France are the responsibility of Matignon (the French prime minister's office) but refused to comment on her role in this affair. Before joining Matignon, Mrs. Putois, an Ecole Normale technocrat, worked for Publicis.
Christophe Chantepy, chief of staff Jean-Marc Ayrault refuses to attribute to a particular person's decision. "This is a government decision, there was a misunderstanding as stated by Laurent Fabius and France expressed regret," says Chantepy. "Everyone was unhappy with the way it happened. At the point you make a decision, there are choices to be made," Mr. Chantepy.
http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2013/07/06/la-directrice-adjointe-de-cabinet-de-m-ayrault-accusee-d-avoir-interdit-le-survol-de-l-avion-de-morales_3443729_651865.html

Edward Snowden: hero and traitor

Snowden made the right call when he fled the U.S.

 

By Daniel Ellsberg, Monday, July 8, 11:05 AM

Daniel Ellsberg is the author of “Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers.” He was charged in 1971 under the Espionage Act for theft and conspiracy for copying the Pentagon Papers. The trial was dismissed in 1973 after evidence of government misconduct, including illegal wiretapping, was introduced in court.

Many people compare Edward Snowden to me unfavorably for leaving the country and seeking asylum, rather than facing trial as I did. I don’t agree. The country I stayed in was a different America, a long time ago.

After the New York Times had been enjoined from publishing the Pentagon Papers — on June 15, 1971, the first prior restraint on a newspaper in U.S. history — and I had given another copy to The Post (which would also be enjoined), I went underground with my wife, Patricia, for 13 days. My purpose (quite like Snowden’s in flying to Hong Kong) was to elude surveillance while I was arranging — with the crucial help of a number of others, still unknown to the FBI — to distribute the Pentagon Papers sequentially to 17 other newspapers, in the face of two more injunctions. The last three days of that period was in defiance of an arrest order: I was, like Snowden now, a “fugitive from justice.”

Yet when I surrendered to arrest in Boston, having given out my last copies of the papers the night before, I was released on personal recognizance bond the same day. Later, when my charges were increased from the original three counts to 12, carrying a possible 115-year sentence, my bond was increased to $50,000. But for the whole two years I was under indictment, I was free to speak to the media and at rallies and public lectures. I was, after all, part of a movement against an ongoing war. Helping to end that war was my preeminent concern. I couldn’t have done that abroad, and leaving the country never entered my mind.

There is no chance that experience could be reproduced today, let alone that a trial could be terminated by the revelation of White House actions against a defendant that were clearly criminal in Richard Nixon’s era — and figured in his resignation in the face of impeachment — but are today all regarded as legal (including an attempt to “incapacitate me totally”).

I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.

He would almost certainly be confined in total isolation, even longer than the more than eight months Manning suffered during his three years of imprisonment before his trial began recently. The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Torture described Manning’s conditions as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” (That realistic prospect, by itself, is grounds for most countries granting Snowden asylum, if they could withstand bullying and bribery from the United States.)

read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/daniel-ellsberg-nsa-leaker-snowden-made-the-right-call/2013/07/07/0b46d96c-e5b7-11e2-aef3-339619eab080_print.html

 

In the summer of 1985, KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky was called back to Moscow from the Soviet embassy in London, where he was serving as a resident spy. As a pretext, his commanders told him that he was going to receive an award for his service. But in fact the KGB suspected him of being a double agent — which he was — and they were looking to interrogate him. So upon his arrival, his KGB colleagues, still concealing their suspicions, took him to a comfortable country estate in the suburbs of the Russian capital, much like the one where Gordievsky and other former spies believe Edward Snowden, the NSA whistle-blower, has spent the past few weeks.

Since June 23, Snowden has been marooned somewhere in Russia, far out of reach of the U.S. government, which wants to put him on trial for exposing the secrets of U.S. intelligence agencies. The official story coming from the Russian government since then is that Snowden has been holed up in the transit zone of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, waiting for some third country to grant him asylum. But few experts or officials in Moscow still believe that to be true. The accepted wisdom, unofficially acknowledged by most Western and Russian sources, is that Snowden was taken soon after his arrival — if not immediately — to a secure location run by some arm of the Russian government.

The reason has to do with Snowden’s laptops, which are reportedly full of the secret data he stole from his former employers at American intelligence agencies. Those hard drives would make him a high-value target for Russian spies. “Without a doubt, a person with inside knowledge like that, live and in the flesh, would be a very useful catch,” says Mikhail Lyubimov, a 20-year veteran of the KGB who headed the agency’s spying activities against the U.K. and Scandinavia in the 1970s. “He is carrying information of great importance.”

As an experienced hacker and computer expert, Snowden could, however, be expected to protect all his data through encryption. Nikita Kislitsyn, the editor of Russia’s Hacker Magazine, says encryption systems are available that would likely stump the experts working for the Russian government. “We don’t know the exact capabilities of our special services,” he says. “But there are programs on the market today that encryption experts believe to be very solid. Their algorithms would take years to crack even with the kinds of supercomputers available to the sta....

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/07/10/snowden-in-moscow-what-are-russian-authorities-doing-with-the-nsa-whistleblower/#ixzz2YjH9vWK4

 

Gus: in most  "algorithms' and encryption there is a key — or two or three... it's likely to be a double or triple lock. That is to say one needs a key to re-encrypt the information which in turns is decrypted into an encrypted message for which there is a last key to make it available in plain lingo... The keys can be as long as a three or four gigabyte line of command...

Mere mortals would not bother protecting stuff beyond wearing some sunnies... People who deal with such annoying little problems are knowledgeable enough to coax the keys out of the encryption itself... This is why most banks change the encryption of their data every thirty seconds... By the time some computer knark finds the key, the encryption has shifted to a different level...

I meant to say here that the Yanks may be more pissed off about having to "re-encrypt" everything with different set of keys, because the information in fact now has not much value after its first "scandalous" impact... What has big value is the style and formulation of the encryption which could lead very easily to far more discreet tapping of new sensitive information...

 

Snowden says he will seek asylum in Russia

By Will Englund, Published: July 12 | Updated: Saturday, July 13, 2:41 AM

MOSCOW — Fugitive document-leaker Edward Snowden announced Friday that he is submitting a request for political asylum in Russia, where he has been stranded at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport since June 23.

Eventually, the 30-year-old former contractor for the National Security Agency said in a meeting with human rights activists and lawyers, he still hopes to gain asylum in Latin America.

“I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future,” Snowden said, reading from a written statement. He cited, for example, Venezuela’s grant of asylum, but he said that “some governments” in Western Europe and North America were interfering “with my right to enjoy that asylum,” making it impossible for him to travel to Latin America.

“Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted,” Snowden said. “I will be submitting my request to Russia today and hope it will be accepted favorably.”

Human Rights Watch activist Tatyana Lokshina, who was at the meeting with Snowden, said the former NSA contractor was not concerned about ademand from Russian President Vladimir Putin that he refrain from releasing harmful information about the United States while on Russian soil.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/snowden-wants-meeting-with-human-rights-activists-lawyers/2013/07/12/237d5254-eac6-11e2-a301-ea5a8116d211_print.html