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- published: 16 Jun 2013
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- author: MeirNaaman
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The 2013 global surveillance disclosures refer to numerous media reports beginning in June 2013 which revealed operational details of the US National Security Agency (NSA) and its international partners' mass surveillance of foreign nationals as well as US citizens. The series of reports emanated from a cache of top secret documents leaked by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden. On 6 June 2013, the first set of documents were published simultaneously by The Washington Post and The Guardian, attracting considerable public attention.
Global surveillance emerged as a phenomenom since the late 1940s (as demonstrated by the joint U.S.-British program code-named "ECHELON"), In the aftermath of the 1970s Watergate affair and a subsequent congressional inquiry led by Sen. Frank Church, it was revealed that the NSA, in collaboration with Britain's GCHQ, had routinely intercepted the international communications of prominent anti-Vietnam War leaders such as Jane Fonda and Dr. Benjamin Spock. Decades later, a multi-year investigation by the European Parliament highlighted the NSA's role in economic espionage in a report entitled 'Development of Surveillance Technology and Risk of Abuse of Economic Information', in 1999. However, for the general public, it was a series of detailed disclosures of internal NSA documents in June 2013 that first revealed the massive extent of the NSA's spying, both foreign and domestic. Most of these were leaked by an ex-contractor, Edward Snowden. Even so, a number of these older global surveillance programs such as PRISM, XKeyscore, and Tempora were referenced in the 2013 release of thousands of documents. Many countries around the world, including Western Allies and member states of NATO, have been targeted by the "Five Eyes" strategic alliance of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA—five English-speaking Western democracies aiming to achieve Total Information Awareness by mastering the Internet with analytical tools such as the Boundless Informant. As confirmed by the NSA's director Keith B. Alexander on 26 September 2013, the NSA collects and stores all phone records of all American citizens. Much of the data is kept in large storage facilities such as the Utah Data Center, a US$1.5 billion megaproject referred to by The Wall Street Journal as a "symbol of the spy agency's surveillance prowess."
As a result of the disclosures, social movements such as Restore the Fourth have sprung up to protest against mass surveillance. Domestic spying programmes in countries such as France, the UK, and India have also been brought to light. On the legal front, the Electronic Frontier Foundation joined a coalition of diverse groups filing lawsuits against the NSA. Several human rights organizations have urged the Obama administration not to prosecute, but to protect "whistleblower Snowden". These groups include Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Transparency International, and the Index on Censorship.
On 14 June 2013, US federal prosecutors charged Edward Snowden with espionage and theft of government property. In late July 2013, he was granted temporary political asylum by the Russian government. This contributed to a deterioration of Russia–United States relations. On 6 August 2013, President Obama made a public appearance on national television where he reassured Americans that "We don't have a domestic spying program" and "There is no spying on Americans".
Disclosures of the general scope of a mass surveillance program involving U.S. citizens had been made in the U.S. media in 2006. In early 2013, Edward Snowden handed over 15,000 – 20,000 top secret documents to various media outlets, triggering one of the biggest news leaks in the modern history of the United States.
Wartime censorship of communications during the World Wars was paralleled by peacetime decipherment of communications by the Black Chamber (Cipher Bureau, MI-8), operating with the approval of the U.S. State Department from 1919 to 1929. In 1945 the now-defunct Project SHAMROCK was created to gather all telegraphic data entering into or exiting from the United States. Major communication companies such as Western Union, RCA Global and ITT World Communications actively aided the U.S. government in the latter's attempt to gain access to international message traffic.
In 1952, the NSA was officially established. According to The New York Times, the NSA was created in "absolute secrecy" by President Truman. Six weeks after President Truman took office, he ordered wiretaps on the telephones of Thomas Gardiner Corcoran, a close advisor of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The recorded conversations are currently kept at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, along with other sensitive documents (~233,600 pages)
Under J. Edgar Hoover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) carried out wide-ranging surveillance of communications and political expression, targeting many well-known speakers such as Albert Einstein, Frank Sinatra, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon, Martin Luther King, Jr., A FBI memo recognized King to be the "most dangerous and effective Negro leader in the country.", Daniel Ellsberg, Some of these activities were eventually uncovered in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, leading to the Resignation of Richard Nixon.
During World War II the U.K. and U.S. governments entered into a series of agreements for sharing of signals intelligence of enemy communications traffic. In March, 1946, a secret agreement, the "British-US Communication Intelligence Agreement", known as BRUSA, was established, based on the wartime agreements. The agreement "tied the two countries into a worldwide network of listening posts run by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the U.K's biggest spying organisation, and its U.S. equivalent, the National Security Agency."
In 1988, an article titled "Somebody's listening" by Duncan Campbell in the New Statesman, described the signals intelligence gathering activities of a program code-named "ECHELON. The program was engaged by English-speaking World War II Allied powers Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States (collectively know as AUSCANNZUKUS). Based on the UKUSA Agreement, it was created to monitor the military and diplomatic communications of the Soviet Union and its Eastern Bloc allies during the Cold War in the early 1960s. Though its existence had long been known, the UKUSA agreement only became public in 2010. It enabled the U.S. and the U.K. to exchange "knowledge from operations involving intercepting, decoding and translating foreign communications." The agreement forbade the parties to reveal its existence to any third party.
By the late 1990s the ECHELON system was capable of intercepting satellite transmissions, public switched telephone network (PSTN) communications (including most Internet traffic), and transmissions carried by microwave. A detailed description of ECHELON was provided by New Zealand journalist Nicky Hager in his 1996 book "Secret Power". While the existence of ECHELON was denied by some member governments, a report by a committee of the European Parliament in 2001 confirmed the program's use and warned Europeans about its reach and effects. The European Parliament stated in its report that the term "ECHELON" was used in a number of contexts, but that the evidence presented indicated it was a signals intelligence collection system capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally. The report to the European Parliament confirmed that this was a "global system for the interception of private and commercial communications."
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks in 2001 on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, the scope of domestic spying in the United States increased significantly. The bid to prevent future attacks of this scale led to the passage of the Patriot Act. Later acts include the Protect America Act (which removes the warrant requirement for government surveillance of foreign targets) and the FISA Amendments Act (which relaxed some of the original FISA court requirements).
In 2005, the existence of STELLARWIND was revealed by Thomas Tamm. On 1 January 2006, days after The New York Times wrote that "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, the President emphasized that "This is a limited program designed to prevent attacks on the United States of America. And I repeat, limited."
In 2006, Mark Klein revealed the existence of Room 641A that he had wired back in 2003. In 2008, Babak Pasdar, a computer security expert, and CEO of Bat Blue publicly revealed the existence of the "Quantico circuit", that he and his team found in 2003. He described it as a back door to the federal government in the systems of an unnamed wireless provider; the company was later independently identified as Verizon.
Other notable media leaks include the Afghan War documents leak (considered to be one of the largest leaks in U.S. military history), as well as the Iraq War documents leak (A collection of 391,832 United States Army field reports), and the Guantanamo Bay files leak (779 top secret documents marked NOFORN).
On 15 March 2012, the American magazine Wired published an article with the headline "The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say)", which was later mentioned by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson during a congressional hearing. In response to Johnson's inquiry, NSA director Keith B. Alexander testified that these allegations made by Wired magazine were untrue.
On 6 June 2013, Britain's The Guardian newspaper began publishing a series of revelations by an as yet unknown American whistleblower, revealed several days later to be ex-CIA and ex-NSA-contracted systems analyst Edward Snowden. Snowden gave a cache of documents to two journalists: Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, Greenwald later estimated that the cache contains 15,000 – 20,000 documents, some very large and very detailed, and some very small. In over two subsequent months of publications, it became clear that the NSA had operated a complex web of spying programs which allowed it to intercept internet and telephone conversations from over a billion users from dozens of countries around the world. Specific revelations were made about China, the European Union, Latin America, Iran and Pakistan, and Australia and New Zealand, however the published documentation reveals that many of the programs indiscriminately collected bulk information directly from central servers and internet backbones, which almost invariably carry and reroute information from distant countries.
Due to this central server and backbone monitoring, many of the programs overlapped and interrelated among one another. These programs were often carried out with the assistance of US entities such as the United States Department of Justice and the FBI, were sanctioned by US laws such as the FISA Amendments Act, and the necessary court orders for them were signed by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Some of the NSA's programs were directly aided by national and foreign intelligence agencies, Britain's GCHQ and Australia's DSD, as well as by large private telecommunications and internet corporations, such as Verizon, Telstra, Google and Facebook.
In a statement addressed to the National Congress of Brazil in early August 2013, journalist Glenn Greenwald maintained that the U.S. government had used counter-terrorism as a pretext for clandestine surveillance in order to compete with other countries in the "business, industrial and economic fields".
In an interview with Der Spiegel published on 12 August 2013, former NSA Director Michael Hayden admitted that "We (the NSA) steal secrets. We're number one in it". Hayden also added: "We steal stuff to make you safe, not to make you rich".
According to documents seen by the news agency Reuters, these "secrets" were subsequently funnelled to authorities across the nation to help them launch criminal investigations of Americans. Federal agents are then instructed to "recreate" the investigative trail in order to "cover up" where the information originated.
Main targets: China, Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan were ranked highly on the NSA's list of spying priorities, followed by France, Germany, Japan, and Brazil. The European Union's "international trade" and "economic stability" are also of interest. Other high priority targets include Cuba, Israel, and North Korea.
Other prominent targets included members and adherents of the internet group known as "Anonymous", as well as potential whistleblowers. According to Edward Snowden, the NSA targeted reporters who wrote critically about the government after 9/11.
As part of a joint operation with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the NSA deployed secret eavesdropping posts in eighty U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide. The headquarters of NATO were also used by NSA experts to spy on the European Union.
In 2013, documents provided by Edward Snowden revealed that the following intergovernmental organizations, diplomatic missions, and government ministries have been subjected to surveillance by the "Five Eyes":
! Country/Organization !! Target !! Method(s) | |||||
* Copying entire hard disk drives | * Picking data from screenshots | ||||
Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations | |||||
* Hacking of e-mail accounts as part of an operation code-named "Whitetamale" | |||||
Council of the European Union in Brussels | * Installation of covert listening devices | * Hacking and infiltration of virtual private networks | * Disk cloning | ||
United Nations Headquarters in New York | *Hacking of encrypted communications | Videoconferencing>video conferences | |||
International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna |
Although the treaty was later revised to include other countries such as Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Norway, Turkey, and the Philippines, most of the information sharing has been performed by the so-called "Five Eyes", a term referring to the following English-speaking western democracies and their respective intelligence agencies:
– The Defence Signals Directorate of Australia – The Communications Security Establishment of Canada – The Government Communications Security Bureau of New Zealand – The Government Communications Headquarters of the United Kingdom, which is widely considered to be a leader in traditional spying due to its influence on countries that were once colonies of the British Empire. – The National Security Agency of the United States, which has the biggest budget and the most advanced technical abilities among the "five eyes".
In 2013, media disclosures revealed how other government agencies have cooperated extensively with the "Five Eyes":
- The Politiets Efterretningstjeneste (PET) of Denmark, a domestic intelligence agency, exchanges data with the NSA on a regular basis, as part of a secret agreement with the United States.
– The Bundesnachrichtendienst (Federal Intelligence Service) of Germany systematically transfers metadata from German intelligence sources to the NSA. In December 2012 alone, Germany provided the NSA with 500 million metadata records. The NSA granted the Bundesnachrichtendienst access to X-Keyscore, in exchange for Mira4 and Veras. In early 2013, Hans-Georg Maaßen, President of the German domestic security agency BfV, made several visits to the headquarters of the NSA. According to classified documents of the German government, Maaßen had agreed to transfer all data collected by the BfV via XKeyscore to the NSA. In addition, the BfV has been working very closely with eight other U.S. government agencies, including the CIA.
- The SIGINT National Unit of Israel routinely receives raw intelligence data (including those of U.S. citizens) from the NSA. (See also: Memorandum of understanding between the NSA and Israel)
- In 2011, the Japanese government was asked by the NSA to intercept fiber-optic cables carrying phone and Internet data from across the entire Asia-Pacific region, including China. However, the Japanese government refused to comply.
- The Algemene Inlichtingen en Veiligheidsdienst (General Intelligence and Security Service) of the Netherlands has been receiving and storing user information gathered by U.S. intelligence sources such as PRISM.
– The Defence Ministry of Singapore and its Security and Intelligence Division have been secretly intercepting much of the fibre optic cable traffic passing through the Asian continent. Information gathered by the Government of Singapore is transferred to the Government of Australia as part of an intelligence sharing agreement. This allows the "Five Eyes" to maintain a "stranglehold on communications across the Eastern Hemisphere".
– The National Defence Radio Establishment of Sweden (codenamed Sardines) has been working extensively with the NSA, and it has granted the "five eyes" access to underwater cables in the Baltic Sea.
- The Federal Intelligence Service (FSI) of Switzerland regularly exchanges information with the NSA, based on a secret agreement. In addition, the NSA has been granted access to Swiss monitoring facilities in Leuk (canton of Valais) and Herrenschwanden (canton of Bern).
Left: SEA-ME-WE 3, which runs across the Afro-Eurasian supercontinent from Japan to Northern Germany, is one of the most important submarine cables accessed by the "Five Eyes". Singapore, a former British colony in the Asia-Pacific region (blue dot), plays a vital role in intercepting internet and telecommunications traffic heading from Australia/Japan to Europe, and vice versa. An intelligence sharing agreement between Singapore and Australia allows the rest of the "Five Eyes" to gain access to SEA-ME-WE 3. Right:TAT-14, a telecommunications cable linking Europe with the United States, was identified as one of few assets of "Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources" of the USA on foreign territory. In 2013, it was revealed that British officials "pressured a handful of telecommunications and internet companies" to allow the British government to gain access to TAT-14.
According to the leaked documents, aside from the Five Eyes, most other Western countries also participatied in the NSA surveillance system and sharing information with each other. However, being a partner of the NSA did not automatically exempt a country from being targeted by the NSA. According to an internal NSA document leaked by Snowden, "We (the NSA) can, and often do, target the signals of most 3rd party foreign partners."
|event= After witholding its publication for a year, The New York Times released an article under the headline: "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts"}}
|event= USA Today reported that the NSA has a "massive database of Americans' phone calls" }} Shortly afterwards, Presidet Bush emphasized that the NSA's surveillance is limited and within the law
|event= Britain's The Guardian newspaper reported that the NSA is "collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily"}} |}
Edward Snowden's disclosures of the NSA's surveillance activities are a continuation of news leaks which have been ongoing since the mid-2000s.
On 16 December 2005, The New York Times published a report under the headline "Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts", which was co-written by Eric Lichtblau and the Pulitzer Prize-winning jorunalist James Risen. According to The Times, the article's date of publication was delayed for a year because of national security concerns.
In 2006, further evidence of the NSA's domestic surveillance of U.S. citizens was provided by USA Today. The newspaper released a report on 11 May 2006 regarding the NSA's "massive database" of phone records collected from "tens of millions" of U.S. citizens. According to USA Today, these phone records were provided by several telecom companies such as AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.
In 2008, the security analyst Babak Pasdar revealed the existence of the so-called "Quantico circuit" that he and his team had set up in 2003. The circuit provided the U.S. federal government with a backdoor into the network of an unnamed wireless provider, which was later independently identified as Verizon.
In April 2012, Edward Snowden began downloading sensitive NSA material while working for the American computer corporation Dell Inc. By the end of the year, Snowden had made his first contact with journalist Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.
;January—May 2013
In January 2013, Snowden contacted documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras. In March 2013, Snowden took up a new job at Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii, specifically to gain access to additional top-secret documents that could be leaked. In April 2013, Poitras asked Greenwald to meet her in New York City. In May 2013, Snowden was permitted temporary leave from his position at the NSA in Hawaii, on the pretext of receiving treatment for his epilepsy. Towards the end of May, Snowden flew to Hong Kong.
It was reported that the NSA had collected phone records from over 120 million Verizon subscribers, according to a top secret court order leaked by Snowden.
During the 2009 G-20 London Summit, the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had intercepted the communications of foreign diplomats. The GCHQ has been intercepting and storing mass quantities of fiber-optic traffic via Tempora
The Guardian revealed that XKeyscore allows analysts to search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals. Microsoft "developed a surveillance capability to deal" with the interception of encrypted chats on Outlook.com, within five months after the service went into testing. NSA had access to Outlook.com emails because "Prism collects this data prior to encryption."
During specific episodes within a four-year period, the NSA hacked several Chinese mobile-phone companies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong and Tsinghua University in Beijing, and the Asian fiber-optic network operator Pacnet. Documents provided by Edward Snowden and seen by Der Spiegel revealed that the NSA spied on various diplomatic missions of the European Union (EU), including the EU's delegation to the United States in Washington D.C., the EU's delegation to the United Nations in New York, the Council of the European Union in Brussels, and the United Nations Headquarters in New York. Only Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK are explicitly exempted from NSA attacks, whose main target in the EU is Germany.
The NSA collected, from 2001 to 2011 via Stellar Wind, vast amounts of records detailing the email and internet usage of Americans, and after the program end of Stellar Wind due to operational and resource reasons other programs such as ShellTrumpet. A method of bugging encrypted fax machines used at an EU embassy is codenamed Dropmire
The NSA's Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) collects intelligence on foreign targets by "hacking into their computers and telecommunications systems, cracking passwords, compromising the computer security systems protecting the targeted computer, stealing the data stored on computer hard drives, and then copying all the messages and data traffic passing within the targeted email and text-messaging systems", in a process known as 'computer network exploitation' (CNE).
The NSA gave the German intelligence agencies BND and BfV access to X-Keyscore. In return, the BND turned over copies of two systems named Mira4 and Veras, reported to exceed the NSA's SIGINT capabilities in certain areas. The NSA also provided the BND with analysis tools so that the BND can monitor foreign data streams flowing through Germany.
Even if there is no reason to suspect U.S. citizens the CIA's National Counterterrorism Center is allowed to examine the government files of for possible criminal behavior. Previously the NTC was barred to do so, unless a person was a terror suspect or related to an investigation.
Snowden also confirmed that Stuxnet was cooperatively developed by the United States and Israel. In a report unrelated to Edward Snowden, the French newspaper Le Monde revealed thet France's DGSE was also undertaking mass surveillance, which it described as "illegal and outside any serious control".
Verizon Business (codenamed "Dacron") British Telecommunications (codenamed "Remedy") Vodafone Cable (codenamed "Gerontic") Global Crossing (codenamed "Pinnage") Level 3 (codenamed "Little") Viatel (codenamed "Vitreous") Interoute (codenamed "Streetcar")
Each of them were assigned a particular area of the international fiber-optic network for which they were individually responsible. The following networks have been infiltrated by the GCHQ: TAT-14 (Europe-USA), Atlantic Crossing 1 (Europe-USA), Circe South (France-UK), Circe North (The Netherlands-UK), Flag Atlantic-1, Flag Europa-Asia, SEA-ME-WE 3 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe), SEA-ME-WE 4 (Southeast Asia-Middle East-Western Europe), Solas (Ireland-UK), UK-France 3, UK-Netherlands 14, ULYSSES (Europe-UK), Yellow (UK-USA) and Pan European Crossing.
Telecommunication companies who participated were "forced" to do so and had "no choice in the matter". Some of the companies were subsequently paid by GCHQ for their participation in the infiltration of the cables. According to the SZ the GCHQ has access to the majority of internet and telephone communications flowing throughout Europe, can listen to phone calls, read emails and text messages, see which websites internet users from all around the world are visiting. It can also retain and analyse nearly the entire european internet traffic.
The GCHQ is collecting all data transmitted to and from the United Kingdom and Northern Europe via the undersea fibre optic telecommunications cable SEA-ME-WE 3. Singaporean intelligence co-operates with Australia in accessing and sharing communications carried by the SEA-ME-WE-3 cable. The Australian Signals Directorate, is also in a partnership with British, American and Singaporean intelligence agencies to tap undersea fibre optic telecommunications cables that link Asia, the Middle East and Europe and carry much of Australia's international phone and internet traffic.
The US runs a top-secret surveillance program, code named Special Collection Service, based in over 80 consulates and embassies worldwide, including Frankfurt Germany and Vienna, Austria. The NSA hacked the United Nations' video conferencing system in Summer 2012 in violation of a UN agreement. The Bundesnachrichtendienst is providing the NSA with metadata collected from German systems. In December 2012 alone, Germany provided the NSA with 500 million metadata records. The N.S.A. is not just intercepting the communications of Americans who are in direct contact with foreigners targeted overseas, but also searching the contents of vast amounts of e-mail and text communications into and out of the country by Americans who mention information about foreigners under surveillance. It also spied on the Al Jazeera and gained access to its internal communications systems.
The NSA has built a surveillance network that has the capacity to reach roughly 75% of all U.S. Internet traffic. U.S. Law-enforcement agencies use tools used by computer hackers to gather information on suspects. An internal NSA audit from May 2012 identified 2776 incidents i.e. violations of the rules or court orders for surveillance of Americans and foreign targets in the U.S. in the period from April 2011 through March 2012, while U.S. officials stressed that any mistakes are not intentional.
The FISA Court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the U.S. government's vast spying programs has limited ability to do and it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans. A legal opinion declassified on August 21, 2013 revealed that the NSA intercepted for three years as many as 56,000 electronic communications a year of Americans who weren't suspected of having links to terrorism, before FISC court that oversees surveillance found the operation unconstitutional in 2011. By the Corporate Partner Access Project for major U.S. telecommunications providers these providers receive hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the NSA for clandestine access to their communications networks and filtering vast traffic flows for foreign targets.
A letter drafted by the Obama administration specifically to inform Congress of the government's mass collection of Americans' telephone communications data was withheld from lawmakers by leaders of the House Intelligence Committee in the months before a key vote affecting the future of the program.
The NSA paid GCHQ over £100 Million between 2009 and 2012, in exchange for these funds GCHQ "must pull its weight and be seen to pull its weight." Documents referenced in the article explain that weaker laws regarding spying are "a selling point". GCHQ is also developing the technology to "exploit any mobile phone at any time." The NSA has under a legal authority a secret backdoor into its databases gathered from large Internet companies enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant.
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board urged the U.S. intelligence chiefs to draft stronger US surveillance guidelines on domestic spying after finding that several of those guidelines have not been updated up to 30 years. US intelligence analysts have deliberately broken rules designed to prevent them from spying on Americans by choosing to ignore so-called "minimisation procedures" aimed at protecting privacy
After the Foreign Secret Intelligence Court ruled in October 2011 that some of the NSA's activities were unconstitutional paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program
"Mastering the Internet" (MTI) is part of the Interception Modernisation Programme (IMP) of the British government that involves the insertion of thousands of DPI (deep packet inspection) "black boxes" at various internet service providers, as revealed by the British media in 2009.
In 2013, it was further revealed that the NSA had made a £17.2 million financial contribution to the project, which is capable of vacuuming signals from up to 200 fibre-optic cables at all physical points of entry into Great Britain.
French intelligence agencies are cooperating under the codename "Lustre" with the Five Eyes alliance by systematically providing them with information after France signed a cooperation treaty with the alliance. Israel, Sweden and Italy are also cooperating with American and British intelligence agencies. Germany's domestic security agency Bundesverfassungsschutz transmitted regularly informations of persons monitored in Germany to the NSA, CIA and seven other members of the US Intelligence community in exchange for information and espionage software.
A special branch of the NSA called "Follow the Money" (FTM) widely monitors international payments, banking and credit card transactions and later stores the collected data in the NSA's own financial databank "Tracfin". The National Security Agency directly targeted the communications of president Dilma Rousseff and her top aides. It also spied on Brazil's oil firm Petrobras as well as French diplomats and gained access to the private network of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of France and the SWIFT network.
The N.S.A. uses the analysis of phone call and e-mail logs of American citizens to create sophisticated graphs of their social connections that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information. The NSA routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens.
In an effort codenamed GENIE, computer specialists can control foreign computer networks using "covert implants," a form of remotely transmitted malware on tens of thousands of devices annually. As worldwide sales of smartphones began exceeding those of feature phones, the NSA decided to take advantage of the smartphone boom. This is particularly advantageous because the smartphone combines a myriad of data that would interest an intelligence agency, such as social contacts, user behavior, interests, location, photos and credit card numbers and passwords.
An internal NSA report from 2010 stated that the spread of the smartphone has been occurring "extremely rapidly"—developments that "certainly complicate traditional target analysis." According to the document, the NSA has set up task forces assigned to several smartphone manufacturers and operating systems, including Apple Inc.'s iPhone and iOS operating system, as well as Google's Android mobile operating system. Similarly, Britain's GCHQ assigned a team to study and crack the BlackBerry.
Under the heading "iPhone capability," the document notes that there are smaller NSA programs, known as "scripts," that can perform surveillance on 38 different features of the iOS 3 and iOS 4 operating systems. These include the mapping feature, voicemail and photos, as well as Google Earth, Facebook and Yahoo! Messenger.
Canada's Communications Security Establishment used a software program called Olympia to map the Brazil's Mines and Energy Ministry communications by targeting "metadata" of phone calls and emails from and to the Brazilian ministry. The Australian Federal Government knew about the internet spying program PRISM months before Edward Snowden made details public.
The NSA monitored the president's public email account of former Mexican president Felipe Calderón (thus gaining access to the communications of high ranking cabinet members), the E-Mails of several high-ranking members of Mexico's security forces and text and the mobile phone communication of current Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto. The N.S.A. tries to gather cellular and landline phone numbers — often obtained from American diplomats — for as many foreign officials as possible. The contents of the phone calls are stored in computer databases that can regularly be searched using keywords.
The NSA has been monitoring telephone conversations of 35 world leaders. The U.S. government's first public acknowledgment that it tapped the phones of world leaders was reported on October 28, 2013 by the Wall Street Journal after an internal U.S. government internal review turned up NSA monitoring of some 35 world leaders. The GCHQ has tried to keep its mass -surveillance programmessecret because it feared a "damaging public debate" on the scale of its activities which could lead to legal challenges against its mass-surveillance programmes.
The Guardian revealed that the NSA had been monitoring telephone conversations of 35 world leaders after being given the numbers by an official in another US government department. A confidential memo revealed that the NSA encouraged senior officials in such Departments as the White House, State and The Pentagon, to share their "Rolodexes" so the agency could add the telephone numbers of leading foreign politicians to their surveillance systems. Reacting to the news, German leader Angela Merkel, arriving in Brussels for an EU summit, accused the US of a breach of trust, saying: "We need to have trust in our allies and partners, and this must now be established once again. I repeat that spying among friends is not at all acceptable against anyone, and that goes for every citizen in Germany." The NSA collected in 2010 data on ordinary Americans' cellphone locations, but later discontinued it because it had no "operational value."
Under a programm known as MUSCULAR the National Security Agency, working with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world and therby gained the abilitiy to collect metadata and content at will from hundreds of millions of user accounts.
The mobile phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel might have been tapped by US intelligence. According to the Spiegel this monitoring goes back to 2002 and ended in the summer of 2013, while the New York Times reported that Germany has evidence that the NSA's surveillance of Merkel began during George W. Bush's tenure.
A highly sensitive signals intelligence collection program named Stateroom involing the interception of radio, telecommunications and internet traffic is conducted from sites at US embassies and consulates and from the diplomatic missions of other "Five eyes" intelligence partners including Australia, Britain and Canada in 80 locations around the world. The program conducted at US diplomatic missions is run in concert by the US intelligence agencies NSA and CIA in a joint venture group called "Special Collection Service" (SCS), whose members work undercover in shielded areas of the American Embassies and Consulates, where they are officially accredited as diplomats and as such enjoy special privileges. Under diplomatic protection, they are able to look and listen unhindered.
As part of a NSA program called Stateroom Australia's used Australian diplomatic embassies Australia's Defence Signals Directorate operates the clandestine surveillance facilities to intercept phone calls and data across Asia.
The NSA targeted in France both people suspected of association with terrorist activities as well as people belonging to the worlds of business, politics or French state administration. The NSA monitored and recorded the content of telephone communications and the history of the connections of each target i.e. the metadata. According to the Wall Street Journal data allegedly collected by the NSA in France was actually collected by French intelligence agencies outside France and then shared with the United States. This was confirmed by National Security Agency director Keith Alexander on October 29, 2013, when he said foreign intelligence services collected phone records in war zones and other areas outside their borders and provided them to the NSA. The French newspaper Le Monde also disclosed new PRISM and Upstream slides (See Page 4, 7 and 8) coming from the "PRISM/US-984XN Overview" presentation.
Upstream collects data from fiber-optic cables and internet backbones.
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is the main British intelligence agency responsible for providing signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the British government and armed forces. Tempora – Collects data from transatlantic fibre-optic cables of major telecommunications corporations by directly tapping on them and from Internet backbones. Tempora uses intercepts on the fibre-optic cables that make up the backbone of the internet to gain access to swaths of internet users' personal data. The intercepts are placed in the United Kingdom and overseas, with the knowledge of companies owning either the cables or landing stations. It is a GCHQ program to create a large-scale "Internet buffer" which stores Internet content for three days and metadata for up to 30 days. Britain runs a large-scale intercept station in the Middle East, capable of tapping underwater fiber-optic cables and satellites, and extracting email, telephone, and web traffic. The information is then passed to the GCHQ and shared with the NSA. The operation costs around £1 billion and is still being assembled. It is part of the "Tempora" project. Edward Snowden disputes the Independent's claim that he, or anyone he has had direct contact with is the source of this information. Süddeutsche Zeitung's fiber optic revelations were also described as having been obtained from GC-Wiki by Snowden. GCHQ is believed to have forced some six global telecommunications and Internet companies to allow them to access more than 14 fiber optic cables that transport telephone communications. The six companies, BT, Vodafone, Viatel, Interoute, Verizon and Level-3, gave GCHQ access to the cables in return for payment, it is believed the companies had no choice in this decision. Three of the cables' terminal stations are on German territory; two of the cables are partially owned by Deutsche Telekom, who have denied knowledge of or participation in GCHQ's activities.
China's underground megaproject, the 816 Nuclear Military Plant in Chongqing (now declassified and opened to tourists), was reported to be "most worrying" for the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
Libya evaded surveillance by building "hardened and buried" bunkers at least 40 feet below ground level.
Shortly after the disclosures were published, US President Barack Obama asserted that the American public had no cause for concern because "nobody is listening to your telephone calls", and "there is no spying on Americans".
On 21 June 2013, the Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper issued an apology for giving false testimony under oath to the United States Congress, which is a felony under 18 USC s. 1001. Earlier in March that year, Clapper was asked by Senator Ron Wyden to clarify the alleged surveillance of U.S. citizens by the NSA:
In an interview shortly after Snowden's disclosures were first published, Clapper stated that he had misunderstood Wyden's question and answered in what he thought was the "least untruthful manner". Later, in his letter of apology, Clapper wrote that he had only focused on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during his testimony to Congress, and therefore, he "simply didn't think" about Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which justifies the mass collection of telephone data from U.S. citizens. Clapper said: "My response was clearly erroneous—for which I apologize".
To increase transparency and because it is in the public interest the Director of National Intelligence authorized the declassification and public release of the following documents pertaining to the collection of telephone metadata pursuant to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act on 31 July 2013. These documents were: # Cover Letter and 2009 Report on the National Security Agency's Bulk Collection Program for USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization # Cover Letters and 2011 Report on the National Security Agency's Bulk Collection Program for USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization # Primary Order for Business Records Collection Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act
In a press conference on 9 August 2013 President Obama announced four steps to reform U.S. intelligence gathering measures, to increase transparency and restore public trust in surveillance by NSA, but made no indication to alter the NSA's ongoing mass collection of phone data and surveillance of internet communications in the short term. These four steps are: # Reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act which allows the National Security Agency to collect telephone data from millions of communications without a warrant. # More transparency: Declassification of the legal rationale for the US government's phone-data collection, release of NSA information that details its mission, authorities, and oversight, installation of a "civil liberties and privacy officer" at the National Security and a website created by the American intelligence community to inform Americans and the world what the intelligence community does and what it doesn't do, how it carries out its mission, and why it does so. # More balance between security and privacy at the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court by appointing an adversarial voice – such as a lawyer assigned to advocate privacy rights – to argue against the US government to ensure to make sure civil liberties concerns have an independent voice in appropriate cases. # Review of all US government intelligence and communications technologies by a group of external experts (composed of former intelligence officials, civil liberties and privacy advocates, and others) which shall provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of 2014 outlining how the US government can maintain the trust of the people, how it can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how surveillance technologies are used and how surveillance impacts US foreign policy. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has been directed on 13 August 2013 to form and review the new Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which is to brief Obama on its interim findings within 60 days of the establishment of the group. A final report and recommendations are to be submitted through Clapper to the president no later than 15 December 2013. The group's purpose is to assess whether the US "employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust."
In a reaction to Obama above reform proposals responsible for overseeing the program which collects Americans' telephone communications data in bulk say that they felt in recent years limited in their ability to challenge its scope and legality. They pointed out to intelligence officials who would not volunteer details if questions were not asked with absolute precision in regular meetings; hearing only from government officials steeped in the legal and national security arguments for aggressive spying; and House members must rely on the existing committee staff, many of whom used to work for the spy agencies they are tasked with overseeing, while Senate Intelligence Committee members can each designate a full-time staffer for the committee who has full access. Additional obstacles stemmed from the classified nature of documents, which lawmakers may read only in specific, secure offices; rules require them to leave their notes behind and restrict their ability to discuss the issues with colleagues, outside experts or their own staff.
On 12 August 2013, President Obama announced the creation of an "independent" panel of "outside experts" to review the NSA's surveillance programs. The panel is due to be established by the Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, who will consult and provide assistance to them. The "independent" panel of "outside experts" is composed of intelligence insiders, former White House officials and Obama advisers, who did not discuss any changes to the National Security Agency's controversial activities at its first meeting.
On 19 July 2013, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Obama administration, urging it to allow companies involved in the NSA's surveillance to report about these activities and to increase government transparency.
On 18 August 2013, Amnesty International asserted that if journalists maintain their independence and report critically about governments, they too may be "targeted" by the British government.
On 20 August 2013, Index on Censorship argued that the British government's "threat of legal action" against The Guardian was a "direct attack on press freedom in the UK".
On 4 September 2013, U.N. Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue stressed that the "protection of national security secrets must never be used as an excuse to intimidate the press into silence."
Detention without charge: On 18 August 2013, David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained under Schedule 7 of the United Kingdom's Terrorism Act of 2000. Miranda was returning from Berlin, carrying 58,000 GCHQ documents on a single computer file to Greenwald in Brazil. Greenwald described Miranda's detention as "clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ". The Metropolitan Police and Home Secretary Teresa May argued that Miranda's detention "legally and procedurally sound". However, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, responsible for introducing the bill in the House of Lords, said that under the act, police can only detain someone "to assess whether they are involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism". He said "I am very clear that this does not apply, either on its terms or in its spirit, to Mr Miranda." Antonio Patriota the Brazilian Minister of External Relations said that Miranda's detention was "not justifiable". The reasons for Miranda's detention were sought from the police by British politicians and David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. The United States government later said that British officials had given them a "heads up" about Miranda's detention, while adding that the decision to detain him had been a British one.
Destruction of evidence: Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the newspaper had received legal threats from the British government and was urged to surrender all documents leaked by Snowden. Security officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) later made a visit to the newspaper's London headquarters to ensure that all computer hard drives containing Snowden's documents were destroyed.
Editing of interview transcript: After the NSA Director of Compliance John Delong was interviewed by The Washington Post regarding these disclosures, the White House sent a "prepared" statement to The Post and ordered that "none of Delong's comments could be quoted on the record". The Post refused to comply.
Forced landing of Morales' plane: Five Latin American countries – Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela – voiced their concerns to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon after the plane of Bolivia's President Evo Morales was denied entry by a number of western European countries, and was forced to reroute to Austria based on "suspicion that United States whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board". Ban said it was important to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future and emphasized that "A Head of State and his or her aircraft enjoy immunity and inviolability".
In September 2013, Senators Mark Udall, Richard Blumenthal, Rand Paul and Ron Wyden introduced a "sweeping surveillance reform" proposal. Called the most comprehensive proposal to date, the "Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act" seeks to end the bulk collection of communication records made legal in section 215 of the Patriot Act and to reign in other "electronic eavesdropping programs". Wyden told the Guardian the Snowden disclosures have "caused a sea change in the way the public views the surveillance system". The draft bill is a blend of 12 similar proposals as well as other legislative proposals.
At the end of October 2013 U.S. Senators introduced two different reform proposals. One, the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 3361/ S. 1599), would effectively halt "bulk" records collection under the USA Patriot Act, while it also would require a warrant to deliberately search for the e-mail and phone call content of Americans that is collected as part of a surveillance program targeting foreigners located overseas. Another would preserve the program while strengthening privacy protections. It would also codifying the requirement that analysts have a "reasonable articulable suspicion" that a phone number is associated with terrorism to query the NSA phone records database; requiring that the FISA court promptly review each such determination; and limiting the retention period for phone records. Both proposals share the introduction of a special advocate to promote privacy interests before the FISA court.
The media leaks caused tension in the bilateral relations of the United States with several of its allies and economic partners as well as in its relationship with the European Union:
The Brazilian government expressed outrage at the revelations that the National Security Agency directly targeted the communications of president Dilma Rousseff and her top aides. It called the incident an "unacceptable violation of sovereignty" and requested an immediate explanation from the U.S. government.
Brazil's government signaled it would consider cancelling Rousseff's state visit to Washington – the only state visit for a foreign leader scheduled this year. A senior Brazilian official stated the country would downgrade commercial ties unless Rousseff receives a public apology. That would include ruling out the $4 billion dollar purchase of Boeing F-18 Super Hornet fighters and cooperation on oil and biofuels technology, as well as other commercial agreements.
According to Huang Chengqing, Director of China's Computer emergency response team, about 2.91 million mainframe computers in China have been hijacked by more than 4,000 servers based in the United States. On 17 June 2013, two weeks after the first disclosure was published, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said:
"We believe the United States should pay attention to the international community's concerns and demands and give the international community the necessary explanation"
On 21 October, 2013, France summoned Charles Rivkin, the U.S. Ambassador to France, to clarify and explain the NSA's surveillance of French citizens. Speaking to journalists in the French seaport of Lorient, President François Hollande said:
"We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies...We ask that this immediately stop."
According to the Wall Street Journal data allegedly collected by the NSA in France was actually collected by French intelligence agencies outside France and then shared with the United States.
; On 1 July 2013, the German Foreign Ministry summoned Philip D. Murphy, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, over allegations that the NSA had spied on institutions of the European Union. On 24 October 2013, the Foreign Ministry summoned John B. Emerson, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, to clarify allegations that the NSA had tapped into Chancellor Angela Merkel's mobile phone.
In early August 2013, Germany canceled largely symbolic Cold War-era administrative agreements with Britain, the United States and France, which had granted the Western countries which had troops stationed in West Germany the right to request surveillance operations to protect those forces.
At the end of August 2013, on orders of the German domestic intelligence agency, a federal police helicopter conducted a low-altitude flyover of the United States Consulate in Frankfurt, apparently in search of suspected clandestine eavesdropping facilities. A German official called it a symbolic "shot across the bow."
Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta asked John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, to clarify if the NSA had illegally intercepted telecommunications in Italy. On 23 October 2013, the Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told reporters in Rome:
"We have a duty to (provide) clarity to Italian citizens - we must obtain the whole truth and tell the whole truth, without regard for anyone."
On 24 October 2013, the Mexican Foreign Minister José Antonio Meade Kuribreña met with U.S. Ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne to clarify surveillance details revealed by Snowden.
On 25 October 2013, the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy summoned James Costos, the U.S. Ambassador to Spain, to clarify reports about the NSA's surveillance of the Spanish government. Spanish EU Minister, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, said such practices, if true, were "inappropriate and unacceptable". An EU delegation was to meet officials in Washington to convey their concerns. According to the Wall Street Journal data allegedly collected by the NSA in Spain was actually collected by Spanish intelligence agencies outside Spain and then shared with the United States. This was confirmed by National Security Agency director Keith Alexander on October 29, 2013, when he said foreign intelligence services collected phone records in war zones and other areas outside their borders and provided them to the NSA.
Early July 2013, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, wrote to 2 US officials that "mutual trust and confidence have been seriously eroded and I expect the U.S. to do all that it can to restore them".
On 20 October 2013, a committee at the European Parliament backed a measure that, if enacted, would require American companies to seek clearance from European officials before complying with United States warrants seeking private data. The legislation has been under consideration for two years. The vote is part of efforts in Europe to shield citizens from online surveillance in the wake of revelations about a far-reaching spying program by NSA.
The European Council meeting at the end of October 2013 in its statement signed by all 28 EU leaders while stressing that "intelligence gathering is a vital element in the fight against terrorism" and noting "the close relationship between Europe and the USA and the value of that partnership", said that this must "be based on respect and trust," a lack of which "could prejudice the necessary cooperation in the field of intelligence gathering".
In early October 2013, former GCHQ director Sir David Omand, speaking of how useful for Russia's intelligece services Snowden's stay in Russia could be, told the BBC: "Part of me says that not even the KGB in its heyday of Philby, Burgess and Maclean in the 1950s could have dreamt of acquiring 58,000 highly classified intelligence documents." Snowden stated that he had not leaked any documents to Russia.
Andrew Parker, the director general of the UK Security Service maintained in October 2013 that the exposing of intelligence techniques had given extremists the ability to evade the intelligence agencies; he said,"It causes enormous damage to make public the reach and limits of GCHQ techniques. Such information hands the advantage to the terrorists. It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will."
Shortly afterwards, The Financial Times editorialised that security chiefs were "right to be alarmed, knowing that terrorists can change their modus operandi in response to new information on their capabilities" and there was "no firm evidence that the intelligence agencies are using these new collection capabilities for malign ends."
On June 14, 2013, US federal prosecutors filed a sealed complaint, made public on June 21, charging Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person; the latter two charges being under the Espionage Act.
In June 2013, the U.S. military blocked access to parts of the Guardian website related to government surveillance programs for thousands of defense personnel across the country, and to the entire Guardian website for personnel stationed in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South Asia. A spokesperson described the filtering as a routine "network hygiene" measure intended to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information onto the Department of Defense's [DOD] unclassified networks.
On Sunday, August 4, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey was shown on the weekly ABC interview show This Week saying that Snowden "has caused us some considerable damage to our intelligence architecture. Our adversaries are changing the way that they communicate."
United States President Barack Obama was dismissive of Snowden in late June, saying, "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker." In early August, Obama said that Snowden was no patriot and that Americans would have been better off if they had remained unaware of the NSA surveillance activities that Snowden revealed. Obama also said that he had "called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks.... My preference, and I think the American people's preference, would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws; a thoughtful fact-based debate that would then lead us to a better place." On August 9, Obama announced that he was ordering Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to arrange for "a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies." Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that Snowden may have done a public service and started a needed debate about the balance between privacy and security. "As loath as I am to give any credit for what's happened here, which was egregious, I think it's clear that some of the conversations that this has generated, some of the debate, actually probably needed to happen," he said, "It's unfortunate they didn't happen some time ago, but if there's a good side to this, that's it."
Representative Thomas Massie was one of few members of Congress to question the constitutional validity of the government surveillance programs and suggest that Snowden should be granted immunity from prosecution. Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul offered tentative support for Snowden, saying they were reserving judgment on Snowden until more information about the surveillance programs and about Snowden's motives were known. Senator Paul said, "I do think when history looks at this, they are going to contrast the behavior of James Clapper, our National Intelligence Director, with Edward Snowden. Mr. Clapper lied in Congress in defiance of the law, in the name of security. Mr. Snowden told the truth in the name of privacy." Paul later called Snowden a "civil disobedient", like Martin Luther King Jr., but who faced life imprisonment. Representative John Lewis made comparisons between Snowden and Gandhi, saying the leaker was appealing to a "higher law".
Senator Bill Nelson, "What Edward Snowden did amounts to an act of treason." Similar comments have also been made by Rep. Peter T. King, Rep. John Boehner, and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
On July 25, the US Senate Committee on Appropriations unanimously adopted an amendment by Senator Lindsey Graham to the "Fiscal Year 2014 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Bill" that would seek sanctions against any country that offers asylum to Snowden.
In response to the information release by Snowden, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to curtail the NSA gathering and storage of the personal records, but the House rejected it by a narrow margin of 205–217. Amash subsequently told Fox News that Snowden was "a whistle-blower. He told us what we need to know."
On the Sunday ABC interview show This Week, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Maryland, of the United States House Select Committee on Intelligence was asked by Raddatz, "Are efforts being thwarted in trying to get information for members of Congress?" He replied,
"...[S]ince this incident occurred with Snowden, we've had three different hearings for members of our Democratic Caucus, and the Republican Caucus, where General Alexander has come with his deputy, Chris Inglis, to ask any questions that people have as it relates to this information. And we will continue to do that because what we're trying to do now is to get the American public to know more about what's going on....But we can do better. I have to educate my caucus more, the Democratic Caucus. And we're trying to declassify as much as we can."
U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said on the August 11 edition of Fox News Sunday that Snowden had become a hero to young Americans, as he reminded them of the Jason Bourne character. McCain attributed it to generation change and a lack of confidence in the federal government. "Right now there's kind of a generational change," he said. "Young Americans do not trust this government."
Gordon Humphrey, the conservative Republican senator for New Hampshire from 1979–1991, expressed support for Snowden. Glenn Greenwald revealed that Humphrey, a former member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had been in contact with Snowden via email. Humphrey told Snowden, "Provided you have not leaked information that would put in harms way any intelligence agent, I believe you have done the right thing in exposing what I regard as massive violation of the United States Constitution." Humphrey cited Snowden as a "courageous whistle-blower".
Tom McClintock (R-Calif) came out in favor of amnesty for Snowden, saying "I think it would be best if the American government granted him amnesty to get him back to America where he can answer questions without the threat of prosecution... We have some very good laws against sharing secrets and he broke those laws. On the other hand, he broke them for a very good reason because those laws were being used in direct contravention of our 4th Amendment rights as Americans."
After the June 2013 release, mass protests against government surveillance were reported in many parts of the world. In the United States, a political movement known as "Restore the Fourth" was formed and it gained momentum rapidly. In early July, Restore the Fourth was responsible for protests in more than 80 cities including Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. These protests were loosely coordinated via online messaging services and involved protestors from all over the United States. Towards the end of July, it was reported in the media that the German intelligence agency BND had been actively cooperating with the NSA, which sparked demonstrations in 40 German cities involving thousands of protestors all over the country.
Glenn Greenwald, one of the journalists who received the documents, praised Snowden for having done a service by revealing the surveillance on the American public. John Cassidy, also of The New Yorker, called Snowden "a hero", and said that "in revealing the colossal scale of the US government's eavesdropping on Americans and other people around the world, [Snowden] has performed a great public service that more than outweighs any breach of trust he may have committed." CNN columnist Douglas Rushkoff also called Snowden's leak an act of heroism. Amy Davidson, writing in The New Yorker, was thankful for the "overdue" conversation on privacy and the limits of domestic surveillance.
American political commentators and public figures such as Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, Michael Moore, Glenn Beck, Matt Drudge, Alex Jones, Andrew Napolitano, Oliver Stone, Michael Savage, and Stephen Walt praised Snowden for exposing secret government surveillance.
Other commentators were more critical of Snowden's methods and motivations. Jeffrey Toobin, for example, denounced Snowden as "a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison." Writing in the The New Yorker, Toobin argued that the programs exposed were not illegal, therefore Snowden was not a whistleblower. Further, Toobin questioned "whether the government can function when all of its employees (and contractors) can take it upon themselves to sabotage the programs they don't like".
Former Vice President Dick Cheney, suggested in June 2013 that Snowden might be a spy working for the Chinese government.
Stewart Baker, a former NSA general counsel in the early 1990s, said at a July 18, 2013 hearing, "I am afraid that hyped and distorted press reports orchestrated by Edward Snowden and his allies may cause us – or other nations – to construct new restraints on our intelligence gathering, restraints that will leave us vulnerable to another security disaster."
Former CIA and NSA chief General Michael Hayden in late June 2013 welcomed the public debate about the balance between privacy and security that the leaks had provoked: "I am convinced the more the American people know exactly what it is we are doing in this balance between privacy and security, the more they know the more comfortable they will feel." In September 2013, Hayden stressed the indisputable legality of "what the NSA is doing" and called Snowden a "troubled young man", albeit "morally arrogant to a tremendous degree"; he also said about his prospects in Russia: "I suspect he will end up like most of the rest of the defectors who went to the old Soviet Union: Isolated, bored, lonely, depressed -- and most of them ended up alcoholics."
Some former U.S. intelligence officials speculated that Chinese or Russian intelligence agents might have gleaned additional classified material from Snowden, a view shared by some former Russian agents. Snowden, however, told Greenwald in July that "I never gave any information to either government, and they never took anything from my laptops."
In late June 2013, Former US President Jimmy Carter said: "He's obviously violated the laws of America, for which he's responsible, but I think the invasion of human rights and American privacy has gone too far ... I think that the secrecy that has been surrounding this invasion of privacy has been excessive, so I think that the bringing of it to the public notice has probably been, in the long term, beneficial."
The editors of Bloomberg News argued that, while the government ought to prosecute Snowden, the media's focus on Snowden took attention away from issues of U.S. government surveillance, the interpretations of the Patriot Act, and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court actions, all of which are "what really matters in all this." Greenwald accused the media in the U.S. of focusing on Edward Snowden instead of on wrongdoing by Clapper and other U.S. officials. In an op-ed, author Alex Berenson argued that the federal government should have flown a representative to Hong Kong to ask Snowden to give testimony in front of the U.S. Congress and offer him a fair criminal trial, with a view to preventing further unintended disclosures of classified information to other countries.
On June 9, a We the People petition was launched on the whitehouse.gov website to seek "a full, free, and absolute pardon for any crimes [Snowden] has committed or may have committed related to blowing the whistle on secret NSA surveillance programs". The petition attained 100,000 signatures within two weeks, thus meeting the threshold and requiring an official response from the White House. In October 2013, the Administration still had not responded to the petition, but gave no excuse for the four month delay.
On August 8, 2013, Lavabit, a Texas-based secure email service provider reportedly used by Snowden, abruptly announced it was shutting down operations after nearly 10 years of business. The owner, Ladar Levison, posted a statement online saying he would rather go out of business than "become complicit in crimes against the American people." He also said that he was barred by law from disclosing what he had experienced over the preceding 6 weeks, and that he was appealing the case in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Multiple sources speculated that the timing of the statement suggested that Lavabit had been targeted by the US government in its pursuit of information about Snowden. The following day, a similar email service, Silent Circle, preemptively shut down in order to "prevent spying". Snowden said about the Lavabit closure, "Ladar Levison and his team suspended the operations of their 10-year old business rather than violate the Constitutional rights of their roughly 400,000 users. The President, Congress, and the Courts have forgotten that the costs of bad policy are always borne by ordinary citizens, and it is our job to remind them that there are limits to what we will pay." He said that "internet titans" like Google should ask themselves why they weren't "fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are".
On 26 October 2013, an anti-NSA rally called "Stop Watching Us" was held in Washington, DC, billed by organizers as the "largest rally yet to protest mass surveillance". A diverse coalition of over 100 advocacy groups organized the event and attracted thousands of protestors calling for an end to the mass surveillance made public by Edward Snowden. According to the Guardian, the most popular sign was printed with the words "Thank you, Edward Snowden". In a statement written by Snowden and read to the crowd by Jesselyn Radack, Snowden said, "This isn't about red or blue party lines, and it definitely isn't about terrorism. It's about being able to live in a free and open society...elections are coming up, and we are watching you", adding that elected officials should be "public servants, not private investigators." Other speakers included former governor Gary Johnson and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, who said to the crowd,"It's time to roll back the surveillance state...It is time for the US government to stop watching us". Protests also took place in Germany.
The rally was held on the 12th anniversary of the Patriot Act, which protesters see as the beginning of the mass surveillance of American citizens. The "Stop Watching Us" website states that it demands reform of "Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act, the state secrets privilege, and the FISA Amendments Act to make clear that blanket surveillance of the Internet activity and phone records of any person residing in the US is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court." It also calls for an investigation into the extent of domestic spying, and asks that officials found violating the constitution be brought to justice.
;Germany Documents from Snowden show that cooperation between Berlin and Washington in the area of digital surveillance and defense intensified considerably during time of Chancellor Merkel. The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, is directly subordinated to the Chancellor's Office. Although Merkel denied knowing about surveillance, Germans take the claims seriously. According to Hansjörg Geiger, former head of the BND, findings/claims are Orwellian and mutual political and economic espionage would be explicitly forbidden.
;UK British Foreign Minister William Hague admitted that Britain's GCHQ was also spying and collaborating with the NSA, and defended the two agencies' actions as "indispensable." Meanwhile, UK Defence officials issued a confidential DA-Notice to British media asking for restraint in running further stories related to surveillance leaks including the PRISM programme and the British involvement therein. British Prime Minister David Cameron issued a veiled threat to resort to prior restraint, through high court injunctions and DA-Notices, if the Guardian did not obey his demands to stop reporting its revelations on spying by GCHQ and the NSA, a development that "alarmed" the Committee to Protect Journalists and that spurred 70 of the world's leading human rights organisation to write an open letter to the newspaper expressing their concern about press and other freedoms in the UK.
;UK A poll of UK public opinion in October 2013 found that Britons generally regarded Snowden as a "hero", with 60% supportive of his actions.
"What he has disclosed is patently in the public interest and as a whistleblower his actions were justified. He has exposed unlawful sweeping surveillance programmes that unquestionably interfere with an individual's right to privacy. States that attempt to stop a person from revealing such unlawful behaviour are flouting international law. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right."
Widney Brown, Senior Director of Amnesty, feared that Snowden would be at "great risk" of human rights violations if forcibly transferred to the United States, and urged no country to return Snowden to the US. Michael Bochenek, Director of Law and Policy at Amnesty International deplored the US pressure on governments to block Snowden's asylum attempts, saying "It is his unassailable right, enshrined in international law".
Human Rights Watch said that if Snowden were able to raise the issue of NSA mass surveillance without facing espionage charges, he would not have left the United States in the first place. Human Rights Watch writes that any country where Snowden seeks asylum should consider his claim fairly and protect his rights under international law, which recognizes that revealing official secrets is sometimes justified in the public interest.
Index on Censorship condemned the U.S. government for its "mass surveillance of citizens' private communications" and urged all government officials to uphold the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. A statement released by Index on Censorship said: "Whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden — as well as journalists reporting on the Prism scandal, who have come under fire — should be protected under the first amendment, not criminalised."
Navi Pillay, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said: "Snowden's case has shown the need to protect persons disclosing information on matters that have implications for human rights, as well as the importance of ensuring respect for the right to privacy".
Transparency International, International Association of Lawyers against Nuclear Arms and Vereinigung Deutscher Wissenschaftler awarded Snowden the German Whistleblowerpreis 2013.
The Humanist Union awarded him the Fritz Bauer Prize 2013.
Referring to Snowden's presence in the territory, Hong Kong chief executive Leung Chun-Ying assured that the government would "handle the case of Mr Snowden in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong [and] follow up on any incidents related to the privacy or other rights of the institutions or people in Hong Kong being violated." Pan-democrat legislators Gary Fan and Claudia Mo said that the perceived U.S. prosecution against Snowden will set "a dangerous precedent and will likely be used to justify similar actions" by authoritarian governments. During Snowden's stay, the two main political groups, the pan-democrats and Pro-Beijing camp, found rare agreement to support Snowden. The pro-Beijing DAB party even organised a separate march to Government headquarters for Snowden.
The People's Daily and the Global Times editorials of June 19 stated respectively that the central Chinese government was unwilling to be involved in a "mess" caused by others, and that the Hong Kong government should follow the public opinion and not concern itself with Sino-US relations. A Tsinghua University communications studies specialist, Liu Jianming, interpreted that the two articles as suggesting that the mainland government did not want further involvement in the case and that the Hong Kong government should handle it independently.
After Snowden left Hong Kong, Chinese-language newspapers such as the Ming Pao and the Oriental Daily expressed relief that Hong Kong no longer had to shoulder the burden of the Snowden situation. Mainland experts said that, although the Central Government did not want to appear to be intervening in the matter, it was inconceivable that the Hong Kong government acted independently in a matter that could have far-reaching consequences for Sino-US relations. One expert suggested that, by doing so, China had "returned the favor" for their not having accepted the asylum plea from Wang Lijun in February 2012. The official Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily denied the US government accusation that the PRC central government had allowed Snowden to escape, and said that Snowden helped in "tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask."
Correa criticized the US media for centering its focus on Snowden and countries supporting him, instead of focusing on the global and domestic privacy issues implicated in the leaked documents.
After Bolivian president Morales' plane was, reacting to a false tip that Snowden was on board, denied access to Spanish, French, and Italian airspace during a return flight from Moscow, the presidents of Uruguay, Argentina, Venezuela and Suriname joined Correa and a representative from Brazil, in Cochabamba, Bolivia to discuss the incident. Presidents Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua offered Snowden asylum after the meeting.
William Binney, a whistleblower who disclosed details of the NSA's mass surveillance activities, said that Snowden had "performed a really great public service to begin with by exposing these programs and making the government in a sense publicly accountable for what they're doing." After Snowden cited a conversation with a "reliable source" about allegations that the US was "hacking into China", Binney felt he was "transitioning from whistle-blower to a traitor."
Thomas Drake, former senior executive of NSA and whistleblower, said that he feels "extraordinary kinship" with Snowden. "What he did was a magnificent act of civil disobedience. He's exposing the inner workings of the surveillance state. And it's in the public interest. It truly is."
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange hailed Snowden as a "hero" who has exposed "one of the most serious events of the decade – the creeping formulation of a mass surveillance state." After charges against Snowden were revealed, Assange released a statement asking people to "step forward and stand with" Snowden. Following President Obama's assurances that changes are planned for the NSA surveillance program, Assange said in a written statement that Obama had "validated Edward Snowden's role as a whistle-blower".
Shamai Leibowitz, who leaked details about an FBI operation, said that the legal threats and "smear campaign" against Snowden are a "grave mistake" because "If the government really wanted to keep more secrets from coming out, they would do well to let this man of conscience go live his life in some other country."
In October 2013, four US whistleblowers and activists visited Moscow to present Snowden with an award for truth-telling titled The Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. Thomas Drake, one of the presenters, told reporters after the event that the US had "unchained itself from their own constitution" by banning the "real law and [using] a secret law and secret interpretations of law." He further explained that Snowden "had to escape the US to ensure any chance of freedom", claiming the US had made Snowden stateless by revoking his passport while in Russia, leading to his temporary asylum in the country. Drake praised Russia, saying it had "actually recognized the international law and granted him political asylum".
In September 2013, names of prominent figures in the United States were released to public following an Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel-mandated declassification by the NSA of relevant documents, and in response to an appeal by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
Tom Wicker, a columnist for The New York Times, was among those included in the Enemies List of the White House
Howard Baker, a Senate Majority Leader from Tennessee, was placed on the NSA watch list, according to documents declassified in September 2013
! Year | ! Disclosure | ! Size | ! Main Source(s) | ! Major publisher(s) |
2013 | Mass surveillance disclosures | 15,000 – 20,000 documents | Edward Snowden | The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, |
2010 | United States diplomatic cables leak | 251,287 diplomatic cables | Chelsea Manning | The Guardian, The New York Times. Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais, Wikileaks |
1971 | Pentagon Papers | 4,100 pages | Daniel Ellsberg | The New York Times |


text: It Starts with One Video: Big branding mistakes small businesses make Add to ... The Globe and Mail Published Wednesday, Nov. 14 2012, 4:32 PM EST Last updated Thursday, Nov. 15 2012, 12:15 PM EST Axle Davids, founder of Distility Branding, shares insights on how to make the right impression on consumers and how to keep branding consistent Watch More Video: Beyonce's genius 'un-marketing' plan busts iTunes records Inside one of Canada's few remaining clothing manufacturers Brand Mandela set to be mega brand WestJet gifts viral marketing hit for Christmas Why Birks is not a luxury brand Yes, online marketing efforts can turn into sales Hockey school takes MVP program public to raise profile How incentives can lure new players to hockey school Hockey school calls for help to attract new students How to get people to do your work for you Feast your eyes on FreshBooks' exquisite office David Taylor's big idea, a few years too early: branchless banking Would you describe Ottawa as an entrepreneurial city? As a young entrepreneur, who do you look up to? How deep is the talent pool in Ottawa's startup community? Cheese maker wants to use algae to make her factory more, um, green Paramount Pictures and Ron Burgundy want you to do their marketing for them Tips on working your personal brand from a YouTube star Calgary woman launches dog-walking/running service The running list of BlackBerry's marketing missteps Comments AA More Related to this Story It Starts With One How to create a brand: Five tips It Starts with One In Pictures: How to unlock your brand's full potential

subset: commoncrawl


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Find a hostel in Queretaro Del Arteaga Mexico and save money on discount lodging. Hosteling in Queretaro Del Arteaga Mexico offers a different travel experience than staying at traditional accommodations. Youth hostels allow you to meet new people and learn from other international and worldly travelers. Most hostels are conveniently located in the center of the action close to public transportation, including buses and rails. Staying at a hostel in Queretaro Del Arteaga Mexico is a great option whether you are backpacking or traveling on a budget . Browse our hostels and plan your Queretaro Del Arteaga Mexico vacation today!
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Youth Hostels Queretaro, Mexico - Santiago de Queretaro (official City's name) is one of the cleanest, safest and most beautiful cities
Youth Hostels Queretaro, Mexico - With more than 15 years of experience, Gema's House is characterized by large numbers of foreign student
Youth Hostels Queretaro, Mexico - Hostal Itza, is a concept of affordable housing, we offer comfortable beds in dormitory rooms with bunk beds
Youth Hostels Queretaro, Mexico - Hostal Galerie is located in the historic center of Quer�taro, that is found in the center of M�xico,
Youth Hostels Queretaro, Mexico - We are a modern, fully redecorated green hostel/hotel offering a variety of privates rooms and dorms in the heart of Queretaro historic center.
Youth Hostels Queretaro, Mexico - Ocote is the perfect hostel for your holidays!
Youth Hostels Queretaro, Mexico - We offer apartments as well as private rooms, completely equipped with all the necessary services.
Youth Hostels Cancun, Mexico - Backpackers & Champs Sports Bar offers the best, cheapest, and most fun vacation packages in Cancun. $29 US gets you lodging, open bar, gourmet dinner & breakfast every day! We have the lowest price adventure tours inc. scuba skydiving & Mayan Ruins
Youth Hostels Isla Holbox, Mexico - Cheap, central and close to the beach the hostel is ideal families, young people and backpackers looking for a warm atmosphere in which to relax and socialize. It offers private bungalows, cabins ensuite, cabanas, dorms, house for rent and tents area
Youth Hostels Punta Colonet, Mexico - Full-facilities, beach-front hostel in Punta Colonet, Northern Baja California, with access to prime surfing spots, fishing, mountain biking, skating, and Parque Nacional San Pedro Martir. Visit cuatrocasashostel dot com to book a bed!


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Lean Cuisine Culinary Collection Mushroom Mezzaluna Ravioli -- UPC 13800-58358 is being recalled after three people reported finding glass in the product.
The production codes are 2311587812 and 2312587812; the "best before date" appears as DEC 2013.
The recall is limited to these two days of production, which were distributed nationwide. No other production dates, sizes or varieties of Lean Cuisine products are affected.
The entrée being recalled was produced during early November, 2012. Nestlé is calling on consumers to examine their freezer inventory for specific packages of the product. To locate the production code, consumers should look for the gray "proof of purchase" panel, located on the right end flap of the package, below the ingredient statement.
Consumers who may have purchased the recalled Lean Cuisine item should not consume the product, but instead should contact Nestlé Consumer Services at (866) 586-9424 or firstname.lastname@example.com for further instructions.
Nestlé will provide a replacement coupon to reporting consumers and also may make arrangements to retrieve the product for further examination.
No injuries have been reported.


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Meetups / Maint Street Armory (PTV, ATL, MDP, YMAS Concert)
Date:Tuesday, April 30th, 2013 (7 months ago)
Time:5:00 pm
Address:900 East Main St.
DiscussView announcement
cucumberdogs10 months ago
gubbins-r-us9 months ago - RSVP'd
I don't know any of you people but this seems like it'd be awesome. :3
c-reativitea9 months ago - RSVP'd
I totally wasn't expecting to see Rochester on the list. How do we know who is who?
death-without-commitment9 months ago - Organizer
you get a sticker when you find me that you write your url on, and you get a tumblr sticker and a pin if you find me before i run out.
were-one-step-away8 months ago - RSVP'd
oh my god, this is amazing
r4tchetwbu8 months ago - RSVP'd
this is so exciting, how are we all going to meet up?!
black-hole8 months ago
This is wonderful haha cant wait
r4tchetwbu7 months ago - RSVP'd
anyone else get early admission?


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Made in Michigan Gifts: Handmade Rugs from Local WoolCross Village Rug Works, started by residents Cheryl Reed and Mary Ann Van Lokeren, brings both art and jobs to their village, producing beautiful handmade rugs from local sourced and spun wool. Full article... |
Made in Michigan Gifts: Hand-Thrown Pottery DishwareHand-thrown, hand-painted pottery dishware by Traverse City native K.S. O'Brien makes a great Made in Michigan gift. Full article... |
Ultimate Up North Kitchen Designers Share Tips for Designing Your Dream KitchenAre you looking for a signature kitchen design to fit your family's tastes and needs? Professional designers, all members of the National Kitchen & Bath Association share their tips for success. Full article... |
Want to Hide the Mess in Your Kitchen? Find Out HowDo you love to cook but hate to have your guest see the mess in the kitchen? Read about the Bailey family solution and then check it out for yourself: #17 on the Ultimate Up North Kitchen Tour. Full article... |
Earthy Home Style Picks—and Earth-FriendlyIt can be a challenge to bridge interior design styles from one season to the next, but these earthy—and earth-friendly—delights send summer off in style. Full article... |
Northern Michigan Style: Big, Bold and Bright for SummerItems for cottage life including a chair and pillows from Anchor Cottage in Suttons Bay and water resistant bins and a Vera Bradley apron from The Front Porch in Suttons Bay. Full article... |
The Pro File: Ryan Sigsbey, Fife Lake Log DoctorInterview with Ryan Sigsbey, taking his Northern Michigan log cabin repair skills around the country. Full article... |
Northern Style: Spring is in the AirWarm up with romantic touches of spring. Full article... |
Northern Style: Holiday DazzlesA little old, a little new, a little shimmer and lots of blue. Full article... |
Northern Style: The New Mod Has the Blues—and BlacksThe new mod is big on cool blacks and blues, warm browns and plenty of personality. Full article... |


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Learn simple techniques and timing for starting vegetable and herb seeds indoors, transplanting, growing on, and hardening off the young plants. Learn time tables for planting vegetables directly from seed, and find out how you can extend your season with repeat or succession plantings.
Other Workshops
Growing Great Garlic Extending the Harvest
Speaker Bio
Ira Wallace lives and gardens at Acorn Community Farm, home of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, where she coordinates variety selection and seed growers. Southern Exposure offers more than 700 varieties of non-GMO, open-pollinated and organic seeds. Wallace also co-organizes the Heritage Harvest Festival at Monticello. Visit her blog, Gardening in the Southeast, at MotherEarthNews.com.
Visit www.southernexposure.com for more information.