Quote:US spy leaker Edward Snowden 'missing' in Hong Kong

Ed Snowden explains why he became a whistleblower (Video courtesy of The Guardian, Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras)
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Q&A: Prism and privacy
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An ex-CIA employee who leaked details of US top-secret phone and internet surveillance has disappeared from his hotel in Hong Kong.

Edward Snowden, 29, checked out from his hotel on Monday. His whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to be still in Hong Kong.

Earlier, he said he had an "obligation to help free people from oppression".

It emerged last week that US agencies were gathering millions of phone records and monitoring internet data.

A spokesman for the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the case had been referred to the Department of Justice as a criminal matter.

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“
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I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded”

Profile: Edward Snowden
Could Hong Kong shelter Snowden?
Q&A: Prism and privacy
Meanwhile a petition posted on the White House website, calling for Mr Snowden's immediate pardon, has gathered more than 30,000 signatures.

However an opinion poll commissioned by the Washington Post suggests a majority of Americans think government monitoring of phone records is acceptable if the aim is to fight terrorism.

Transatlantic fallout
Hong Kong's broadcaster RTHK said Mr Snowden checked out of the Mira hotel on Monday.

Reuters news agency quoted hotel staff as saying that he had left at noon.

Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian journalist, told the BBC he believed Mr Snowden was still in Hong Kong.

The Chinese territory has an extradition treaty with the US, although analysts say any attempts to bring Mr Snowden to America may take months and could be blocked by Beijing.

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US media response
A USA Today editorial accepts that "the primary result of Snowden's actions is a plus. He has forced a public debate on the sweepingly invasive programs that should have taken place before they were created". But, it goes on, "pure motives and laudable effects don't alter the fact that he broke the law".

An editorial in the Chicago Tribune argues that "some new restrictions" in the US intelligence gathering programme may be in order, adding: "If the government is looking for, say, calls between the United States and terrorists in Pakistan or Yemen, why can't it simply demand records of calls to certain foreign countries. Is there no way to narrow the search to leave most Americans out of it?"

Robert O'Harrow in the Washington Post writes that the growing reliance on contractors in US intelligence gathering "reflects a massive shift toward outsourcing over the past 15 years, in part because of cutbacks in the government agencies". He argues that this "has dramatically increased the risk of waste and contracting abuses... but given the threat of terrorism and the national security mandates from Congress, the intelligence community had little choice".

Mr Snowden was revealed as the source of the leaks at his own request by the UK's Guardian newspaper.

He is believed to have arrived in Hong Kong on 20 May. A standard visa on arrival in the territory for a US citizen lasts for 90 days.

His revelations have caused transatlantic political fallout, amid allegations that the UK's electronic surveillance agency, GCHQ, used the US system to snoop on British citizens.

Foreign Secretary William Hague cancelled a trip to Washington to address the UK parliament on Monday and deny the claims.

Mr Snowden is described by the Guardian as an ex-CIA technical assistant, currently employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, a defence contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA).

He told the newspaper: "The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting.

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things. I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded."

Mr Snowden said he did not believe he had committed a crime: "We have seen enough criminality on the part of government. It is hypocritical to make this allegation against me."


Vatis: NSA's Prism 'fully authorised by US law'
But he admitted that he could end up in jail and feared for people who knew him.

'Core values'
In a statement, Booz Allen Hamilton confirmed Mr Snowden had been an employee for less than three months.

"If accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the statement said.

At a daily press briefing on Monday, White House press secretary Jay Carney said he could not comment on the Snowden case, citing an ongoing investigation.

The first of the leaks came out on Wednesday night, when the Guardian reported a US secret court ordered phone company Verizon to hand over to the NSA millions of records on telephone call "metadata".

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Major US security leaks
Pentagon papers, 1971: Daniel Ellsberg leaks study showing the government had knowledge it was unlikely to win Vietnam war
Watergate, 1972: Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reveal extent of cover-up over burglary at Democrat National Committee HQ
Iran-Contra affair, 1986: Iranian cleric reveals illegal US arms sales to Iran, the proceeds of which are later used to fund Nicaraguan Contras
Valerie Plame, 2003: Ms Plame is revealed to be an undercover CIA agent, ending her covert career
Abu Ghraib, 2004: Publication of pictures showing abuse of detainees at Iraq prison by US officials turns initial media reports of abuse into full-blown scandal
Bradley Manning, 2010: The soldier downloads thousands of classified documents from military servers and hands them over to Wikileaks
US leaks that shook the world
What can you learn from phone records?
Just how much do the spooks know?
The metadata include the numbers of both phones on a call, its duration, time, date and location (for mobiles, determined by which mobile signal towers relayed the call or text).

On Thursday, the Washington Post and Guardian said the NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a programme known as Prism.

All the internet companies deny giving the US government access to their servers.

Prism is said to give the NSA and FBI access to emails, web chats and other communications directly from the servers of major US internet companies.

The data is used to track foreign nationals suspected of terrorism or spying. The NSA is also collecting the telephone records of American customers, but said it is not recording the content of their calls.

US director of national intelligence James Clapper's office said information gathered under Prism was obtained with the approval of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court (Fisa).

Prism was authorised under changes to US surveillance laws passed under President George W Bush, and renewed last year under Barack Obama.

Mr Obama has defended the surveillance programmes, assuring Americans that nobody was listening to their calls.

Flonne Wrote:spy

Asen Wrote:That single word in that article just discredited this entire news site

Flonne Wrote:The media in general is slandering the hell out of him; I heard a friend say Fox News called him a highschool dropout NEET...how does that even make sense, he was a network admin for a massive government organization, probably making 7 figures. I wish I could make 7 figures a year as a NEET, currently I'm making 0 figures. And why isn't Fox supporting him, I thought they were anti government and all that pomegranate.

SaptaZapta Wrote:They're not calling him a spy, they're calling him "US spy leaker". i.e., the guy who leaked the fact that the US spies on everyone.
If they wanted to call him a spy and a leaker, they'd say "spy and leaker", "spy, leaker" or "spy/leaker".
At least that's how I read the title.
Disclaimer: English is not my native language.

Words Wrote:It's an awful title and it's calling the guy a spy and a leaker. US, spy and leaker are used as adjectives in that sentence to describe Edward Snowden.
Next time use the whole sentence and not just a "fragment" (US spy leaker) to see what it means, because figuring out that fragment alone is a headache.

EDIT: Also, I don't think you can get "the guy who leaked the fact that the US spies on everyone" from "US spy leaker". For that sentence (US spy leaker) to make any sense, spy must be the noun. But I'm not 100% sure about it. I know @Felicitates; also majors in languages so maybe we can get some help from her. Errr... does she even visit anymore?

SaptaZapta Wrote:Let's see.

"American car manufacturer General Motors ...." GM is not a car, it is a company that manufactures cars.
"American basketball player Larry Bird... " Mr. Bird is not a basketball, he is a person who played basketball.
"American wife beater Bobby Brown..." Mr. Brown is not a wife, he is a person who beat his wife.
by the same token
"American spy leaker Edward Snowden..." Mr. Snowden is not a spy, he is a person who leaks spies.

Now, if it had been "American spy, leaker Ed Snowden" then you'd have a case. But as it stands, and considering the body of the article never once calls him a spy, only using the term "leak", I stand by my interpretation.

Quote:Canada has its own eavesdropping agency, the Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC), which is charged with monitoring foreign communications. The agency clearly states that it "does not direct its activities at Canadians, Canadians abroad or any persons in Canada" and that it is prohibited by law from doing so.

But when it comes to looking into metadata information, CSEC may have more leeway. The Globe and Mail recently obtained documents under the Access to Information Act that reveal Defence Minister Peter MacKay in 2011 renewed a secret metadata eavesdropping program that had been secretly approved in 2005 by then Liberal Defence Minister Bill Graham.

Jamesie Wrote:It's not that the government structure and the internet can't exist, it's that the internet and the government need to work together. The government wants to keep tabs on things in the internet, people want the internet to stay private. The two need to meet in the middle; the internet needs to give up some privacy, and the government needs to take the privacy it is given and use it effectively and with in reason. As Obama defended Prism, you can't have 100 percent security and 100 percent privacy. The two cannot go together.

MissingLink Wrote:Apparently polls show most Americans support this stuff if it is deemed necessary to combat terrorism. Stupid sheep.

Asen Wrote:It's possible that the poll was manipulated. I wouldn't be surprised if it was.

Flonne Wrote:The media in general is slandering the hell out of him; I heard a friend say Fox News called him a highschool dropout NEET...how does that even make sense, he was a network admin for a massive government organization, probably making 7 figures. I wish I could make 7 figures a year as a NEET, currently I'm making 0 figures. And why isn't Fox supporting him, I thought they were anti government and all that pomegranate.

Jamesie Wrote:He got a GED. His big figure salary came from the recent contractor job where he worked for about three months (possibly the other contracting work he did as well). A lot of his other jobs were low level stuff. Also government jobs tend to pay decently (usually lower in higher level stuff than private sector, but it's made up with great benefits). Also Fox is conservative-leaning in the US, not anarchist.

KhainiWest Wrote:[video=youtube;MLZtAJCKatg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLZtAJCKatg[/video]

Flonne Wrote:That's still not the definition of "NEET". How is upholding the laws our country runs on anarchist, by the way?

Niernen Wrote:Microsoft (September 2007)
Yahoo (March 2008)
Google (January 2009)
Facebook (June 2009)
PalTalk (December 2009)
YouTube (September 2010)
Skype (February 2011)
AOL (March 2011)
Apple (October 2012)

So.... what aren't they watching?

maplefreak26 Wrote:Twitter.
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http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_23436141/google-we-want-disclose-all-prism-requests-but

Google wants to disclose all the requests.