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Snowden: Norway gives no guarantees

By on June 28, 2016 in Big Brother, Democracy, Snowden, US

Norway can issue no guarantee that Edward Snowden will not be extradited to the US, should he visit the country. This a Norwegian court decided Monday. The court argues that such guarantees can not be given when it comes to someone who is not presently inside the country.

In other words: Go to Norway first. Then we will see what happens.

This is hardly reassuring, as Norway is a Nato member with close ties to the US.

It is notable that the Norwegian court does not seem to subscribe to the general human rights principle that no one should be extradited for political “crimes”.

Why Norway? Reuters:

Snowden was granted asylum in Russia, which borders Norway, in 2013. He had been invited to Norway to receive a freedom of speech award from the local branch of writers’ group PEN International, but worried that he would be handed over to the United States, his lawyers have said.

Business as usual. No western democracy is willing to offer Snowden refuge.

At the same time, western politicians and intelligence mandarins are trying to use the fact that Snowden is staying in Russia to discredit him – thus creating an absurd example of circular reasoning.

It is not just about Snowden. As long as this goes on, our political leaders clearly demonstrate that they side with the forces of mass surveillance – not with the people.

And they get away with it, as nobody seems to care.

/ HAX

Reuters: Norwegian court rejects Edward Snowden lawsuit on free passage »

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Pardon for Snowden?

By on June 28, 2016 in Snowden, US

“We’re going to make a very strong case between now and the end of this administration that this is one of those rare cases for which the pardon power exists.”

The implicit point is that if Snowden is going to come home, his best chance is a presidential pardon, which is unlikely to come from Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. The final days of Obama’s final term are the best chance Snowden has, which gives Wizner and his team a little more than six months to make their case.

The Verge: President Obama should pardon Edward Snowden before leaving office »

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Embarrassed German intelligence official trying to discredit Snowden

By on June 10, 2016 in Big Brother, BND, Democracy, Germany, NSA, Snowden, Sweden

German intelligence mandarin Hans-Georg Maassen of the Verfassungsschutz has told the Bundestag’s NSA committee that it is “highly plausible” that whistleblower Edward Snowden is a Russian spy.

Obviously, it is very hard if at all possible to know if anyone is a Russian spy. There are even speculations about Chancellor Merkel (who is of East-German descent). But speculations are just speculations.

And when it comes to Maassen, he has some pretty strong incentives to smear Snowden — as the whistleblower’s revelations have left German intelligence with egg on its face.

One should consider the fact that Edward Snowden did not choose Russia as his refuge. The reason he is stuck there is that US authorities had revoked  his passport, stranding him in Moscow when in transit. And because all relevant western countries (including Germany) have refused him sanctuary / asylum.

If the German government were to let him into the country, Snowden could be in Berlin pretty quickly. But somehow, I presume Mr. Maassen wouldn’t be all too happy about that.

For the rest of us, it would be of great value and importance to have the whistleblower out of Russia and cooperating with western democratic oversight bodies, e.g. the Bundestag’s NSA committee.

/ HAX

Link: Verfassungsschutz­chef hält russische Agententätigkeit Snowdens für plausibel »

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UK spies cannot handle all the data

By on June 8, 2016 in Big Brother, Data Retention, GCHQ, Privacy, Snowden, UK

“British spies may have put lives at risk because their surveillance systems were sweeping up more data than could be analyzed, leading them to miss clues to possible security threats” according to documents in the Snowden files, now published by The Intercept.

A common analogy when it comes to mass surveillance is “trying to find a needle in a haystack”. Thus, having a bigger haystack might make it harder to find the needle.

Sure enough. The Intercept writes…

Silkie Carlo, a policy officer at the London-based human rights group Liberty, told The Intercept that the details contained in the secret report highlighted the need for a comprehensive independent review of the proposed new surveillance powers.

“Intelligence whistleblowers have warned that the agencies are drowning in data — and now we have it confirmed from the heart of the U.K. government,” Carlo said. “If our agencies have risked missing ‘life-saving intelligence’ by collecting ‘significantly’ more data than they can analyze, how can they justify casting the net yet wider in the toxic Investigatory Powers Bill?”

The British government’s Home Office, which handles media requests related to MI5, declined to comment for this story.

And this is not just a general opinion. There are figures.

A top-secret 2009 study found that, in one six-month period, the PRESTON program had intercepted more than 5 million communications. Remarkably, 97 percent of the calls, messages, and data it had collected were found to have been “not viewed” by the authorities.

The authors of the study were alarmed because PRESTON was supposedly focused on known suspects, and yet most of the communications it was monitoring appeared to be getting ignored — meaning crucial intelligence could have been missed.

“Only a small proportion of the Preston Traffic is viewed,” they noted. “This is of concern as the collection is all warranted.”

Then, there is mission creep…

Carlo, the policy analyst with Liberty, said the revelations about MILKWHITE suggested members of Parliament had been misled about how so-called bulk data is handled. “While MPs have been told that bulk powers have been used only by the intelligence community, it now appears it has been ‘business as usual’ for the tax man to access mass internet data for years,” she said.

We told you this would happen.

/ HAX

Links:
• The Intercept: Facing data deluge, secret U.K. spying report warned of intelligence failure »
• Supporting document: Digint Narrative »
• Supporting document: Digint Imbalance »
• BoingBoing: MI5 warning: we’re gathering more than we can analyse, and will miss terrorist attacks »

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Edward Snowden on unchecked government

By on May 16, 2016 in Big Government, Civil liberties, Democracy, Snowden

A lot of people laud me as the sole actor, like I’m this amazing figure who did this. I personally see myself as having a quite minor role. I was the mechanism of revelation for a very narrow topic of governments. It’s not really about surveillance, it’s about what the public understands—how much control the public has over the programs and policies of its governments. If we don’t know what our government really does, if we don’t know the powers that authorities are claiming for themselves, or arrogating to themselves, in secret, we can’t really be said to be holding the leash of government at all.

CJR – Snowden interview: Why the media isn’t doing its job »

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Snowden on whistleblowing

By on May 4, 2016 in Civil liberties, Democracy, Human rights, Manning, NSA & Snowden, Privacy, Rule of law, Snowden, US, Wikileaks

When you first go on duty at CIA headquarters, you raise your hand and swear an oath — not to government, not to the agency, not to secrecy. You swear an oath to the Constitution. So there’s this friction, this emerging contest between the obligations and values that the government asks you to uphold, and the actual activities that you’re asked to participate in. (…)

By preying on the modern necessity to stay connected, governments can reduce our dignity to something like that of tagged animals, the primary difference being that we paid for the tags and they’re in our pockets. It sounds like fantasist paranoia, but on the technical level it’s so trivial to implement that I cannot imagine a future in which it won’t be attempted. It will be limited to the war zones at first, in accordance with our customs, but surveillance technology has a tendency to follow us home.

Edward Snowden in The Intercept: Whistleblowing Is Not Just Leaking — It’s an Act of Political Resistance »

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