How Snowden hid in Hong Kong

In the National Post Theresa Tedesco writes the story of how Edward Snowden evaded capture after revealing government secrets. Oliver Stone is making a movie about it.

The never-been-told story of those two pivotal weeks when the most wanted man in the world was hidden in the depths of a Hong Kong slum.

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Snowden criticizes Russia's deteriorating human rights record

A giant screen displays the image of fugitive US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden as he is represented by an empty chair while being awarded the freedom of expression prize Bjornson in Molde, Norway, on September, 5, 2015. PHOTO: AFP

AFP writes in the Tribune,

Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden — who has been granted asylum by Russia — criticised the country’s crackdown on human rights and online freedom Saturday as “wrong… disappointing and frustrating”.

Snowden called Moscow’s restrictions on the web “a mistake in policy” and “fundamentally wrong” as he accepted a Norwegian freedom of expression prize by videophone from Russia.

“It’s wrong in Russia, and it would be wrong anywhere,” said Snowden, 32, who was granted asylum by the Kremlin two years ago after Washington filed a warrant for his arrest for having leaked documents that revealed the vast scale of US surveillance programmes.

Pushed on Moscow’s deteriorating human rights record, the whistleblower said the situation is “disappointing, it’s frustrating” and described restrictions on the Internet as part of a wider problem in Russia.

“I’ve been quite critical of (it) in the past and I’ll continue to be in the future, because this drive that we see in the Russian government to control more and more the internet, to control more and more what people are seeing, even parts of personal lives, deciding what is the appropriate or inappropriate way for people to express their love for one another…(is) fundamentally wrong,” he said.

Snowden said he had “never intended to go to Russia”, and that he had been transiting the country en route for Latin America when US officials cancelled his passport.

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Irony

"D" weapons

Spiegel Online writes:

According to top secret documents from the archive of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden seen exclusively by SPIEGEL, they are planning for wars of the future in which the Internet will play a critical role, with the aim of being able to use the net to paralyze computer networks and, by doing so, potentially all the infrastructure they control, including power and water supplies, factories, airports or the flow of money.

During the 20th century, scientists developed so-called ABC weapons -- atomic, biological and chemical. It took decades before their deployment could be regulated and, at least partly, outlawed. New digital weapons have now been developed for the war on the Internet. But there are almost no international conventions or supervisory authorities for these D weapons, and the only law that applies is the survival of the fittest.

The US Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force have already established their own cyber forces, but it is the NSA, also officially a military agency, that is taking the lead. It's no coincidence that the director of the NSA also serves as the head of the US Cyber Command. The country's leading data spy, Admiral Michael Rogers, is also its chief cyber warrior and his close to 40,000 employees are responsible for both digital spying and destructive network attacks.

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Putin the t.v. star

Putin had his annual call-in show this week. And, yes, Edward Snowden called in to ask if Russia had been spying on its citizens.
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