Edward Snowden, the former CIA analyst behind the NSA leaks, has claimed that the U.S. government has been hacking Hong Kong and Chinese networks for at least four years.
In his first interview since he revealed himself on Sunday, the 29-year-old whistleblower told the South China Morning Post that the NSA has hacked the country's universities, businesses and politicians.
He claimed the agency had hundreds of targets - including the Chinese University of Hong Kong - from as far back as 2009, but that these were just a fraction of the 61,000 NSA hacking operations carried out globally.
He added that none of the do ents revealed any information about Chinese military systems.
We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,' he explained.
The hour-long interview, which took part in a secret location on Wednesday, came after Snowden fled to Hong Kong from his home in Hawaii on May 20 after leaking sensitive do ents about the NSA.
His actions have been both praised and condemned globally, with some hailing him a hero while others, including House Speaker John Boehner, calling him a traitor.
But in the exclusive interview, he said: 'I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American.'
He said he will stay in Hong Kong to fight any extradition bid from the U.S, and he hit back against people who have called his choice to flee to Hong Kong a gamble.
People who think I made a mistake in picking HK as a location misunderstand my intentions,' he said. 'I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.
'My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate. I have been given no reason to doubt your system.'
It is believed the U.S. is pursuing a criminal investigation against Snowden, and on Tuesday, sources said officials were preparing to bring charges against him. No extradition request has yet been filed.
'The United States government is trying to bully the Hong Kong government into extraditing me'
Edward Snowden
In another clip of the interview Snowden said he has heard from a reliable source that the government is 'trying to bully the Hong Kong government into extraditing me'.
'I will never feel safe,' he said, adding that he has also not contacted his family because he fears their safety too.
'Things are very difficult for me in all terms, but speaking truth to power is never without risk,' he said. 'It has been difficult, but I have been glad to see the global public speak out against these sorts of systemic violations of privacy
His interview comes two days after Snowden checked out of a Hong Kong hotel where he was interviewed by the Guardian newspaper, which first published the story.
Since then, he has been nowhere to be seen.
n the Guardian interview, he had said he wanted to avoid the media spotlight, noting he didn't want 'the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing'.
With little new information to report on Snowden or his whereabouts, focus has instead fallen on his American girlfriend, Lindsay Mills, a dancer who posted partially nude photographs of herself online before she also apparently disappeared.
Reporter Ewen MacAskill of Britain's the Guardian newspaper, who interviewed Snowden for exclusive stories about his revelations, wrote late Tuesday that 'it is thought' Snowden was now in a private home in Hong Kong, but offered no details.
Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, who interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong, has given a series of interviews about the case, but refused to reveal any information about his location or his plans.
The country has been divided in praising or condemning Snowden after he leaked information about a global eavesdropping operation, Prism, put in place by the government.
'He's a traitor,' Boehner told ABC on Tuesday. 'The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk. It shows our adversaries what our capabilities are. And it’s a giant violation of the law.'
Also on Tuesday, Snowden's employers, Booz Allen Hamilton, announced that it has terminated his contract 'for violations of the firm’s code of ethics and firm policy'.
It said that the claims he had leaked information were 'shocking' - and revealed that he was earning $122,000 rather than the $200,000 he told The Guardian he was paid.
As for his future prospects - although Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the U.S., the do ent has some exceptions, including for crimes deemed political.
Any negotiations about his possible handover will involve Beijing, but some believe China is unlikely to want to jeopardize its relationship with the U.S. over someone of little political interest to them.
Snowden also told The Guardian that he may seek asylum in Iceland, which has strong free-speech protections and a tradition of providing a haven for the outspoken and the outcast.
And even Russia has stepped up to say it would consider offering him political asylum if he sought it.
'We will take action based on what actually happens. If we receive such a request, it will be considered,' said the Russian president's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
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He has blown his credibility by over claiming what he could and couldn't do as a contractor at the NSA. He claimed that as system admin he had the authority to tap anyones phone, even the POTUS.
Everybody knows that is bull . Even if he had the ability to do it, he didn't have the authority to do it and he would have been caught.
Last edited by CosmicCowboy; 06-13-2013 at 07:29 AM.
autho y? can i suck on it?
Guy is a attention .
What really goes on in NSA nobody knows.
It's beyond naive to think the NSA would tell the truth about what goes on, lying, disinformation, propaganda are their games (along with murder of foreigners on their soil).
Of course, they must trash relentlessly everything Snowden says.
No doubt that NSA follows every "political" forum.
Yep.
Pretty sure they are watching you VERY closely.
maybe boutons works for them. maybe he is watching us very carefully.
well, there goes that theory...
On a somewhat related manner, Bradley Manning should be executed publicly.
Is this a board 'conservative' thing that you guys just make up that you have no way of knowing?
There has been a hu ingmongous erosion of civil liberties over the last 12 years yet this is somehow out of the realm of possibilities? That NSA administrators are given powers such as this?
after all that has come out...anyone attacking edward snowden is the problem in america.
lol military making up about this guy, but still employs him? lol look whose stupid now
anyone can be fkn moron at specialize in a certain skill set that someone wants....
Barack W Cheney:
THE NEW MIRANDA RIGHTS
You have the right to
remain Silent & Frozen in fear
Anything you Say
Anything you Do Online
Anything you Tell your Doctor
Anything you Tell the IRS
Anything you Text
Anything you Talk About on the Phone
CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU!
Edward Snowden May Have Committed Treason, But He’s 4 Times More Popular than Congress
44% approve of Edward Snowden’s actions, while 52% disapprove.
hat confidence in Congress had fallen to a record low of 10%. (Gallup has a proven history of being wrong, so this is another poll that should be taken with a degree of skepticism. Even if they are wrong, previous polls from other organizations place the approval rating for Congress in the 20%-30% range, so their overall point that people don’t trust Congress is valid.)
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/06/...iticus+USA+%29
Way out of hand.
Just a question:
Could Snowden just have quit and go to his congressman? ie is there any other way he could had important people look at this legally?
The press first was the only way?
Is that the American Pie dad?Barack W Cheney:
THE NEW MIRANDA RIGHTS
You have the right to
remain Silent & Frozen in fear
Anything you Say
Anything you Do Online
Anything you Tell your Doctor
Anything you Tell the IRS
Anything you Text
Anything you Talk About on the Phone
CAN AND WILL BE USED AGAINST YOU!
http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...th-of-internetRepeat after me: Edward Snowden is not the story. The story is what he has revealed about the hidden wiring of our networked world. This insight seems to have escaped most of the world's mainstream media, for reasons that escape me but would not have surprised Evelyn Waugh, whose contempt for journalists was one of his few endearing characteristics. The obvious explanations are: incorrigible ignorance; the imperative to personalise stories; or gullibility in swallowing US government spin, which brands Snowden as a spy rather than a whistleblower.
In a way, it doesn't matter why the media lost the scent. What matters is that they did. So as a public service, let us summarise what Snowden has achieved thus far.
Without him, we would not know how the National Security Agency (NSA) had been able to access the emails, Facebook accounts and videos of citizens across the world; or how it had secretly acquired the phone records of millions of Americans; or how, through a secret court, it has been able to bend nine US internet companies to its demands for access to their users' data.
Similarly, without Snowden, we would not be debating whether the US government should have turned surveillance into a huge, privatised business, offering data-mining contracts to private contractors such as Booz Allen Hamilton and, in the process, high-level security clearance to thousands of people who shouldn't have it. Nor would there be – finally – a serious debate between Europe (excluding the UK, which in these matters is just an overseas franchise of the US) and the United States about where the proper balance between freedom and security lies.
sameThese are pretty significant outcomes and they're just the first-order consequences of Snowden's activities. As far as most of our mass media are concerned, though, they have gone largely unremarked. Instead, we have been fed a constant stream of journalistic pap – speculation about Snowden's travel plans, asylum requests, state of mind, physical appearance, etc. The "human interest" angle has trumped the real story, which is what the NSA revelations tell us about how our networked world actually works and the direction in which it is heading.
As an antidote, here are some of the things we should be thinking about as a result of what we have learned so far.
The first is that the days of the internet as a truly global network are numbered. It was always a possibility that the system would eventually be Balkanised, ie divided into a number of geographical or jurisdiction-determined subnets as societies such as China, Russia, Iran and other Islamic states decided that they needed to control how their citizens communicated. Now, Balkanisation is a certainty.
Second, the issue of internet governance is about to become very contentious. Given what we now know about how the US and its satraps have been abusing their privileged position in the global infrastructure, the idea that the western powers can be allowed to continue to control it has become untenable.
Third, as Evgeny Morozov has pointed out, the Obama administration's "internet freedom agenda" has been exposed as patronising cant. "Today," he writes, "the rhetoric of the 'internet freedom agenda' looks as trustworthy as George Bush's 'freedom agenda' after Abu Ghraib."
That's all at nation-state level. But the Snowden revelations also have implications for you and me.
They tell us, for example, that no US-based internet company can be trusted to protect our privacy or data. The fact is that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft are all integral components of the US cyber-surveillance system. Nothing, but nothing, that is stored in their "cloud" services can be guaranteed to be safe from surveillance or from illicit downloading by employees of the consultancies employed by the NSA. That means that if you're thinking of outsourcing your troublesome IT operations to, say, Google or Microsoft, then think again.
And if you think that that sounds like the paranoid fantasising of a newspaper columnist, then consider what Neelie Kroes, vice-president of the European Commission, had to say on the matter recently. "If businesses or governments think they might be spied on," she said, "they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out. Why would you pay someone else to hold your commercial or other secrets, if you suspect or know they are being shared against your wishes? Front or back door – it doesn't matter – any smart person doesn't want the information shared at all. Customers will act rationally and providers will miss out on a great opportunity."
"Edward Snowden is not the story"
nor is Manning, nor is (non-American, CIA-framed) Assange.
corporate media, which refuses to talk about what these people revealed, is part of, intimidated by, the national security Big Brother state.
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