According to new documents provided by
Edward Snowden to The Guardian newspaper (but not, as yet,
published in full), the British signals intelligence organization, known as the
Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), has the “ability to tap into and
store huge volumes of data drawn from fibre-optic cables for up to 30 days so
that it can be sifted and analysed.”
In addition, the newspaper also reported that
GCHQ is sharing this information with its American counterpart, the National
Security Agency (NSA). The operation, known as “Tempora,” has been running for
18 months. Documents about the program detail GCHQ’s goal of “Mastering the
Internet.” The leak is just the latest in a string of documents disclosed to
the paper by Snowden, a former NSA employee now on the lam in Hong Kong.
As The Guardian writes, “The documents appear to
suggest the two agencies had come to rely on each other; with Tempora’s
‘buffering capability,’ and Britain’s access to the cables that carry Internet
traffic in and out of the country, GCHQ has been able to collect and store a
huge amount of information… The NSA, however, had provided GCHQ with the
tools necessary to sift through the data and get value from it.”
“It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this
fight,” Snowden told The
Guardian. “They [GCHQ] are worse than the US.”
Not surprisingly, some of those in the UK intelligence
establishment have a completely different view of the information-sharing that
goes on. The Guardian cited a “a source with knowledge of
intelligence,” who said that such data was being “collected legally” and was
replete with “safeguards.”
Hundreds of GCHQ analysts—and hundreds more from the
NSA—have apparently been assigned to work on this flood of data.
As the UK paper noted: The Americans were given guidelines for its use but were told in
legal briefings by GCHQ lawyers: “We have a light oversight regime compared
with the US.”
When it came to judging the necessity and proportionality of what
they were allowed to look for, would-be American users were told it was “your
call.”
The Guardian understands that a total of
850,000 NSA employees and US private contractors with top secret clearance had
access to GCHQ databases.
The documents reveal that by last year GCHQ was handling 600m
“telephone events” each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables, and
was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.
About half way through the video below a NSA official testifies to Congress, by his body language he is obviously lying!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2jT-hB6aDI
Obama in his own words, you decide.......
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BmdovYztH8
Fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden is seeking asylum in Ecuador, the Quito government said on Sunday, after Hong Kong let him leave for Russia despite Washington's efforts to extradite him on espionage charges.
In a major embarrassment for the Obama administration, an aircraft thought to have been carrying Snowden landed in Moscow, and the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said he was "bound for the Republic of Ecuador via a safe route for the purposes of asylum."
Ecuadorean Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino, visiting Vietnam, tweeted: "The Government of Ecuador has received an asylum request from Edward J. #Snowden."
The United States warned countries in the Western Hemisphere that Snowden might travel through or take refuge in not to let the former spy agency contractor go anywhere but home, a State Department official said on Sunday.
"The U.S. is advising these governments that Snowden is wanted on felony charges, and as such should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States," the official said in a written statement.
The State Department did not identify any of the countries.
| Julian Assange |
Snowden, who worked for the U.S. National Security Agency in Hawaii, had been hiding in the former British colony, which returned to China in 1997, Kong since leaking details about U.S. surveillance activities at home and abroad to news media.
On Friday, U.S. authorities charged Snowden with theft of U.S. government property, unauthorised communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorised person, with the latter two charges falling under the U.S. Espionage Act.
Earlier on Sunday, a source at the Russian airline Aeroflot said Snowden would fly on from Moscow within 24 hours to Cuba, although that source said he planned to go on to Venezuela. The chief of Cuba's International Press Center, Gustavo Machin, said he had no such information though pro-government bloggers heaped praise on Snowden and condemned U.S. spying activity.
Venezuela, Cuba and Ecuador are all members of the ALBA bloc, an alliance of leftist governments in Latin America that pride themselves on their "anti-imperialist" credentials.
Ecuadorean Ambassador Patricio Alberto Chavez Zavala told reporters at a Moscow airport hotel that he would hold talks with Snowden and Sarah Harrison, a WikiLeaks representative.
In their statement announcing Snowden's departure, the Hong Kong authorities said they were seeking clarification from Washington about reports of U.S. spying on government computers in the territory.
At a summit earlier this month, Obama called on his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to acknowledge the threat posed by "cyber-enabled espionage" against the United States and to investigate the problem. Obama also met Putin in Northern Ireland last week.
A spokesman for the Hong Kong government said it had allowed the departure of Snowden - considered a whistleblower by his critics and a criminal or even a traitor by his critics - as the U.S. request for his arrest did not comply with the law.
In Washington, a Justice Department official said it would seek cooperation with countries Snowden may try to go to and sources familiar with the issue said Washington had revoked Snowden's U.S. passport. State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said revoking the passport of someone under a felony arrest warrant was routine. "Such a revocation does not affect citizenship status," she said.
"It's a shocker," Simon Young, a law professor with Hong Kong University said of the case. "I thought he was going to stay and fight it out. The U.S. government will be irate."
The issue has been a major distraction for Obama, who has found his domestic and international policy agenda sidelined as he has scrambled to deflect accusations that U.S. surveillance practices violate privacy protections and civil rights. The president has maintained that the measures have been necessary to thwart attacks on the United States.
The White House had no immediate comment on Sunday's developments.
WikiLeaks said Snowden was accompanied by diplomats and that Harrison, a British legal researcher working for WikiLeaks, was "accompanying Mr Snowden in his passage to safety."
"The WikiLeaks legal team and I are interested in preserving Mr Snowden's rights and protecting him as a person," former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon, legal director of WikiLeaks and lawyer for Assange, said in a statement.
"What is being done to Mr Snowden and to Mr Julian Assange - for making or facilitating disclosures in the public interest - is an assault against the people."
WIKILEAKS CASE
Assange, an Australian, said last week he would not leave the sanctuary of Ecuador's London embassy even if Sweden stopped pursuing sexual assault claims against him because he feared arrest on the orders of the United States.
The latest drama coincides with the court martial of Bradley Manning, a U.S. soldier accused of providing reams of classified documents to WikiLeaks, which Assange began releasing on the Internet in 2010, and, according to some critics, put its national security and people's lives at risk.
A spokesman for Wikileaks refused to make any comment about possible routes to Ecuador. Asked why Ecuador, he replied "That is something that Mr. Snowden needs to reply to. ... It was a decision taken by him. ... Various governments were approached."
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden. Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said this month that Russia would consider granting asylum if Snowden were to ask for it and pro-Kremlin lawmakers supported the idea, but there has been no indication he has done so.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post newspaper earlier quoted Snowden offering new details about U.S. surveillance activities, including accusations of U.S. hacking of Chinese mobile phone firms and targeting of China's Tsinghua University.
Documents previously leaked by Snowden revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies, including Facebook and Google, under a government program known as Prism.
The head of the National Security Agency, General Keith Alexander, said he did not know why it failed to prevent Snowden leaving Hawaii for Hong Kong with the secrets. "We are now putting in place actions that would give us the ability to track our system administrators, what they're doing, what they're taking, a two-man rule. We've changed the passwords. But at the end of the day, we have to trust that our people are going to do the right thing."
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