USA -NSA SPYING: Obama pledges to end ′unacceptable′ tactics after France spying row - LOL

US President Barack Obama spoke with his French counterpart, Francois Hollande, on Wednesday after reports emerged that his government spied on French leaders, a statement from the French president's office said.

"President Obama reiterated unequivocally his firm commitment … to end the practices that may have happened in the past, and that are unacceptable among allies," the statement said.

The two presidents discussed "the principles that should govern relations between allies in the domain of intelligence."

French intelligence officials will visit Washington some time soon to discuss the matter, the statement added.
Obama made a similar pledge to Germany in 2013 after former CIA contractor Edward Snowden leaked confidential information about the extent of the US National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance. The documents showed that the NSA has tapped German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone.

Note  EU-Digest: "end the practices that may have happened in the past, and that are unacceptable among allies" LOL


Read more: Obama pledges to end ′unacceptable′ tactics after France spying row | News | DW.COM | 24.06.2015

Government Spying: Edward Snowden: Privacy Remains ‘Under Threat’

Edward Snowden has penned a new op-ed celebrating recent reforms of the US National Security Administration.

Writes Snowden: “the right to privacy . . . remains under threat. Some of the world’s most popular online services have been enlisted as partners in the N.S.A.’s mass surveillance programs, and technology companies are being pressured by governments around the world to work against their customers rather than for them.”

Read more: Edward Snowden: Privacy Remains ‘Under Threat’ | TIME

USA - Privacy Rights - NSA: Obama signs landmark bill reforming NSA surveillance

US President Barack Obama signed into law on Tuesday landmark legislation passed by Congress just hours earlier putting an end to the government's bulk telephone data dragnet. US President Barack Obama signed into law on Tuesday legislation passed by Congress earlier in the day reforming a government surveillance programme that swept up millions of Americans’ telephone records.

Reversing security policy in place since shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the bill ends a system exposed by former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden. The spy agency collected and searched records of phone calls looking for terrorism leads but was not allowed to listen to their content.

Passage of the USA Freedom Act, the result of an alliance between Senate Democrats and some of the chamber’s most conservative Republicans, was a victory for Obama, a Democrat, and a setback for Senate Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Read more: Americas - Obama signs landmark bill reforming NSA surveillance - France 24

EU: Leave Facebook if you don't want to be spied on by US, warns EU - by Samuel Gibbs

The European Commission has warned EU citizens that they should close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep information private from US security services, finding that current Safe Harbour legislation does not protect citizen’s data.

The case, dubbed “the Facebook data privacy case”, concerns the current Safe Harbour framework, which covers the transmission of EU citizens’ data across the Atlantic to the US. Without the framework, it is against EU law to transmit private data outside of the EU. The case collects complaints lodged against Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Microsoft-owned Skype and Yahoo.

Schrems maintains that companies operating inside the EU should  not be allowed to transfer data to the US under Safe Harbour protections – which state that US data protection rules are adequate if information is passed by companies on a “self-certify” basis – because the US no longer qualifies for such a status.

The case argues that the US government’s Prism data collection program, revealed by Edward Snowden in the NSA files, which sees EU citizens’ data held by US companies passed on to US intelligence agencies, breaches the EU’s Data Protection Directive “adequacy” standard for privacy protection, meaning that the Safe Harbour framework no longer applies and does not protect citizen’s data.

The comments were made by EC attorney Bernhard Schima in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems, looking at whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in a post-Snowden revelation landscape.

“You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one,” Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at the European court of justice in Luxembourg.

Read more: Leave Facebook if you don't want to be spied on, warns EU | Technology | The Guardian

Whistle Blowers: Edward Snowden makes Switzerland asylum appeal

Edward Snowden has made a public appeal for Switzerland to grant him asylum.

The fugitive former US spy agency contractor told an audience in Geneva that he would like to live in the Swiss city, where he once worked undercover for the CIA.

He spoke from Moscow via video link after a viewing of “Citizenfour”, an Oscar-winning documentary about his case.

“I would love to return to Switzerland, some of my favourite memories are from Geneva. It’s a wonderful place,” he told the International Film Festival and Forum on Human Rights on Thursday night.

“I do think Switzerland would be a sort of great political option because it has a history of neutrality,” he said, praising its multicultural diversity and human rights record.

Snowden, wanted by Washington for leaking details of US mass surveillance programmes, said he had appealed to 21 countries, “the majority in central and Western Europe”, for asylum after the US cancelled his passport and he was stopped from going to Ecuador.

Read more: Edward Snowden makes Switzerland asylum appeal | euronews, world news

The Pantheon of Human Liberty: Edward Snowden and the Great Removal - by Thomas L. Knapp

Thomas Paine

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden continues to loom large in the world’s daily news. Revelations from the trove of data he disclosed to journalists roll out on a near-weekly basis, followed by denials and excuses from politicians and bureaucrats he exposes as responsible for rights violations around the world. Citizenfour, a documentary covering his heroic actions on behalf of the public, just grabbed the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

It’s easy to get lost in the minutiae of Snowden’s individual disclosures. And that’s OK. Each disclosure tells us something important about those who rule us. But there’s more to it than the details. There’s a bigger picture.

In a February 23 “Ask Me Anything” discussion on Reddit, Snowden encapsulated that bigger picture. “[W]e the people,” he wrote, “will implement systems that provide for a means of not just enforcing our rights, but removing from governments the ability to interfere with those rights” (emphasis Snowden’s).

That’s the whole ballgame right there, folks. The purpose of political government has never been, as the US Declaration of Independence claims, “to secure these rights [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness] … deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The purpose of political government has always been to monopolize violations of rights and to use those violations to redistribute power, control and wealth from you to the political class.

Many — perhaps most — of us don’t get it. Sometimes Snowden himself doesn’t seem quite sure of it. But the politicians know it deep down in their guts.

When the world’s panicked potentates and powermongers squeal that people like Snowden make it more difficult for them to “protect” us, what they really mean is that people like Snowden unlock and open the doors of the cages we’re kept in.

The politicians aren’t afraid of bad actors getting in. They’re afraid of us getting out. Worse, they’re afraid that while we’re out, we’ll realize we never needed them. They fear that the final shred of the emperor’s clothes — the notion that the state is a “necessary evil” — will fall away, revealing them to us in all their nakedness as the unnecessary evil they’ve always been. And that fear is fully justified.

Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden (among others; Barrett Brown and Ross Ulbricht also come immediately to mind) have earned their places as central figures in the pantheon of human liberty.

They will one day be revered (indeed, they already are among many) as modern-day Thomas Paines.

Paine’s work brought down the British Empire in one small corner of Earth; it also inspired and informed the revolution in France. The effects reverberate across more than two centuries of human history down to this very day. Snowden and those others are in the process of completing Paine’s mission by bringing down the global political class’s preferred governance model of the last 400 years, the Westphalian nation-state.

Snowden’s Great Removal is in progress and unstoppable. It deserves our enthusiastic embrace.

Read more: Edward Snowden and the Great Removal » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

NSA Spying Revealed in Award Winning Documentary - Edward Snowden "Citizenfour" wins Oscar:

“CitizenFour” after winning the Gotham Award for best documentary, just hours after winning the New York Film Critics Award, tonight also won an Oscar.

Laura Poitras’ film documents her initial meeting in Hong Kong with Snowden, as well as journalist Glenn Greenwald.

It’s an uncommonly intimate view of what became a historic and much debated act: Snowden leaking National Security Agency documents that revealed their previously undisclosed collection of phone and email records, foreign government information, and classified corporate strategies. 

Edward Snowden presently lives in Russia, but also applied for asylum in the European Union. On June 14, 2013 the US department of Justice charged Edward Snowdon with two counts of violating the Espionage Act and theft of government property.

EU-Digest

NSA Spying: Does this photo tell us what Edward Snowden stands for? - by Jacob Axelrad,

A photo of Edward Snowden clutching an American flag on the covered of Wired magazine sparks questions about how the famous whistleblower is viewed more than one year after he first revealed the NSA's surveillance programs.  

No matter your political stance, the image is eye-grabbing: famed whistleblower Edward Snowden stares into the distance as he clutches an American flag to his chest, as though protecting the thing he holds most sacred.

That's the picture gracing the current cover of Wired magazine and it's causing quite a stir among supporters and opponents alike of the man who pulled back the curtain on rampant NSA spying programs by fleeing the country and leaking classified documents to journalists just over a year ago.

The photo was taken by world-famous photographer Platon Antoniou, whose portraits include such notable figures as Vladamir Putin and Barack Obama, and accompanies a lengthy profile of Mr. Snowden by James Bamford. 

Read more: Does this photo tell us what Edward Snowden stands for? - CSMonitor.com

NSA SPY SCANDAL:: Journalist Greenwald refuses to speak to Germany's NSA scandal inquiry because they are too soft on US

Greenwald on Friday said he had turned down an invitation to testify before the German parliament later this summer about the NSA spying scandal. The US journalist said that while he was "very supportive of any attempt by the German Parliament to conduct a serious investigation into NSA spying on Germans," the existing Bundestag inquiry was not that.

"Unfortunately, German politicians have demonstrated, with their refusal to interview the key witness in person - Edward Snowden - that they care far more about not upsetting the US than they do about conducting a serious investigation," he said in a statement.

Greenwald (pictured above) had been expected to speak to the Bundestag on September 11 via video link from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he lives.

Read more: Journalist Greenwald refuses to speak to Germany's NSA scandal inquiry | News | DW.DE | 01.08.2014

Privacy Violations: Deutsche Telekom (T-Mobile) to follow Vodafone in revealing surveillance - Juliette Garside

Germany's biggest telecoms company is to follow Vodafone in disclosing for the first time the number of surveillance requests it receives from governments around the world.

Deutsche Telekom, which owns half of Britain's EE mobile network and operates in 14 countries including the US, Spain and Poland, has already published surveillance data for its home nation – one of the countries that have reacted most angrily to the Edward Snowden revelations. In the wake of Vodafone's disclosures, first published in the Guardian on Friday, it announced that it would extend its disclosures to every other market where it operates and where it is legal.

A spokeswoman for Deutsche Telekom, which has 140 million customers worldwide, said: "Deutsche Telekom has initially focused on Germany when it comes to disclosure of government requests.

We are currently checking if and to what extent our national companies can disclose information. We intend to publish something similar to Vodafone."

Bosses of the world's biggest mobile networks, many of which have headquarters in Europe, are gathering for an industry conference in Shanghai this weekend, and the debate is expected to centre on whether they should join Deutsche and Vodafone in using transparency to push back against the use of their technology for government surveillance.

Mobile companies, unlike social networks, cannot operate without a government-issued licence, and have previously been reluctant to discuss the extent of their cooperation with national security and law enforcement agencies.

But Vodafone broke cover on Friday by confirming that in around half a dozen of the markets in which it operates, governments in Europe and outside have installed their own secret listening equipment on its network and those of other operators.

Under this direct access system, wires suck up traffic at key points in the network, allowing unfettered access to the content of phone conversations and text messages, and in some cases delivering

Read more: Deutsche Telekom to follow Vodafone in revealing surveillance | World news | The Guardian

BRITAIN-NSA SPY SCANDAL: Stephen Fry attacks 'squalid' coalition for inaction on Snowden revelations

Stephen Fry has denounced the government's failure to act over the mass surveillance programme revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden, labelling its behaviour as "squalid and rancid"
.
Opening a day of debate to galvanise action against spying by the British and US intelligence agencies, Fry said that exploiting the fear of terrorism is a "duplicitous and deeply wrong means of excusing something as base as spying on the citizens of your own country".

The performer was speaking via a prerecorded interview at a London summit on Saturday marking the anniversary of the start of Snowden's revelations, which were first published in the Guardian and the Washington Post.

The day of action is billed as the biggest privacy event of 2014, with more than 500 people attending the event at Shoreditch Town Hall in east London.

In his video message, Fry, 56, said: "The idea of having your letters read by somebody, your telegrams, your faxes, your postcards intercepted, was always considered one of the meanest, most beastly things a human being could do, and for a government to do, without good cause. Using the fear of terrorism that we all have, the fear of the unknown that we all share, the fear of enemies that hate us, is a duplicitous and deeply wrong means of excusing something as base as spying on the citizens of your own country."

The broadcaster said GCHQ and NSA had cooperated to "read and intercept everything we send".

Read more: Stephen Fry attacks 'squalid' coalition for inaction on Snowden revelations | World news | The Observer

NSA Spy Program : Ex-NSA chief Keith Alexander seeks post-Snowden second act - by Darren Samuelsohn and Joseph Marks

Former National Security Agency chief Gen. Keith Alexander is launching a consulting firm for financial institutions looking to address cybersecurity threats, POLITICO has learned.

Less than two months since his retirement from the embattled agency at the center of the Edward Snowden leak storm, the retired four-star general is setting up a Washington-based operation that will try to attract clients based on his four decades of experience in the military and intelligence — and the continued levels of access to senior decision-makers that affords.

“He’s already out pushing hard,” said an industry source recently briefed by Alexander on the new business venture. “He’s cleared. If something does pop, he can get in the door and get a briefing. That’s part of his stock and trade.”

Read More: Ex-NSA chief Keith Alexander seeks post-Snowden second act - Darren Samuelsohn and Joseph Marks - POLITICO.com

Government Spying: Snowden Says Technology Companies Should Lead on Data Encryption - by Adam Satariano

Edward Snowden, who leaked classified documents revealing the surveillance activities of the National Security Agency, said technology companies need to take a leadership role in improving encryption tools.

“There’s a technical response that needs to occur,” said Snowden, speaking through a video feed to a packed room of more than 3,000 people today at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in Austin, Texas. Technology companies can add layers of security that make it harder for intelligence agencies to scour for data, and can do it faster than new surveillance-oversight laws can be implemented, he said.

Snowden is now a fugitive in Russia to avoid arrest following last year’s release of the documents, which disclosed how global spy agencies collect vast amounts of data about phone calls and online activities. The revelations frayed U.S. relationships with countries such as Brazil and Germany and set off a global debate about whether the government is overstepping its authority and violating privacy to bolster security.

The leaks from Snowden, a former NSA contractor, showed that the U.S. had been collecting phone records as well as data from companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG), Facebook Inc. and Apple Inc. The disclosures made Snowden a hero to some people who want to see government activities reined in, while others, including U.S. President Barack Obama, say his actions compromised efforts to combat terrorism.

Security and privacy have been main themes of South by Southwest this year. Known as the conference that helped catapult Twitter Inc. to popularity, the gathering typically focuses on the discovery of new social-networking companies. Instead, this year’s event has focused more on the drawbacks and consequences of sharing personal information online.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange spoke at the conference on March 8 and said the group would soon release a new trove of classified information. He didn’t disclose the timing or the topic of the material because he said he didn’t want to give the subjects a chance to prepare.

Other speakers, including Google Chairman Eric Schmidt, have discussed the impact of Snowden’s leaks. Schmidt said the material alerted his company to the fact the U.S. government was intercepting data from Google’s servers. Schmidt said the company has since enhanced its encryption and is “pretty sure” the government can’t access the data.

Still, he said the company must comply with court orders for information. Schmidt said there must be a balance between transparency and security, because the government data being disclosed could put lives at risk. Assange and Snowden’s release of classified information have made them “celebrities,” Schmidt said, and may spawn copycat efforts, increasing the risk for harm if the disclosures aren’t done carefully.

Read more: Snowden Says Technology Companies Should Lead on Data Encryption - Bloomberg

NSA created 'European bazaar' to spy on EU citizens, Snowden tells European Parliament - by Loek Essers

"Don't worry EU we are your friend"

The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has turned the European Union into a tapping “bazaar” in order to spy on as many EU citizens as possible, NSA leaker Edward Snowden said.

The NSA has been working with national security agencies in EU member states to get access to as much data of EU citizens as possible, Snowden said in a testimony sent to Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) published Friday March 7.

The European Parliament had invited Snowden to provide testimony for an inquiry into the electronic mass surveillance of EU citizens. That surveillance, often instigated by the NSA but carried out with help of EU member states, is quite extensive, he wrote.

The NSA has been pressuring EU member states to change their laws to enable mass surveillance, according to Snowden. This is done through NSA’s Foreign Affairs Division (FAD), he said, adding that lawyers from the NSA and GCHQ work very hard “to search for loopholes in laws and constitutional protections that they can use to justify indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance operations that were at best unwittingly authorized by lawmakers,” he said.

The deals between the NSA and foreign partners are set up in such a way as to provide the NSA with a means of monitoring a partner’s citizens without informing the partner, and to provide the partner with a means of plausible deniability, he said.

“The result is a European bazaar, where an EU member state like Denmark may give the NSA access to a tapping center on the (unenforceable) condition that NSA doesn’t search it for Danes, and Germany may give the NSA access to another on the condition that it doesn't search for Germans. Yet the two tapping sites may be two points on the same cable, so the NSA simply captures the communications of the German citizens as they transit Denmark, and the Danish citizens as they transit Germany, all the while considering it entirely in accordance with their agreements,” Snowden said.

Snowden, who said that he’s still seeking asylum in the EU, also provided solutions to solve the mass surveillance problem.

It is easy to make mass surveillance more expensive through changes in technical standards, he said. “Pervasive, end-to-end encryption can quickly make indiscriminate surveillance impossible on a cost effective basis,” he said, adding that the result is that governments are likely to fall back to traditional, targeted surveillance founded upon an individualized suspicion.

The European Parliament is set to vote on a draft resolution on Wednesday March 12 that seeks to keep data protection out of EU-U.S. trade talks. The MEPs want the EU to suspend two deals with the U.S., one on exchanging banking data and the other on the Safe Harbor privacy principles for U.S. firms holding European data, as, they say, the fight against terrorism can never justify secret and illegal mass surveillance.

The MEPs will also vote on a proposal for stronger safeguards for data transfers to non-EU countries.

Wednesday’s vote could result in the updating of 19-year-old data-protection laws. Under MEPs’ amendments, companies breaking the rules would face fines of up to €100 million (about $139 million), or up to 5 percent of their annual worldwide turnover, whichever is greater, according to the Parliament

Read more: NSA created 'European bazaar' to spy on EU citizens, Snowden tells European Parliament | PCWorld

Russia Would Benefit The Most From US Break-Up With The EU - by Rob Sharp

Unflattering remarks by a top US diplomat to the European Union have come to light over the past week. Victoria Nuland, the State Department’s Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs, is reported to have said “Fuck the EU” in a private conversation with our ambassador to the Ukraine, Mr. Geoffrey Pyatt.

The exchange was allegedly bugged by Russian agents, a fact emphasized by the White House and State Department to deflect attention from the remark itself. If the Russians are indeed behind the bugging, declared the State Department, it would constitute “a new low in Russian tradecraft.”

The issue speaks to the frustrations that the United States and other nations, including EU member nations, have experienced while interacting with the supranational organization. While Baroness Catherine Ashton has been widely regarded as successful in her role as High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, including her handling of the Ukrainian issue, she has been the lone bright star in what is otherwise a typically slow, indecisive (when not contentious), and overly bureaucratic organization.

The point remains that Nuland is a trained diplomat and her tone with the our ambassadors and other State Department employees sets the timbre for the nature of the relationship between the US and the EU.

Regardless of whether or not she should have considered the possibility that someone might overhear her conversation with Ambassador Pyatt (and given the recent history of intelligence bugging brought to light by Edward Snowden, there is no reason not to suspect clandestine eavesdropping), her language reveals that the United States does not respect her European allies and would rather not collaborate with them. Not exactly what you might call ‘diplomatic.’

Ms. Nuland has since apologized to various European heads of state for her comments and stated that she “will not comment on a private diplomatic conversation.” Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was herself recently an alleged victim of NSA phone-tapping, called Nuland’s remarks “totally unacceptable.” The context of the remarks, however, demonstrates that the U.S. is attempting to stem the influence of Moscow in the governance of the Ukraine as we work with Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon to address the pro-EU demonstrations that have been held constantly across the past few months in Kiev.

In order to build stronger ties between Ukraine and the “West,” the U.S. must suppress Russian interests in the region, thus adding another dimension to the re-emerging cold war developing between our two countries.

With Russia seeking to project its might throughout the Winter Olympic Games, expanding its realpolitik via Syria, opposing same-sex equality, and countering the United States’ position as a global hegemon, the prospect of an allied state the size of the Ukraine defect from the EU membership process and realign itself with Russia raises the specter of the Iron Curtain for many older European and American observers.

By destabilizing our relations with the EU, Moscow could very well scoop up allies looking for leadership, loyalty, and decisiveness in uncertain times. Perhaps that possibility should be the focus of our State Department’s grandiloquence.

Read more: Russia Would Benefit The Most From Our Break-Up With The EU | Article 3

Switzerland: Swiss govt tightens tech security over NSA spying

The Swiss government has ordered tighter security for its own computer and telephone systems that could block foreign companies from key technology and communications contracts.

The governing Federal Council’s decision Wednesday cited concerns about foreign spies targeting Switzerland.

National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, who worked for the CIA at the U.S. mission to the U.N. in Geneva from 2007 to 2009, has released documents indicating that large American and British IT companies cooperated with those countries’ intelligence services.

According to a Swiss government statement, contracts for critical IT infrastructure will ‘‘where possible, only be given to companies that act exclusively according to Swiss law, where a majority of the ownership is in Switzerland and which provides all of its services from within Switzerland’s borders.’’

Read more: Swiss govt tightens tech security over NSA spying - Europe news - Boston.com

NSA also Spied on Climate Talks - by Kate Sheppard and Ryan Grim

The National Security Agency monitored the communications of other governments ahead of and during the 2009 United Nations climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark, according to the latest document from whistleblower Edward Snowden.
 
The document, with portions marked "top secret," indicates that the NSA was monitoring the communications of other countries ahead of the conference, and intended to continue doing so throughout the meeting. Posted on an internal NSA website on Dec. 7, 2009, the first day of the Copenhagen summit, it states that "analysts here at NSA, as well as our Second Party partners, will continue to provide policymakers with unique, timely, and valuable insights into key countries' preparations and goals for the conference, as well as the deliberations within countries on climate change policies and negotiation strategies."

"Second Party partners" refers to the intelligence agencies of the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, with which the U.S. has an intelligence-sharing relationship. "While the outcome of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference remains uncertain, signals intelligence will undoubtedly play a significant role in keeping our negotiators as well informed as possible throughout the 2-week event," the document says.

The Huffington Post published the documents Wednesday night in coordination with the Danish daily newspaper Information, which worked with American journalist Laura Poitras.

Read more: NSA Spied on Climate Talks

NSA spying: Obama announces "limits" on surveillance program

U.S. President Barack Obama is calling for ending the government's control of phone data from hundreds of millions of Americans, and he promises that "we will not monitor the communications of heads of state and government of our close friends and allies."

The president said Friday he will end the program "as it currently exists." He called for extending some privacy protections to foreign citizens whose communications are scooped up by the U.S.

But Obama also said he believes critics of the program have been right to argue that without proper safeguards, the collection could be used to obtain more information about the private lives of Americans and open the door to more intrusive programs.

Obama warned, however, that "we cannot unilaterally disarm our intelligence agencies." He added, "We know that the intelligence services of other countries — including some who feign surprise over the Snowden disclosures — are constantly probing our government and private sector networks."

Key questions about the future of the surveillance apparatus remain. While Obama wants to strip the NSA of its ability to store the phone records, he offered no recommendation for where the data should be moved.

Instead, he gave the intelligence community and the attorney general 60 days to study options.
He also immediately ordered intelligence agencies to get a secretive court's permission before accessing such records.

Privacy advocates say moving the data outside the government's control could minimize the risk of unauthorized or overly broad searches by the NSA.

NSA spying: Obama announces questionable limits on surveillance program - World - CBC News

NSA Spy Program: EU Parliament invites Snowden to testify

The European Parliament's committee tasked with investigating the NSA announced on Thursday it had invited Edward Snowden to provide testimony via video link. It was not immediately clear if Snowden would agree to the request.

The Justice and Civil Liberties Committee voted on the measure 36-2 with one abstention.
German EU parliament member Jan Philipp Albrecht expressed doubt at the possibility of Snowden, who currently has temporary asylum in Moscow, giving evidence in the NSA investigation.

Snowden would be worried about the video link pointing US authorities - who are currently seeking his arrest - to his undisclosed location, Albrecht told the news agency AFP, adding that it would be "very unlikely" that Snowden testify.

The EU Parliament has tasked its Justice and Civil Liberties Committee with investigating the extent to which US National Security Agency (NSA) has spied on EU member states.

Read more: EU Parliament invites Snowden to testify | News | DW.DE | 09.01.2014

NSA Spying: Edward Snowden did us all a favour, it's time to curb the snooping - by Brian Stewart,

For some of us, the great shock of the past year was the revelation that whistleblowers like Edward Snowden were not, after all, wildly exaggerating the dangers of intelligence agencies run amok.

Even those who encouraged Snowden's revelations seem stunned by how far the state's assault on privacy has gone.

And the great challenge for Western democracies this year — assuming they are up for it — will be to wrestle back oversight control over a too-secretive world that most of us barely comprehend.
Getting the spy genie back into so many bottles, however, won't be easy.

Jacob Appelbaum, an independent security expert and Snowden confidante, told technology experts in Hamburg last week that the U.S. National Security Agency's high-tech spying gear is "even worse than your worst nightmares."

He says new exposes will show the NSA can turn iPhones into eavesdropping "bugs" and has unlimited ability to break into our computers.

True or not, that deep pessimism is echoed by British security analyst and former MI5 whistleblower Annie Machon. She sees a nightmare reality in which all governments have let secret agencies spy on virtually anyone they want and on each other without limits.

"Indeed, not only have we learned that we are all under constant electronic surveillance, but these politicians are targeted, too," she wrote in a recent column for RT publication. "We are all now targets."

Read more: Edward Snowden did us all a favour, it's time to curb the snooping - World - CBC News