Amerika bespioneert al haar burgers.

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Op vrijdag 7 juni 2013 23:56 schreef epicbeardman het volgende:
Grappig youtube filmpje van Palantir, het bedrijf waar CIA vermoedelijk met werkt.

[..]

Dit doen ze dus ongeveer, maar dan op massive scale;

Prepare, Detect, Respond, And Harden: Palantir Cyber In Action

http://www.businessinside(...)ed-by-the-cia-2013-6

PRISM Is Also The Name Of A Product From Palantir, A $5 Billion Tech Startup Funded By The CIA

Dat filmpje is 3dagen geleden geupload door Palantir.

Palantir 101

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Op zaterdag 8 juni 2013 14:18 schreef polderturk het volgende:
9/11 is een inside job. Een van de redenen voor de aanslag os het op grote schaal verzamelen van gegevens van burgers.

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Op zaterdag 8 juni 2013 14:18 schreef polderturk het volgende:
9/11 is een inside job. Een van de redenen voor de aanslag was het op grote schaal verzamelen van gegevens van burgers.

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Op zaterdag 8 juni 2013 16:53 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

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Weet je, het ergste aan dit hele gezeik dat er nu nog meer volksstammen dit soort onzin gaan geloven.

Ik ben vooral benieuwd hoe dit allemaal gelekt is.

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Op zaterdag 8 juni 2013 19:06 schreef Brum_brum het volgende:

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De ergste uitkomst van dat hele volksstammen het inside job verhaal gaan geloven is dat de overheid eindelijk eens gedwongen word op te rotten met hun inlichtingendiensten en oorlogen. De uitkomst van het huidige verhaal dat terroristen onder iedere steen zitten heeft letterlijk tot meer dan een miljoen doden geleid, het verdwijnen van een hele hoop rechten en privacy, het faillissement van de Amerikaanse overheid en permanente haat vanuit moslim landen richting ons.

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Op zaterdag 8 juni 2013 20:04 schreef deelnemer het volgende:

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Dat lijkt mij ook. Hopelijk leidt het tot een herziening van de huidige politieke koers in de VS op tal van terreinen.

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Op zaterdag 8 juni 2013 20:25 schreef Brum_brum het volgende:

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Dat maakt het nog niet waar maar in een wereld waarin we over de grote gebeurtenissen toch nooit de hele waarheid horen kunnen we maar beter een versie hebben die geen oorlog veroorzaakt.

Howard Zinn on Obama: "If you want to end terrorism, you have to stop being terrorists"

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Op zaterdag 8 juni 2013 02:31 schreef Daftastic het volgende:
Je moet wel ontzettend naïef / technofoob als je denkt dat dit niet gebeurde.

Mensen doen veel te zwaar over privacy. Het is niet zo dat de Amerikaanse overheid al je chatsessies gaan doorlezen, je moet wel erg verdacht internet- en surfgedrag hebben voordat ze ook maar de moeite nemen (en ook al zouden ze je gesprekken doorlezen met vrienden, wat dan nog als je niks te verbergen hebt?)...*

Ik denk dat veel mensen zich zullen verbazen als ze weten waardoor ze allemaal 'bespioneerd' worden, zoals smartphone apps, de Albert Heijn bonuskaart en de KvK die al je gegevens opslaan, gebruiken en soms doorverkopen.

* Ik heb het nu puur over de Amerikaanse overheid.

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 02:36 schreef Romanus het volgende:

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Misschien gewoon het feit alleen al dat de overheid dat ziet en ik dat beangstigend vind? Ik heb niks te verbergen maar dat betekent niet dat ik wil dat iedereen alles over me weet

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 03:08 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:

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Simpel, gewoon wegblijven van het internet.

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Boundless Informant: the NSA's secret tool to track global surveillance data | World news | guardian.co.uk

Revealed: The NSA's powerful tool for cataloguing data – including figures on US collection

The National Security Agency has developed a powerful tool for recording and analysing where its intelligence comes from, raising questions about its repeated assurances to Congress that it cannot keep track of all the surveillance it performs on American communications.

The Guardian has acquired top-secret documents about the NSA datamining tool, called Boundless Informant, that details and even maps by country the voluminous amount of information it collects from computer and telephone networks.

The focus of the internal NSA tool is on counting and categorizing the records of communications, known as metadata, rather than the content of an email or instant message.

The Boundless Informant documents show the agency collecting almost 3 billion pieces of intelligence from US computer networks over a 30-day period ending in March 2013. One document says it is designed to give NSA officials answers to questions like, "What type of coverage do we have on country X" in "near real-time by asking the SIGINT [signals intelligence] infrastructure."

An NSA factsheet about the program, acquired by the Guardian, says: "The tool allows users to select a country on a map and view the metadata volume and select details about the collections against that country."

Under the heading "Sample use cases", the factsheet also states the tool shows information including: "How many records (and what type) are collected against a particular country."

A snapshot of the Boundless Informant data, contained in a top secret NSA "global heat map" seen by the Guardian, shows that in March 2013 the agency collected 97bn pieces of intelligence from computer networks worldwide.

Iran was the country where the largest amount of intelligence was gathered, with more than 14bn reports in that period, followed by 13.5bn from Pakistan. Jordan, one of America's closest Arab allies, came third with 12.7bn, Egypt fourth with 7.6bn and India fifth with 6.3bn.

The heatmap gives each nation a color code based on how extensively it is subjected to NSA surveillance. The color scheme ranges from green (least subjected to surveillance) through yellow and orange to red (most surveillance).

The disclosure of the internal Boundless Informant system comes amid a struggle between the NSA and its overseers in the Senate over whether it can track the intelligence it collects on American communications. The NSA's position is that it is not technologically feasible to do so.

At a hearing of the Senate intelligence committee In March this year, Democratic senator Ron Wyden asked James Clapper, the director of national intelligence: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

"No sir," replied Clapper.

Judith Emmel, an NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian in a response to the latest disclosures: "NSA has consistently reported – including to Congress – that we do not have the ability to determine with certainty the identity or location of all communicants within a given communication. That remains the case."

Other documents seen by the Guardian further demonstrate that the NSA does in fact break down its surveillance intercepts which could allow the agency to determine how many of them are from the US. The level of detail includes individual IP addresses.

IP address is not a perfect proxy for someone's physical location but it is rather close, said Chris Soghoian, the principal technologist with the Speech Privacy and Technology Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "If you don't take steps to hide it, the IP address provided by your internet provider will certainly tell you what country, state and, typically, city you are in," Soghoian said.

That approximation has implications for the ongoing oversight battle between the intelligence agencies and Congress.

On Friday, in his first public response to the Guardian's disclosures this week on NSA surveillance, Barack Obama said that that congressional oversight was the American peoples' best guarantee that they were not being spied on.

"These are the folks you all vote for as your representatives in Congress and they are being fully briefed on these programs," he said. Obama also insisted that any surveillance was "very narrowly circumscribed".

Senators have expressed their frustration at the NSA's refusal to supply statistics. In a letter to NSA director General Keith Alexander in October last year, senator Wyden and his Democratic colleague on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Udall, noted that "the intelligence community has stated repeatedly that it is not possible to provide even a rough estimate of how many American communications have been collected under the Fisa Amendments Act, and has even declined to estimate the scale of this collection."

At a congressional hearing in March last year, Alexander denied point-blank that the agency had the figures on how many Americans had their electronic communications collected or reviewed. Asked if he had the capability to get them, Alexander said: "No. No. We do not have the technical insights in the United States." He added that "nor do we do have the equipment in the United States to actually collect that kind of information".

Soon after, the NSA, through the inspector general of the overall US intelligence community, told the senators that making such a determination would jeopardize US intelligence operations – and might itself violate Americans' privacy.

"All that senator Udall and I are asking for is a ballpark estimate of how many Americans have been monitored under this law, and it is disappointing that the inspectors general cannot provide it," Wyden told Wired magazine at the time.

The documents show that the team responsible for Boundless Informant assured its bosses that the tool is on track for upgrades.

The team will "accept user requests for additional functionality or enhancements," according to the FAQ acquired by the Guardian. "Users are also allowed to vote on which functionality or enhancements are most important to them (as well as add comments). The BOUNDLESSINFORMANT team will periodically review all requests and triage according to level of effort (Easy, Medium, Hard) and mission impact (High, Medium, Low)."

Emmel, the NSA spokeswoman, told the Guardian: "Current technology simply does not permit us to positively identify all of the persons or locations associated with a given communication (for example, it may be possible to say with certainty that a communication traversed a particular path within the internet. It is harder to know the ultimate source or destination, or more particularly the identity of the person represented by the TO:, FROM: or CC: field of an e-mail address or the abstraction of an IP address).

"Thus, we apply rigorous training and technological advancements to combine both our automated and manual (human) processes to characterize communications – ensuring protection of the privacy rights of the American people. This is not just our judgment, but that of the relevant inspectors general, who have also reported this."

She added: "The continued publication of these allegations about highly classified issues, and other information taken out of context, makes it impossible to conduct a reasonable discussion on the merits of these programs."

Bron: www.guardian.co.uk

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Op donderdag 26 juli 2012 09:57 schreef wise het volgende:
duidelijk 1984 ja.
Grappig hoe zo'n "oud" boek zoveel waarheden bevat.

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 02:36 schreef Romanus het volgende:

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Misschien gewoon het feit alleen al dat de overheid dat ziet en ik dat beangstigend vind? Ik heb niks te verbergen maar dat betekent niet dat ik wil dat iedereen alles over me weet

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 09:03 schreef -Strawberry- het volgende:

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Proxy gaan gebruiken.

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Your Data: If You Have Nothing to Hide, You Have Nothing to Fear

Our value is founded on a unique and deep understanding of risks, vulnerabilities, mitigations, and threats. Domestic Surveillance plays a vital role in our national security by maintaining a total information awareness of all domestic activities by using advanced data mining systems to "connect the dots" to identify suspicious patterns.

Why We Collect Your Data

Under the authority of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6, which defines the integration and use of screening information to protect against terrorism, the NSA is authorized to collect and disseminate information about suspected foreign and domestic terrorists. In the past, this meant gathering information AFTER a target had been identified. This often led to missed intelligence and lost opportunities.

But what if we could collect the information in advance, before the target was known? What if the mere act of collecting information could result in the identification of new targets? What if we could build a national data warehouse containing all available information about every person in the United States? Under the authority of the classified Homeland Security Directive 15 (U.S. Strategy and Policy in the War on Terror), we can.

What Data We Collect

Every day, people leave a digital trail of electronic breadcrumbs as they go about their daily routine. They go to work using electronic fare cards; drive through intersections with traffic cameras; walk down the street past security cameras; surf the internet; pay for purchases with credit/debit cards; text or call their friends; and on and on.

There is no way to predict in advance which crucial piece of data will be the key to revealing a potential plot. The standard operating procedure for the Domestic Surveillance Directorate is to "collect all available information from all available sources all the time, every time, always".

For security reasons, it is unrealistic to expect a complete list of information we collect for our national citizen database. In the spirit of openness and transparency however, here is a partial list:

internet searches
websites visited
emails sent and received
social media activity (Facebook, Twitter, etc)
blogging activity including posts read, written, and commented on - View our patent
videos watched and/or uploaded online
photos viewed and/or uploaded online
music downloads
mobile phone GPS-location data
mobile phone apps downloaded
phone call records - View our patent
text messages sent and received
online purchases and auction transactions
bookstore receipts
credit card/ debit card transactions
bank statements
cable television shows watched and recorded
commuter toll records
parking receipts
electronic bus and subway passes / Smartpasses
travel itineraries
border crossings
surveillance cameras
medical information including diagnoses and treatments
prescription drug purchases
guns and ammunition sales
educational records
arrest records
driver license information

How We Collect Your Data

For information on how we collect your data, including our PRISM program, visit Our Surveillance Strategy page on this website. For information about our new state-of-the-art Surveillance Data Center, visit our Utah Data Center information page.

How We Use Your Data

We treasure the U.S. Constitution and the rights it secures for all the people. In a world in which privacy has become illusory in so many areas of our lives, the Domestic Surveillance Directorate maintains the highest standards of integrity and lawful action. Your private data is safely secured using our custom database software called Cloudbase, which has fine-grained security to control access down to the cell level.

Threat Matrix Processing

Incoming transactional data is analyzed against a continually evolving threat matrix and is assigned an action code. The vast majority of these transactions are routed directly to a permanent static storage state. In fact, for most Americans, your data is never accessed or viewed by anyone within the US Government unless some future event triggers an inquiry. We work closely with our partners in the Intelligence Community to ensure that your stored data is released only as a result of a "national security" request.

Continuity of Government

Our strong commitment to keeping the Nation safe includes an important role in maintaining the Continuity of Government. Since the early 1980s, the federal government has used its secret Main Core database to track dissidents and watchlisted Americans in the event of a national emergency. The roots of the Domestic Surveillance Directorate can, in fact, be traced back to the early days of this program. We are proud to continue this tradition by sharing our data with the modern-day COG program. Learn more about this.

Future Uses of Domestic Intelligence Data

In 2006, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) was created to invest in high-risk, high-payoff classified programs uniquely designed to provide research and technical capabilities for the Intelligence Community. IARPA-funded researchers are currently studying novel ways of processing and analyzing the explosive growth of domestic data.

The Aladdin program seeks to extract intelligence information from the high volume of videos uploaded to the internet.
The Babel program is developing agile and robust speech recognition technology that can provide effective search capability for analysts to efficiently process massive amounts of real-world recorded speech.
The Knowledge Discovery and Dissemination (KDD) program will develop advanced analytic algorithms that can effectively draw inferences across multiple databases to allow the Intelligence Community to create virtual fusion centers enabling analysts to produce actionable intelligence.
The Socio-cultural Content in Language (SCIL) Program will develop novel algorithms, techniques and technologies to uncover the social actions and characteristics of members of a group (ie; within discussion forums, online comment sections, social media, etc.) by examining the language used in relation to acceptable social and cultural norms.
The Reynard Program starts from the premise that "real world" characteristics are reflected in "virtual world" behavior. The program seeks to identify behavioral indicators in online virtual worlds and "massively multiplayer online games" that are related to the real world characteristics of the users. Attributes of interest include gender, age, economic status, educational level, occupation, ideology or "world view", and physical geographic location.

http://nsa.gov1.info/data/index.html

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 10:35 schreef YuckFou het volgende:
Leuke plaatjes van de NSA:
[ afbeelding ]
Zo geheim zijn ze niet over wat ze doen
[ afbeelding ]
[ afbeelding ]
[ afbeelding ]
[ afbeelding ]

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Waar is mn alufoliehoedje?

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 12:10 schreef Pietverdriet het volgende:
Een overheid die doelbewust haar eigen regels overtreed om haar falen te maskeren.

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 12:20 schreef YuckFou het volgende:

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Zoals de waard is vertrouwd hij zijn gasten....

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 11:48 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:
Leuk dat ze het "if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear", ook nog even zelf herhalen

Jammer alleen dat ze niet zeggen naar waar ze op zoek zijn. Oh je hebt SP gestemd? Hmm kans dat je een linkse-extremist bent. Oh je hebt daarnaast wikileaks gesteund met een paar dollar? Nu is de kans wel erg groot dat je Amerika haat. Misschien is het beter als vliegvelden je gewoon helemaal weigeren.

Trouwens, echt HULDE aan The Guardian dat ze zo doorgaan met het publiceren van die gelekte documenten.

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Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance | World news | guardian.co.uk

The 29-year-old source behind the biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.

Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations – the NSA.

In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."

Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."

He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."

Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in." He added: "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."

He has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building."

Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose.

He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year.

As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world."

On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.

In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills.

He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.

Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him.

Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington.

And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks.

"All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.

"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.

"We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."

Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made."

He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become".

The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night," he said, his eyes welling up with tears.

Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.

By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework.

In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".

He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.

After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.

By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.

That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.

He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.

"Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about how my government functions and what its impact is in the world," he says. "I realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."

He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.

First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.

He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."

The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."

Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".

He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".

But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."

Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.

As strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."

For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.

His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.

Asked by reporters to establish his authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about anything in his personal life and he will answer.

He is quiet, smart, easy-going and self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services.

His manner was calm and relaxed but he has been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a CIA ploy to get him out onto the street.

Strewn about the side of his bed are his suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney.

Ever since last week's news stories began to appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place.

He lay, propped up against pillows, watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile.

Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news.

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

He purposely chose, he said, to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed.

As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it "harder for them to get dirty".

He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland – with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom – at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.

But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets."

Bron: www.guardian.co.uk

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 21:41 schreef Tocadisco het volgende:
Dat ik ooit nog eens het moment mee kan maken waarop een Amerikaan als politieke vluchteling naar China vlucht .

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 21:23 schreef Disorder het volgende:
Enge wereld waarin we leven. Het ergste vind ik nog dat bijna iedereen passief blijft en/of de verhalen van de regering zelf herhaald: "Ja maar, kinderporno.. Ja maar, terrorisme!"

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 21:48 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:
Geweldig, jullie vereren een lunatic .

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 21:48 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:
Geweldig, jullie vereren een lunatic .

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 21:48 schreef Fir3fly het volgende:
Geweldig, jullie vereren een lunatic .

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 21:13 schreef Papierversnipperaar het volgende:
already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it.

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 22:17 schreef YuckFou het volgende:

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Geweldig ik ben de derde vierde ofzo die je post niet begrijpt??

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 22:37 schreef NightH4wk het volgende:
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Kom niet aan Obama!

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 22:45 schreef Brum_brum het volgende:

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Moeten we die mensen kennen?

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 22:37 schreef NightH4wk het volgende:
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Kom niet aan Obama!

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 22:53 schreef Tocadisco het volgende:

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Aha.

En wat moeten we hiermee?

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 22:56 schreef NightH4wk het volgende:

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Gewoon grappig om te zien hoe dom mensen het beleid verdedigen.

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Op zondag 9 juni 2013 22:57 schreef Eyjafjallajoekull het volgende:

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Ik zie de link met Obama niet?

Mensen die hem traitor noemen zijn hoogst waarschijnlijk juist republikeinen, die zien Manning en Assange ook als verraders...