Tuesday, July 16,
2013: Edward Snowden -- who has been at Moscow's Sheremetyevo International
Airport for the past three weeks -- applies for temporary asylum in Russia since
the US has revoked his passport and he cannot go anywhere.
Monday, July 15,
2013: Snowden's lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, who is Kremlin-friendly, met with
Snowden for four hours and helped him complete his temporary asylum paperwork. If Russia’s federal migration service (FMS) approves
Snowden’s temporary asylum request, Snowden could leave the airport and live in
Russia; possibly also travel to other
countries.
Sunday, June 23,
2013: Snowden traveled to Moscow on the commercial Aeroflot flight SU213
from Hong Kong accompanied by Sarah Harrison of WikiLeaks after Hong Kong
considered extraditing Snowden to the United States. Snowden had hoped to continue his travel to South America but was not able to do so without a passport.
June 14, 2013: U.S. federal prosecutors charged Snowden with
espionage and theft of government property.
Post June 6, 2013:
Edward Snowden becomes known as the ex-CIA and ex-NSA-contracted systems
analyst who leaked secret NSA details.
June 6, 2013: Journalist
Glenn Greenwald,
documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, and Washington Post reporter Barton
Gellman met with Snowden in Hong Kong and began publishing information provided
by Edward Snowden without initially revealing his identity.
May 20, 2013: Snowden,
who was a computer technician for U.S. defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton,
leaves his residence and his job at the United States National Security Agency
(NSA) in Hawaii and flies to Hong Kong.
So what are those revelations that got Snowden stranded in
Russia?
- The NSA operates a complex web of spying programs which
allow it to intercept internet and telephone conversations from over a billion
users from dozens of countries around the world.
- Specific revelations have been made about China, the
European Union, Latin America, Iran and Pakistan, and Australia and New Zealand.
- Many of the spying programs overlap and interrelate among
one another and are often done with the assistance of US entities such as the
DOJ and the FBI and are sanctioned by US laws such as the FISA Amendments Act.
- Many of NSA's programs are directly aided by national and
foreign intelligence services, Britain's GCHQ and Australia's DSD, as well as
by large private telecommunications and internet corporations, such as Verizon,
Telstra, Google and Facebook. Microsoft and Silicon Valley are also
participants.
Some of these programs are:
PRISM –
Cooperation between the NSA and internet companies, whereby the latter allow
the former access (whether direct or indirect is disputed) to their servers.
Boundless Informant
– the computer program that physically performs the data collection.
X-Keyscore – a
program run out of Australia and New Zealand, which specifically targets
foreign-language emails.
Dropmire – a
program that specifically targets foreign embassies and diplomats
Fairview – a
programme that targets mobile phone usage (particularly text messages) in
foreign countries.
Upstream and Tempora
– collecting data from fiber-optic cables and internet backbones.
MAINWAY (call
records), Main Core (financial records) – storing the collected data
Stellar Wind –
mining the collected data
ECHELON –
intercepts commercial satellite trunk communications by all of the Five Eyes
signatories
Turbulence –
includes cyber-warfare capabilities, such as targeting enemies with malware
Insider Threat
Program – policy requiring federal employees to report "high-risk
persons or behaviors" from among co-workers, as well as to punish those
who fail to report such colleagues.
As Edward Snowden is spending his days at Moscow's
Sheremetyevo International Airport, he has the support of WikiLeaks and human
rights activists. Edward Snowden allegedly has further and more devastating information than the ones already leaked. Much
of that information has been put into the hands of people who, should something
happen to Edward Snowden, might find its way into the press.
Historically, Edward Snowden’s saga is really no surprise.
Following World War II, paranoia and fear have ruled many countries and spying
by any means necessary deems to be fit for any country that wants to compete.
Remembering that the internet originally was a military venture makes it no
surprise that it has become a major means for governments to collect
information. There is nothing private about the internet.
While historically there is nothing surprising about the
Edward Snowden saga, Edward Snowden himself is a puzzle.
Edward Snowden, who was born on June 21, 1983, hasn’t
completed anything (high school, college, a Special Forces recruit in the
United States Army) and yet he is an ex-CIA and ex-NSA-contracted systems
analyst with access to most sensitive information?
How effective can all of those secret international and
national surveillance programs be if they cannot detect its own “traitor” or people
that are capable of planning the Boston Marathon bombings?
Something does not add up.
CNN provides a clickable map on the Edward Snowden saga. Click on picture to enlarge.
