CONFIRMED: NSA Taps Phones of Major World Leaders

The National Security Agency eavesdropped on hundreds of phone numbers belonging to dozens of world leaders, newly leaked documents supplied by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden reveal.

Britain’s Guardian newspaper wrote Thursday that a classified memo provided to them by Snowden suggests that the NSA encouraged officials within the United States government and intelligence community to share among their colleagues contact information pertaining to international heads of state.

According to the Guardian, the memo made reference to an unnamed US official who had reportedly supplied the NSA with over 200 numbers, including 35 belonging to world leaders.

“These numbers plus several others have been tasked," or monitored, reads the memo.

The leaders themselves are not identified in the memorandum, but classified documents previously disclosed to the media by Snowden have suggested that the NSA spied on conversations involving citizens of France, Germany, Brazil and elsewhere.
Guardian reporter James Ball writes that senior officials in the NSA’s “customer” departments — or officials within the White House, State Department and Pentagon — were asked in the memo to share their own collection of international contacts, as their unnamed colleague had, in order for the agency to add the numbers to its list of intelligence targets.

"This success leads S2 [signals intelligence] to wonder if there areNSA liaisons whose supported customers may be willing to share their 'Rolodexes' or phone lists with NSA as potential sources of intelligence," Ball quotes from the memo. "S2 welcomes such information!"

“From time to time, SID [Signals Intelligence Directorate] is offered access to the personal contact databases of US officials," it continues. “Such 'Rolodexes' may contain contact information for foreign political or military leaders, to include direct line, fax, residence and cellular numbers."

When asked by the Guardian to comment, White House press secretary Jay Carney referred to comments made earlier Thursday during a briefing in which he acknowledged the NSA disclosure and said, "The revelations have clearly caused tension in our relationships with some countries, and we are dealing with that through diplomatic channels.”
Last month, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff canceled a scheduled meeting at the White House after leaked documents showed the NSA spied on her country’s state oil company. This week it was reported that officials in both France and Germany summoned the US envoy over similar allegations in the wake of Snowden’s leaks.

On Thursday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called allegations the NSA spied on her private communications “not at all acceptable” during a summit of European leaders in Brussels. Germany’s Der Spiegel paper reported previously that leaked NSA documents indicated Merkel’s mobile phone number had been on the radar of American intelligence.

Carney, the White House press secretary, said, "The president spoke with Chancellor Merkel, reassured her that the United States is not and will not monitor the chancellor's communications." 

The White House has not, however, gone on the record to dismiss allegations that German leaders were not previously the subject of US-administered surveillance. 

"It's not just about me but about every German citizen," Merkel said during Thursday's conference. 

"This is not how you should treat your partners," said Stephanie Hilebrand, a 38-year-old German woman who spoke to reporters with Reuters on Thursday from Berlin. "We're not terrorists. Nor is our chancellor." 

Source : RT News

UK ordered Guardian to destroy hard drives in effort to stop Snowden revelations

UK authorities reportedly raided the Guardian’s office in London to destroy hard drives in an effort to stop future publications of leaks from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger revealed in a Monday article posted on the British newspaper's website that intelligence officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) told him that he would either have to hand over all the classified documents or have the newspaper’s hard drives destroyed.

After more talks, two "security experts" from GCHQ - the British version of the National Security Agency - visited the Guardian’s London offices.

Rusbridger wrote that the government officials then watched as computers, which contained classified information passed on by Snowden, were physically destroyed in one of the newspaper building’s basements.

"We can call off the black helicopters," Rusbridger said one of the officials joked.

Another source familiar with the event confirmed to Reuters that Guardian employees destroyed the computers as UK officials observed.

During negotiations with the government, Rusbridger said that the newspaper could not fulfill its journalistic duty if it satisfied the authorities’ requests.

But GCHQ reportedly responded by telling the Guardian that it had already sparked the debate, which was enough.
"You've had your debate. There's no need to write any more," Reuters quoted the unnamed official as saying.

In the article, Rusbridger explained that because of existing “international collaborations” between journalists, it was still possible to report the story and "take advantage of the most permissive legal environments."

“I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations...Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that [reporter Glenn] Greenwald lived in Brazil?” wrote Rusbridger.

“The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian’s long history occurred – with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian’s basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents.”

Rusbridger pointed out that the whole incident felt like a “pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age.”

The news comes after Sunday’s international incident during which David Miranda, the partner of Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald, was held at Heathrow airport under the UK Terrorism Act for the maximum time allowed before pressing charges. Greenwald was the reporter who exclusively broke the Snowden story. 

The editor promised that the Guardian will “continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won’t do it in London. The seizure of Miranda’s laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald’s work.”

Another US security source told Reuters that Miranda’s detention was meant to send a message to those who received Snowden’s classified documents, about how serious the UK is in closing all the leaks in relation to the whistleblower’s revelations.
Greenwald, who first published secrets leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, responded by promising to release more documents. He added that the UK would be “sorry” for detaining his partner for nine hours.

Snowden, who has been granted asylum by Russia, gave Greenwald up to 20,000 documents with details about the US National Security Agency and the UK’s GCHQ surveillance operations.

‘US is the intellectual author behind detention of Miranda’
Lawyer Eva Golinger told RT that the UK has violated all concepts of freedom of the press. “We are talking about a media outlet. Journalists and their spouses and partners being detained and interrogated. So clearly there has been a decision made that everything related to Edward Snowden must be captured no matter what, violating anyone’s right under any country’s laws.”

Golinger believes that government's pressure on journalists could inspire some to cover the topic of government surveillance even more, instead of discouraging them to do so.

“The more principled the people reporting are, the more they will continue to pursue that work in the face of threat. Such cheap threats and intimidation give people even more reasons to continue doing what they are doing because it shows that those in power are clearly frightened of the information that is being put out,” she explained.

“At the same time it could certainly intimidate other journalists and create the environment of self-censorship, where many would be unwilling to take the risks that are involved with national security reporting, particularly when it comes to the US.”

Golinger argued that US is the “intellectual author behind the detainment of Miranda.”

“We are talking about a search and capture that is going on for Edward Snowden and it is the US that is leading that effort. It is not the UK or other European nations, they are merely abiding by the wishes of the US…What I believe is that Washington has simply put out a request to all of its allies that anyone related to Edward Snowden must be detained if they come into your territory and the UK abided by that and did their duty.”

Source : RT News

Snowden faces execution as sealed complaint charges espionage

U.S federal prosecutors have charged whistleblower Edward Snowden with espionage, theft and conversion of government property in a sealed criminal complaint, and asked Hong Kong to detain him ahead of a move to extradite him.
Though the criminal complaint is sealed, charges of espionage and theft are undoubtedly based on Snowden's extraction of classified documents from NSA servers, which led to the publication of several articles regarding the NSA's PRISM program, which alleged to harvest private user data through cooperation with a slew of American corporations including Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple and Microsoft. Federal prosecutors have now laid the groundwork for Snowden's extradition back to the U.S for trial, and have 60 days to file an indictment, The U.S currently has an extradition treaty with Hong Kong, though that treaty includes an exception for crimes of a political nature. The 29 year old former intelligence analyst flew to Hong Kong last month, having been in contact with journalists at The Washington Post and The Guardian Newspapers regarding a series of highly classified documents regarding a massive electronic surveillance program run by the U.S National Security Agency that he had acquired and intended to leak.

Washington has now asked Hong Kong's government to detain Snowden on a provisional arrest warrant, according to officials who spoke with the Post. Though the territory is considered a ''semi-autonomous'' region under Chinese sovereignty, it is unclear whether the matter will be handled solely by Hong Kong's legal system or without intervention from Beijing.

More detail to follow on this story as it breaks.

Nearly two weeks ago a Fox News analyst called for Snowden's execution. Here is that interview:

I Stand With Edward Snowden

                  >>>http://bit.ly/1757Ezp<<<
                                                         (click here^^^^^)

This 29 year-old analyst just gave up his whole life -- his girlfriend, his job, and his home -- to blow the whistle on the US government's shocking PRISM program -- which has been reading and recording our emails, Skype messages, Facebook posts and phone calls for years.

When Bradley Manning passed this kind of data to Wikileaks, the US threw him naked into solitary confinement in conditions that the UN called "cruel, inhumane and degrading".

The authorities and press are deciding right now how to handle this scandal. If millions of us stand with Edward in the next 48 hours, it will send a powerful statement that he should be treated like the brave whistleblower that he is, and it should be PRISM, and not Edward, that the US cracks down on.

To President Barack Obama:

We call on you to ensure that whistleblower Edward Snowden is treated fairly, humanely and given due process. The PRISM program is one of the greatest violations of privacy ever committed by a government. We demand that you terminate it immediately, and that Edward Snowden be recognized as a whistleblower acting in the public interest -- not as a dangerous criminal.