Mitra Taj / Reuters & Geoff Dyer / The Financial Times – 2013-07-14 11:29:07
http://in.reuters.com/article/2013/07/13/usa-security-snowden-greenwald-idINDEE96C05520130713
Snowden Documents Could Be ‘Worst Nightmare’ for US
Mitra Taj / Reuters
BUENOS AIRES (July 13 2013) – Fugitive former US spy contractor Edward Snowden controls dangerous information that could become the United States’ “worst nightmare” if revealed, a journalist familiar with the data said in a newspaper interview.
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who first published the documents Snowden leaked, said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday that the US government should be careful in its pursuit of the former computer analyst.
“Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the US government in a single minute than any other person has ever had,” Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinian daily La Nacion.
“The US government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare.”
Snowden, who is sought by Washington on espionage charges after revealing details of secret surveillance programs, has been stranded at a Moscow airport since June 23 and is now seeking refuge in Russia until he can secure safe passage to Latin America, where several counties have offered him asylum.
Greenwald told Reuters on Tuesday that Snowden would likely accept asylum in Venezuela, one of three Latin American countries that have made that offer.
Snowden’s leaks on US spying secrets, including eavesdropping on global email traffic, have upset Washington’s friends and foes alike.
Latin American leaders lashed out at the United States after Greenwald reported in a Brazilian newspaper that the US targeted most of the region with spying programs that monitored Internet traffic.
Washington has urged nations not to give Snowden safe passage.
Greenwald said in his interview with La Nacion that documents Snowden has tucked away in different parts of the world detail which US spy programs capture transmissions in Latin America and how they work.
“One way of intercepting communications is through a telephone company in the United States that has contracts with telecommunications companies in most Latin American countries,” Greenwald said, without specifying which company.
(c) Thomson Reuters 2011. All rights reserved.
Snowden Revelations Stir Up Anti-US Sentiment
Geoff Dyer / The Financial Times
WASHINGTON (July 12, 2013) — Holed up in Moscow airport for the past three weeks, Edward Snowden has only had a limited impact on the political debate about surveillance in the US that he wanted to ignite.
Yet the self-confessed National Security Agency leaker has managed to orchestrate a very different political phenomenon: the biggest bout of anti-Americanism since the Iraq war.
When he first revealed his identity a month ago while in Hong Kong, Mr Snowden used selective disclosures about US global surveillance to rally public opinion in China and Russia. Since then, he has managed to create uproar in Europe with information about the bugging of EU offices and over the past week he has created a new international stir in Latin America.
According to reports this week in the Brazilian newspaper O Globo based on documents provided by the 30-year-old former NSA contractor, the US has been using telecoms infrastructure in Brazil to absorb huge volumes of communications and to spy on governments in the region.
With the US economy looking robust for the first time since the financial crisis, the US is again being seen as an over-weaning superpower that brushes aside smaller nations.
“It sends chills up my spine when we learn they are spying on all of us through their intelligence services in Brazil,” said Cristina Fernández, Argentina’s president.
Making his first public appearance on Friday since he arrived in Moscow, Mr Snowden told human rights activists and politicians that he was applying for temporary asylum in Russia, which would give him the legal basis to travel to one of the three left-leaning Latin American countries that have offered asylum.
“I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression,” he said, according to a statement later released by WikiLeaks, which suggested that he ultimately wants to travel to Venezuela.
The Snowden saga has prompted starkly different responses in the US and in the rest of the world. In the US, the revelations have set off a debate about surveillance in the media, but the broader political impact has been muted by Mr Snowden’s flirtations with governments that are viewed as unfriendly to the US, leading some previously sympathetic members of Congress to denounce him.
Read the complete article online at the FT wensite: www.ft.com
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2013.
Posted according to Title 17, Section 107, US Code, for noncommercial, educational purposes
