Snowden reveals US intelligence’s black budget: $52.6 billion on secret programs. The David Miranda judgment has chilling implications for press freedom, race relations and basic justice. One person's freedom fighter may be another's terrorist, but David Miranda is very clearly neither.
Yet he was detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours under schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000. That the high court has now found his detention to be lawful is disappointing, to say the least. If someone travelling as part of journalistic work can be lawfully detained like this – questioned for hours without a lawyer present, his electronic equipment confiscated and cloned and all without the merest suspicion of wrongdoing required – then clearly something has gone wrong with the law. We've been here before. Schedule 7 suffers the same glaring flaws as the old section 44 counter-terrorism power that also allowed stop and search without suspicion. "Une tendance inquiétante" : L'avocate d'Edward Snowden arrêtée à l'aéroport d'Heathrow de Londres. Edward Snowden 'humbled' by his election as Glasgow University rector. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden said he was humbled and honoured after Glasgow University students voted overwhelmingly for him to serve as their rector for the next three years.
In a statement to the Guardian, Snowden described it as bold and historic decision in support of academic freedom. "In a world where so many of our developing thoughts and queries and plans must be entrusted to the open internet, mass surveillance is not simply a matter of privacy, but of academic freedom and human liberty," Snowden said. The vote is purely symbolic as Snowden is unlikely to be in a position to become a working rector, able to represent students at meetings of the university's administrators.
He is wanted by the US for leaking tens of thousands of documents to journalists and has been granted temporary asylum in Russia. Maryland lawmakers look to cut off NSA's water, power. A bill in Maryland’s state legislature would cut off state services like water and power at the National Security Agency’s (NSA) headquarters.
The bill from eight Republicans in the House of Delegates, including the chamber's minority leader, would prevent the state from granting “material support, participation or assistance” to the NSA or any other federal agency that collects people’s information without a warrant. Under the Fourth Amendment Protection Act, which was introduced last week, law enforcement officials would also be prevented from using information collected without a warrant in a criminal investigation. The NSA’s headquarters is in Fort Meade, Md., about halfway between Washington and Baltimore.
Maryland bill would cut water, electricity to NSA headquarters. June 6, 2013: In this file photo National Security Agency plaques are seen at the compound at Fort Meade, Md.AP A group of legislators in Maryland has introduced legislation that would deny state support to federal agencies engaged in warrantless electronic surveillance in a move aimed at curtailing the National Security Agency's power to monitor and track citizens.
Eight Republicans in the Maryland House of Delegates last week introduced the "Fourth Amendment Protection Act," which would deny the NSA "material support, participation or assistance in any form” from the state, its political subdivisions or companies with state contracts, US News reported. The bill would deprive NSA's headquarters in Ft. Meade, Md., water and electricity carried over public utilities, prohibit the use of evidence gathered by the agency in state courts and prevent state universities from partnering with the NSA on research, according to the report.
Utah lawmaker floats bill to cut off NSA data centre's water supply. The National Security Agency, already under siege in Washington, faces a fresh attempt to curtail its activities from a Utah legislator who wants to cut off the surveillance agency’s water supply.
Marc Roberts, a first-term Republican lawmaker in the Beehive State, plans this week to begin a quixotic quest to check government surveillance starting at a local level. He will introduce a bill that would prevent anyone from supplying water to the $1bn-plus data center the NSA is constructing in his state at Bluffdale. The bill is about telling the federal government “if you want to spy on the whole world and American citizens, great, but we’re not going to help you,” Roberts told the Guardian. Supporters of the bill freely admit they’re at a disadvantage. Roberts is still talking with colleagues to find co-sponsors. Edward Snowden asylum demand dropped by European parliament. The European parliament is to ditch demands on Wednesday that EU governments give guarantees of asylum and security to Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency whistleblower.
The parliament's civil liberties committee is to vote on more than 500 amendments to the first ever parliamentary inquiry into the NSA and GCHQ scandal, a 60-page report that is damning about the scale and the impact of mass surveillance. But there is no consensus on an amendment proposed by the Greens calling on EU governments to assure Snowden of his safety in the event that he emerges from hiding in Russia and comes to Europe. Amid what key MEPs have described as intense pressure from national governments on parliament – from the Conservatives and their allies, from the mainstream centre-right and from social democrats – the asylum call has no chance of passing. "The amendment asking for asylum won't go through," said Claude Moraes, the British Labour MEP who is the principal author of the report. The Intercept. Is Edward Snowden a prisoner in Russia? Edward Snowden's prolonged stay in Russia was involuntary.
He got stuck in Moscow's Sheremetyevo International Airport when his efforts to transit to a South American country such as Ecuador, Bolivia or Venezuela failed. But it made his own story – his narrative of principled exile and flight – a lot more complicated. How Edward Snowden went from loyal NSA contractor to whistleblower. In late December 2001, someone calling themselves TheTrueHOOHA had a question.
He was an 18-year-old American male with impressive IT skills and a sharp intelligence. His real identity was unknown.