Snowden

Putin: I envy Obama, because he can spy and get away with it

I envy Obama because he can spy on his allies without any consequences, said Putin when asked about how his relations had changed with the US following Snowden’s espionage revelations. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/q66cm7

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Anti-surveillance buses thanking Snowden cruise Washington

While Edward Snowden continues to be viewed as a traitor by Washington, a poster campaign on the city’s bus routes is putting across a very different message. The scheme, launched by a free speech advocacy group, calls on the public to take a stand against America’s notorious surveillance operations – and thanks the former CIA man for exposing wrongdoing. READ MORE: http://on.rt.com/vij149

‘US citizen has no right to free speech?’ State Dept spokesperson grilled over Snowden

Tensions are high as NSA leaker Edward Snowden officially submitted application for temporary asylum in Russia on Tuesday. After Russian and international human rights advocates and lawyers met with Snowden at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on Friday, the US said it was disappointed in Russia for considering the whistleblowers asylum. During a daily press briefing State Department spokeswoman, Jen Psaki was given a thorough grilling on the Snowden affair by journalists, including AP’s Matthew Lee and CNN’s Elise Labott and was left lost for words at almost every turn.

Snowden docs now show Britain, not NSA, targeted Belgian telco

Snowden docs now show Britain, not NSA, targeted Belgian telco

“Operation Socialist” designed “to enable better exploitation of Belgacom.”

  by       –    Sept 20 2013, 4:05pm +0300

Citing documents provided by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, the German magazine Der Spiegel reported on Friday that it was actually the United Kingdom that was behind the recently disclosed malware infection at a major Belgian telco. Der Spiegel said that top secret documents from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British equivalent of the NSA, show that “Operation Socialist” was designed “to enable better exploitation of Belgacom.”

Previously, a major Belgian newspaper, De Standaard, had pointed the finger at the NSA. The scandal has raised a lot of questions in the European Union—after all, Belgium and the United Kingdom are both part of the 28-member bloc. As Der Spiegel reported:

According to the slides in the GCHQ presentation, the attack was directed at several Belgacom employees and involved the planting of a highly developed attack technology referred to as a “Quantum Insert” (“QI”). It appears to be a method with which the person being targeted, without their knowledge, is redirected to websites that then plant malware on their computers that can then manipulate them. Some of the employees whose computers were infiltrated had “good access” to important parts of Belgacom’s infrastructure, and this seemed to please the British spies, according to the slides.

Belgacom deferred all questions of future action to the public prosecutor and the Ministry of Justice. “Belgacom has detected and eradicated the virus,” Haroun Fenaux, a Belgacom spokesperson, told Le Soir newspaper (Google Translate) on Friday.“We’ve then brought a complaint. With respect to all of these aspects, since Monday we have communicated everything in a transparent manner. Now, it is the job of the federal prosecutor, supported by the Computer Crime Unit and the Ministry of Defense, to do their job and determine who was behind the virus and what their intentions were.”