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(CNN) — Iran’s centrist president-elect expressed a willingness to open dialogue with the United States, which it hasn’t had diplomatic relations with in decades, but only if the United States recognizes Iran’s right to a nuclear program.

Hassan Rouhani, who won the presidency over the weekend, said in his first news conference Monday, however, that the Islamic republic has no intention of ending its uranium-enrichment program. The program is a major impetus for the international sanctions against Iran.

Calling relations between the U.S. and Iran an “old wound” and “complicated,” Rouhani said that before there are talks, the U.S. must first promise to never interfere with Iranian domestic affairs and scrap its “unilateral” and “bullying policies.”

“Wisdom tells us both countries, both nations need to think more about the future and try to sit down and find solutions to past issues and rectify things,” he said. “The rights of the Iranian nation, including nuclear rights, need to be recognized.”

Is Iran’s new president a reformist?

Iran pins hope for change on Rouhani

Iran declares new president

Impact of sanctions on Iranians

“We are prepared to see tensions alleviated,” he added, noting that any talks “should be based on mutual respect and interest and equal footing.”

In opening his news conference, Rouhani, 65, said repairing Iran’s economy and engaging in more dialogue — both at home and abroad — will be his administration’s top priorities.

Dialogue and the economy are related, as Iran faces sharp international sanctions over its nuclear program, but Rouhani said he foresees a “fresh opportunity for interaction at the global level.”

Mutual trust and transparency are key to the international community lifting sanctions, which he called “brutal, and the people of Iran have done nothing wrong to deserve sanctions.”

“Making use of the lever of sanctions, this is not the right time for that. … Even in the West, they are facing economic problems and dilemmas, and they themselves know the sanctions are to the detriment of the West,” Rouhani said, adding that Israel was the only country benefiting from them. “We can make it clear to the whole world that the measures and activities of the Islamic republic are totally within international regulations and mechanisms.”

Rouhani did not elaborate on how he would make the country’s nuclear program more transparent, but he insisted that the Iranian nuclear program was lawful. He also voiced opposition to international “meddling” in domestic affairs.

While Rouhani encouraged Iran to act with “unity and solidarity” as it transitions to his promised moderate rule in coming weeks, he said his primary goals will be “acting in line with salvaging the country’s economy, reviving morality and constructive interaction with the world.”

He said he could not yet provide time lines but said he would first like to ensure that Iranians had basic commodities before his government pursues “the tranquility and stability of the economy.”

This will require embracing “moderation and justice, and not extremism and egoism,” he said. “Electoral promises, I will not forget them, so I beseech the almighty God to give me the opportunity to materialize all those promises.”

Rouhani said he would convene groups to discuss the best ways to improve the country’s social, cultural and economic affairs. “As far as practice, that job will be delegated to the people themselves,” he said.

After his victory was announced over the weekend, Rouhani spoke of reforms without threatening Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the country’s institutions — of which he is a product. The former national security council chief promised greater personal freedoms and said he would free political prisoners and jailed journalists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already cautioned the world against easing such sanctions in the face of Rouhani’s promises.

“Regarding the results of the elections in Iran, let us not delude ourselves. The international community must not become caught up in wishes and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program,” Netanyahu said at a weekly Cabinet meeting.

The prime minister also said Iran’s supreme leader “disqualified candidates who did not fit his extremist outlook.”

In his campaigning, Rouhani pledged to improve the economy and unemployment. As a former nuclear negotiator, he said, he would reduce the high tension between Iran and the outside world by addressing the sanctions.

In a message through the semiofficial Fars News Agency, Rouhani said the win “is the victory of wisdom, moderation, growth and awareness, the victory of commitment and religiosity over extremism and ill tempers.”

Reaction from the West — including that of Britain, the United States and United Nations — revolved around calls for Rouhani to keep his promises to steer Iran in a new direction.

The United States “remains ready to engage the Iranian government directly in order to reach a diplomatic solution that will fully address the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program,” the White House said.

While the White House respected the vote, it said the election occurred “against the backdrop of a lack of transparency, censorship of the media, Internet, and text messages, and an intimidating security environment that limited freedom of expression and assembly.”

Rouhani succeeds outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was term-limited and could not run in the election.

But Rouhani won’t be Iran’s most powerful man. That distinction belongs to Khamenei, who has been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989. He’s got plenty of backing, from conservative citizens to loyalist militia groups to, most notably, the Revolutionary Guard.

On his website, the supreme leader said Rouhani is the president of all Iranians and told supporters of various candidates to set aside their differences and unify.

Rouhani has all-round credentials in Iran’s institutions, including as a senior cleric and former commander of Iranian air defenses, and he is an intellectual with three law degrees, including from a university in Scotland.

He has a reputation for shunning extreme positions and bridging differences.

While he has represented Khamenei on Iran’s security council since 1989, he has avoided being perceived as a pushover and has taken exception with the supreme leader on being too rigid toward the international community, according to an Iranian scholar at Stanford University. He has also accused state-run media of censorship and publishing lies.

Prior to Rouhani’s election, Iran’s Guardian Council, an unelected body made up of six clerics and six lawyers operating under the oversight of the supreme leader, drew up the restricted list of candidates from the 680 who initially registered.

Eight candidates were approved, two of whom subsequently dropped out. The final six contenders didn’t include any women. Nor did they include Ahmadinejad’s aide and protege Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who was among those excluded by the Guardian Council.

CNN’s Shirzad Bozorgmehr, Michael Martinez, Holly Yan, Michael Schwartz, Laura Smith-Spark, Reza Sayah, Azadeh Ansari and Sara Mazloumsaki contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/17/world/meast/iran-rouhani-news-conference/index.html?eref=edition

(CNN) — Iran’s centrist president-elect expressed a willingness to open dialogue with the United States, which it hasn’t had diplomatic relations with in decades, but only if the United States recognizes Iran’s right to a nuclear program.

Hassan Rouhani, who won the presidency over the weekend, said in his first news conference Monday, however, that the Islamic republic has no intention of ending its uranium-enrichment program. The program is a major impetus for the international sanctions against Iran.

Calling relations between the U.S. and Iran an “old wound” and “complicated,” Rouhani said that before there are talks, the U.S. must first promise to never interfere with Iranian domestic affairs and scrap its “unilateral” and “bullying policies.”

“Wisdom tells us both countries, both nations need to think more about the future and try to sit down and find solutions to past issues and rectify things,” he said. “The rights of the Iranian nation, including nuclear rights, need to be recognized.”

Is Iran’s new president a reformist?

Iran pins hope for change on Rouhani

Iran declares new president

Impact of sanctions on Iranians

“We are prepared to see tensions alleviated,” he added, noting that any talks “should be based on mutual respect and interest and equal footing.”

In opening his news conference, Rouhani, 65, said repairing Iran’s economy and engaging in more dialogue — both at home and abroad — will be his administration’s top priorities.

Dialogue and the economy are related, as Iran faces sharp international sanctions over its nuclear program, but Rouhani said he foresees a “fresh opportunity for interaction at the global level.”

Mutual trust and transparency are key to the international community lifting sanctions, which he called “brutal, and the people of Iran have done nothing wrong to deserve sanctions.”

“Making use of the lever of sanctions, this is not the right time for that. … Even in the West, they are facing economic problems and dilemmas, and they themselves know the sanctions are to the detriment of the West,” Rouhani said, adding that Israel was the only country benefiting from them. “We can make it clear to the whole world that the measures and activities of the Islamic republic are totally within international regulations and mechanisms.”

Rouhani did not elaborate on how he would make the country’s nuclear program more transparent, but he insisted that the Iranian nuclear program was lawful. He also voiced opposition to international “meddling” in domestic affairs.

While Rouhani encouraged Iran to act with “unity and solidarity” as it transitions to his promised moderate rule in coming weeks, he said his primary goals will be “acting in line with salvaging the country’s economy, reviving morality and constructive interaction with the world.”

He said he could not yet provide time lines but said he would first like to ensure that Iranians had basic commodities before his government pursues “the tranquility and stability of the economy.”

This will require embracing “moderation and justice, and not extremism and egoism,” he said. “Electoral promises, I will not forget them, so I beseech the almighty God to give me the opportunity to materialize all those promises.”

Rouhani said he would convene groups to discuss the best ways to improve the country’s social, cultural and economic affairs. “As far as practice, that job will be delegated to the people themselves,” he said.

After his victory was announced over the weekend, Rouhani spoke of reforms without threatening Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the country’s institutions — of which he is a product. The former national security council chief promised greater personal freedoms and said he would free political prisoners and jailed journalists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already cautioned the world against easing such sanctions in the face of Rouhani’s promises.

“Regarding the results of the elections in Iran, let us not delude ourselves. The international community must not become caught up in wishes and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program,” Netanyahu said at a weekly Cabinet meeting.

The prime minister also said Iran’s supreme leader “disqualified candidates who did not fit his extremist outlook.”

In his campaigning, Rouhani pledged to improve the economy and unemployment. As a former nuclear negotiator, he said, he would reduce the high tension between Iran and the outside world by addressing the sanctions.

In a message through the semiofficial Fars News Agency, Rouhani said the win “is the victory of wisdom, moderation, growth and awareness, the victory of commitment and religiosity over extremism and ill tempers.”

Reaction from the West — including that of Britain, the United States and United Nations — revolved around calls for Rouhani to keep his promises to steer Iran in a new direction.

The United States “remains ready to engage the Iranian government directly in order to reach a diplomatic solution that will fully address the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program,” the White House said.

While the White House respected the vote, it said the election occurred “against the backdrop of a lack of transparency, censorship of the media, Internet, and text messages, and an intimidating security environment that limited freedom of expression and assembly.”

Rouhani succeeds outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was term-limited and could not run in the election.

But Rouhani won’t be Iran’s most powerful man. That distinction belongs to Khamenei, who has been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989. He’s got plenty of backing, from conservative citizens to loyalist militia groups to, most notably, the Revolutionary Guard.

On his website, the supreme leader said Rouhani is the president of all Iranians and told supporters of various candidates to set aside their differences and unify.

Rouhani has all-round credentials in Iran’s institutions, including as a senior cleric and former commander of Iranian air defenses, and he is an intellectual with three law degrees, including from a university in Scotland.

He has a reputation for shunning extreme positions and bridging differences.

While he has represented Khamenei on Iran’s security council since 1989, he has avoided being perceived as a pushover and has taken exception with the supreme leader on being too rigid toward the international community, according to an Iranian scholar at Stanford University. He has also accused state-run media of censorship and publishing lies.

Prior to Rouhani’s election, Iran’s Guardian Council, an unelected body made up of six clerics and six lawyers operating under the oversight of the supreme leader, drew up the restricted list of candidates from the 680 who initially registered.

Eight candidates were approved, two of whom subsequently dropped out. The final six contenders didn’t include any women. Nor did they include Ahmadinejad’s aide and protege Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who was among those excluded by the Guardian Council.

CNN’s Shirzad Bozorgmehr, Michael Martinez, Holly Yan, Michael Schwartz, Laura Smith-Spark, Reza Sayah, Azadeh Ansari and Sara Mazloumsaki contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/17/world/meast/iran-rouhani-news-conference/index.html?eref=edition

(CNN) — Iran’s centrist president-elect expressed a willingness to open dialogue with the United States, which it hasn’t had diplomatic relations with in decades, but only if the U.S. recognizes Iran’s right to a nuclear program.

The Islamic republic has no intention, however, of ending uranium enrichment, Hassan Rouhani, who won the presidency over the weekend, said in his first news conference Monday. The country’s nuclear enrichment program is a major impetus for the international sanctions against Iran.

Calling relations between the U.S. and Iran an “old wound” and “complicated,” Rouhani said that before there are talks, the U.S. must first promise to never interfere with Iranian domestic affairs and scrap its “unilateral” and “bullying policies.”

“Wisdom tells us both countries, both nations need to think more about the future and try to sit down and find solutions to past issues and rectify things,” he said. “The rights of the Iranian nation, including nuclear rights, need to be recognized.”

Is Iran’s new president a reformist?

Iran pins hope for change on Rouhani

Iran declares new president

Impact of sanctions on Iranians

“We are prepared to see tensions alleviated,” he added, noting that any talks “should be based on mutual respect and interest and equal footing.”

In opening his news conference, Rouhani, 65, said repairing Iran’s economy and engaging in more dialogue — both at home and abroad — will be his administration’s top priorities.

Dialogue and the economy are related, as Iran faces sharp international sanctions over its nuclear program, but Rouhani said he foresees a “fresh opportunity for interaction at the global level.”

Mutual trust and transparency are key to the international community lifting sanctions, which he called “brutal, and the people of Iran have done nothing wrong to deserve sanctions.”

“Making use of the lever of sanctions, this is not the right time for that. … Even in the West, they are facing economic problems and dilemmas, and they themselves know the sanctions are to the detriment of the West,” Rouhani said, adding that Israel was the only country benefiting from them. “We can make it clear to the whole world that the measures and activities of the Islamic republic are totally within international regulations and mechanisms.”

Rouhani did not elaborate on how he would make the country’s nuclear program more transparent, but he insisted that the Iranian nuclear program was lawful. He also voiced opposition to international “meddling” in domestic affairs.

While Rouhani encouraged Iran to act with “unity and solidarity” as it transitions to his promised moderate rule in coming weeks, he said his primary goals will be “acting in line with salvaging the country’s economy, reviving morality and constructive interaction with the world.”

He said he could not yet provide time lines but said he would first like to ensure that Iranians had basic commodities before his government pursues “the tranquility and stability of the economy.”

This will require embracing “moderation and justice, and not extremism and egoism,” he said. “Electoral promises, I will not forget them, so I beseech the almighty God to give me the opportunity to materialize all those promises.”

Rouhani said he would convene groups to discuss the best ways to improve the country’s social, cultural and economic affairs. “As far as practice, that job will be delegated to the people themselves,” he said.

After his victory was announced over the weekend, Rouhani spoke of reforms without threatening Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or the country’s institutions — of which he is a product. The former national security council chief promised greater personal freedoms and said he would free political prisoners and jailed journalists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already cautioned the world against easing such sanctions in the face of Rouhani’s promises.

“Regarding the results of the elections in Iran, let us not delude ourselves. The international community must not become caught up in wishes and be tempted to relax the pressure on Iran to stop its nuclear program,” Netanyahu said at a weekly Cabinet meeting.

The prime minister also said Iran’s supreme leader “disqualified candidates who did not fit his extremist outlook.”

In his campaigning, Rouhani pledged to improve the economy and unemployment. As a former nuclear negotiator, he said, he would reduce the high tension between Iran and the outside world by addressing the sanctions.

In a message through the semiofficial Fars News Agency, Rouhani said the win “is the victory of wisdom, moderation, growth and awareness, the victory of commitment and religiosity over extremism and ill tempers.”

Reaction from the West — including that of Britain, the United States and United Nations — revolved around calls for Rouhani to keep his promises to steer Iran in a new direction.

The United States “remains ready to engage the Iranian government directly in order to reach a diplomatic solution that will fully address the international community’s concerns about Iran’s nuclear program,” the White House said.

While the White House respected the vote, it said the election occurred “against the backdrop of a lack of transparency, censorship of the media, Internet, and text messages, and an intimidating security environment that limited freedom of expression and assembly.”

Rouhani succeeds outgoing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was term-limited and could not run in the election.

But Rouhani won’t be Iran’s most powerful man. That distinction belongs to Khamenei, who has been Iran’s supreme leader since 1989. He’s got plenty of backing, from conservative citizens to loyalist militia groups to, most notably, the Revolutionary Guard.

On his website, the supreme leader said Rouhani is the president of all Iranians and told supporters of various candidates to set aside their differences and unify.

Rouhani has all-round credentials in Iran’s institutions, including as a senior cleric and former commander of Iranian air defenses, and he is an intellectual with three law degrees, including from a university in Scotland.

He has a reputation for shunning extreme positions and bridging differences.

While he has represented Khamenei on Iran’s security council since 1989, he has avoided being perceived as a pushover and has taken exception with the supreme leader on being too rigid toward the international community, according to an Iranian scholar at Stanford University. He has also accused state-run media of censorship and publishing lies.

Prior to Rouhani’s election, Iran’s Guardian Council, an unelected body made up of six clerics and six lawyers operating under the oversight of the supreme leader, drew up the restricted list of candidates from the 680 who initially registered.

Eight candidates were approved, two of whom subsequently dropped out. The final six contenders didn’t include any women. Nor did they include Ahmadinejad’s aide and protege Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, who was among those excluded by the Guardian Council.

CNN’s Shirzad Bozorgmehr, Michael Martinez, Holly Yan, Michael Schwartz, Laura Smith-Spark, Reza Sayah, Azadeh Ansari and Sara Mazloumsaki contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/17/world/meast/iran-rouhani-news-conference/index.html?eref=edition

(CNN) — As the Iranian people get ready to cast their votes for one of the six remaining presidential candidates, as vetted by the country’s Supreme Leader and the Guardian Council, a free election is under way in the virtual world — where technology and the Internet are creating an alternative platform for Iranians to raise their voices.

With just days until the June 14 election, a cyber-voting space is running a “virtual election.” This campaign — free from the Islamic regime’s constraints — is helping to provide a virtual space for voters inside Iran to “freely” choose their preferred candidate.

Russian chess legend Garry Kasparov is leading this effort, known as the “We Choose” campaign. He is joined by other internationally recognized former government officials, human rights advocates and technology experts.

“Democracy is both a political right and a human right,” said Kasparov, chairman of the We Choose global committee.

“The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which Iran has also signed, declares that the will of the people shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections — which are not the case in the current system of Iran, so if we want to understand the real opinion of the Iranian people, we need to give them an alternative platform to vote and to express their preferences,” he said.

After the 2009 election many Iranians protested against Ahmadinejad’s re-election alleging severe voting fraud. Soon after, the opposition was systematically crushed by regime forces, which left the massive movement for change in Iran shattered.

Khamenei “rigged” Iranian elections

More drama in the Iranian elections

Ahmadinejad aide banned from election

Read more: Repressed voices speak out in Iran

“Such ‘parallel institutions’ as We Choose give people space to express their will and grievances freely — it’s also what we called a ‘low risk tactic’ of dispersion as opposed to ‘high risk tactic’ of concentration, such as mass rallies and protests,” said Srdja Popovic, a Serbian lawyer and political activist whose creative opposition tactics helped topple the government of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000.

He adds that such tactics are suitable for societies with high levels of oppression and fear, “and Khamenei’s Iran is unfortunately exactly like that.”

Popovic is the founder of the Center for Applied Non-Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS). According to the Atlantic, the young Iranians protesting against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s re-election in 2009 downloaded 17,000 copies of Popovic’s guide to nonviolent action.

“People are not satisfied with the Iranian election inside Iran because of the election process, there is no independent monitoring, and there is no international supervision, so the election is not free and fair.” said Reza Ghazinouri, a young Iranian who fled Iran after expressing opposition toward the regime in the 2009 election aftermath.

Like many of his friends inside Iran, Reza believes people are disappointed with this upcoming election, where they feel their voices cannot be heard.

Aspiring to help raise the Iranian people’s voices, We Choose claims to provide a secure space, where aside from the official nominees, there are 12 other candidates that represent a wide range of socio-political perspectives.

Former reformists and Green Movement representatives Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, who the Iranian regime currently has under house arrest, are among the 12 “virtual candidates.”

Representing views from outside Iran, Reza Pahlavi, Iran’s heir to the Pahlavi monarchy is another candidate, as well controversial figures like Mariam Rajavi, President of the National Council of Resistance of Iran or Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK). The U.S. removed Rajavi’s organization from its list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations last year.

Read more: Iranian exile group removed from U.S. terror list

“While there are an enormous number of possible candidates, our list of 20 candidates is representative of the broad political spectrum and not just chosen from a single political ideology.” Kasparov told CNN, suggesting “this process can be a step forward towards building a healthy and strong civil society in Iran, which promotes democracy and freedom.”

We Choose also listed Nasrin Sotoudeh, an Iranian human rights lawyer currently jailed in Tehran’s Evin prison among its candidates. Former president Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani and Ahmadinejad’s protege Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei – both disqualified from this year’s race by the Guardian Council – are also among the 20 candidates.

A similar virtual voting platform was applied in Russia during the October 2012 elections, which was also headed by Kasparov and Leonid Volkov — the architect of the design team behind the virtual election platform. The Russian cyber election voicing opposition to Vladimir Putin resulted in 82,000 participant voters.

As the Iranian government tightens cyberspace access and begins monitoring of Internet activities, satellite space, and mobile communication ahead of the election, these virtual campaigners say they have created a cyber security system that cannot be monitored or hacked by the regime.

Read more: Iran tightens grip on cyberspace

“The system we have created for the Iranian election is arguably the most secure and sophisticated platform of its kind ever developed,” said Volkov. “The Iranian people will be able to cast their ‘virtual’ votes without worrying about a knock on the door in the night.”

Amanpour explains Iran election

Iran’s candidate, and nuclear negotiator

Uncertainty in Iranian elections

This technology is exclusive to Iranians inside Iran who can use their mobile phones to cast their votes by SMS. Phil Zimmermann’s cyber-security firm Silent Circle helped to ensure anonymity for voters and the “one vote for one person” process.

Kasparov also told CNN the biggest challenge for the virtual platform was “finding the right balance between maximum security for the voters, and thereby ensuring safety through anonymity, and protecting the reliability of the results by preventing mass manipulation.”

While many still speculate about the success of this campaign and challenges to internet access and cell-phone use in Iran, Nazie Eftekhari one of the Iranian-American community’s leading voices and co-founder of The Foundation for the Children of Iran, believes history belongs to those who show up and support creative ways that support democracy and reform.

“If you look at Tunisia and Egypt, it all started as a Twitter and Facebook campaign. Back in the days, wars and change began with shots and gunfire around the world, but nowadays it could be one SMS that could be heard around the world and create change.”

Eftekhari is also a board member of the We Choose global committee, as are NASA scientist Firouz Naderi, renowned historian Francis Fukiyama and six other internationally recognized figures.

Only one day into the start of this virtual election on June 7, almost 500 people voted inside Iran. An Iranian voter who asked to remain anonymous created a blog post to show other Iranians the process through which he cast his SMS vote.

The blogger also publicized how voting cannot go through some mobile-service providers in Tehran. We Choose technicians said that his post helped their cyber security team trouble shoot the technical glitch and continue to improve voting.

Inside Iran, Osoolgara, a website close to the Supreme Leader has condemned this campaign and called it a “CIA operation against the Islamic Republic of Iran, that is led by one of its agents Garry Kasparov.” Other Iranian-government news agencies including Fars News and Mashregh are calling this effort a CIA operation that is aiming to hurt the Islamic Regime.

Today, virtual elections and characters have created new rallying fields that compete with the Islamic regime.

This virtual election continues until June 13, where the “virtual winner” will be announced on the morning of the actual Iranian presidential election on June 14.

“I want to send a message of hope to the people of Iran and to show them that the whole world is watching what happens there,” Kasparov told CNN, a message he hopes can potentially model an opportunity to “operationalize democracy in nations where people are not able to express their true political views.”

Read more: Iran presidential candidates ‘cry for overhaul of foreign policy’

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/11/world/meast/iran-elections-virtual/index.html?eref=edition

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Former intelligence worker Edward Snowden, 29, revealed himself as the source of documents outlining a massive effort by the NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. He says he just wanted the public to know what the government was doing. “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” he said. While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks.

Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers in 1971. The top-secret documents revealed that senior American leaders, including three presidents, knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire. Further, they showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg surrendered to authorities and was charged as a spy. During his trial, the court learned that President Richard Nixon’s administration had embarked on a campaign to discredit Ellsberg, illegally wiretapping him and breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. All charges against him were dropped. Since then he has lived a relatively quiet life as a respected author and lecturer.

Starting in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service studied untreated syphilis in black men who thought they were getting free health care. The patients weren’t told of their affliction or sufficiently treated. Peter Buxtun, who worked for the Public Health Service, relayed information about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to a reporter in 1972, which halted the 40-year study. His testimony at congressional hearings led to an overhaul of the Health, Education and Welfare rules concerning work with human subjects. A class-action lawsuit was settled out-of-court for $10 million, with the U.S. government promising free medical care to survivors and their families. Here, participants talk with a study coordinator.

In 2005, retired deputy FBI director Mark Felt revealed himself to be the whistle-blower “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal. He anonymously assisted Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward with many of their stories about the Nixon administration’s cover-up after the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The stories sparked a congressional investigation that eventually led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage. Felt was convicted on unrelated conspiracy charges in 1980 and eventually pardoned by President Ronald Reagan before slipping into obscurity for the next quarter-century. He died in 2008 at age 95.

Mordechai Vanunu, who worked as a technician at Israel’s nuclear research facility, leaked information to a British newspaper and led nuclear arms analysts to conclude that Israel possessed a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its weapons program. An Israeli court convicted Vanunu in 1986 after Israeli intelligence agents captured him in Italy. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Since his release in 2004, he has been arrested on a number of occasions for violating terms of his parole.

President Ronald Reagan addresses the media in 1987, months after the disclosure of the Iran-Contra affair. A secret operation carried out by an American military officer used proceeds from weapons sales to Iran to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and attempted to secure the release of U.S. hostages held by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mehdi Hashemi, an officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, leaked evidence of the deal to a Lebanese newspaper in 1986. Reagan’s closest aides maintain he did not fully know, and only reluctantly came to accept, the circumstances of the operation.

Tobacco industry executive Jeffrey Wigand issued a memo to his company in 1992 about his concerns regarding tobacco additives. He was fired in March 1993 and subsequently contacted by “60 Minutes” and persuaded to tell his story on CBS. He claimed that Brown Williamson knowingly used additives that were carcinogenic and addictive and spent millions covering it up. He also testified in a landmark case in Mississippi that resulted in a $246 billion settlement from the tobacco industry. Wigand has received public recognition for his actions and continues to crusade against Big Tobacco. He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film “The Insider.”

For 10 years, Frederic Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about practices at the FBI’s world-renowned crime lab, where he worked. His efforts eventually led to a 1997 investigation that found lab agents produced inaccurate and scientifically flawed testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings. The Justice Department recommended major reforms but also criticized Whitehurst for “overstated and incendiary” allegations. He also faced disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into how some of his allegations were leaked to a magazine. After a yearlong paid suspension he left the bureau in 1998 with a settlement worth more than $1.16 million.

FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley accused the bureau of hindering efforts to investigate a suspected terrorist that could have disrupted plans for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. In 2002 she fired off a 13-page letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and flew to Washington to hand-deliver copies to two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and meet with committee staffers. The letter accused the bureau of deliberately undermining requests to look into Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States of playing a role in the attacks. She testified in front of Congress and the 9/11 Commission about the FBI’s mishandling of information. Rowley was selected as one of Time magazine’s People of the Year in 2002, along with whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins of Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.

Sherron Watkins, a former vice president at Enron, sent an anonymous letter to founder Kenneth Lay in 2001 warning him the company had accounting irregularities. The memo eventually reached the public and she later testified before Congress about her concerns and the company’s wrongdoings. More than 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and many also lost their life savings, when the energy giant declared bankruptcy in 2001. Investors lost billions of dollars. An investigation in 2002 found that Enron executives reaped millions of dollars from off-the-books partnerships and violated basic rules of accounting and ethics. Many were sentenced to prison for their roles in the Enron scandal.

Cynthia Cooper and her team of auditors uncovered massive fraud at WorldCom in 2002. They found that the long-distance telephone provider had used $3.8 billion in questionable accounting entries to inflate earnings over the past five quarters. By the end of 2003, the total fraud was estimated to be $11 billion. The company filed for bankruptcy protection and five executives ended up in prison. Cooper started her own consulting firm and told her story in the book “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.”

In 2003, federal air marshal Robert MacLean anonymously tipped off an MSNBC reporter that because of budget concerns, the TSA was temporarily suspending missions that would require marshals to stay in hotels just days after they were briefed about a new “potential plot” to hijack U.S. airliners. The news caused an immediate uproar on Capitol Hill and the TSA retreated, withdrawing the scheduling cuts before they went into effect. MacLean was later investigated and fired for the unauthorized disclosure of “sensitive security information.”

Joe Darby is the whistle-blower behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq. He says he asked Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. for photos from their travels so he could share them with family. Instead, he was given photos of prisoner abuse. Darby eventually alerted the U.S. military command, triggering an investigation and global outrage when the scandal came to light in 2004. Graner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the abuse. He was released in 2011 after serving 6½ years of his sentence. The military and members of Darby’s own family ostracized him, calling him a traitor. Eventually he and his wife had to enter protective custody.

The New York Times reported in 2005 that in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush authorized the U.S. National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court warrant on people in the United States, including American citizens, suspected of communicating with al Qaeda members overseas. The Bush administration staunchly defended the controversial surveillance program. Russ Tice, an NSA insider, came forward as one of the anonymous sources used by the Times. He said he was concerned about alleged abuses and a lack of oversight. Here, President Bush participates in a conversation about the Patriot Act in Buffalo, New York, in April 2004.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. His court-martial began on June 3. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and could face up to two decades in jail. He has pleaded not guilty to the most serious charge – that of aiding U.S. enemies, which carries the potential for a life sentence. At a February proceeding, Manning read a statement detailing why and how he sent classified material in 2010 to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information.

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Hong Kong (CNN) — China remained tight-lipped Thursday about its stance on NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who is believed to be holed up in a safe house somewhere in the semiautonomous territory of Hong Kong.

Snowden provided fresh fuel Wednesday for the controversy he has sparked, telling a Hong Kong newspaper that U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking networks around the world for years, including hundreds of computers in China.

In the interview with the South China Morning Post, he also said he plans to stay in Hong Kong to fight any attempt to force him to return to the United States because he has “faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.” His comments come as the FBI is investigating his case.

His presence in the southern Chinese territory, which has a separate system of government from the mainland, has raised questions about how an effort by the U.S. government to extradite him would unfold, and what role Beijing might play in the process.

Manhunt under way for NSA leaker

Ron Paul on Snowden: It’s a heroic effort

Snowden’s life before leak

Obama open to NSA changes

But China’s first official comment on the matter gave away no clues.

“We have no information to offer at the moment,” a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, said in response to a question about Snowden at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday. She repeated the same answer to several follow-up questions.

Snowden, 29, has rocked the Obama administration and U.S. intelligence community by providing documents to journalists revealing the existence of secret programs to collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and the Internet activity of overseas residents.

Differing reactions

Snowden’s case has become a hot issue in Hong Kong, making local newspaper front pages, stirring legal debates and prompting plans for a rally in support of him over the weekend.

The reaction in mainland China, on the other hand, has been muted. State-run media outlets have covered the case cautiously, appearing to try to avoid focusing too much attention on some of the sensitive issues his disclosures have raised, such as government surveillance of citizens.

The Snowden story has also so far failed to make big waves among China’s tens of millions of highly active social media users.

Some Chinese state media took the opportunity Thursday to highlight Snowden’s comments to the South China Morning Post alleging U.S. government hacking of Chinese targets.

In recent years, the Global Times newspaper said in an editorial, “the United States has always claimed itself to be a victim of Chinese hacking activities. Many speculate that it’s a cover up for hacking activities conducted by the U.S. government. Now, Snowden’s revelation proves that such activities have already been going on for a long time.”

Hacking claims

Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden told the Hong Kong newspaper, are hundreds of computers in China.

U.S. officials have increasingly accused China of being the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. Beijing has denied such attacks.

The South China Morning Post said it had seen documents provided by Snowden but was unable to verify their authenticity. The newspaper also said it was unable to independently verify allegations of U.S. hacking of networks in Hong Kong and mainland China since 2009.

NSA leaker back in shadows

Why did U.S. leaker hide in Hong Kong?

Where could NSA leaker go?

Prosecution for journalists in leak?

Snowden told the paper that some of the targets included the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public officials and students. The documents also “point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets,” it reported.

The claims came just days after U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to address cyberattacks emanating from China that Obama described as “direct theft of United States property.”

Snowden’s allegations appear to give weight to claims by some Chinese government officials that the country has been a victim of similar hacking efforts coming from the United States.

His claims came as Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency chief, testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that the country’s cyberinfrastructure, including telephones and computer networks, is somewhat vulnerable to attack.

On a scale of one to 10, “our critical infrastructure’s preparedness to withstand a destructive cyberattack is about a three, based on my experience,” he said.

In the South China Morning Post interview — published one week after the British newspaper The Guardian revealed the first leaks attributed to Snowden — he said the agency he once worked for as a contractor typically targets high-bandwidth data lines that connect Internet nodes around the world.

“We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

A “backbone” is part of the inner workings of a computer network that links different parts of that network. It is used to deliver data from one part of the network to another and, as such, could expose data from multiple computers if hacked.

‘Trying to bully’

While he has not been charged, Snowden has told The Guardian that he expects the United States to try to prosecute him. He worked for the computer consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton until Monday, when he was fired after outing himself as the leaker.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he felt U.S. officials were pressuring his family and also accused them of “trying to bully” Hong Kong into extraditing him to prevent the release of more damaging information.

He vowed to resist extradition efforts if it comes to that, saying he “would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.”

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” the South China Morning Post quoted Snowden as saying. “I have been given no reason to doubt your system.”

But Hong Kong lawmaker Regina Ip, a former secretary of security for the territory, said Tuesday that while any extradition process could take months, Snowden isn’t necessarily beyond the reach of the United States.

“If he thought there was a legal vacuum in Hong Kong which renders him safe from U.S. jurisdiction, that is unlikely to be the case,” she said.

Legal experts says that Beijing can get involved in the process to extradite a person from Hong Kong if the case significantly affects defense or foreign affairs.

But some observers say that Chinese authorities are unlikely to want to rock the boat in this instance.

“Given the somewhat fraught Hong Kong-Beijing relationship, the political impact of Beijing interference in this Hong Kong legal matter could be grave,” the Beijing-based analyst and blogger, Bill Bishop, wrote in an article for USA Today.

The newspaper said Snowden has been hiding in undisclosed locations in Hong Kong since checking out of his hotel room Monday, a day after he revealed his identity in an interview with The Guardian.

Snowden told the Morning Post he is not trying to evade U.S. authorities.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

The NSA and the national intelligence director did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

Asked during a media briefing Wednesday for comment on Snowden’s latest claims, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki declined. She said she had not seen the latest South China Morning Post report.

On the defensive

The revelations have renewed debate over surveillance in the United States and overseas in the name of fighting terrorism, with supporters saying the programs revealed by Snowden are legal and have helped stop terror plots. Civil liberties advocates, however, call the measures dangerous and unacceptable intrusions.

Such criticisms have put Obama and his allies on the issue — both Democrats and Republicans — on the defensive against mounting criticism from a similarly bipartisan group of critics demanding changes to rein in the programs.

There also is a sharp division among Americans over the issue.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 44% of Americans believe Snowden did the right thing by releasing details about the classified surveillance programs, while 42% said it was wrong and 14% said they were unsure.

The poll for that question had a 6% margin of error.

It also found that more Americans disapprove than approve of the government’s surveillance programs, 53% to 37%. Ten percent had no opinion.

The poll for that question had a 4% margin of error.

Those differences were on display Wednesday when Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, testified at a hearing into cybersecurity technology and civil liberties.

Officials have been unable to explain controversial data mining programs because they have been classified, he testified.

But he rejected Snowden’s claim that the NSA could tap into any American’s phone or computer.

“I know of no way to do that,” Alexander said.

But he testified that phone records obtained by the government helped prevent “dozens” of terrorist events.

He would not discuss disrupted plots broadly, saying they were classified. But he did say federal data mining appeared to play a role in helping to disrupt a plot in recent years to attack the New York subway system.

Alexander said information developed overseas was passed along to the FBI, which he said was able to identify eventual suspect Najibullah Zazi in Colorado and ultimately uncover a plot. Zazi pleaded guilty to terror-related charges in 2010.

EU questions

Fallout over revelations about the NSA’s intelligence-gathering has also reached the European Union’s governing body, where Vice President Viviane Reding raised concerns that the United States may have targeted some of its citizens.

Reding said she plans to raise the issue during a meeting Friday with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

“The respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law are the foundations of the EU-U.S. relationship. This common understanding has been, and must remain, the basis of cooperation between us in the area of justice,” Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, said Wednesday.

“Trust that the rule of law will be respected is also essential to the stability and growth of the digital economy, including transatlantic business. This is of paramount importance for individuals and companies alike.”

CNN’s Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong, and Chelsea J. Carter reported and wrote from Atlanta. CY Xu, David McKenzie and Michael Pearson contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/13/politics/nsa-leak/index.html?eref=edition

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Former intelligence worker Edward Snowden, 29, revealed himself as the source of documents outlining a massive effort by the NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. He says he just wanted the public to know what the government was doing. “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” he said. While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks.

Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers in 1971. The top-secret documents revealed that senior American leaders, including three presidents, knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire. Further, they showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg surrendered to authorities and was charged as a spy. During his trial, the court learned that President Richard Nixon’s administration had embarked on a campaign to discredit Ellsberg, illegally wiretapping him and breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. All charges against him were dropped. Since then he has lived a relatively quiet life as a respected author and lecturer.

Starting in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service studied untreated syphilis in black men who thought they were getting free health care. The patients weren’t told of their affliction or sufficiently treated. Peter Buxtun, who worked for the Public Health Service, relayed information about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to a reporter in 1972, which halted the 40-year study. His testimony at congressional hearings led to an overhaul of the Health, Education and Welfare rules concerning work with human subjects. A class-action lawsuit was settled out-of-court for $10 million, with the U.S. government promising free medical care to survivors and their families. Here, participants talk with a study coordinator.

In 2005, retired deputy FBI director Mark Felt revealed himself to be the whistle-blower “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal. He anonymously assisted Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward with many of their stories about the Nixon administration’s cover-up after the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The stories sparked a congressional investigation that eventually led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage. Felt was convicted on unrelated conspiracy charges in 1980 and eventually pardoned by President Ronald Reagan before slipping into obscurity for the next quarter-century. He died in 2008 at age 95.

Mordechai Vanunu, who worked as a technician at Israel’s nuclear research facility, leaked information to a British newspaper and led nuclear arms analysts to conclude that Israel possessed a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its weapons program. An Israeli court convicted Vanunu in 1986 after Israeli intelligence agents captured him in Italy. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Since his release in 2004, he has been arrested on a number of occasions for violating terms of his parole.

President Ronald Reagan addresses the media in 1987, months after the disclosure of the Iran-Contra affair. A secret operation carried out by an American military officer used proceeds from weapons sales to Iran to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and attempted to secure the release of U.S. hostages held by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mehdi Hashemi, an officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, leaked evidence of the deal to a Lebanese newspaper in 1986. Reagan’s closest aides maintain he did not fully know, and only reluctantly came to accept, the circumstances of the operation.

Tobacco industry executive Jeffrey Wigand issued a memo to his company in 1992 about his concerns regarding tobacco additives. He was fired in March 1993 and subsequently contacted by “60 Minutes” and persuaded to tell his story on CBS. He claimed that Brown Williamson knowingly used additives that were carcinogenic and addictive and spent millions covering it up. He also testified in a landmark case in Mississippi that resulted in a $246 billion settlement from the tobacco industry. Wigand has received public recognition for his actions and continues to crusade against Big Tobacco. He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film “The Insider.”

For 10 years, Frederic Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about practices at the FBI’s world-renowned crime lab, where he worked. His efforts eventually led to a 1997 investigation that found lab agents produced inaccurate and scientifically flawed testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings. The Justice Department recommended major reforms but also criticized Whitehurst for “overstated and incendiary” allegations. He also faced disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into how some of his allegations were leaked to a magazine. After a yearlong paid suspension he left the bureau in 1998 with a settlement worth more than $1.16 million.

FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley accused the bureau of hindering efforts to investigate a suspected terrorist that could have disrupted plans for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. In 2002 she fired off a 13-page letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and flew to Washington to hand-deliver copies to two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and meet with committee staffers. The letter accused the bureau of deliberately undermining requests to look into Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States of playing a role in the attacks. She testified in front of Congress and the 9/11 Commission about the FBI’s mishandling of information. Rowley was selected as one of Time magazine’s People of the Year in 2002, along with whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins of Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.

Sherron Watkins, a former vice president at Enron, sent an anonymous letter to founder Kenneth Lay in 2001 warning him the company had accounting irregularities. The memo eventually reached the public and she later testified before Congress about her concerns and the company’s wrongdoings. More than 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and many also lost their life savings, when the energy giant declared bankruptcy in 2001. Investors lost billions of dollars. An investigation in 2002 found that Enron executives reaped millions of dollars from off-the-books partnerships and violated basic rules of accounting and ethics. Many were sentenced to prison for their roles in the Enron scandal.

Cynthia Cooper and her team of auditors uncovered massive fraud at WorldCom in 2002. They found that the long-distance telephone provider had used $3.8 billion in questionable accounting entries to inflate earnings over the past five quarters. By the end of 2003, the total fraud was estimated to be $11 billion. The company filed for bankruptcy protection and five executives ended up in prison. Cooper started her own consulting firm and told her story in the book “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.”

In 2003, federal air marshal Robert MacLean anonymously tipped off an MSNBC reporter that because of budget concerns, the TSA was temporarily suspending missions that would require marshals to stay in hotels just days after they were briefed about a new “potential plot” to hijack U.S. airliners. The news caused an immediate uproar on Capitol Hill and the TSA retreated, withdrawing the scheduling cuts before they went into effect. MacLean was later investigated and fired for the unauthorized disclosure of “sensitive security information.”

Joe Darby is the whistle-blower behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq. He says he asked Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. for photos from their travels so he could share them with family. Instead, he was given photos of prisoner abuse. Darby eventually alerted the U.S. military command, triggering an investigation and global outrage when the scandal came to light in 2004. Graner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the abuse. He was released in 2011 after serving 6½ years of his sentence. The military and members of Darby’s own family ostracized him, calling him a traitor. Eventually he and his wife had to enter protective custody.

The New York Times reported in 2005 that in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush authorized the U.S. National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court warrant on people in the United States, including American citizens, suspected of communicating with al Qaeda members overseas. The Bush administration staunchly defended the controversial surveillance program. Russ Tice, an NSA insider, came forward as one of the anonymous sources used by the Times. He said he was concerned about alleged abuses and a lack of oversight. Here, President Bush participates in a conversation about the Patriot Act in Buffalo, New York, in April 2004.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. His court-martial began on June 3. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and could face up to two decades in jail. He has pleaded not guilty to the most serious charge – that of aiding U.S. enemies, which carries the potential for a life sentence. At a February proceeding, Manning read a statement detailing why and how he sent classified material in 2010 to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information.

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Hong Kong (CNN) — China remained tight-lipped Thursday about its stance on NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who is believed to be holed up in a safe house somewhere in the semiautonomous territory of Hong Kong.

Snowden provided fresh fuel Wednesday for the controversy he has sparked, telling a Hong Kong newspaper that U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking networks around the world for years, including hundreds of computers in China.

In the interview with the South China Morning Post, he also said he plans to stay in Hong Kong to fight any attempt to force him to return to the United States because he has “faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.” His comments come as the FBI is investigating his case.

His presence in the southern Chinese territory, which has a separate system of government from the mainland, has raised questions about how an effort by the U.S. government to extradite him would unfold, and what role Beijing might play in the process.

Manhunt under way for NSA leaker

Ron Paul on Snowden: It’s a heroic effort

Snowden’s life before leak

Obama open to NSA changes

But China’s first official comment on the matter gave away no clues.

“We have no information to offer at the moment,” a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, said in response to a question about Snowden at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday. She repeated the same answer to several follow-up questions.

Snowden, 29, has rocked the Obama administration and U.S. intelligence community by providing documents to journalists revealing the existence of secret programs to collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and the Internet activity of overseas residents.

Differing reactions

Snowden’s case has become a hot issue in Hong Kong, making local newspaper front pages, stirring legal debates and prompting plans for a rally in support of him over the weekend.

The reaction in mainland China, on the other hand, has been muted. State-run media outlets have covered the case cautiously, appearing to try to avoid focusing too much attention on some of the sensitive issues his disclosures have raised, such as government surveillance of citizens.

The Snowden story has also so far failed to make big waves among China’s tens of millions of highly active social media users.

Some Chinese state media took the opportunity Thursday to highlight Snowden’s comments to the South China Morning Post alleging U.S. government hacking of Chinese targets.

In recent years, the Global Times newspaper said in an editorial, “the United States has always claimed itself to be a victim of Chinese hacking activities. Many speculate that it’s a cover up for hacking activities conducted by the U.S. government. Now, Snowden’s revelation proves that such activities have already been going on for a long time.”

Hacking claims

Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden told the Hong Kong newspaper, are hundreds of computers in China.

U.S. officials have increasingly accused China of being the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. Beijing has denied such attacks.

The South China Morning Post said it had seen documents provided by Snowden but was unable to verify their authenticity. The newspaper also said it was unable to independently verify allegations of U.S. hacking of networks in Hong Kong and mainland China since 2009.

NSA leaker back in shadows

Why did U.S. leaker hide in Hong Kong?

Where could NSA leaker go?

Prosecution for journalists in leak?

Snowden told the paper that some of the targets included the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public officials and students. The documents also “point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets,” it reported.

The claims came just days after U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to address cyberattacks emanating from China that Obama described as “direct theft of United States property.”

Snowden’s allegations appear to give weight to claims by some Chinese government officials that the country has been a victim of similar hacking efforts coming from the United States.

His claims came as Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency chief, testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that the country’s cyberinfrastructure, including telephones and computer networks, is somewhat vulnerable to attack.

On a scale of one to 10, “our critical infrastructure’s preparedness to withstand a destructive cyberattack is about a three, based on my experience,” he said.

In the South China Morning Post interview — published one week after the British newspaper The Guardian revealed the first leaks attributed to Snowden — he said the agency he once worked for as a contractor typically targets high-bandwidth data lines that connect Internet nodes around the world.

“We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

A “backbone” is part of the inner workings of a computer network that links different parts of that network. It is used to deliver data from one part of the network to another and, as such, could expose data from multiple computers if hacked.

‘Trying to bully’

While he has not been charged, Snowden has told The Guardian that he expects the United States to try to prosecute him. He worked for the computer consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton until Monday, when he was fired after outing himself as the leaker.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he felt U.S. officials were pressuring his family and also accused them of “trying to bully” Hong Kong into extraditing him to prevent the release of more damaging information.

He vowed to resist extradition efforts if it comes to that, saying he “would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.”

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” the South China Morning Post quoted Snowden as saying. “I have been given no reason to doubt your system.”

But Hong Kong lawmaker Regina Ip, a former secretary of security for the territory, said Tuesday that while any extradition process could take months, Snowden isn’t necessarily beyond the reach of the United States.

“If he thought there was a legal vacuum in Hong Kong which renders him safe from U.S. jurisdiction, that is unlikely to be the case,” she said.

Legal experts says that Beijing can get involved in the process to extradite a person from Hong Kong if the case significantly affects defense or foreign affairs.

But some observers say that Chinese authorities are unlikely to want to rock the boat in this instance.

“Given the somewhat fraught Hong Kong-Beijing relationship, the political impact of Beijing interference in this Hong Kong legal matter could be grave,” the Beijing-based analyst and blogger, Bill Bishop, wrote in an article for USA Today.

The newspaper said Snowden has been hiding in undisclosed locations in Hong Kong since checking out of his hotel room Monday, a day after he revealed his identity in an interview with The Guardian.

Snowden told the Morning Post he is not trying to evade U.S. authorities.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

The NSA and the national intelligence director did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

Asked during a media briefing Wednesday for comment on Snowden’s latest claims, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki declined. She said she had not seen the latest South China Morning Post report.

On the defensive

The revelations have renewed debate over surveillance in the United States and overseas in the name of fighting terrorism, with supporters saying the programs revealed by Snowden are legal and have helped stop terror plots. Civil liberties advocates, however, call the measures dangerous and unacceptable intrusions.

Such criticisms have put Obama and his allies on the issue — both Democrats and Republicans — on the defensive against mounting criticism from a similarly bipartisan group of critics demanding changes to rein in the programs.

There also is a sharp division among Americans over the issue.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 44% of Americans believe Snowden did the right thing by releasing details about the classified surveillance programs, while 42% said it was wrong and 14% said they were unsure.

The poll for that question had a 6% margin of error.

It also found that more Americans disapprove than approve of the government’s surveillance programs, 53% to 37%. Ten percent had no opinion.

The poll for that question had a 4% margin of error.

Those differences were on display Wednesday when Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, testified at a hearing into cybersecurity technology and civil liberties.

Officials have been unable to explain controversial data mining programs because they have been classified, he testified.

But he rejected Snowden’s claim that the NSA could tap into any American’s phone or computer.

“I know of no way to do that,” Alexander said.

But he testified that phone records obtained by the government helped prevent “dozens” of terrorist events.

He would not discuss disrupted plots broadly, saying they were classified. But he did say federal data mining appeared to play a role in helping to disrupt a plot in recent years to attack the New York subway system.

Alexander said information developed overseas was passed along to the FBI, which he said was able to identify eventual suspect Najibullah Zazi in Colorado and ultimately uncover a plot. Zazi pleaded guilty to terror-related charges in 2010.

EU questions

Fallout over revelations about the NSA’s intelligence-gathering has also reached the European Union’s governing body, where Vice President Viviane Reding raised concerns that the United States may have targeted some of its citizens.

Reding said she plans to raise the issue during a meeting Friday with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

“The respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law are the foundations of the EU-U.S. relationship. This common understanding has been, and must remain, the basis of cooperation between us in the area of justice,” Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, said Wednesday.

“Trust that the rule of law will be respected is also essential to the stability and growth of the digital economy, including transatlantic business. This is of paramount importance for individuals and companies alike.”

CNN’s Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong, and Chelsea J. Carter reported and wrote from Atlanta. CY Xu, David McKenzie and Michael Pearson contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/13/politics/nsa-leak/index.html?eref=edition

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Former intelligence worker Edward Snowden, 29, revealed himself as the source of documents outlining a massive effort by the NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. He says he just wanted the public to know what the government was doing. “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” he said. While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks.

Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers in 1971. The top-secret documents revealed that senior American leaders, including three presidents, knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire. Further, they showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg surrendered to authorities and was charged as a spy. During his trial, the court learned that President Richard Nixon’s administration had embarked on a campaign to discredit Ellsberg, illegally wiretapping him and breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. All charges against him were dropped. Since then he has lived a relatively quiet life as a respected author and lecturer.

Starting in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service studied untreated syphilis in black men who thought they were getting free health care. The patients weren’t told of their affliction or sufficiently treated. Peter Buxtun, who worked for the Public Health Service, relayed information about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to a reporter in 1972, which halted the 40-year study. His testimony at congressional hearings led to an overhaul of the Health, Education and Welfare rules concerning work with human subjects. A class-action lawsuit was settled out-of-court for $10 million, with the U.S. government promising free medical care to survivors and their families. Here, participants talk with a study coordinator.

In 2005, retired deputy FBI director Mark Felt revealed himself to be the whistle-blower “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal. He anonymously assisted Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward with many of their stories about the Nixon administration’s cover-up after the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The stories sparked a congressional investigation that eventually led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage. Felt was convicted on unrelated conspiracy charges in 1980 and eventually pardoned by President Ronald Reagan before slipping into obscurity for the next quarter-century. He died in 2008 at age 95.

Mordechai Vanunu, who worked as a technician at Israel’s nuclear research facility, leaked information to a British newspaper and led nuclear arms analysts to conclude that Israel possessed a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its weapons program. An Israeli court convicted Vanunu in 1986 after Israeli intelligence agents captured him in Italy. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Since his release in 2004, he has been arrested on a number of occasions for violating terms of his parole.

President Ronald Reagan addresses the media in 1987, months after the disclosure of the Iran-Contra affair. A secret operation carried out by an American military officer used proceeds from weapons sales to Iran to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and attempted to secure the release of U.S. hostages held by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mehdi Hashemi, an officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, leaked evidence of the deal to a Lebanese newspaper in 1986. Reagan’s closest aides maintain he did not fully know, and only reluctantly came to accept, the circumstances of the operation.

Tobacco industry executive Jeffrey Wigand issued a memo to his company in 1992 about his concerns regarding tobacco additives. He was fired in March 1993 and subsequently contacted by “60 Minutes” and persuaded to tell his story on CBS. He claimed that Brown Williamson knowingly used additives that were carcinogenic and addictive and spent millions covering it up. He also testified in a landmark case in Mississippi that resulted in a $246 billion settlement from the tobacco industry. Wigand has received public recognition for his actions and continues to crusade against Big Tobacco. He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film “The Insider.”

For 10 years, Frederic Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about practices at the FBI’s world-renowned crime lab, where he worked. His efforts eventually led to a 1997 investigation that found lab agents produced inaccurate and scientifically flawed testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings. The Justice Department recommended major reforms but also criticized Whitehurst for “overstated and incendiary” allegations. He also faced disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into how some of his allegations were leaked to a magazine. After a yearlong paid suspension he left the bureau in 1998 with a settlement worth more than $1.16 million.

FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley accused the bureau of hindering efforts to investigate a suspected terrorist that could have disrupted plans for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. In 2002 she fired off a 13-page letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and flew to Washington to hand-deliver copies to two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and meet with committee staffers. The letter accused the bureau of deliberately undermining requests to look into Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States of playing a role in the attacks. She testified in front of Congress and the 9/11 Commission about the FBI’s mishandling of information. Rowley was selected as one of Time magazine’s People of the Year in 2002, along with whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins of Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.

Sherron Watkins, a former vice president at Enron, sent an anonymous letter to founder Kenneth Lay in 2001 warning him the company had accounting irregularities. The memo eventually reached the public and she later testified before Congress about her concerns and the company’s wrongdoings. More than 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and many also lost their life savings, when the energy giant declared bankruptcy in 2001. Investors lost billions of dollars. An investigation in 2002 found that Enron executives reaped millions of dollars from off-the-books partnerships and violated basic rules of accounting and ethics. Many were sentenced to prison for their roles in the Enron scandal.

Cynthia Cooper and her team of auditors uncovered massive fraud at WorldCom in 2002. They found that the long-distance telephone provider had used $3.8 billion in questionable accounting entries to inflate earnings over the past five quarters. By the end of 2003, the total fraud was estimated to be $11 billion. The company filed for bankruptcy protection and five executives ended up in prison. Cooper started her own consulting firm and told her story in the book “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.”

In 2003, federal air marshal Robert MacLean anonymously tipped off an MSNBC reporter that because of budget concerns, the TSA was temporarily suspending missions that would require marshals to stay in hotels just days after they were briefed about a new “potential plot” to hijack U.S. airliners. The news caused an immediate uproar on Capitol Hill and the TSA retreated, withdrawing the scheduling cuts before they went into effect. MacLean was later investigated and fired for the unauthorized disclosure of “sensitive security information.”

Joe Darby is the whistle-blower behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq. He says he asked Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. for photos from their travels so he could share them with family. Instead, he was given photos of prisoner abuse. Darby eventually alerted the U.S. military command, triggering an investigation and global outrage when the scandal came to light in 2004. Graner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the abuse. He was released in 2011 after serving 6½ years of his sentence. The military and members of Darby’s own family ostracized him, calling him a traitor. Eventually he and his wife had to enter protective custody.

The New York Times reported in 2005 that in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush authorized the U.S. National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court warrant on people in the United States, including American citizens, suspected of communicating with al Qaeda members overseas. The Bush administration staunchly defended the controversial surveillance program. Russ Tice, an NSA insider, came forward as one of the anonymous sources used by the Times. He said he was concerned about alleged abuses and a lack of oversight. Here, President Bush participates in a conversation about the Patriot Act in Buffalo, New York, in April 2004.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. His court-martial began on June 3. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and could face up to two decades in jail. He has pleaded not guilty to the most serious charge – that of aiding U.S. enemies, which carries the potential for a life sentence. At a February proceeding, Manning read a statement detailing why and how he sent classified material in 2010 to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information.

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Hong Kong (CNN) — China remained tight-lipped Thursday about its stance on NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who is believed to be holed up in a safe house somewhere in the semiautonomous territory of Hong Kong.

Snowden provided fresh fuel Wednesday for the controversy he has sparked, telling a Hong Kong newspaper that U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking networks around the world for years, including hundreds of computers in China.

In the interview with the South China Morning Post, he also said he plans to stay in Hong Kong to fight any attempt to force him to return to the United States because he has “faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.” His comments come as the FBI is investigating his case.

His presence in the southern Chinese territory, which has a separate system of government from the mainland, has raised questions about how an effort by the U.S. government to extradite him would unfold, and what role Beijing might play in the process.

Manhunt under way for NSA leaker

Ron Paul on Snowden: It’s a heroic effort

Snowden’s life before leak

Obama open to NSA changes

But China’s first official comment on the matter gave away no clues.

“We have no information to offer at the moment,” a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, said in response to a question about Snowden at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday. She repeated the same answer to several follow-up questions.

Snowden, 29, has rocked the Obama administration and U.S. intelligence community by providing documents to journalists revealing the existence of secret programs to collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and the Internet activity of overseas residents.

Differing reactions

Snowden’s case has become a hot issue in Hong Kong, making local newspaper front pages, stirring legal debates and prompting plans for a rally in support of him over the weekend.

The reaction in mainland China, on the other hand, has been muted. State-run media outlets have covered the case cautiously, appearing to try to avoid focusing too much attention on some of the sensitive issues his disclosures have raised, such as government surveillance of citizens.

The Snowden story has also so far failed to make big waves among China’s tens of millions of highly active social media users.

Some Chinese state media took the opportunity Thursday to highlight Snowden’s comments to the South China Morning Post alleging U.S. government hacking of Chinese targets.

In recent years, the Global Times newspaper said in an editorial, “the United States has always claimed itself to be a victim of Chinese hacking activities. Many speculate that it’s a cover up for hacking activities conducted by the U.S. government. Now, Snowden’s revelation proves that such activities have already been going on for a long time.”

Hacking claims

Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden told the Hong Kong newspaper, are hundreds of computers in China.

U.S. officials have increasingly accused China of being the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. Beijing has denied such attacks.

The South China Morning Post said it had seen documents provided by Snowden but was unable to verify their authenticity. The newspaper also said it was unable to independently verify allegations of U.S. hacking of networks in Hong Kong and mainland China since 2009.

NSA leaker back in shadows

Why did U.S. leaker hide in Hong Kong?

Where could NSA leaker go?

Prosecution for journalists in leak?

Snowden told the paper that some of the targets included the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public officials and students. The documents also “point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets,” it reported.

The claims came just days after U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to address cyberattacks emanating from China that Obama described as “direct theft of United States property.”

Snowden’s allegations appear to give weight to claims by some Chinese government officials that the country has been a victim of similar hacking efforts coming from the United States.

His claims came as Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency chief, testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that the country’s cyberinfrastructure, including telephones and computer networks, is somewhat vulnerable to attack.

On a scale of one to 10, “our critical infrastructure’s preparedness to withstand a destructive cyberattack is about a three, based on my experience,” he said.

In the South China Morning Post interview — published one week after the British newspaper The Guardian revealed the first leaks attributed to Snowden — he said the agency he once worked for as a contractor typically targets high-bandwidth data lines that connect Internet nodes around the world.

“We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

A “backbone” is part of the inner workings of a computer network that links different parts of that network. It is used to deliver data from one part of the network to another and, as such, could expose data from multiple computers if hacked.

‘Trying to bully’

While he has not been charged, Snowden has told The Guardian that he expects the United States to try to prosecute him. He worked for the computer consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton until Monday, when he was fired after outing himself as the leaker.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he felt U.S. officials were pressuring his family and also accused them of “trying to bully” Hong Kong into extraditing him to prevent the release of more damaging information.

He vowed to resist extradition efforts if it comes to that, saying he “would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.”

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” the South China Morning Post quoted Snowden as saying. “I have been given no reason to doubt your system.”

But Hong Kong lawmaker Regina Ip, a former secretary of security for the territory, said Tuesday that while any extradition process could take months, Snowden isn’t necessarily beyond the reach of the United States.

“If he thought there was a legal vacuum in Hong Kong which renders him safe from U.S. jurisdiction, that is unlikely to be the case,” she said.

Legal experts says that Beijing can get involved in the process to extradite a person from Hong Kong if the case significantly affects defense or foreign affairs.

But some observers say that Chinese authorities are unlikely to want to rock the boat in this instance.

“Given the somewhat fraught Hong Kong-Beijing relationship, the political impact of Beijing interference in this Hong Kong legal matter could be grave,” the Beijing-based analyst and blogger, Bill Bishop, wrote in an article for USA Today.

The newspaper said Snowden has been hiding in undisclosed locations in Hong Kong since checking out of his hotel room Monday, a day after he revealed his identity in an interview with The Guardian.

Snowden told the Morning Post he is not trying to evade U.S. authorities.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

The NSA and the national intelligence director did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

Asked during a media briefing Wednesday for comment on Snowden’s latest claims, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki declined. She said she had not seen the latest South China Morning Post report.

On the defensive

The revelations have renewed debate over surveillance in the United States and overseas in the name of fighting terrorism, with supporters saying the programs revealed by Snowden are legal and have helped stop terror plots. Civil liberties advocates, however, call the measures dangerous and unacceptable intrusions.

Such criticisms have put Obama and his allies on the issue — both Democrats and Republicans — on the defensive against mounting criticism from a similarly bipartisan group of critics demanding changes to rein in the programs.

There also is a sharp division among Americans over the issue.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 44% of Americans believe Snowden did the right thing by releasing details about the classified surveillance programs, while 42% said it was wrong and 14% said they were unsure.

The poll for that question had a 6% margin of error.

It also found that more Americans disapprove than approve of the government’s surveillance programs, 53% to 37%. Ten percent had no opinion.

The poll for that question had a 4% margin of error.

Those differences were on display Wednesday when Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, testified at a hearing into cybersecurity technology and civil liberties.

Officials have been unable to explain controversial data mining programs because they have been classified, he testified.

But he rejected Snowden’s claim that the NSA could tap into any American’s phone or computer.

“I know of no way to do that,” Alexander said.

But he testified that phone records obtained by the government helped prevent “dozens” of terrorist events.

He would not discuss disrupted plots broadly, saying they were classified. But he did say federal data mining appeared to play a role in helping to disrupt a plot in recent years to attack the New York subway system.

Alexander said information developed overseas was passed along to the FBI, which he said was able to identify eventual suspect Najibullah Zazi in Colorado and ultimately uncover a plot. Zazi pleaded guilty to terror-related charges in 2010.

EU questions

Fallout over revelations about the NSA’s intelligence-gathering has also reached the European Union’s governing body, where Vice President Viviane Reding raised concerns that the United States may have targeted some of its citizens.

Reding said she plans to raise the issue during a meeting Friday with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

“The respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law are the foundations of the EU-U.S. relationship. This common understanding has been, and must remain, the basis of cooperation between us in the area of justice,” Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, said Wednesday.

“Trust that the rule of law will be respected is also essential to the stability and growth of the digital economy, including transatlantic business. This is of paramount importance for individuals and companies alike.”

CNN’s Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong, and Chelsea J. Carter reported and wrote from Atlanta. CY Xu, David McKenzie and Michael Pearson contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/13/politics/nsa-leak/index.html?eref=edition

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Former intelligence worker Edward Snowden, 29, revealed himself as the source of documents outlining a massive effort by the NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. He says he just wanted the public to know what the government was doing. “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” he said. While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks.

Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers in 1971. The top-secret documents revealed that senior American leaders, including three presidents, knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire. Further, they showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg surrendered to authorities and was charged as a spy. During his trial, the court learned that President Richard Nixon’s administration had embarked on a campaign to discredit Ellsberg, illegally wiretapping him and breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. All charges against him were dropped. Since then he has lived a relatively quiet life as a respected author and lecturer.

Starting in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service studied untreated syphilis in black men who thought they were getting free health care. The patients weren’t told of their affliction or sufficiently treated. Peter Buxtun, who worked for the Public Health Service, relayed information about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to a reporter in 1972, which halted the 40-year study. His testimony at congressional hearings led to an overhaul of the Health, Education and Welfare rules concerning work with human subjects. A class-action lawsuit was settled out-of-court for $10 million, with the U.S. government promising free medical care to survivors and their families. Here, participants talk with a study coordinator.

In 2005, retired deputy FBI director Mark Felt revealed himself to be the whistle-blower “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal. He anonymously assisted Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward with many of their stories about the Nixon administration’s cover-up after the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The stories sparked a congressional investigation that eventually led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage. Felt was convicted on unrelated conspiracy charges in 1980 and eventually pardoned by President Ronald Reagan before slipping into obscurity for the next quarter-century. He died in 2008 at age 95.

Mordechai Vanunu, who worked as a technician at Israel’s nuclear research facility, leaked information to a British newspaper and led nuclear arms analysts to conclude that Israel possessed a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its weapons program. An Israeli court convicted Vanunu in 1986 after Israeli intelligence agents captured him in Italy. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Since his release in 2004, he has been arrested on a number of occasions for violating terms of his parole.

President Ronald Reagan addresses the media in 1987, months after the disclosure of the Iran-Contra affair. A secret operation carried out by an American military officer used proceeds from weapons sales to Iran to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and attempted to secure the release of U.S. hostages held by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mehdi Hashemi, an officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, leaked evidence of the deal to a Lebanese newspaper in 1986. Reagan’s closest aides maintain he did not fully know, and only reluctantly came to accept, the circumstances of the operation.

Tobacco industry executive Jeffrey Wigand issued a memo to his company in 1992 about his concerns regarding tobacco additives. He was fired in March 1993 and subsequently contacted by “60 Minutes” and persuaded to tell his story on CBS. He claimed that Brown Williamson knowingly used additives that were carcinogenic and addictive and spent millions covering it up. He also testified in a landmark case in Mississippi that resulted in a $246 billion settlement from the tobacco industry. Wigand has received public recognition for his actions and continues to crusade against Big Tobacco. He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film “The Insider.”

For 10 years, Frederic Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about practices at the FBI’s world-renowned crime lab, where he worked. His efforts eventually led to a 1997 investigation that found lab agents produced inaccurate and scientifically flawed testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings. The Justice Department recommended major reforms but also criticized Whitehurst for “overstated and incendiary” allegations. He also faced disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into how some of his allegations were leaked to a magazine. After a yearlong paid suspension he left the bureau in 1998 with a settlement worth more than $1.16 million.

FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley accused the bureau of hindering efforts to investigate a suspected terrorist that could have disrupted plans for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. In 2002 she fired off a 13-page letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and flew to Washington to hand-deliver copies to two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and meet with committee staffers. The letter accused the bureau of deliberately undermining requests to look into Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States of playing a role in the attacks. She testified in front of Congress and the 9/11 Commission about the FBI’s mishandling of information. Rowley was selected as one of Time magazine’s People of the Year in 2002, along with whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins of Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.

Sherron Watkins, a former vice president at Enron, sent an anonymous letter to founder Kenneth Lay in 2001 warning him the company had accounting irregularities. The memo eventually reached the public and she later testified before Congress about her concerns and the company’s wrongdoings. More than 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and many also lost their life savings, when the energy giant declared bankruptcy in 2001. Investors lost billions of dollars. An investigation in 2002 found that Enron executives reaped millions of dollars from off-the-books partnerships and violated basic rules of accounting and ethics. Many were sentenced to prison for their roles in the Enron scandal.

Cynthia Cooper and her team of auditors uncovered massive fraud at WorldCom in 2002. They found that the long-distance telephone provider had used $3.8 billion in questionable accounting entries to inflate earnings over the past five quarters. By the end of 2003, the total fraud was estimated to be $11 billion. The company filed for bankruptcy protection and five executives ended up in prison. Cooper started her own consulting firm and told her story in the book “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.”

In 2003, federal air marshal Robert MacLean anonymously tipped off an MSNBC reporter that because of budget concerns, the TSA was temporarily suspending missions that would require marshals to stay in hotels just days after they were briefed about a new “potential plot” to hijack U.S. airliners. The news caused an immediate uproar on Capitol Hill and the TSA retreated, withdrawing the scheduling cuts before they went into effect. MacLean was later investigated and fired for the unauthorized disclosure of “sensitive security information.”

Joe Darby is the whistle-blower behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq. He says he asked Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. for photos from their travels so he could share them with family. Instead, he was given photos of prisoner abuse. Darby eventually alerted the U.S. military command, triggering an investigation and global outrage when the scandal came to light in 2004. Graner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the abuse. He was released in 2011 after serving 6½ years of his sentence. The military and members of Darby’s own family ostracized him, calling him a traitor. Eventually he and his wife had to enter protective custody.

The New York Times reported in 2005 that in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush authorized the U.S. National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court warrant on people in the United States, including American citizens, suspected of communicating with al Qaeda members overseas. The Bush administration staunchly defended the controversial surveillance program. Russ Tice, an NSA insider, came forward as one of the anonymous sources used by the Times. He said he was concerned about alleged abuses and a lack of oversight. Here, President Bush participates in a conversation about the Patriot Act in Buffalo, New York, in April 2004.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. His court-martial began on June 3. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and could face up to two decades in jail. He has pleaded not guilty to the most serious charge – that of aiding U.S. enemies, which carries the potential for a life sentence. At a February proceeding, Manning read a statement detailing why and how he sent classified material in 2010 to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information.

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Hong Kong (CNN) — China remained tight-lipped Thursday about its stance on NSA leaker Edward Snowden, who is believed to be holed up in a safe house somewhere in the semiautonomous territory of Hong Kong.

Snowden provided fresh fuel Wednesday for the controversy he has sparked, telling a Hong Kong newspaper that U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking networks around the world for years, including hundreds of computers in China.

In the interview with the South China Morning Post, he also said he plans to stay in Hong Kong to fight any attempt to force him to return to the United States because he has “faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.” His comments come as the FBI is investigating his case.

His presence in the southern Chinese territory, which has a separate system of government from the mainland, has raised questions about how an effort by the U.S. government to extradite him would unfold, and what role Beijing might play in the process.

Manhunt under way for NSA leaker

Ron Paul on Snowden: It’s a heroic effort

Snowden’s life before leak

Obama open to NSA changes

But China’s first official comment on the matter gave away no clues.

“We have no information to offer at the moment,” a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, said in response to a question about Snowden at a regular news briefing in Beijing on Thursday. She repeated the same answer to several follow-up questions.

Snowden, 29, has rocked the Obama administration and U.S. intelligence community by providing documents to journalists revealing the existence of secret programs to collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and the Internet activity of overseas residents.

Differing reactions

Snowden’s case has become a hot issue in Hong Kong, making local newspaper front pages, stirring legal debates and prompting plans for a rally in support of him over the weekend.

The reaction in mainland China, on the other hand, has been muted. State-run media outlets have covered the case cautiously, appearing to try to avoid focusing too much attention on some of the sensitive issues his disclosures have raised, such as government surveillance of citizens.

The Snowden story has also so far failed to make big waves among China’s tens of millions of highly active social media users.

Some Chinese state media took the opportunity Thursday to highlight Snowden’s comments to the South China Morning Post alleging U.S. government hacking of Chinese targets.

In recent years, the Global Times newspaper said in an editorial, “the United States has always claimed itself to be a victim of Chinese hacking activities. Many speculate that it’s a cover up for hacking activities conducted by the U.S. government. Now, Snowden’s revelation proves that such activities have already been going on for a long time.”

Hacking claims

Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden told the Hong Kong newspaper, are hundreds of computers in China.

U.S. officials have increasingly accused China of being the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. Beijing has denied such attacks.

The South China Morning Post said it had seen documents provided by Snowden but was unable to verify their authenticity. The newspaper also said it was unable to independently verify allegations of U.S. hacking of networks in Hong Kong and mainland China since 2009.

NSA leaker back in shadows

Why did U.S. leaker hide in Hong Kong?

Where could NSA leaker go?

Prosecution for journalists in leak?

Snowden told the paper that some of the targets included the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public officials and students. The documents also “point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets,” it reported.

The claims came just days after U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to address cyberattacks emanating from China that Obama described as “direct theft of United States property.”

Snowden’s allegations appear to give weight to claims by some Chinese government officials that the country has been a victim of similar hacking efforts coming from the United States.

His claims came as Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency chief, testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that the country’s cyberinfrastructure, including telephones and computer networks, is somewhat vulnerable to attack.

On a scale of one to 10, “our critical infrastructure’s preparedness to withstand a destructive cyberattack is about a three, based on my experience,” he said.

In the South China Morning Post interview — published one week after the British newspaper The Guardian revealed the first leaks attributed to Snowden — he said the agency he once worked for as a contractor typically targets high-bandwidth data lines that connect Internet nodes around the world.

“We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

A “backbone” is part of the inner workings of a computer network that links different parts of that network. It is used to deliver data from one part of the network to another and, as such, could expose data from multiple computers if hacked.

‘Trying to bully’

While he has not been charged, Snowden has told The Guardian that he expects the United States to try to prosecute him. He worked for the computer consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton until Monday, when he was fired after outing himself as the leaker.

Snowden told the South China Morning Post that he felt U.S. officials were pressuring his family and also accused them of “trying to bully” Hong Kong into extraditing him to prevent the release of more damaging information.

He vowed to resist extradition efforts if it comes to that, saying he “would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.”

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” the South China Morning Post quoted Snowden as saying. “I have been given no reason to doubt your system.”

But Hong Kong lawmaker Regina Ip, a former secretary of security for the territory, said Tuesday that while any extradition process could take months, Snowden isn’t necessarily beyond the reach of the United States.

“If he thought there was a legal vacuum in Hong Kong which renders him safe from U.S. jurisdiction, that is unlikely to be the case,” she said.

Legal experts says that Beijing can get involved in the process to extradite a person from Hong Kong if the case significantly affects defense or foreign affairs.

But some observers say that Chinese authorities are unlikely to want to rock the boat in this instance.

“Given the somewhat fraught Hong Kong-Beijing relationship, the political impact of Beijing interference in this Hong Kong legal matter could be grave,” the Beijing-based analyst and blogger, Bill Bishop, wrote in an article for USA Today.

The newspaper said Snowden has been hiding in undisclosed locations in Hong Kong since checking out of his hotel room Monday, a day after he revealed his identity in an interview with The Guardian.

Snowden told the Morning Post he is not trying to evade U.S. authorities.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

The NSA and the national intelligence director did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

Asked during a media briefing Wednesday for comment on Snowden’s latest claims, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki declined. She said she had not seen the latest South China Morning Post report.

On the defensive

The revelations have renewed debate over surveillance in the United States and overseas in the name of fighting terrorism, with supporters saying the programs revealed by Snowden are legal and have helped stop terror plots. Civil liberties advocates, however, call the measures dangerous and unacceptable intrusions.

Such criticisms have put Obama and his allies on the issue — both Democrats and Republicans — on the defensive against mounting criticism from a similarly bipartisan group of critics demanding changes to rein in the programs.

There also is a sharp division among Americans over the issue.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 44% of Americans believe Snowden did the right thing by releasing details about the classified surveillance programs, while 42% said it was wrong and 14% said they were unsure.

The poll for that question had a 6% margin of error.

It also found that more Americans disapprove than approve of the government’s surveillance programs, 53% to 37%. Ten percent had no opinion.

The poll for that question had a 4% margin of error.

Those differences were on display Wednesday when Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, testified at a hearing into cybersecurity technology and civil liberties.

Officials have been unable to explain controversial data mining programs because they have been classified, he testified.

But he rejected Snowden’s claim that the NSA could tap into any American’s phone or computer.

“I know of no way to do that,” Alexander said.

But he testified that phone records obtained by the government helped prevent “dozens” of terrorist events.

He would not discuss disrupted plots broadly, saying they were classified. But he did say federal data mining appeared to play a role in helping to disrupt a plot in recent years to attack the New York subway system.

Alexander said information developed overseas was passed along to the FBI, which he said was able to identify eventual suspect Najibullah Zazi in Colorado and ultimately uncover a plot. Zazi pleaded guilty to terror-related charges in 2010.

EU questions

Fallout over revelations about the NSA’s intelligence-gathering has also reached the European Union’s governing body, where Vice President Viviane Reding raised concerns that the United States may have targeted some of its citizens.

Reding said she plans to raise the issue during a meeting Friday with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

“The respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law are the foundations of the EU-U.S. relationship. This common understanding has been, and must remain, the basis of cooperation between us in the area of justice,” Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, said Wednesday.

“Trust that the rule of law will be respected is also essential to the stability and growth of the digital economy, including transatlantic business. This is of paramount importance for individuals and companies alike.”

CNN’s Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong, and Chelsea J. Carter reported and wrote from Atlanta. CY Xu, David McKenzie and Michael Pearson contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/13/politics/nsa-leak/index.html?eref=edition

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Former intelligence worker Edward Snowden, 29, revealed himself as the source of documents outlining a massive effort by the NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. He says he just wanted the public to know what the government was doing. “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” he said. While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks.

Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers in 1971. The top-secret documents revealed that senior American leaders, including three presidents, knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire. Further, they showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg surrendered to authorities and was charged as a spy. During his trial, the court learned that President Richard Nixon’s administration had embarked on a campaign to discredit Ellsberg, illegally wiretapping him and breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. All charges against him were dropped. Since then he has lived a relatively quiet life as a respected author and lecturer.

Starting in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service studied untreated syphilis in black men who thought they were getting free health care. The patients weren’t told of their affliction or sufficiently treated. Peter Buxtun, who worked for the Public Health Service, relayed information about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to a reporter in 1972, which halted the 40-year study. His testimony at congressional hearings led to an overhaul of the Health, Education and Welfare rules concerning work with human subjects. A class-action lawsuit was settled out-of-court for $10 million, with the U.S. government promising free medical care to survivors and their families. Here, participants talk with a study coordinator.

In 2005, retired deputy FBI director Mark Felt revealed himself to be the whistle-blower “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal. He anonymously assisted Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward with many of their stories about the Nixon administration’s cover-up after the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The stories sparked a congressional investigation that eventually led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage. Felt was convicted on unrelated conspiracy charges in 1980 and eventually pardoned by President Ronald Reagan before slipping into obscurity for the next quarter-century. He died in 2008 at age 95.

Mordechai Vanunu, who worked as a technician at Israel’s nuclear research facility, leaked information to a British newspaper and led nuclear arms analysts to conclude that Israel possessed a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its weapons program. An Israeli court convicted Vanunu in 1986 after Israeli intelligence agents captured him in Italy. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Since his release in 2004, he has been arrested on a number of occasions for violating terms of his parole.

President Ronald Reagan addresses the media in 1987, months after the disclosure of the Iran-Contra affair. A secret operation carried out by an American military officer used proceeds from weapons sales to Iran to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and attempted to secure the release of U.S. hostages held by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mehdi Hashemi, an officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, leaked evidence of the deal to a Lebanese newspaper in 1986. Reagan’s closest aides maintain he did not fully know, and only reluctantly came to accept, the circumstances of the operation.

Tobacco industry executive Jeffrey Wigand issued a memo to his company in 1992 about his concerns regarding tobacco additives. He was fired in March 1993 and subsequently contacted by “60 Minutes” and persuaded to tell his story on CBS. He claimed that Brown Williamson knowingly used additives that were carcinogenic and addictive and spent millions covering it up. He also testified in a landmark case in Mississippi that resulted in a $246 billion settlement from the tobacco industry. Wigand has received public recognition for his actions and continues to crusade against Big Tobacco. He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film “The Insider.”

For 10 years, Frederic Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about practices at the FBI’s world-renowned crime lab, where he worked. His efforts eventually led to a 1997 investigation that found lab agents produced inaccurate and scientifically flawed testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings. The Justice Department recommended major reforms but also criticized Whitehurst for “overstated and incendiary” allegations. He also faced disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into how some of his allegations were leaked to a magazine. After a yearlong paid suspension he left the bureau in 1998 with a settlement worth more than $1.16 million.

FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley accused the bureau of hindering efforts to investigate a suspected terrorist that could have disrupted plans for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. In 2002 she fired off a 13-page letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and flew to Washington to hand-deliver copies to two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and meet with committee staffers. The letter accused the bureau of deliberately undermining requests to look into Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States of playing a role in the attacks. She testified in front of Congress and the 9/11 Commission about the FBI’s mishandling of information. Rowley was selected as one of Time magazine’s People of the Year in 2002, along with whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins of Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.

Sherron Watkins, a former vice president at Enron, sent an anonymous letter to founder Kenneth Lay in 2001 warning him the company had accounting irregularities. The memo eventually reached the public and she later testified before Congress about her concerns and the company’s wrongdoings. More than 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and many also lost their life savings, when the energy giant declared bankruptcy in 2001. Investors lost billions of dollars. An investigation in 2002 found that Enron executives reaped millions of dollars from off-the-books partnerships and violated basic rules of accounting and ethics. Many were sentenced to prison for their roles in the Enron scandal.

Cynthia Cooper and her team of auditors uncovered massive fraud at WorldCom in 2002. They found that the long-distance telephone provider had used $3.8 billion in questionable accounting entries to inflate earnings over the past five quarters. By the end of 2003, the total fraud was estimated to be $11 billion. The company filed for bankruptcy protection and five executives ended up in prison. Cooper started her own consulting firm and told her story in the book “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.”

In 2003, federal air marshal Robert MacLean anonymously tipped off an MSNBC reporter that because of budget concerns, the TSA was temporarily suspending missions that would require marshals to stay in hotels just days after they were briefed about a new “potential plot” to hijack U.S. airliners. The news caused an immediate uproar on Capitol Hill and the TSA retreated, withdrawing the scheduling cuts before they went into effect. MacLean was later investigated and fired for the unauthorized disclosure of “sensitive security information.”

Joe Darby is the whistle-blower behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq. He says he asked Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. for photos from their travels so he could share them with family. Instead, he was given photos of prisoner abuse. Darby eventually alerted the U.S. military command, triggering an investigation and global outrage when the scandal came to light in 2004. Graner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the abuse. He was released in 2011 after serving 6½ years of his sentence. The military and members of Darby’s own family ostracized him, calling him a traitor. Eventually he and his wife had to enter protective custody.

The New York Times reported in 2005 that in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush authorized the U.S. National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court warrant on people in the United States, including American citizens, suspected of communicating with al Qaeda members overseas. The Bush administration staunchly defended the controversial surveillance program. Russ Tice, an NSA insider, came forward as one of the anonymous sources used by the Times. He said he was concerned about alleged abuses and a lack of oversight. Here, President Bush participates in a conversation about the Patriot Act in Buffalo, New York, in April 2004.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. His court-martial began on June 3. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and could face up to two decades in jail. He has pleaded not guilty to the most serious charge – that of aiding U.S. enemies, which carries the potential for a life sentence. At a February proceeding, Manning read a statement detailing why and how he sent classified material in 2010 to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information.

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Hong Kong (CNN) — U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking computer networks around the world for years, apparently targeting fat data pipes that push immense amounts of data around the Internet, NSA leaker Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday.

Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden said, are thousands of computers in China — which U.S. officials have increasingly criticized as the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. China has denied such attacks.

The Morning Post said it had seen documents provided by Snowden but was unable to verify their authenticity. The English-language news agency, which operates in Hong Kong, also said it was unable to independently verify allegations of U.S. hacking of networks in Hong Kong and mainland China since 2009.

Manhunt under way for NSA leaker

Ron Paul on Snowden: It’s a heroic effort

Snowden’s life before leak

Obama open to NSA changes

Snowden told the paper that some of the targets included the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public officials and students. The documents also “point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets,” the newspaper reported.

The claims came just days after U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to address cyberattacks emanating from China that Obama described as “direct theft of United States property.”

Snowden’s allegations appear to give weight to claims by some Chinese government officials that the country has been a victim of similar hacking efforts coming from the United States.

His claims came as Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency chief, testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that the country’s cyberinfrastructure, including telephones and computer networks, is somewhat vulnerable to attack.

On a scale of one to 10, “our critical infrastructure’s preparedness to withstand a destructive cyberattack is about a three, based on my experience,” he said.

In the Morning Post interview — published one week after the British newspaper The Guardian revealed the first leaks attributed to Snowden — he claimed the agency he once worked for as a contractor typically targets high-bandwidth data lines that connect Internet nodes located around the world.

“We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

A “backbone” is part of the inner workings of a computer network that links different parts of that network. It is used to deliver data from one part of the network to another and, as such, could expose data from multiple computers if hacked.

‘Trying to bully’

Snowden, 29, worked for the Booz Allen Hamilton computer consulting firm until Monday, when he was fired after documents he provided to journalists revealed the existence of secret programs to collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and the Internet activity of overseas residents.

While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks, and he has told The Guardian that he expects the United States will try to prosecute him.

NSA leaker back in shadows

Why did U.S. leaker hide in Hong Kong?

Where could NSA leaker go?

Prosecution for journalists in leak?

Snowden told the Morning Post that he felt U.S. officials were pressuring his family and also accused them of “trying to bully” Hong Kong into extraditing him to prevent the release of more damaging information.

He vowed to resist extradition efforts if it comes to that, saying he “would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.”

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” the South China Morning Post quoted Snowden as saying. “I have been given no reason to doubt your system.”

But Hong Kong lawmaker Regina Ip, a former secretary of security for the territory, said Tuesday that while any extradition process could take months, Snowden isn’t necessarily beyond the reach of the United States.

“If he thought there was a legal vacuum in Hong Kong which renders him safe from U.S. jurisdiction, that is unlikely to be the case,” she said.

The newspaper said Snowden has been hiding in undisclosed locations inside the semi-autonomous Chinese territory since checking out of his hotel room Monday — a day after he revealed his identity in an interview with The Guardian.

Snowden told the Morning Post he is not trying to evade U.S. authorities.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

The NSA and the National Intelligence director did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

Asked during a media briefing on Wednesday for comment on Snowden’s latest claims, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki declined. She said she had not seen the latest Morning Post report.

On the defensive

The revelations have renewed debate over surveillance in the United States and overseas in the name of fighting terrorism, with supporters saying the programs revealed by Snowden are legal and have helped stop terror plots. Civil liberties advocates, however, call the measures dangerous and unacceptable intrusions.

Such criticisms have put Obama and his allies on the issue — both Democrats and Republicans — on the defensive against mounting criticisms from a similarly bipartisan group of critics demanding changes to rein in the programs.

There also is a sharp division among Americans over the issue.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 44% of Americans believe Snowden did the right thing by releasing details about the classified surveillance programs, while 42% said it was wrong and 14% said they were unsure.

The poll for that question had a 6% margin of error.

It also found that more Americans disapprove than approve of the government’s surveillance programs, 53% to 37%. Ten percent had no opinion.

The poll for that question had a 4% margin of error.

Those differences were on display Wednesday when Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, testified at a hearing into cybersecurity technology and civil liberties.

Officials have been unable to explain controversial data mining programs because they have been classified, Alexander testified.

But Alexander rejected the Snowden’s claim that the NSA could tap into any American’s phone or computer.

“I know of no way to do that,” Alexander said.

But he testified that phone records obtained by the government helped prevent “dozens” of terrorist events.

He would not discuss disrupted plots broadly, saying they were classified. But he did say federal data mining appeared to play a role in helping to disrupt a plot in recent years to attack the New York subway system.

Alexander said information developed overseas was passed along to the FBI, which he said was able to identify eventual suspect Najibullah Zazi in Colorado and ultimately uncover a plot. Zazi pleaded guilty to terror-related charges in 2010.

While not on the roster for Wednesday’s hearing, another administration official in the spotlight is Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, whom Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has singled out for how he answered questions about the telephone surveillance program in March.

In March, Wyden asked Clapper whether the NSA collects “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

“No sir,” Clapper said.

On Saturday, Clapper told NBC News that he answered in the “most truthful or least most untruthful manner” possible.

Clapper told NBC that he had interpreted “collection” to mean actually examining the materials gathered by the NSA.

He previously told the National Journal he had meant that “the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails,” but he did not mention e-mails at the hearing.

NSA leaker’s girlfriend says she’s ‘lost at sea’

EU questions

Fallout over revelations about the NSA’s intelligence-gathering has reached the European Union’s governing body, where Vice President Viviane Reding raised concerns that the United States may have targeted some of its citizens.

Reding said she plans to raise the issue during a meeting Friday with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

“The respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law are the foundations of the EU-U.S. relationship. This common understanding has been, and must remain, the basis of cooperation between us in the area of Justice,” Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, said Wednesday.

“Trust that the rule of law will be respected is also essential to the stability and growth of the digital economy, including transatlantic business. This is of paramount importance for individuals and companies alike.”

CNN’s Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong, and Chelsea J. Carter reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN’s Paul Steinhauser, Tom Cohen, Michael Pearson, Doug Gross, Shirley Henry, Brian Walker and Pamela Boykoff contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/12/politics/nsa-leak/index.html?eref=edition

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Former intelligence worker Edward Snowden, 29, revealed himself as the source of documents outlining a massive effort by the NSA to track cell phone calls and monitor the e-mail and Internet traffic of virtually all Americans. He says he just wanted the public to know what the government was doing. “Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’re being watched and recorded,” he said. While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks.

Military analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked the 7,000-page Pentagon Papers in 1971. The top-secret documents revealed that senior American leaders, including three presidents, knew the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire. Further, they showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. Ellsberg surrendered to authorities and was charged as a spy. During his trial, the court learned that President Richard Nixon’s administration had embarked on a campaign to discredit Ellsberg, illegally wiretapping him and breaking into his psychiatrist’s office. All charges against him were dropped. Since then he has lived a relatively quiet life as a respected author and lecturer.

Starting in 1932, the U.S. Public Health Service studied untreated syphilis in black men who thought they were getting free health care. The patients weren’t told of their affliction or sufficiently treated. Peter Buxtun, who worked for the Public Health Service, relayed information about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment to a reporter in 1972, which halted the 40-year study. His testimony at congressional hearings led to an overhaul of the Health, Education and Welfare rules concerning work with human subjects. A class-action lawsuit was settled out-of-court for $10 million, with the U.S. government promising free medical care to survivors and their families. Here, participants talk with a study coordinator.

In 2005, retired deputy FBI director Mark Felt revealed himself to be the whistle-blower “Deep Throat” in the Watergate scandal. He anonymously assisted Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward with many of their stories about the Nixon administration’s cover-up after the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. The stories sparked a congressional investigation that eventually led to President Nixon’s resignation in 1974. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage. Felt was convicted on unrelated conspiracy charges in 1980 and eventually pardoned by President Ronald Reagan before slipping into obscurity for the next quarter-century. He died in 2008 at age 95.

Mordechai Vanunu, who worked as a technician at Israel’s nuclear research facility, leaked information to a British newspaper and led nuclear arms analysts to conclude that Israel possessed a stockpile of nuclear weapons. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied its weapons program. An Israeli court convicted Vanunu in 1986 after Israeli intelligence agents captured him in Italy. He was sentenced to 18 years in prison. Since his release in 2004, he has been arrested on a number of occasions for violating terms of his parole.

President Ronald Reagan addresses the media in 1987, months after the disclosure of the Iran-Contra affair. A secret operation carried out by an American military officer used proceeds from weapons sales to Iran to fund the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua and attempted to secure the release of U.S. hostages held by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Mehdi Hashemi, an officer of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, leaked evidence of the deal to a Lebanese newspaper in 1986. Reagan’s closest aides maintain he did not fully know, and only reluctantly came to accept, the circumstances of the operation.

Tobacco industry executive Jeffrey Wigand issued a memo to his company in 1992 about his concerns regarding tobacco additives. He was fired in March 1993 and subsequently contacted by “60 Minutes” and persuaded to tell his story on CBS. He claimed that Brown Williamson knowingly used additives that were carcinogenic and addictive and spent millions covering it up. He also testified in a landmark case in Mississippi that resulted in a $246 billion settlement from the tobacco industry. Wigand has received public recognition for his actions and continues to crusade against Big Tobacco. He was portrayed by Russell Crowe in the 1999 film “The Insider.”

For 10 years, Frederic Whitehurst complained mostly in vain about practices at the FBI’s world-renowned crime lab, where he worked. His efforts eventually led to a 1997 investigation that found lab agents produced inaccurate and scientifically flawed testimony in major cases, including the Oklahoma City and World Trade Center bombings. The Justice Department recommended major reforms but also criticized Whitehurst for “overstated and incendiary” allegations. He also faced disciplinary action for refusing to cooperate with an investigation into how some of his allegations were leaked to a magazine. After a yearlong paid suspension he left the bureau in 1998 with a settlement worth more than $1.16 million.

FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley accused the bureau of hindering efforts to investigate a suspected terrorist that could have disrupted plans for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks. In 2002 she fired off a 13-page letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller and flew to Washington to hand-deliver copies to two members of the Senate Intelligence Committee and meet with committee staffers. The letter accused the bureau of deliberately undermining requests to look into Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States of playing a role in the attacks. She testified in front of Congress and the 9/11 Commission about the FBI’s mishandling of information. Rowley was selected as one of Time magazine’s People of the Year in 2002, along with whistle-blowers Sherron Watkins of Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom.

Sherron Watkins, a former vice president at Enron, sent an anonymous letter to founder Kenneth Lay in 2001 warning him the company had accounting irregularities. The memo eventually reached the public and she later testified before Congress about her concerns and the company’s wrongdoings. More than 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and many also lost their life savings, when the energy giant declared bankruptcy in 2001. Investors lost billions of dollars. An investigation in 2002 found that Enron executives reaped millions of dollars from off-the-books partnerships and violated basic rules of accounting and ethics. Many were sentenced to prison for their roles in the Enron scandal.

Cynthia Cooper and her team of auditors uncovered massive fraud at WorldCom in 2002. They found that the long-distance telephone provider had used $3.8 billion in questionable accounting entries to inflate earnings over the past five quarters. By the end of 2003, the total fraud was estimated to be $11 billion. The company filed for bankruptcy protection and five executives ended up in prison. Cooper started her own consulting firm and told her story in the book “Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower.”

In 2003, federal air marshal Robert MacLean anonymously tipped off an MSNBC reporter that because of budget concerns, the TSA was temporarily suspending missions that would require marshals to stay in hotels just days after they were briefed about a new “potential plot” to hijack U.S. airliners. The news caused an immediate uproar on Capitol Hill and the TSA retreated, withdrawing the scheduling cuts before they went into effect. MacLean was later investigated and fired for the unauthorized disclosure of “sensitive security information.”

Joe Darby is the whistle-blower behind the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in Iraq. He says he asked Army Reserve Spc. Charles Graner Jr. for photos from their travels so he could share them with family. Instead, he was given photos of prisoner abuse. Darby eventually alerted the U.S. military command, triggering an investigation and global outrage when the scandal came to light in 2004. Graner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for his part in the abuse. He was released in 2011 after serving 6½ years of his sentence. The military and members of Darby’s own family ostracized him, calling him a traitor. Eventually he and his wife had to enter protective custody.

The New York Times reported in 2005 that in the months after the September 11, 2001, attacks, President George W. Bush authorized the U.S. National Security Agency to eavesdrop without a court warrant on people in the United States, including American citizens, suspected of communicating with al Qaeda members overseas. The Bush administration staunchly defended the controversial surveillance program. Russ Tice, an NSA insider, came forward as one of the anonymous sources used by the Times. He said he was concerned about alleged abuses and a lack of oversight. Here, President Bush participates in a conversation about the Patriot Act in Buffalo, New York, in April 2004.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning is accused in the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history. His court-martial began on June 3. He has pleaded guilty to 10 of 22 charges against him and could face up to two decades in jail. He has pleaded not guilty to the most serious charge – that of aiding U.S. enemies, which carries the potential for a life sentence. At a February proceeding, Manning read a statement detailing why and how he sent classified material in 2010 to WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information.

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Hong Kong (CNN) — U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking computer networks around the world for years, apparently targeting fat data pipes that push immense amounts of data around the Internet, NSA leaker Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday.

Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden said, are thousands of computers in China — which U.S. officials have increasingly criticized as the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. China has denied such attacks.

The Morning Post said it had seen documents provided by Snowden but was unable to verify their authenticity. The English-language news agency, which operates in Hong Kong, also said it was unable to independently verify allegations of U.S. hacking of networks in Hong Kong and mainland China since 2009.

Manhunt under way for NSA leaker

Ron Paul on Snowden: It’s a heroic effort

Snowden’s life before leak

Obama open to NSA changes

Snowden told the paper that some of the targets included the Chinese University of Hong Kong, public officials and students. The documents also “point to hacking activity by the NSA against mainland targets,” the newspaper reported.

The claims came just days after U.S. President Barack Obama pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to address cyberattacks emanating from China that Obama described as “direct theft of United States property.”

Snowden’s allegations appear to give weight to claims by some Chinese government officials that the country has been a victim of similar hacking efforts coming from the United States.

His claims came as Gen. Keith Alexander, the National Security Agency chief, testified at a U.S. Senate hearing that the country’s cyberinfrastructure, including telephones and computer networks, is somewhat vulnerable to attack.

On a scale of one to 10, “our critical infrastructure’s preparedness to withstand a destructive cyberattack is about a three, based on my experience,” he said.

In the Morning Post interview — published one week after the British newspaper The Guardian revealed the first leaks attributed to Snowden — he claimed the agency he once worked for as a contractor typically targets high-bandwidth data lines that connect Internet nodes located around the world.

“We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” the newspaper quoted him as saying.

A “backbone” is part of the inner workings of a computer network that links different parts of that network. It is used to deliver data from one part of the network to another and, as such, could expose data from multiple computers if hacked.

‘Trying to bully’

Snowden, 29, worked for the Booz Allen Hamilton computer consulting firm until Monday, when he was fired after documents he provided to journalists revealed the existence of secret programs to collect records of domestic telephone calls in the United States and the Internet activity of overseas residents.

While he has not been charged, the FBI is conducting an investigation into the leaks, and he has told The Guardian that he expects the United States will try to prosecute him.

NSA leaker back in shadows

Why did U.S. leaker hide in Hong Kong?

Where could NSA leaker go?

Prosecution for journalists in leak?

Snowden told the Morning Post that he felt U.S. officials were pressuring his family and also accused them of “trying to bully” Hong Kong into extraditing him to prevent the release of more damaging information.

He vowed to resist extradition efforts if it comes to that, saying he “would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.”

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” the South China Morning Post quoted Snowden as saying. “I have been given no reason to doubt your system.”

But Hong Kong lawmaker Regina Ip, a former secretary of security for the territory, said Tuesday that while any extradition process could take months, Snowden isn’t necessarily beyond the reach of the United States.

“If he thought there was a legal vacuum in Hong Kong which renders him safe from U.S. jurisdiction, that is unlikely to be the case,” she said.

The newspaper said Snowden has been hiding in undisclosed locations inside the semi-autonomous Chinese territory since checking out of his hotel room Monday — a day after he revealed his identity in an interview with The Guardian.

Snowden told the Morning Post he is not trying to evade U.S. authorities.

“People who think I made a mistake in picking Hong Kong as a location misunderstand my intentions,” the newspaper quoted him as saying. “I am not here to hide from justice; I am here to reveal criminality.”

The NSA and the National Intelligence director did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

Asked during a media briefing on Wednesday for comment on Snowden’s latest claims, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Jennifer Psaki declined. She said she had not seen the latest Morning Post report.

On the defensive

The revelations have renewed debate over surveillance in the United States and overseas in the name of fighting terrorism, with supporters saying the programs revealed by Snowden are legal and have helped stop terror plots. Civil liberties advocates, however, call the measures dangerous and unacceptable intrusions.

Such criticisms have put Obama and his allies on the issue — both Democrats and Republicans — on the defensive against mounting criticisms from a similarly bipartisan group of critics demanding changes to rein in the programs.

There also is a sharp division among Americans over the issue.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that 44% of Americans believe Snowden did the right thing by releasing details about the classified surveillance programs, while 42% said it was wrong and 14% said they were unsure.

The poll for that question had a 6% margin of error.

It also found that more Americans disapprove than approve of the government’s surveillance programs, 53% to 37%. Ten percent had no opinion.

The poll for that question had a 4% margin of error.

Those differences were on display Wednesday when Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, testified at a hearing into cybersecurity technology and civil liberties.

Officials have been unable to explain controversial data mining programs because they have been classified, Alexander testified.

But Alexander rejected the Snowden’s claim that the NSA could tap into any American’s phone or computer.

“I know of no way to do that,” Alexander said.

But he testified that phone records obtained by the government helped prevent “dozens” of terrorist events.

He would not discuss disrupted plots broadly, saying they were classified. But he did say federal data mining appeared to play a role in helping to disrupt a plot in recent years to attack the New York subway system.

Alexander said information developed overseas was passed along to the FBI, which he said was able to identify eventual suspect Najibullah Zazi in Colorado and ultimately uncover a plot. Zazi pleaded guilty to terror-related charges in 2010.

While not on the roster for Wednesday’s hearing, another administration official in the spotlight is Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, whom Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has singled out for how he answered questions about the telephone surveillance program in March.

In March, Wyden asked Clapper whether the NSA collects “any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?”

“No sir,” Clapper said.

On Saturday, Clapper told NBC News that he answered in the “most truthful or least most untruthful manner” possible.

Clapper told NBC that he had interpreted “collection” to mean actually examining the materials gathered by the NSA.

He previously told the National Journal he had meant that “the NSA does not voyeuristically pore through U.S. citizens’ e-mails,” but he did not mention e-mails at the hearing.

NSA leaker’s girlfriend says she’s ‘lost at sea’

EU questions

Fallout over revelations about the NSA’s intelligence-gathering has reached the European Union’s governing body, where Vice President Viviane Reding raised concerns that the United States may have targeted some of its citizens.

Reding said she plans to raise the issue during a meeting Friday with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.

“The respect for fundamental rights and the rule of law are the foundations of the EU-U.S. relationship. This common understanding has been, and must remain, the basis of cooperation between us in the area of Justice,” Reding, the EU commissioner for justice, said Wednesday.

“Trust that the rule of law will be respected is also essential to the stability and growth of the digital economy, including transatlantic business. This is of paramount importance for individuals and companies alike.”

CNN’s Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong, and Chelsea J. Carter reported and wrote from Atlanta. CNN’s Paul Steinhauser, Tom Cohen, Michael Pearson, Doug Gross, Shirley Henry, Brian Walker and Pamela Boykoff contributed to this report.

Article source: http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/12/politics/nsa-leak/index.html?eref=edition