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France’s Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has summoned the US ambassador over Le Monde newspaper claims that the US spied on millions of phone calls in France.
France has labeled such activity between allies as “unacceptable”.
Le Monde says the data, based on leaks from ex-intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, suggest the US NSA monitored businesses and officials as well as terrorism suspects.
The intercepts were apparently triggered by certain key words.
Le Monde says the US National Security Agency (NSA) spied on 70.3 million phone calls in France in just 30 days between December 10, 2012, and January 8, 2013.
The NSA also apparently captured millions of text messages.
Leaks from ex-intelligence analyst Edward Snowden suggest the NSA monitored businesses and officials as well as terrorism suspects
It was unclear whether the content of the calls and messages was stored, or just the metadata – the details of who is speaking to whom.
Le Monde did not say whether the operation, codenamed US-985D, was still in progress.
Laurent Fabius announced that he had summoned the US ambassador to discuss the claims “immediately”.
Interior Minister Manuel Valls had earlier said the allegations were “shocking”, and added: “If an allied country spies on France, this is totally unacceptable.”
Le Monde reported in July that the French government ran a huge snooping operation on its own citizens, giving its intelligence agencies access to vast amounts of personal data.
The latest revelations follow claims in the German media that US agents hacked into the email account of former Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
Edward Snowden, a former NSA employee, went public with revelations about US spying operations in June.
The information he leaked led to claims of systematic spying by the NSA and CIA on a global scale.
Targets included rivals like China and Russia, as well as allies like the EU and Brazil.
The NSA was also forced to admit it captured email and phone data from millions of Americans.
Edward Snowden is currently in Russia, where he was granted a year-long visa after making an asylum application.
The US wants Edward Snowden extradited to face trial on criminal charges.
Mexico’s foreign ministry has strongly condemned alleged US spying after a report said that former President Felipe Calderon’s emails were hacked by the National Security Agency (NSA).
Data leaked by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden showed Mexico’s ex-President Felipe Calderon’s emails were hacked in 2010, Germany’s Der Spiegel reports.
Mexico’s foreign ministry said such spying was “unacceptable, illegal” and contrary to good relations.
It urged President Barack Obama to complete an investigation into the allegations.
Data leaked by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden showed Mexico’s ex-President Felipe Calderon’s emails were hacked in 2010
In an official statement, the Mexican foreign ministry said it would soon re-iterate the importance of such an investigation through diplomatic means.
“In a relationship between neighbors and partners, there is no place for the alleged practices,” the statement said.
Previous reports had already suggested the NSA had intercepted communications involving current President Enrique Pena Nieto before he took office in 2012 and Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff. Messages involving her aides and state oil company Petrobas were also said to have been compromised.
The revelations prompted a sharp response from Brazil, with the suspension of plans for a state visit by Dilma Rousseff to Washington next month.
The NSA is also alleged to have seen electronic data from other Latin American governments, including Venezuela and Ecuador.
At the G20 meeting in Russia last month, Barack Obama promised to investigate the allegations of espionage against Dilma Rousseff and her Mexican counterpart.
The allegations were also based on documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
A US federal court has since filed espionage charges against the former intelligence contractor and is seeking his extradition.
Edward Snowden is currently living in Russia where he has been granted temporary asylum.
Edward Snowden insists he took no classified documents to Russia when he fled to Moscow from Hong Kong in June.
The former NSA contractor told the New York Times he had given all the papers to journalists in Hong Kong and had kept no copies.
Edward Snowden, who worked for two US spy agencies, also said no confidential information had been passed to China.
The US authorities want Edward Snowden extradited to face trial, but Russia has refused to hand him over.
The Russian authorities gave him a one-year visa earlier this year after he claimed asylum.
Edward Snowden, 30, told the US newspaper that he did not take any of the documents because it would not have been in the public interest.
Edward Snowden insists he took no classified documents to Russia when he fled to Moscow from Hong Kong in June
“What would be the unique value of personally carrying another copy of the materials onward,” he said.
Claims had surfaced in media reports that China was likely to have gained some intelligence from the former NSA contractor before he left Hong Kong.
Some analysts had suggested Edward Snowden was working with Chinese intelligence, while others said he was working with the Russians.
Edward Snowden rebuffed these claims, saying: “There’s a zero per cent chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents.”
He said his last job for the NSA had focused on China, and he had “access to every target”, so he felt confident that the data was safe from Chinese agencies.
The New York Times report said its interview was conducted over several days via encrypted networks.
The information leaked by Edward Snowden has led to claims of systematic spying by the NSA and CIA on a global scale of governments, businesses and members of the public.
Targets have included rivals like China and Russia, as well as close allies like the EU and Brazil.
The NSA was also forced to admit it captured email and phone data from millions of Americans.
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Glenn Greenwald – The Guardian journalist who broke the Snowden leaks story – is to join a new media project being set up by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
Glenn Greenwald confirmed he was leaving The Guardian for the mass media outlet being planned by French-born billionaire Pierre Omidyar.
Laura Poitras, the documentary-maker who connected Glenn Greenwald with Edward Snowden, is also expected to join.
Edward Snowden leaked details of US government surveillance programmes.
He is now living in Russia, where he was granted temporary asylum after fleeing Hong Kong in June, shortly after the revelations were published.
On Wednesday, British PM David Cameron accused The Guardian of having knowingly compromised national security by publishing the leaks.
Glenn Greenwald is to join a new media project being set up by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar
Glenn Greenwald, a US citizen based in Brazil, insists that none of the information he published could have damaged national security.
Announcing his new project in a statement, Pierre Omidyar said he wanted to support “independent journalists in a way that leverages their work to the greatest extent possible, all in support of the public interest”.
His project, he said, was in its early stages but he had approached Glenn Greenwald and found that he and fellow Americans Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, an investigative journalist, were already contemplating something similar.
“We had a lot of overlap in terms of our ideas, and decided to join forces,” said Pierre Omidyar.
Pierre Omidyar said his new outlet would be independent of other media with the focus on allowing independent journalists to “pursue the truth in their fields”.
“And, I want to find ways to convert mainstream readers into engaged citizens,” he said in the statement.
Pierre Omidyar’s existing projects include the US-based Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm which operates in some of Africa’s most troubled countries.
Forbes magazine estimated Pierre Omidyar ‘s net worth to be $8.5 billion (6.3 billion euros) last month.
Announcing his departure in a statement on Tuesday, Glenn Greenwald said he was embarking on a “once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity”.
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Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian journalist who covered data leaked by Edward Snowden, has announced he is leaving the British newspaper.
Glenn Greenwald said he was departing to take up a “dream” opportunity.
He told Buzzfeed website he would be involved in a “new, large-scale… media outlet”.
In a statement posted online, Glenn Greenwald said the news of this “momentous new venture” had been leaked before he had planned to announce it so he was not able to provide further details, but that it would be unveiled shortly.
“My partnership with the Guardian has been extremely fruitful and fulfilling: I have high regard for the editors and journalists with whom I worked and am incredibly proud of what we achieved,” Glenn Greenwald said.
Glenn Greenwald, The Guardian journalist who covered data leaked by Edward Snowden, has announced he is leaving the British newspaper
The Guardian‘s Jennifer Lindauer said: “Glenn Greenwald is a remarkable journalist and it has been fantastic working with him.
“Our work together over the last year has demonstrated the crucial role that responsible investigative journalism can play in holding those in power to account.”
Glenn Greenwald has been fiercely criticized for his work with Edward Snowden, who is wanted in the US on espionage charges and is living under asylum in Russia.
However, Glenn Greenwald, who is a lawyer by training, said during an interview that none of the information he had published in the Guardian could have damaged national security.
In August, Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda, who lives with the journalist in Rio de Janeiro, was held for nine hours at Heathrow under anti-terror laws. Police seized a number of electronic items he was carrying.
British Home Secretary Theresa May defended the move, saying the police had to act if someone had “highly sensitive, stolen information”.
David Miranda denied any wrongdoing.
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According to a document leaked by Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA) collects up to 250 million online address books each year.
The NSA document was leaked to the Washington Post and shows a collection of contact lists from both foreign and US email and instant message accounts.
Scrutinizing such lists allows the NSA to find hidden connections between people of interest to them, it says.
The web firms involved said that they did not give direct access to the NSA.
During a single day last year, the NSA collected 444,743 email address books from Yahoo, 105,068 from Hotmail, 82,857 from Facebook and 33,697 from Gmail, according to the alleged internal NSA Powerpoint presentation.
Another 22,881 address books were harvested from unspecified providers, according to the Washington Post.
In response to earlier allegations, Yahoo said that it would begin to encrypt email connections from next year. Meanwhile Facebook called for greater government transparency about data collection and Microsoft said the revelations raised “significant concerns”.
According to a document leaked by Edward Snowden, the NSA collects up to 250 million online address books each year
The data collection, which the paper says takes place overseas, happens when users log in, compose a message or sync devices.
According to the leaked document, the information is collected at least 18 key access points controlled by telecommunication companies based outside the US.
Because American web communications can flow outside of the country, the contact lists of US citizens also cross the international collection points, known as Sigads (Signals Intelligence Activity Designators).
This is particularly significant because President Barack Obama has previously said that US citizens were not targeted by the surveillance, which he said struck “the right balance” between security and privacy.
Address books include names and email addresses but can also include telephone numbers, home addresses, and business and family information.
Many web-based email services generate contact lists automatically once an email has been sent. These lists allow users to write emails more quickly by providing an auto-complete suggestion.
For an intelligence analyst, access to such data would allow them to reconstruct a network of who knows whom among criminals and terrorists.
Previous Edward Snowden allegations have suggested large-scale NSA spying and attempts to weaken internet encryption.
The NSA said that such surveillance is used to combat terrorism, drug smuggling and human trafficking among other crimes.
It has always maintained it has no interest in the personal information of ordinary Americans.
NSA director general Keith Alexander has defended the bulk collection of internet communications, saying that counter-terrorism and serious crime-fighting requires “the haystack to find the needle”.
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Lon Snowden – the father of fugitive former NSA contractor Edward Snowden – has arrived in Russia to visit his son.
Lon Snowden told journalists on his arrival in Moscow that he felt “extreme gratitude that my son is safe and secure and he’s free”.
Edward Snowden, 30, was granted asylum in Russia in August after weeks spent in a transit zone at Moscow airport when the US revoked his travel documents.
He leaked many thousands of US intelligence documents.
The information, published in The Guardian and Washington Post newspapers, revealed extensive internet and phone surveillance by both US and British intelligence.
In the US, Edward Snowden faces charges of theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified intelligence.
Each of the charges carries a maximum 10-year prison sentence.
The father of fugitive Edward Snowden has arrived in Russia to visit his son
Lon Snowden, arriving at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, was met by his son’s Russian lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena.
“I’m here to learn more about my son’s situation,” Lon Snowden told reporters.
“My hope is to learn more about his circumstances and his health and to discuss legal options.”
“If the opportunity presents itself, I certainly hope that I have the opportunity to see my son,” he said in televised remarks.
“I’m not sure that my son will be returning to the US. That’s his decision, he’s an adult.”
Lon Snowden has in the past praised his son for speaking “the truth” and making great sacrifices, and has spoken of his concern that he would not face a fair trial if he returned to the US.
Edward Snowden accessed many of the documents while working for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton in Hawaii, where he had been living with his girlfriend.
As the revelations became public, Edward Snowden fled to Hong Kong where, with his consent, The Guardian revealed his identity in June.
To escape US attempts to extradite him, Edward Snowden moved on to Russia where he remained in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo airport until Russia granted him asylum.
Russia’s move added to already tense relations with the US. Washington cancelled a bilateral summit in September.
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Edward Snowden has made the shortlist of three for the Sakharov prize, Europe’s top human rights award.
The American fugitive was nominated by Green politicians in the European Parliament for leaking details of US surveillance.
Nominees also include Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani teenager shot in the head for demanding education for girls.
Former recipients of the prize, awarded by the European Parliament, include Nelson Mandela and Aung San Suu Kyi.
Edward Snowden has made the shortlist of three for the Sakharov prize
Edward Snowden’s nomination recognized that his disclosure of US surveillance activities was an “enormous service” to human rights and European citizens, the parliament’s Green group said.
The former NSA employee, who has sought asylum in Russia, said in a statement read out in parliament that he was grateful to Europe’s politicians for “taking up the challenge of mass surveillance”.
“The surveillance of whole populations, rather than individuals, threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of our time,” Edward Snowden said.
The Sakharov prize for freedom of thought is awarded annually in memory if Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet scientist and dissident.
The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on October 10.
The third nominee for the award is a group of Belarusian political dissidents jailed in 2010 for protesting against the disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko.
The group includes activists Ales Bialiatski, Eduard Lobau and former presidential candidate Mykola Statkevich.
Ales Bialiatski was also named as the first person to receive the Council of Europe’s Vaclav Havel human rights prize, worth €61,000 ($81,000).
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has called off a state visit to the US next month in a row over allegations of American espionage.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been accused of intercepting emails and messages from Dilma Rousseff, her aides and state oil company, Petrobras.
The allegations were based on documents leaked by fugitive former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden.
President Barack Obama had promised to investigate the incident.
The White House said he had telephoned Dilma Rousseff on Monday to discuss the matter.
The allegations of widespread espionage against Brazilian citizens were first published in July by Rio de Janeiro-based journalist Glenn Greenwald, a reporter for the Guardian newspaper.
Glenn Greenwald alleged that the NSA accessed all internet content that Dilma Rousseff had visited online.
The documents, according to the report, were part of an NSA case study showing how data could be intelligently filtered.
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff has called off a state visit to the US next month in a row over allegations of American espionage
Earlier this month, another report by Glenn Greenwald on Globo Television alleged that the NSA had illegally accessed data from oil company Petrobras.
The company is due next month to carry out an important auction for exploration rights of an oil field off the Rio de Janeiro state coast.
Dilma Rousseff has said that if the accusations are proven it means the NSA was involved in “industrial espionage”.
Her US state visit, starting on October 23, was to be the first by a Brazilian president since 1995.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Brazilian government said that “given the proximity of the scheduled state visit to Washington – and in the absence of a timely investigation of the incident, with corresponding explanations and the commitment to cease the interception activities” it could not go ahead as planned.
The statement said Brazil hoped the visit would take place “as soon as possible”, once the issue had been “resolved properly”.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said that the postponement had been a joint decision between Dilma Rousseff and Barack Obama, who agreed it “should not be overshadowed by any bilateral issue”.
The White House said in a statement: “The president has said that he understands and regrets the concerns [that] disclosures of alleged US intelligence activities have generated in Brazil and made clear that he is committed to working together with President Rousseff and her government in diplomatic channels to move beyond this issue as a source of tension in our bilateral relationship.”
The NSA has been accused of looking into electronic communications from what the US sees as hostile Latin American governments, such as Venezuela and Ecuador, as well as traditional allies, including Mexico.
At the G20 meeting in Russia earlier this month, Barack Obama promised to investigate the allegations of espionage against Dilma Rousseff and her Mexican counterpart, Henrique Pena Nieto.
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Brazil announces it will demand an explanation from the US after allegations that the National Security Agency (NSA) spied on Brazilian government communications.
The allegations were made by Rio-based journalist Glenn Greenwald in a programme on TV Globo on Sunday.
Glenn Greenwald obtained secret files from whistle-blower Edward Snowden.
Communications from the Mexican president were also accessed by the NSA, Glenn Greenwald said.
Glenn Greenwald, a columnist for the Guardian newspaper, told TV Globo’s news programme Fantastico that secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden showed how US agents had spied on communications between aides of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff.
Brazil’s Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo said that “if these facts prove to be true, it would be unacceptable and could be called an attack on our country’s sovereignty”.
According to the report, the NSA also used a program to access all internet content that President Dilma Rousseff visited online.
Edward Snowden’s documents showed how US agents had spied on communications between aides of Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff
The report also alleges that the NSA monitored the communications of Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto before he was elected.
Glenn Greenwald said that a document dating from June 2012 showed that Enrique Pena Nieto’s emails were being read.
A spokesman for the Mexican foreign ministry told the Agence France Presse news agency that he had seen the report but had no comment.
The documents were provided to Glenn Greenwald by ex-US intelligence analyst Edward Snowden, who was granted temporary asylum in Russia after leaking secret information to media in the US and Britain.
Glenn Greenwald was the first journalist to reveal the secret documents leaked by Edward Snowden on June 6. Since then, he has written a series of stories about surveillance by US and UK authorities.
The detention last month for nine hours at London’s Heathrow airport of Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda, caused widespread controversy in the UK and abroad.
Glenn Greenwald said the detention of his partner amounted to “bullying” and was “clearly intended to send a message of intimidation” to those working on the NSA revelations.
The British government said that it was right for the police to act if they believed that someone had “highly sensitive stolen information”.
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The files disclosed by leaker Edward Snowden to the Washington Post revealed the multi-billion dollar “black budget” used by US intelligence.
The CIA’s budget is the most expensive, $14.7 billion out of $52.6 billion in total for 16 intelligence agencies, according to the files.
Two of those agencies are also actively hacking into foreign computer networks, reports the Washington Post.
The US has not made public a breakdown of the total intelligence budget.
The newspaper published charts detailing the budget, but did not post all the documents, citing “sensitive details” after US officials expressed concerns about risks to methods and sources.
According to the Washington Post, the CIA’s budget has grown more than 50% since 2004.
The files also reportedly show the budget of the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s electronic spying organization – it apparently requested $10.8 billion for 2013, making it second only to the CIA.
Nearly $5 billion of the CIA’s budget is allocated to human intelligence operations, with almost $67 million of that total reserved for funding the false identities of its overseas spies, according to the files.
The files disclosed by leaker Edward Snowden to the Washington Post revealed the multi-billion dollar “black budget” used by US intelligence
The CIA and the NSA have also launched “offensive cyber operations” to hack into or sabotage enemy computer networks, according to the files.
The documents reportedly refer to China, Russia, Iran, Cuba and Israel as “priority” counterintelligence targets. Israel is an American ally, though it has previously conducted espionage against the US.
The NSA is denying one part of Friday’s report – that the agency planned to investigate up to 4,000 cases of possible internal security breaches before Edward Snowden made his disclosures to the media.
Vanee Vines, an agency spokesman, told the Associated Press the effort actually represented a broad reinvestigation of civil personnel to lessen the possibility of security risks.
“Periodic reinvestigations are conducted as one due-diligence component of our multifaceted insider threat programme,” he said.
The documents are the latest in a series of leaks by ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who has been charged with espionage in a federal court in the US.
Edward Snowden is currently in Russia, where the government of Vladimir Putin has granted him a year’s asylum.
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Documents leaked by Edward Snowden revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) broke privacy rules and overstepped its legal authority thousands of times in the past two years.
The incidents resulted in the unauthorised electronic surveillance of US citizens, according to documents published by the Washington Post.
Edward Snowden, 30, a former NSA contractor, has leaked top secret documents to the US and British media.
He has been given asylum in Russia.
On Thursday, the Washington Post posted on its website a selection of documents it said had been provided by Edward Snowden, who fled the US in June after providing documents detailing NSA surveillance programmes to the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers.
The documents purport to show that the unauthorised interception of telephone calls and emails of Americans and foreign nationals on US soil resulted from errors and departures from standard agency processes, including through a data collection method that a secret US surveillance court later ruled unconstitutional.
The documents offer more detail into the agency practices than is typically shared with members of Congress, the US justice department, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
The NSA broke privacy rules and overstepped its legal authority thousands of times in the past two years
An internal audit dated May 2012 counted 2,776 incidents over the previous 12 months of unauthorised data collection. The rate of violations grew significantly each quarter, from 546 in the second quarter of 2011 to 865 in the first quarter of 2012.
It is unclear how many individuals were subjected to unauthorised surveillance.
NSA auditors speculated the number of incidents jumped in the first quarter of 2012 because a large number of Chinese surveillance targets visited the US for the Chinese New Year. NSA surveillance of foreign nationals while they are on US soil is restricted.
According to an internal NSA audit report detailing the incidents in the first quarter of 2012, the majority occurred due to “operator error”, usually from failure to follow procedures, typographical errors, insufficient research information, or workload issues.
Other incidents were attributed to “system error”, such as a lack of capabilities or glitches and bugs.
Some data was intercepted when foreign targets entered the US – where NSA surveillance is restricted – but the system was unaware the target had entered US soil.
Other “inadvertent collection incidents” were targets believed to be non-Americans but who turned out to be US citizens upon further investigation.
In one instance in 2008, a “large number” of calls placed from Washington DC were intercepted after an error in a computer program entered “202” – the telephone area code for Washington DC – into a data query instead of “20”, the country code for Egypt.
In another case, the agency vacuumed up vast amounts of international data from a fibre optic cable running through the US into an NSA computer, where it was stored and analysed. Months later, the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ruled the programme violated the search and seizure protections afforded by the US constitution.
Edward Snowden has been charged with espionage in a federal court in the US. He is currently in Russia, where the government of Vladimir Putin has granted him a year of asylum on the condition he cease disclosing secret US government information.
President Barack Obama has defended the series of programmes described in Edward Snowden’s leaks, but has promised reforms to guarantee greater oversight.
“Given the history of abuse by governments, it’s right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives,” Barack Obama said last week.
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Movie star Matt Damon says he no longer has a crush on President Barack Obama.
“He broke up with me,” Matt Damon said in an interview published online Thursday.
Matt Damon told BET that he and the president “no longer see eye-to-eye”.
“There are a lot of things that I really question, specifically about the Obama administration’s national security posture.”
“The legality of the drone strikes,” Matt Damon said, “and these NSA revelations are – like, you know – Jimmy Carter came out and said we don’t live in a democracy. That’s a little intense when an ex-president says that. So you know, he’s got some explaining to do, particularly for a constitutional law professor.”
Barack Obama has come under fire for presiding over an NSA with a mandate for domestic spying. The agency’s biggest secrets are now exposed publicly since contractor Edward Snowden leaked them to the press and fled to Russia.
And the president has faced growing outrage from Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and other libertarian-minded Republicans, following his Department of Justice’s longtime refusal to guarantee that it won’t use drones to surveil Americans – an assurance it gave only in the face of an embarrassing Senate filibuster.
Matt Damon no longer has a crush on President Barack Obama
The White House continues to use unmanned drones as first-strike weapons against terrorism targets overseas.
Matt Damon campaigned aggressively for then-Senator Obama during the 2008 election season. Nine days before the 2008 election, Matt Damon told a room full of volunteers in Florida that they should work hard to “make sure Barack wins”.
But in the president’s second term, the bloom is clearly off the rose.
Matt Damon told reporters in August 2011 that he was “really dissatisfied” with Barack Obama “doubling down” on George W. Bush’s “bad ideas” for education.
Three months later in an interview with Elle magazine Matt Damon said: “I’ve talked to a lot of people who worked for Obama at the grassroots level. One of them said to me, <<Never again. I will never be fooled again by a politician>>.”
“You know, a one-term president with some balls who actually got stuff done would have been, in the long run of the country, much better.”
Matt Damon’s criticism of Barack Obama began in late 2010, and by April 2011 the president was ready to fire back, albeit in good fun.
“It’s fair to say that when it comes to my presidency, the honeymoon is over,” Barack Obama said at the White House Correspondents Dinner.
“Matt Damon said he was disappointed in my performance. Well Matt, I just saw The Adjustment Bureau so right back atcha buddy.”
Matt Damon has come under fire this week following revelations that despite his long-term advocacy for improving public education, he sends his own children to a private school.
“I pay for a private education and I’m trying to get the one that most matches the public education that I had,” he told The Guardian, “but that kind of progressive education no longer exists in the public system. It’s unfair.”
During a 2011 rally in Washington D.C., Matt Damon told a crowd of teachers that he would not trade his own public school education “for anything”.
Matt Damon’s upcoming film Elysium, which opens Friday, has been panned by conservatives for arguing for a socialist utopia as an alternative to a future world of haves and have-nots.
The Occupy Wall Street-inspired plot line involves a wealthy elite class that has abandoned an overcrowded Earth for a luxury space station, leaving the rest of humanity in crime-ridden and poverty-stricken squalor.
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President Barack Obama has vowed “appropriate reforms” to guarantee greater oversight of controversial US surveillance programmes.
At a White House news conference, Barack Obama proposed “safeguards against abuse”, including amending legislation on the collection of telephone data.
The president also urged allowing a lawyer to challenge decisions by the nation’s secretive surveillance court.
He has been defending the programmes since they were leaked in June.
Barack Obama said on Friday that the US “can and must be more transparent” about its snooping on phone and internet data.
“Given the history of abuse by governments, it’s right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives,” he told reporters.
“It’s not enough for me as president to have confidence in these programmes,” Barack Obama added.
“The American people need to have confidence as well.”
Barack Obama has vowed appropriate reforms to guarantee greater oversight of controversial US surveillance programmes
Barack Obama unveiled four steps aimed at reassuring Americans about the surveillance:
- He said he would work with Congress to reform Section 215 of the Bush-era Patriot Act, which governs the programme that collects telephone records
- He directed justice officials to make public the legal rationale for the government’s phone-data collection activities, under Section 215
- He proposed allowing a lawyer to check the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which is accused of essentially rubber-stamping government requests to scour electronic records
- He announced the formation of a group of external experts to review all US government intelligence and communications technologies
In response to a question about Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who revealed details of the secretive surveillance programmes to media, Barack Obama said: “No, I don’t think Mr. Snowden was a patriot.”
The president went on to criticize Russia, two days after he cancelled a planned summit with President Vladimir Putin next month in Moscow.
Barack Obama said there had been more anti-American rhetoric since Vladimir Putin returned to the Russian presidency, which “played into some of the old stereotypes about the Cold War contest”.
“I’ve encouraged Mr. Putin to think forward as opposed to backwards on those issues, with mixed success,” Barack Obama told reporters, who held the news conference just before going on holiday at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
He said that during his photocalls with Vladimir Putin, the Russian leader “has got that kind of slouch, looking like he’s the bored kid in the back of the classroom”. But he said their discussions in private had been constructive.
Barack Obama also said he would not consider it “appropriate” to boycott Russia’s Winter Olympics next year, despite calls by gay rights activists to shun the games because of a recently passed law in that country banning “homosexual propaganda”.
Earlier on Friday, Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel held talks with their Russian counterparts in Washington DC.
John Kerry conceded the US-Russia relationship had been complicated by “the occasional collision” and “challenging moments”.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov also acknowledged problems, but said Moscow preferred to handle their differences like “grown-ups”.
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Lavabit, an encrypted email service thought to have been used by Edward Snowden, has abruptly shut down.
Ladar Levison, owner of the Texas-based Lavabit service, said legal reasons prevented him explaining his decision.
He said he would rather suspend his business than become complicit in “crimes against the American people”.
Correspondents say Lavabit appears to have been in a legal battle to stop US officials accessing customer details.
Edward Snowden, a 30-year-old former CIA contractor, has admitted leaking information about US surveillance programmes to the media.
Edward Snowden is believed to have been using the Lavabit service after fleeing the US
He fled the US – where he now faces espionage charges – and has been granted temporary asylum in Russia.
Observers say Lavabit was put in the spotlight following reports that Edward Snowden was using the service while holed-up in Moscow airport.
“I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people, or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit,” Ladar Levison wrote in a letter posted on the Lavabit website.
He said he had decided to “suspend operations” but was barred from discussing the events over the past six weeks that led to his decision.
“This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would strongly recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States,” Ladar Levison wrote.
The US Department of Justice has so far not commented.
Edward Snowden spent about a month in a transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport as the US pressured other countries to deny him asylum.
On August 1st, Edward Snowden left the airport after the Russian government said it would grant him asylum there for a year.
Moscow’s decision prompted President Barack Obama to scrap a planned meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin.
Barack Obama has canceled a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin after Russia’s decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden, the White House said.
But President Barack Obama will still attend the G20 economic talks in St Petersburg.
A White House aide said Edward Snowden’s asylum had deepened the pre-existing tension between the two countries.
The Kremlin said it was disappointed by the move and that the invitation to bilateral talks remained in force.
Edward Snowden, a former intelligence contractor, has admitted leaking information about US surveillance programmes to the media.
The decision to cancel the talks, announced during a trip by the president to Los Angeles, comes the morning after Barack Obama said he was “disappointed” with Russia’s decision to offer Edward Snowden asylum for a year.
“We have reached the conclusion that there is not enough recent progress in our bilateral agenda with Russia to hold a US-Russia Summit,” the White House said in a statement.
Barack Obama has canceled a meeting with Vladimir Putin after Russia’s decision to grant asylum to Edward Snow
In addition to Russia’s “disappointing decision” to grant Edward Snowden temporary asylum, the White House cited a lack of progress on issues ranging from missile defense to human rights.
“We believe it would be more constructive to postpone the summit until we have more results from our shared agenda,” the White House said.
The decision to cancel the US-Russia summit comes the day after Barack Obama appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, in which he condemned a newly enacted anti-gay law in Russia.
But the White House reaffirmed Barack Obama’s commitment to attending an upcoming round of G20 economic talks, which take place on 5-6 September in the Russian city of St Petersburg.
In the wake of the announcement, Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said it was clear the US had canceled the meeting over the Snowden affair.
In a conference call on Wednesday, Yuri Ushakov added the Kremlin was disappointed by the move and that the invitation for talks remained open.
“Russian representatives are ready to continue working together with American partners on all key issues on the bilateral and multilateral agenda,” he said.
Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin last met in June, on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland.
Edward Snowden, an American former National Security Agency (NSA) technical contractor and CIA worker, in June leaked to the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers documents and details relating to NSA programmes that gather data on telephone calls and emails.
Edward Snowden, 30, fled his home in Hawaii, where he worked at a small NSA installation, to Hong Kong, and subsequently to Russia. He faces espionage charges in the US.
He spent about a month in a transit area of the Moscow airport as the US pressured other countries to deny him asylum.
On August 1st, Edward Snowden left the airport after the Russian government said it would give him asylum there for a year.
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Barack Obama made his first comments about Edward Snowden since Russia granted him a temporary asylum last week during an interview with NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.
President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that he was “disappointed” that Russia granted temporary asylum to National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, defying his administration’s demands that the former government contractor be sent back to the U.S. to face espionage charges.
“There have been times where they slip back into Cold War thinking and a Cold War mentality,” Barack Obama said.
Edward Snowden, a 30-year-old ex-NSA systems analyst, is accused of leaking details about highly-secretive government surveillance programs.
He spent several weeks in the transit zone of a Moscow airport before being granted asylum for a year.
Russia’s decision has pushed the White House to reconsider Barack Obama’s plans to travel to Russia in September. He said he would attend an international summit in St. Petersburg, saying it was important for the U.S. to be represented at talks among global economic powers.
But the president did not say whether he planned to attend separate meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow.
The White House has said it was evaluating the “utility” of the Putin meetings.
Barack Obama also criticized a new Russian law cracking down on gay rights activism.
Russia has said it will enforce the law when it hosts the 2014 Winter Olympics. Asked whether the law would impact the games, Barack Obama said he believes Vladimir Putin and Russia have “a big stake in making sure the Olympics work”.
President Barack Obama giving Jay Leno a replica of his limo The Beast on The Tonight Show
“I think they understand that for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we wouldn’t tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently,” the president said.
In a wide-ranging interview, Barack Obama touched on the closure of 19 embassies in the wake of the al-Qaeda terror alert.
He said that the U.S. was not overreacting with its decision and that Americans can still take their vacation in a “prudent way” by checking on State Department websites for up-to-day information before making plans.
Barack Obama added: “The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately.”
The administration was earlier today accused of behaving “like a bunch of cowards” following the embassy closures.
Louis Gohmert, a Republican congressman from Texas, recalled the September 11, 2012, terror attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
Barack Obama also lauded two of his former political rivals: former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator John McCain, R-Ariz.
Once bitter adversaries, Barack Obama and John McCain have deepened their ties in recent months. The Republican senator helped usher a White House-backed overhaul of U.S. immigration law through the Senate and most recently negotiated a plan to clear the way for votes on several stalled Obama nominees.
The president said that while he and John McCain still have significant policy differences, the Republican senator is “a person of integrity”.
But Barack Obama said jokingly that it’s probably not good for John McCain if the Democratic president compliments him on television.
The president also discussed his recent lunch with Hillary Clinton, his rival in the 2008 Democratic primaries.
Hillary Clinton, who left the State Department earlier this year, had a post-administration “glow”, Barack Obama said.
But he sidestepped questions about whether she was measuring the curtains in the White House for a possible 2016 presidential bid.
“Keep in mind, she’s been there before,” Barack Obama said.
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US officials say they will go ahead with high-level talks with Russia on Friday despite Moscow’s decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden.
Some members of Edward Snowden’s family are applying for visas to visit him in Russia, his lawyer says.
Edward Snowden was granted asylum by Russia despite repeated requests from the US that he be returned to America.
He leaked details about a secret data-gathering programme.
The US state department said Secretary of State John Kerry and US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel would hold talks on pressing bilateral and global issues with their Russian counterparts in Washington, including Syria and Iran’s nuclear programme.
The two sides were also to discuss Edward Snowden, it added.
President Barack Obama has meanwhile said he is “disappointed” that Russia granted asylum to Edward Snowden.
US will go ahead with high-level talks with Russia despite Moscow’s decision to grant asylum to Edward Snowden
Speaking during an interview for Tuesday’s broadcast of The Tonight Show on NBC, Barack Obama accused Moscow of occasionally adopting a “Cold War mentality”.
Barack Obama said: “What I say to President [Vladimir] Putin is, that’s the past and… we’ve got to think about the future. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to cooperate more effectively than we do.”
Edward Snowden’s whereabouts in Russia are not publicly known after he slipped away from Moscow’s international airport last week.
But his lawyer says he has now registered an address within Russian territory and his father, Lon Snowden, is waiting for a visa to visit him.
He said Edward Snowden wanted his father’s advice on what to do with his new life.
“We do not have a set date yet, but we have been working closely with Anatoly Kucherena, Ed Snowden’s attorney, on setting a definitive date which will be some time in August,” Mattie Fein, a representative for Lon Snowden, told the Reuters news agency.
Russia’s decision to grant temporary asylum to the former intelligence analyst has strained relations between Moscow and the US.
Edward Snowden leaked details of the National Security Agency’s electronic surveillance programme which gathers data about emails and phone calls made by American citizens.
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Germany has decided to cancel a Cold War-era pact with the US and the UK in response to revelations about electronic surveillance operations.
Details of snooping programmes involving the transatlantic allies have been leaked to the media by Edward Snowden.
The revelations have sparked widespread outrage in Germany, where elections are due next month.
The agreement dates from 1968-1969, and its cancellation is largely symbolic.
Germany has decided to cancel a Cold War-era pact with the US and the UK in response to revelations about electronic surveillance operations
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said in a statement: “The cancellation of the administrative agreements, which we have pushed for in recent weeks, is a necessary and proper consequence of the recent debate about protecting personal privacy.”
Germans’ experience of mass surveillance under the Communist and Nazi dictatorships makes them particularly sensitive to perceived infringements of personal privacy, and the country has strong data protection laws.
The agreement cancelled on Friday gave the Western countries which had troops stationed in West Germany – the US, the UK and France – the right to request surveillance operations to protect those forces.
A German official told the Associated Press news agency that the agreement had not been invoked since the end of the Cold War, and admitted that the decision would have no impact on current intelligence co-operation.
A spokesperson for the UK’s Foreign Office told reporters that the agreement had not been in use since 1990.
Henning Riecke of the German Council on Foreign Relations told AP that the German government needed to do something to demonstrate at home that it was taking the issue seriously.
“Ending an agreement made in the pre-internet age gives the Germans a chance to show they’re doing something, and at the same time the Americans know it’s not going to hurt them.
“Given the good relations between the intelligence agencies, they’ll get the information they need anyway,” he said.
Edward Snowden has thanked Russia for granting him temporary asylum, allowing him to leave the Moscow airport where he has been holed up since June.
In a statement, Edward Snowden also accused the US government of showing “no respect” for international law.
The US has charged Edward Snowden with leaking details of its electronic surveillance programmes.
Washington has expressed its “extreme disappointment” at Russia’s decision.
White House spokesman Jay Carney said they were considering whether a meeting between US President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in September should go ahead.
The latest developments came amid fresh revelations from the cache of documents leaked by Edward Snowden.
Documents seen by the UK’s Guardian newspaper appear to show the US government paid at least $150 million to the UK’s GCHQ spy agency to secure access to and influence over Britain’s intelligence gathering programmes.
Edward Snowden’s lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, said the former CIA contractor had left Sheremetyevo Airport at about 14:00 local time for an undisclosed destination.
Showing a photocopy of the document issued to his client, he described Edward Snowden as “the most pursued man on the planet”.
Anatoly Kucherena said Edward Snowden was being looked after by a legal expert from the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks.
Russia’s Federal Migration Service later officially confirmed that Edward Snowden had been granted temporary asylum for one year, Interfax news agency reported.
Russia granted Edward Snowden temporary asylum, allowing him to leave the Moscow airport
In a statement issued on the WikiLeaks website, Edward Snowden said: “Over the past eight weeks we have seen the Obama administration show no respect for international or domestic law, but in the end the law is winning.
“I thank the Russian Federation for granting me asylum in accordance with its laws and international obligations.”
President Barack Obama and President Vladimir Putin had been scheduled to meet on the sidelines of a G20 summit in early September in Saint Petersburg.
However, Jay Carney said: “We’re extremely disappointed that the Russian government would take this step despite our very clear and lawful requests in public and in private to have Mr. Snowden expelled to the United States to face the charges against him.
“We’re evaluating the utility of a summit in light of this and other issues.”
Earlier, Senator Robert Menendez, chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee, described Thursday’s development as “a setback to US-Russia relations”.
“Edward Snowden is a fugitive who belongs in a United States courtroom, not a free man deserving of asylum in Russia,” he said.
Republican Senator John McCain also issued a stinging rebuke, saying Russia’s actions were “a disgrace and a deliberate effort to embarrass the United States”.
“It is a slap in the face of all Americans. Now is the time to fundamentally rethink our relationship with Putin’s Russia. We need to deal with the Russia that is, not the Russia we might wish for,” he said.
Vladimir Putin has said previously that Edward Snowden could receive asylum in Russia on condition he stopped leaking US secrets.
The Russian president’s foreign policy adviser, Yury Ushakov, said the situation was “rather insignificant” and should not influence relations with the US.
Information leaked by Edward Snowden first surfaced in the Guardian newspaper in early June.
It showed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans.
The systems analyst also disclosed that the NSA had tapped directly into the servers of nine internet firms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a surveillance programme known as PRISM.
PRISM was allegedly also used by Britain’s electronic eavesdropping agency, GCHQ. The agency was further accused of sharing vast amounts of data with the NSA.
Allegations that the NSA had spied on its EU allies caused indignation in Europe.
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Edward Snowden has left the Moscow airport where he has been staying since June, his lawyer said.
Anatoly Kucherena said Edward Snowden had received the necessary papers to enter Russian territory from the transit zone at Sheremetyevo Airport.
Edward Snowden has left the Moscow airport where he has been staying since June
Russia is currently considering his request for asylum.
The US has charged Edward Snowden with leaking details of its electronic surveillance programmes.
He arrived in Moscow on June 23 from Hong Kong, after making his revelations.
The Snowden affair has caused diplomatic ructions around the world, upsetting America’s close allies and traditional enemies.
The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, has given Moscow an assurance that Edward Snowden will not face the death penalty if extradited to America, but the Russians say they do not intend to hand him over.
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The Obama administration has released documents on its phone-snooping, as a Senate panel questions intelligence officials about the programme.
The declassification was made in the “interest of increased transparency”, intelligence officials said.
However, the three documents include significant redactions.
Meanwhile the father of Edward Snowden, who leaked information about the surveillance, says the FBI has asked him to go to Moscow to see his son.
Lon Snowden told Russian state TV he wants to learn more about the FBI’s intentions. His son is a sought by the US government for revealing details of its electronic snooping by phone and internet.
Meanwhile, slides published by the UK’s Guardian newspaper detailed a secret US surveillance system known as XKeyscore, which reportedly enables American intelligence to monitor “nearly everything a typical user does on the internet”.
The programme includes real-time data and suggests analysts could narrow searches through use of so-called metadata also stored by the NSA, the newspaper reports.
The official US documents released on Wednesday include a court order describing how the data from the programmes would be stored and accessed.
Two reports to US lawmakers on the telephone and email records were also declassified.
But lines in the files, including details on “selection terms” used to search the massive data stores, were blacked out.
For the first time, however, the government acknowledged publicly that using what it calls “hop analysis” it can analyze the phone calls of millions of Americans in the hunt for just one suspect.
NSA analysts could use the records of everyone a suspect calls, and the contacts of those records, as well as everyone who contacts the contacts of contacts of the initial suspect.
The Obama administration has released documents on its phone-snooping
If the average person calls 40 unique people, such three-hop analysis could allow the government to mine the records of 2.5 million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist.
“What’s being described as a very narrow program is really a very broad program,” Democratic Senator Richard Durbin said.
Deputy Attorney General James Cole told a Senate judiciary committee hearing on Wednesday that the court order spells out how the government can use call data obtained from telecom giants such as Verizon.
It is the first congressional session on the issue since the House narrowly rejected a proposal to effectively shut down the NSA’s secretive collection of hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone records.
During the early parts of the hearing, NSA deputy director John Inglis said “no” when asked if anyone had been fired over the leak.
“No-one has offered to resign,” John Inglis said.
“Everyone is working hard to understand what happened.”
Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the committee, also questioned the deputy director on the number of attacks the agency said had been disrupted by the programmes.
General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, has said phone and internet surveillance disrupted 54 schemes by militants.
Sen. Patrick Leahy said a list of the relevant plots provided to Congress does not reflect dozens or, as he said, “let alone 54 as some have suggested”.
John Inglis said the phone surveillance helped disrupt or discover attacks 12 times, and the larger number were foiled thanks to both the phone-records snooping and a second programme collecting global internet users’ data.
In a letter to lawmakers last week, the Obama administration acknowledged there had been an unspecific number of “compliance problems” with the rules governing the secret collection of US phone records.
But the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said no intentional or bad-faith rules violations were found.
Edward Snowden, the NSA contractor that released the information, has been stuck in transit at a Moscow airport for more than a month after the US revoked his travel documents.
He said he has applied for asylum in Russia but has not been able to leave the airport.
Edward Snowden’s father, Lon Snowden, said in the interview with Russian state TV on Wednesday, he believes his son would not get a fair trial in America and, if he were in his son’s place, he would stay in Russia.
He described his son as a “true patriot” who had “made America a more democratic country” by revealing secret details of the US National Security Agency’s surveillance programmes.
“Edward, I hope you are watching this,” Lon Snowden said in the interview.
“Your family is well. We love you. We hope you are healthy, we hope you are well, I hope to see you soon, but most of all I want you to be safe. I want you to find a safe haven.”
Lonnie Snowden, the father of CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden, has said the FBI asked him to travel to Moscow and see his son, but adds that he wants more details.
Lonnie Snowden said he had been asked several weeks ago about Edward, who is sought by the US for leaking details of electronic surveillance programmes.
However, Lonnie Snowden wants to know the FBI’s intentions, he told Russian state TV.
Lonnie Snowden said his son would not get a fair trial in America and, if he were in his son’s place, he would stay in Russia.
He described his son as a “true patriot” who had “made America a more democratic country” by revealing secret details of the National Security Agency’s surveillance programmes.
The interview was broadcast live, early in the morning, on the Russia 24 news channel.
Edward Snowden has been stuck in transit at a Moscow airport for more than a month as he has no valid travel documents
Lonnie Snowden spoke English, with a Russian translation.
Edward Snowden has been stuck in transit at a Moscow airport for more than a month as he has no valid travel documents.
“Edward, I hope you are watching this,” Lonnie Snowden said in the interview.
“Your family is well. We love you. We hope you are healthy, we hope you are well, I hope to see you soon, but most of all I want you to be safe. I want you to find a safe haven.”
The fugitive’s father also thanked the Russian authorities for keeping his son safe.
“I also would like to thank President Vladimir Putin and the Russian government for what I believe to be their courage and strength and conviction to keep my son safe,” Lonnie Snowden said.
“Like any mother or father who loves their child, I love my son and I will be forever grateful for what you have done, very much.”
Edward Snowden arrived in Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on June 23 from Hong Kong, where he had made his revelations.
He has requested temporary asylum in Russia, while saying he hopes eventually to go to Latin America.
The Snowden affair has caused diplomatic ructions around the world, upsetting America’s close allies and traditional enemies.
The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, has given Moscow an assurance that Edward Snowden will not face the death penalty if extradited to America, but the Russians say they do not intend handing him over.
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The FBI and Russian FSB security services are “in talks” over fugitive Edward Snowden, according to President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman.
However, Dmitry Peskov repeated Russia’s position that it would “not hand anyone over”.
Edward Snowden, 30, has been stuck in transit at a Moscow airport for the past month as he has no valid travel documents.
The US Attorney General, Eric Holder, has sought to assure Moscow he would not face the death penalty in America.
Washington wants him extradited for leaking details of surveillance programmes.
Dmitry Peskov did not specify what the nature of the talks between the agencies was.
He did, however, remind reporters that President Vladimir Putin had expressed a strong determination not to allow the case to interfere with US-Russian relations.
The FBI and Russian FSB security services are “in talks” over fugitive Edward Snowden
Vladimir Putin had not taken part in any discussions with the American authorities over Mr Snowden case, Dmitry Peskov said.
Edward Snowden “has not made any request that would require examination by the head of state”, Dmitry Peskov added.
The Russian president has refused to hand him to the American authorities, but said he could stay in Russia only if he stopped leaking US secrets.
Edward Snowden, whose passport has been cancelled by the US, has been in the transit area of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport since arriving from Hong Kong on June 23.
On Thursday Edward Snowden’s lawyer Anatoly Kucherena denied earlier reports that Snowden had been given Russian travel documents.
Edward Snowden has requested temporary asylum in Russia, and said recently his favored final destination was Latin America.
In a letter to Russian Justice Minister Alexander Konovalov, Eric Holder said that the charges against Edward Snowden were not punishable by death.
If additional charges were brought which could incur capital punishment, the US would not seek to impose such a penalty, he added.
The Snowden affair has caused diplomatic ructions around the world, upsetting America’s close allies and traditional enemies.
Leaks by the former CIA worker have led to revelations that the National Security Agency (NSA) is collecting Americans’ phone records.
On Wednesday evening, an attempt to block funding for the programme narrowly failed in a 205-217 vote in the House of Representatives.
The White House had lobbied Congress to support the surveillance.
Opponents of the US, including Bolivia, Venezuela and Nicaragua, have all offered Edward Snowden asylum.
The US House of Representatives has rejected the Amash amendment, voting to continue collecting data on phone calls, in the first legislative move on the programme.
In a 205-217 vote, lawmakers rejected an effort to restrict the National Security Agency’s (NSA) ability to collect electronic information.
The NSA’s chief had lobbied strongly against the proposed measure.
The vote saw an unusual coalition of conservatives and liberal Democrats join forces against the programme.
The details of the NSA dragnet were made public by Edward Snowden, a former contractor for America’s electronic spying agency. He is now a fugitive, seeking asylum in Moscow.
The rejected amendment would have blocked funding for the NSA programme which gathers details of every call made by or to a US phone, unless the records were part of a specific investigation.
The amendment was introduced by Michigan Republican Justin Amash, who warned during Wednesday’s debate that the proposal’s critics would “use the same tactic every government throughout history has used to justify its violation of rights: fear”.
The US House of Representatives has rejected the Amash amendment, voting to continue collecting data on phone calls
“They’ll tell you that the government must violate the rights of the American people to protect us against those who hate our freedom.”
Despite the White House’s lobbying against the amendment, a majority of House Democrats – 111 – voted for it. Eighty-three Democrats voted against.
Among Republicans, 94 voted for the Amash amendment and 134 against.
Before Wednesday’s vote there were fierce exchanges on the House floor during what was the first sustained legislative debate on the NSA’s reach since Edward Snowden’s revelations.
“We’ve really gone overboard on the security side,” said Democratic Representative Peter Welch of the surveillance, which is part of a classified $30 billion intelligence budget.
But others said the practice was essential in America’s efforts against terrorism.
“Have 12 years gone by and our memories faded so badly that we forgot what happened on September 11?” said Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee.
Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann, not usually noted for her support of President Barack Obama, also backed the administration’s stance.
“Let us not deal in false narratives,” she said.
“Let’s deal in facts that will keep Americans safe.”
But Republican Jim Sensenbrenner, one of the original authors of the Bush-era Patriot Act, said “the time has come” to stop harvesting phone records.
On the eve of the vote, in a rare statement against a legislative amendment, the White House called the Amash proposal a “blunt approach” that would hamper US anti-terrorism efforts.
NSA director General Keith Alexander held separate, closed-door sessions with Republicans and Democrats on Tuesday to lobby them against the bill.
Another NSA surveillance programme, PRISM, allows the agency to sweep up global internet usage data through nine major US-based providers.
The programmes’ supporters say such surveillance has helped thwart at least 50 terror plots in 20 countries, including up to a dozen directed at the US.
Divided opinion in the US about the snooping was highlighted by a CBS News poll on Wednesday.
The survey found that 67% of Americans opposed the government’s collection of phone records, but 52% said it was necessary to counter terrorism.
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