Free Republic

Since Snowden has said he sought out his job to gain access to NSA activities, it is likely that this network aided him from the beginning. Whatever the arguments about alleged NSA abuses of U.S. citizen privacy rights or whether Snowden had any justification for revealing information he’d pledged a solemn oath to keep secret, his hop-scotch escape route and the motley crew of actors helping him stay out of reach of American justice already provide a graphic illustration of the loose-knit but powerful international network that is allied in hatred for the United States. That network includes nation states,...

Bolivia's president left Europe for home on Wednesday in a flurry of diplomatic drama after his flight was rerouted and delayed in Austria, allegedly because of suspicion he was trying to spirit NSA leaker Edward Snowden to Latin America. Bolivia accused the United States of ordering European countries to block President Evo Morales' flight from their airspace, and accused European governments of "aggression" by thwarting the flight.

Glenn Greenwald told Fox News on Tuesday that new NSA revelations yet to be released will “shock” the world. Greenwald, the journalist who worked in some capacity with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden to reveal the organization’s domestic cell phone spying program PRISM, has long teased that there is more information yet to be released in the NSA scandal. On Tuesday, he told Fox News host Eric Bolling that the “world will be shocked” by the coming revelations about the organization’s surveillance tactics, though otherwise played coy about the information. “You’re going to have to wait along with everybody else,” Greenwald...

After departing from Russia the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales was forced to landing in Austria Wednesday morning over suspicions that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board, a claim Bolivian authorities denied. Snowden had requested asylum from Bolivia, which has yet to answer; he also petitioned Austria but was rejected. Reports indicated the plane was hindered in navigating Western Europe as France and Portugal would not allow the La Paz-bound plane to enter their airspace.

LA PAZ, Bolivia — The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales home from Russia was rerouted to Austria on Tuesday after France and Portugal refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, the country’s foreign minister said. Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca denied that Snowden was on the plane, which landed in Vienna, and said France and Portugal would have to explain why they canceled authorization for the plane. “We don’t know who invented this lie. We want to denounce to the international community this injustice with the plane of President...

LA PAZ, Bolivia — The plane carrying Bolivian President Evo Morales home from Russia was rerouted to Austria on Tuesday after France and Portugal refused to let it cross their airspace because of suspicions that NSA leaker Edward Snowden was on board, the country’s foreign minister said.

Another big National Security Agency scoop is coming soon, Glenn Greenwald said on Tuesday. “Just wait a little bit, you’ll have it,” The Guardian journalist who broke the NSA surveillance story said on “Fox & Friends.”

The self-described patriot hacker known as “The Jester” says he will carry out cyber attacks on countries considering granting asylum to Edward Snowden. Beginning early Monday, The Jester hacked into several government websites in Ecuador as reports circulated that Snowden, who divulged secrets on the National Security Agency’s spying programs, could be headed there. With Venezuela emerging as a possible landing spot for Snowden, The Jester told FoxNews.com he could turn his attention to that South American country. “These are enemies and I that's how I will be treating them, and anyone who facilitates them,” The Jester told FoxNews.com in...

As if the diplomatic confusion over Edward Snowden wasn’t dense enough already, leaders of the two nations most involved both insisted that their security organizations would work together to resolve it — in diametrically opposed fashions.  Both Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama ordered their agencies to find a solution to Snowden’s status as a stranded traveler without papers: Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin have ordered their security chiefs to find a way to remove Edward Snowden from a Moscow airport.Both Mr Putin and Mr Obama have now ordered the heads of their security agencies, the FBI and FSB, to find a solution to...

Statement from Edward Snowden in Moscow One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful. On Thursday, President Obama declared before the world that he would not permit any diplomatic "wheeling and dealing" over my case. Yet...

It is way too soon to bet the house fortune on the reliability of reports by the Washington Post (Washington, DC) and The Guardian (United Kingdom) on US President Barack Obama’s data harvesting program, known for the moment as PRISM. With the hot pursuit of mainstream media reporters underway by the US Department of Justice (Associated Press, for example); a US Corporate-State show trial of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange/Wikileaks (Obama has already stated they are guilty); the extraordinary cyberwar/hacking accusations against the Chinese government; and the shrill sound of cyber quackery from the Defense Science Board and its legion of...

President says NSA will assess espionage allegations as France and Germany demand answers and warn of delay to trade talks Barack Obama has sought to limit the damage from the growing transatlantic espionage row after Germany and France denounced the major snooping activities of US agencies and warned of a possible delay in the launch next week of ambitious free-trade talks between Europe and the US. The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and French president, François Hollande, demanded quick explanations from Washington about disclosures by the Guardian and Der Spiegel that US agencies bugged European embassies and offices. Berlin stressed there...

WASHINGTON – Amid the cascading disclosures about National Security Agency surveillance programs, the top lawyer in the U.S. intelligence community opened his remarks at a rare public appearance last week with a lament about how much of the information being spilled was wrong. “A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on,” said Robert Litt, citing a line often attributed to Mark Twain. “Unfortunately, there’s been a lot of misinformation that’s come out about these programs.” The remark by Litt, general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, was aimed at...

Two high-profile senators on Sunday continued to admonish Russia for not handing over Edward Snowden, the leaker of National Security Agency secrets who's hiding in Russia as he seeks asylum in Ecuador. Republican Sen. John McCain said Snowden's actions amounted to a "slap in the face to the United States" and called President Vladimir Putin "an old colonel KGB apparatchik" who "dreams of the restoration of the Russian Empire."

One week ago I left Hong Kong after it became clear that my freedom and safety were under threat for revealing the truth. My continued liberty has been owed to the efforts of friends new and old, family, and others who I have never met and probably never will. I trusted them with my life and they returned that trust with a faith in me for which I will always be thankful. ~ snip ~ For decades the United States of America has been one of the strongest defenders of the human right to seek asylum. Sadly, this right, laid...

EXCERPT ... Snowden said the United States was illegally persecuting him for revealing its electronic surveillance programme, PRISM. He also thanked Ecuador for helping him get to Russia and for examining his asylum request.

....the real traitors who have done so much to destroy America are buying politicians of both parties, using their undue influence to gut any effort at real regulation, all the while earning fat bonuses in their corner offices at megabanks like Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citi Group, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. No need to extradite those guys in order to prosecute 'em. They're right here in the USA. All that's lacking is a will to bring charges for things like mortgage fraud, derivative fraud, collusion, lying under oath, etc. But Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder,...

WASHINGTON — Intelligence officials refer to Edward J. Snowden’s job as a National Security Agency contractor as “systems administrator” — a bland name for the specialists who keep the computers humming. But his last job before leaking classified documents about N.S.A. surveillance, he told the news organization The Guardian, was actually “infrastructure analyst.” It is a title that officials have carefully avoided mentioning, perhaps for fear of inviting questions about the agency’s aggressive tactics: an infrastructure analyst at the N.S.A., like a burglar casing an apartment building, looks for new ways to break into Internet and telephone traffic around the...

Snowden applies for asylum in Russia: immigration source MOSCOW | Mon Jul 1, 2013 12:36pm EDT (Reuters) - Former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden has applied for political asylum in Russia, a Russian immigration source close to the matter said on Monday. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said a Wikileaks activist who is traveling with Snowden handed his application to a Russian consulate.............

THE twin revelations that telecom carriers have been secretly giving the National Security Agency information about Americans’ phone calls, and that the N.S.A. has been capturing e-mail and other private communications from Internet companies as part of a secret program called Prism, have not enraged most Americans. Lulled, perhaps, by the Obama administration’s claims that these “modest encroachments on privacy” were approved by Congress and by federal judges, public opinion quickly migrated from shock to “meh.” It didn’t help that Congressional watchdogs — with a few exceptions, like Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky — have accepted the White House’s...