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The coauthor of the Washington Post’s bombshell story on the National Security Agency’s PRISM surveillance program is a long-time activist filmmaker who has railed against U.S. counterterrorism policies put into place after the Sept. 11 attacks. Filmmaker Laura Poitras, who shared the lead byline with former Post journalist Barton Gellman on the paper’s front-page NSA story, is not on the Post’s staff and is not a print reporter. Poitras has criticized the “illegal” Guantanamo Bay detention facility, described enhanced interrogation techniques as “legalized torture,” and criticized the intelligence community’s surveillance methods in her films and public comments. While traditional media...

German outrage over a secret U.S. Internet spying program is building before a visit by Barack Obama next week, with senior members of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government demanding a full explanation from the president when he lands in Berlin. Merkel's spokesman has said she will raise the issue with Obama in talks next Wednesday. That could cast a cloud over the visit, designed to celebrate U.S.-German ties on the 50th anniversary of a famous speech in which President John F. Kennedy declared: "Ich bin ein Berliner". Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger said reports the United States could access and track virtually all...

European lawmakers threatened on Tuesday to unpick data-sharing agreements with the United States, reacting furiously to reports that U.S. authorities have accessed emails and other personal data from leading Internet companies. The news has forced European governments to explain whether they let Washington spy on their citizens or benefited from snooping that would be illegal at home. In a heated debate in the European Parliament, lawmakers complained that for a decade they had yielded to U.S. demands for access to European financial and travel data and said it was now time to re-examine the deals and to limit data access....

National Security Agency whistleblower William Binney explains how the secretive agency runs its pervasive domestic spying apparatus in a new piece by Laura Poitras in The New York Times. Binney—one of the best mathematicians and code breakers in NSA history—worked for the Defense Department's foreign signals intelligence agency for 32 years before resigning in late 2001 because he "could not stay after the NSA began purposefully violating the Constitution." In a short video called "The Program," Binney explains how the agency took part of one of the programs he built and started using it to spy on virtually every U.S....

JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO: I would describe this man as an American hero, as a person willing to risk life, limb and liberty in order to expose to the American people one of the most extraordinary violations of the American principles, value judgments and the Constitution itself in all of our history. A person so familiar with the intelligence community, as you just heard from the excerpts that you just played. He's aware of the personal danger to himself. He knows of the likelihood of prosecution. But he also understands that the government listening to half the country is not what...

The UK Guardian revealed the source for its stories on the NSA phone-monitoring story (and, evidently, the Washington Post story about the PRISM Internet snooping program) is a 29-year-old IT specialist for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton named Edward Snowden. He says he enlisted in the Army with an eye towards fighting in Iraq because “I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression,” ended up spending three years as a CIA security technician, and voted for Barack Obama. He now claims to be deeply disillusioned about Iraq, the CIA, and Obama....

The outrage is palpable and the sudden realization by the average American that they really, truly are now living in a Orwellian surveillance state has been an eye-opening experience for many across the fruited plain. The once mocked conspiracy theories of the all-knowing Big Brother state has shown itself to be far more of an ugly reality than a silly fantasy. He who has called the War on Terror basically over has now been forced to admit that his administration has vastly expanded the concept of the security state in the name of 'public safety.' The 'trust us' stance of...

BEIJING -- Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old contractor identified as the source of leaks about the U.S. electronic surveillance program, apparently checked out of his Hong Kong hotel at midday Monday, his destination and whereabouts unknown. "We know he was here until today," said Cosmo Beatson, a Hong Kong-based refugee activist who heads an organization called Vision First. Beatson said Monday night it is possible that Snowden boarded a plane from Hong Kong -- since there is no warrant for his arrest -- or was smuggled onto one of the many illegal speedboats smuggling people and goods between mainland Chinese and...

The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell. The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I...

Washington was struggling to contain one of the most explosive national security leaks in US history on Monday, as public criticism grew of the sweeping surveillance state revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden. Political opinion was split, with some members of Congress calling for the immediate extradition of a man they consider a "defector" but other senior politicians from both parties questioning whether US surveillance practices had gone too far. Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who revealed secrets of the Vietnam war through the so-called Pentagon Papers in 1971, described Snowden's leak as even more important and perhaps the most...

Even before last week’s revelations by The Guardian newspaper that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting call records from telecommunications companies and had the ability to mine user data from major U.S. Internet companies, the NSA was already on the trail of the leaker, according to two former U.S. intelligence officers with close ties to the agency.

... Bill Hemmer asked the judge what he thinks we need to understand about what Snowden is telling us. Judge Napolitano explained that the government has granted itself this sweeping authority without a national debate about how much privacy Americans are willing to sacrifice... He said the government wants Americans to sacrifice liberty in return for the promise of security... ...

National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden appears to be a Ron Paul supporter as Federal Election Committee records show donations to the libertarian Republican presidential candidate.The records show that Snowden donated $250 to Paul in March 2012 under his address in Maryland, and an additional $250 in May 2012 under his Hawaii address.In his interview with the Guardian, Snowden indicated that he voted for a third party candidate for president.

Edward Snowden, 29, leaked details of PRISM, a National Security Agency program he says harvests personal data from internetHe has fled to Hong Kong from Hawaii, where he worked as computer technician for government contractor on $200,000 a year salary Questions over how a man who failed to complete his high school education was entrusted with NSA's top secrets and systems The man behind one of the most significant leaks in U.S. history has revealed himself as a high school drop-out who turned against his government when he realized it was 'doing far more harm than good'. As Edward...

An ex-CIA employee has said he acted to "protect basic liberties for people around the world" in leaking details of US phone and internet surveillance. Edward Snowden, 29, was revealed as the source of the leaks at his own request by the UK's Guardian newspaper. Mr Snowden, who says he has fled to Hong Kong, said he had an "obligation to help free people from oppression". The recent revelations are that US agencies gathered millions of phone records and monitored internet data. A spokesman for the US Office of the Director of National Intelligence said the case had been referred...

Barton Gellman posted a story cobbled from his chat transcripts with Snowden late Sunday, which contained this exchange concerning the whistleblower's conditions to keep the story the Post's: To effect his plan, Snowden asked for a guarantee that The Washington Post would publish — within 72 hours — the full text of a PowerPoint presentation describing PRISM, a top-secret surveillance program that gathered intelligence from Microsoft, Facebook, Google and other Silicon Valley giants. He also asked that The Post publish online a cryptographic key that he could use to prove to a foreign embassy that he was the document’s source....

Glenn Greenwald ✔ @ggreenwald Read this tweet and what follows: https://twitter.com/SCClemons/status/343392529913356289 … 5:00 PM - 8 Jun 2013 194 Retweets 47 favorites Remember that tidbit about the Chinese president deciding not to sleep over at the lush Sunnylands estate with President Obama because of concerns of eavesdropping? Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. According to a series of tweets by Atlantic editor-at-large Steve Clemons, U.S. intel officials aren’t very careful about speaking their minds in public. Steve Clemons @SCClemons In Dulles UAL lounge listening to 4 US intel officials saying loudly leaker & reporter on #NSA stuff should be...

When we last tuned in on July 25th, Russell Tice - a disgruntled ex-NSA staffer was subpoenaed to appear before the GJ, but balked when he found out just how rigorous the DOJ is perusing the leakers. So what has been going on in the meantime? According to sources the initial focus of the GJ is towards the media involvement, with special emphasis on who in our Government, specifically within the IC, or (as many believe via their sources) from the Senate Intelligence Committee via a staffer, is leaking classified information.

The New York Times's explanation of its decision to report, after what it said was a one-year delay, that the National Security Agency is eavesdropping domestically without court-approved warrants was woefully inadequate. And I have had unusual difficulty getting a better explanation for readers, despite the paper's repeated pledges of greater transparency. For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making. My queries concerned the timing of the exclusive Dec. 16 article about President Bush's secret decision in the months after 9/11...

WASHINGTON — A federal grand jury investigating leaks of classified information has summoned a former National Security Agency officer who says he talked to reporters about the agency's warrantless eavesdropping program. Russell Tice received a subpoena to testify next Wednesday to a grand jury that is meeting in Alexandria, Va. The subpoena was posted Friday on a Web site run by a whistleblowers' group to which Tice belongs. "The grand jury is conducting an investigation of possible violations of federal criminal laws involving the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," according to a letter that accompanied the subpoena.