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The show continues: Snowden didn't cross Russian border - Russian foreign minister

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© Reuters/ Bobby YipSnowden Didn’t Cross Russian Border - Foreign Minister
Russia said on Tuesday that Edward Snowden, the former CIA employee wanted by the US for leaking state secrets, had not crossed the Russian border.

Snowden, who leaked details of a US surveillance program to newspapers in the US and UK earlier this month, was widely reported to have flown from Hong Kong to Moscow on Sunday, from where he was expected to fly - via Cuba - to Ecuador, where he has requested asylum.

"I want to say right away that we have nothing to do with Snowden, or with his attitude to the American legal system, or with his movements around the world. He chose his own route, and we found out about it - like most people here - from the media," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a press conference.

"He did not cross the Russian border," the foreign minister said.

MIB

Flashback Spying on the spies

The National Security Agency has its ear to the world, but doesn't listen to everyone at once.

That was one conclusion of a new report, Interception Capabilities 2000, accepted late last week by the European Parliament's Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel (STOA).

The panel commissioned Duncan Campbell, a British investigative reporter, to prepare a report on Echelon, the US-led satellite surveillance network.

"I have no objection to these systems monitoring serious criminals and terrorists," said Glyn Ford, a British Labour Party member of parliament and a committee member of STOA. "But what is missing here is accountability, clear guidelines as to who they can listen to, and in what circumstances these laws apply."

Campbell was asked to investigate the system in the wake of charges made last year in the European Parliament that Echelon was being used to funnel European government and industry secrets into US hands.

"What is new and important about this report is that it contains the first ever documentary evidence of the Echelon system," said Campbell. Campbell obtained the document from a source at Menwith Hill, the principal NSA communications monitoring station, located near Harrogate in northern England.

Eye 1

Undercover police whistleblower reveals disturbing details about his undercover deployment

In extracts from a joint Guardian and Channel 4 Dispatches investigation, police whistleblower Peter Francis reveals disturbing details about his undercover deployment. His full story is detailed in the book Undercover: The True Story of Britain's Secret Police, by Rob Evans and Paul Lewis.

USA

The biggest ponzi scheme in the history of the world

Unlce Sam
© The Economic Collapse Blog

Did you know that you are involved in the most massive Ponzi scheme that has ever existed? To illustrate my point, allow me to tell you a little story. Once upon a time, there was a man named Sam. When he was younger, he had been a very principled young man that had worked incredibly hard and that had built a large number of tremendously successful businesses.

He became fabulously wealthy and he accumulated far more gold than anyone else on the planet. But when he started to get a little older he forgot the values of his youth. He started making really bad decisions and some of his relatives started to take advantage of him. One particularly devious relative was a nephew named Fred.

One day Fred approached his uncle Sam with a scheme that his friends the bankers had come up with. What happened next would change the course of Sam's life forever.

Even though Sam was the wealthiest man in the world by far, Fred convinced Sam that he could have an even higher standard of living by going into a little bit of debt. In exchange for IOUs issued by his uncle Sam, Fred would give him paper notes that he printed off on his printing press. Since the paper notes would be backed by the gold that Sam was holding, everyone would consider them to be valuable.

Sam could take those paper notes and spend them on whatever his heart desired. Uncle Sam started to do this, and he started to become addicted to all of the nice things that those paper notes would buy him.

Eye 1

US: Hong Kong's failure to arrest Snowden 'troubling'

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© APA banner supporting Edward Snowden, a former CIA employee who leaked top-secret documents about sweeping U.S. surveillance programs, is displayed in a Hong Kong shopping mall.

The United States is disappointed by Hong Kong's "troubling'' failure to arrest fugitive intelligence leaker Edward Snowden before he fled the territory, an official said Sunday.

A Department of Justice spokesperson insisted US officials had fulfilled all the requirements of Washington's extradition treaty with the autonomous Chinese region and were "disappointed'' by the decision to let him go.

Snowden, a 30-year-old former intelligence contractor, is wanted by the United States on espionage charges, after he quit his job with the National Security Agency and fled to Hong Kong with a cache of secret documents.

Yesterday Snowden left Hong Kong and fled for Moscow, despite Washington having requested his arrest and extradition.

He's been offered asylum in Ecuador.

Hong Kong officials said the documentation supporting the extradition request had been incomplete.

But the US Department of Justice denied there was anything missing.

"The US is disappointed and disagrees with the determination by Hong Kong authorities not to honour the US request for the arrest of the fugitive,'' the spokesperson said in a statement.

"The request for the fugitive's arrest for purposes of his extradition complied with all of the requirements of the US-Hong Kong Surrender Agreement.

"At no point, in all of our discussions through Friday, did the authorities in Hong Kong raise any issues regarding the sufficiency of the US's provisional arrest request.

"In light of this, we find their decision to be particularly troubling.''

The statement said senior US officials had been in touch with their Hong Kong counterparts since June 10, when they learned Snowden was in Hong Kong and leaking details of secret surveillance programs to the media.

On Wednesday, US Attorney-General Eric Holder spoke to Hong Kong Secretary for Justice Rimsky Yuen and urged Hong Kong to honour the request for Snowden's arrest.

The Hong Kong government had said that, as it "has yet to have sufficient information to process the request for provisional warrant of arrest, there is no legal basis to restrict Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.''

Source: Agence France-Presse

Eye 1

Flashback Best of the Web: Somebody's listening: How the NSA, GCHQ, Germany and China have spent decades working together to spy on the whole world

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Echelon aka PRISM aka many other 'top secret spy names yet to be 'revealed''
. . . and they don't give a damn about personal privacy or commercial confidence. Project 415 is a top-secret new global surveillance system. It can tap into a billion calls a year in the UK alone. Inside Duncan Campbell on how spying entered the 21st century . . .

They've got it taped
In the booming surveillance industry they spy on whom they wish, when they wish, protected by barriers of secrecy, fortified by billions of pounds worth of high, high technology. Duncan Campbell reports from the United States on the secret Anglo-American plan for a global electronic spy system for the 21st century capable of listening in to most of us most of the time...
American, British and Allied intelligence agencies are soon to embark on a massive, billion-dollar expansion of their global electronic surveillance system. According to information given recently in secret to the US Congress, the surveillance system will enable the agencies to monitor and analyse civilian communications into the 21st century. Identified for the moment as Project P415, the system will be run by the US National Security Agency (NSA). But the intelligence agencies of many other countries will be closely involved with the new network, including those from Britain, Australia, Germany and Japan--and, surprisingly, the People's Republic of China.


Comment: ... and yet, in the aftermath of the Snowden 'leaks', German and other world leaders seem surprised that the NSA is watching and listening... what's up with that?!
World leaders seek answers on US collection of communication data
The Guardian, 10 June 2013


Peter Schaar, Germany's federal data protection commissioner, told the Guardian that it was unacceptable for the US authorities to have access to EU citizens' data...

New satellite stations and monitoring centres are to be built around the world, and a chain of new satellites launched, so that NSA and its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) at Cheltenham, may keep abreast of the burgeoning international telecommunications traffic.

Comment: Well, there you have it folks.

The global mass surveillance system has been operational for quite some time. In addition, it was being reported on in great detail a quarter of a century ago.

All the world's superpowers (and not-so-super powers) are in on it, linked together through 'back-channels' of spies who all ultimately work on the same team: the psychopathic elite against humanity.

So what's really going on here with these June 2013 'NSA Leaks'? Andy why are the Russians, Germans and Chinese pretending to be surprised about it?

PRISM for your Mind: NSA, WikiLeaks and Israel

Through the PRISM of public amnesia


Vader

U.S. training Syrian rebels; White House 'stepped up assistance'

Syria
© AMC
WASHINGTON - White House officials refused to comment Friday on a Los Angeles Times report that CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have been secretly training Syrian rebels with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons since late last year, saying only that the U.S. had increased its assistance to the rebellion.

The covert U.S. training at bases in Jordan and Turkey began months before President Obama approved plans to begin directly arming the opposition to Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to U.S. officials and rebel commanders.

"We have stepped up our assistance, but I cannot inventory for you all the elements of that assistance," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said. "We have provided and will continue to provide substantial assistance to the Syrian opposition, as well as the Supreme Military Council."

The Supreme Military Council is the military arm of an umbrella group that represents more moderate rebel factions, including the Free Syrian Army.

The training and Obama's decision this month to supply arms and ammunition to the rebels have raised hope among the beleaguered opposition that Washington ultimately will provide heavier weapons as well. So far, the rebels say they lack the weapons they need to regain the offensive in Syria's bitter civil war.

The tightly constrained U.S. effort reflects Obama's continuing doubts about getting drawn into a conflict that already has killed more than 100,000 people and the administration's fear that Islamic militants now leading the war against Assad could gain control of advanced U.S. weaponry.

The training has involved fighters from the Free Syrian Army, a loose confederation of rebel groups that the Obama administration has promised to back with expanded military assistance, said a U.S. official, who discussed the effort anonymously because he was not authorized to disclose details.

Headphones

Flashback This is how we know Echelon exists

The European Parliament published its report into the Echelon spying system last week in which it concluded it did exist, was against the law and that the UK had a lot of explaining to do.

We've sifted through about 100 of the 194 pages and decided that since no one had yet to officially admit its existence, you may be interested in how the European Parliament decided it was definitely out there.

The report admits from the outset that the existence of Echelon can only be proved by gathering together as many clues as possible so that it remains the only possible explanation. Since we are talking about an extremely secretive spying mechanism run by some of the most secretive (and powerful) organisations in the world, this is the only method at our disposal.

MIB

Flashback CIA patching ECHELON shortcomings

Relax, it's for your own good, and the sake of your children.

A core objection to paranoid rants regarding the US National Security Agency (NSA) electronic eavesdropping apparatus called ECHELON is the simple observation that spooks trying to use it are literally buried in an avalanche of white noise from which it's quite difficult to extract anything pertinent.

But now the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), no doubt with some assistance and guidance from NSA, is making strides towards cracking that little inconvenience.

The CIA's Office of Advanced Information Technology is developing a number of data-mining enhancements to make life easy for those who would eavesdrop on electronic communications, Reuters reports.

First up is a computer program called Oasis, which automatically converts audio signals into conveniently readable, and searchable, text.

Eye 1

Is "Prism" news? or is it ECHELON?

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© Van Rhijn Arial Photography
By now most people have heard the "new" disclosure of "Prism;" but for the most part there is little or no mention of the possibility that this program is virtually identical to ECHELON which was reported years ago; in fact it was exposed before the attacks on 9/11 or even when George Bush was inaugurated president. Anyone that takes a close look at this would almost certainly come to the conclusion that they're very similar if not virtually the same thing and perhaps that the biggest thing that is news isn't that the program was exposed but that they're covering it in a high profile manner, and that they're making a major appeal to emotions that is getting much more attention.

(This has been cros-posted on Open Salon)

The vast majority of the coverage in the commercial media about this clearly seems to imply that this program is a few years old and that it was created after the attacks on 9/11; yet this almost certainly isn't true. ECHELON was created first and then after 9/11 they passed laws that made it legal without reminding the public that this was already in place. This was previously reported in several outlets, including an article in the National Geographic although none of them were nearly as high profile as the coverage that is going on now. The way they covered it in the past was, mostly to ignore it when possible or to refuse to acknowledge or deny the existence of this program. Some other countries admitted that they participated in it; but it received so little coverage that only a fraction of the public knew about it. One notable exception was when it apparently appeared on 60 Minutes in 2000 (for transcript of segment see http://cryptome.org) and there wasn't nearly as much hype surrounding it nor was the whistle blower threatened with prosecution as Edward Snowden is now being threatened. Mike Frost disclosed most if not all the same material that Edward Snowden covered except for the possibility that they have apparently been searching Google and Facebook, but these two companies weren't nearly as big, if they existed at all at the time. Expanding the program to cover this would have been predictable and the way it was described was a blanket surveillance program that would have covered most if not all internet activity anyway so even though they didn't directly report on this they did so indirectly.