Snowdon is a dummy

Anonymous sources were reported by today's 'Sunday Times' and the BBC that Russia and China have broken into the secret cache of Edward Snowden files and that British agents have had to be withdrawn from live operations as a consequence.

This has been published today, a few days after a 373-page report by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson QC, came out, which was commissioned by David Cameron. (Anderson was highly critical of the existing system of oversight of the surveillance agencies and set out a series of recommendations for reform.)

So, if Downing Street and the Home Office believe that Russia and China had gained access to the Snowden documents, why don't they tell it the USA and publish it officially?

I am not surprised, there has been a lot of shootings by the police and they get away with it.

Not all the police are getting out of hand, but it seems the ones who are just simply get away with it.

The Zimmerman trial probably didn't help either.

I looked again and historically it was only 24%. Not surprising either when consider the unequal treatment between minorities and whites in the criminal justice system.

These last couple of years we have been inundated with police brutality or shootings and no justice for those who suffered it or for their families.

Frank Apisa wrote:

A fair trial is the only way to go if he comes back.

Do you want a unicorn with that fair trial? Sure, I will grant you that your request sounds pretty reasonable in the abstract. But how do you expect a fair trial would come about in practice? The prosecution's facts are common knowledge. Most exonerating facts on the defense's side are classified. The only people who could declassify them are identical with the clients of the prosecution. How do you suggest we get a fair trial in these circumstances?

Frank Apisa wrote:

You, Thomas, apparently do not want a fair trial...you want an acquittal. You want a rigged trial.

Thanks for informing me about what I want. I'm not saying a fair trial is undesirable, I'm saying it's unrealistic. Realistically, Snowden is facing a choice between a trial rigged in favor of his accusers (if he returns to the US), and no trial at all (if he stays abroad). I think he's choosing wisely by staying abroad.

If it was not clear before news that China is continuously successfully hacking US government computers ( and in the latest case being in for a year) proves that the efforts of the NSA have been misguided. I understand that I am a critic of the US government, but even for me the incompetence of the NSA has been spellbinding. And money has nothing to do with it, these people have had for years gobs of money to spend, they just suck at their jobs.

The governments ability to spy on its citizens without cause, consent or effective supervision has been negatively impacted.

What specific information did he reveal that directly compromised the US' counter terrorism operations?

Sounds like the CIA needs to step up their efforts to kill Snowden.

"Looking at telephone records" is quite a long ways from "wiretapping a telephone".

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2486506,00.asp

U.S. and U.K. security agencies aren't just interested in your phone calls and naked pics. They also want to crack antivirus software, according to The Intercept.
Citing the documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, The Intercept says that the National Security Agency (NSA) and the U.K.'s GCHQ have reverse-engineered popular antivirus software in order to exploit bugs, but also monitored the Web and email activity of antivirus firms to learn about new vulnerabilities and malware.
One name that kept coming up over and over was Kaspersky. U.K. officials had a particularly tough time trying to crack Kaspersky software, and requested a warrant in 2008 in order to reverse engineer the company's technology. As The Intercept explained, reverse engineering of software is often forbidden by licensing agreements and, in some cases, laws. So GCHQ requested a warrant.
"It is unclear what GCHQ accomplished in its analysis of Kaspersky software, but GCHQ has repeatedly reverse engineered software to discover vulnerabilities," The Intercept said. "Rather than report the vulnerabilities to the companies, spy agencies have quietly stockpiled numerous exploits for a wide range of commercial hardware and software, using them to hack adversaries."
Across the pond, meanwhile, the NSA also had an interest in Kaspersky. In 2008, they found that its software was transmitting information that might reveal who was using Kaspersky software and allow for tracking of those users. Kaspersky told The Intercept that is not the case, however.
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The agencies, meanwhile, were also snooping on email activity, keeping an eye out for messages that discussed new bugs. Antivirus firms can sometimes be slow to patch these vulnerabilities, particularly if they are not public, so the NSA and GCHQ were looking for mentions of things they could exploit, even temporarily.
An NSA presentation listed 23 AV firms on a slide titled "More Targets," including Bit-Defender, F-Secure, Avast, AVG, and Avira. Kaspersky, however, has been a particular thorn in the agency's side, as it has uncovered a number of sophisticated, state-sponsored attacks linked to the U.S., including Flame, Gauss, and Equation Group.
Earlier this month, Kaspersky said it had been hacked, probably by a "nation state." Kaspersky said the attackers—believed to be the same group behind 2011's Stuxnet-like Duqu worm—were mainly interested in spying on its technologies, especially its solutions for discovering and analyzing sophisticated attacks known as Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs). The attackers were looking to find out about Kaspersky's ongoing investigations into advanced attacks, detection methods, and analysis capabilities.

But is of no matter to Blue!

The United States should allow whistle-blower Edward Snowden to return to his home country “without fear of criminal prosecution under conditions that would not allow him to raise the public interest defence”, according to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). The 1917 Espionage Act – under which he has been charged in the United States – does not allow for any form of public interest defence.