Free Republic

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...

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 Supreme Court today refused to entertain a PIL seeking direction to the government to initiate action against Internet companies involved in sharing Internet data from India with US' National Security Agency. The apex court said it cannot entertain the petition as Indian agency is not involved in it and allowed the petitioner, former dean of Law Faculty of Delhi University S N Singh, to move any other forum for seeking remedy against Internet companies and the US agency for snooping data resulting in violation of right to privacy. "The petitioner may have right to privacy against foreign companies but...

NSA leaker Edward Snowden admitted to taking a job at Booz Hamilton in order to gather evidence on US spying. Snowden was fired from Booz Allen on June 11. Active content removed Active content removed The South China Morning Post reported: Edward Snowden secured a job with a US government contractor for one reason alone – to obtain evidence of Washington’s cyberspying networks, the South China Morning Post can reveal. For the first time, Snowden has admitted he sought a position at Booz Allen Hamilton so he could collect proof about the US National Security Agency’s secret surveillance programmes ahead...

The PIL, filed by a former Dean of Law Faculty of Delhi University Professor S N Singh, alleged such largescale spying by the USA authorities is detrimental to national security and urged the apex court to intervene in the matter. The issue of the US National Security Agency monitoring internet data of India today reached the Supreme Court with a PIL filed seeking its direction to the Centre to initiate action against internet companies for sharing information with foreign authority in "breach" of contract and violation of right to privacy. The PIL, filed by a former Dean of Law Faculty...

Students at George Mason University (GMU) signed a petition early this month asking President Obama to listen in on the "private conversations" of all Fox News employees and their families. -video at link- The petition, which was circulated on GMU's flagship campus in Fairfax, Va, near Washington D.C., by Media Research Center video reporter Dan Joseph, described the right-leaning news channel as “a threat to media integrity and an informed populace.” “We want the to be able to legally read their private e-mails and listen in on phone conversations between Fox News employees and their associates and their families," Joseph...

Although he implemented a flat tax in Russia, I don’t think of Vladimir Putin as a supporter of free markets. Heck, he was head of the KGB during the communist era, and he presides over a country that is more known for cronyism rather than competitive markets. So if he criticizes European nations for having excessive welfare states, it’s like being called ugly by a frog. Here are some of the amusing details from Euractiv.com. He’s no Milton Friedman, but he’s right about the welfare state Russian President Vladimir Putin, speaking ahead of the G8 Summit in Northern Ireland on...

In a Sunday evening statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Public Affairs Office released this statement, meant to clear up information on the National Security Agency’s data program "The statement that a single analyst can eavesdrop on domestic communications without proper legal authorization is incorrect and was not briefed to Congress. Members have been briefed on the implementation of Section 702, that it targets foreigners located overseas for a valid foreign intelligence purpose, and that it cannot be used to target Americans anywhere in the world," the full statement reads.

Honolulu (HawaiiNewsNow) - A military jury has found a Schofield Barracks officer guilty of illegally possessing and passing classified national defense information. Military prosecutors say Army Maj. Seivirak Inson, 43, attempted to hand over a number of military secrets to members connected to the Cambodian government between 2009 and 2012. Prosecutors say that Inson -- who is of Cambodian ancestry -- took classified U.S. intelligence reports about the Cambodian military and gave it to unauthorized personnel. The military jury on Friday evening sentenced Maj. Inson to 10 years in prison, forfeiture of pay and dismissal from the Army. The jury...

Sarah Palin addressed Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference Saturday morning, skewering Obama voters, the NSA, and Washington culture in general, and throwing a good-natured elbow to her “friends” at Saturday Night Live while she was at it. “It seems so Orwellian around here,” Palin said. “Before 1984, terms like ‘leading from behind’ meant following. The other day the White House testified before Congress, bragging that they used the ‘least untruthful statement.’ Where I come from that’s called a lie.” “Yes, officials lied, and government spied,” Palin rhymed. “In Benghazi, government lied, and Americans died. These...

Ted Ullyot, Facebook's general counsel, said in a statement Friday that Facebook is only allowed to talk about total numbers and must give no specifics. But he said the permission it has received is still unprecedented, and the company was lobbying to reveal more. "These requests run the gamut – from things like a local sheriff trying to find a missing child, to a federal marshal tracking a fugitive, to a police department investigating an assault, to a national security official investigating a terrorist threat," Ullyot said.

What was it that I was saying earlier this week about the intelligence-industrial complex? Bloomberg reported last night that Edward Snowden may have only scratched the surface on the cooperation between American intelligence agencies and commercial firms. In fact, the partnership is much wider than first thought — and the intel agencies provide their partners with some significant quid pro quo:CLICK ABOVE LINK FOR THE VIDEO Thousands of technology, finance and manufacturing companies are working closely with U.S. national security agencies, providing sensitive information and in return receiving benefits that include access to classified intelligence, four people familiar with the...

An operation to troll the NSA has started up online in a bid to jam the spy scanners. The plan is to 'test' the system by sending a message full of terrorist buzz words to the agency Wednesday at 7pm EST. The website was set up in response to the accusations at the U.S. government is collecting and looking at data from Internet companies like Google, Facebook and Apple through a secretive program codenamed PRISM.

Long Knives Out for That Punk Kid Snowden June 11, 2013 BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Let's go to the audio sound bites. We have the Washington and media elites upset about Edward Snowden. Folks, let me ask.Didn't we just go through an election where we were toldthat the youths of America had all the answers? We had to get the youth of America interested in American politics. We had to get them interested to the point that they cared. The youth of America, it's their future. The youth vote, that mattered as much as anything,whoever got the youth vote was...

...Fifty years after the Profumo affair erupted, Christine Keeler, now 71, has confessed she played a role in a high-placed spy ring... ...she says: 'However I dress it up, I was a spy and I am not proud of it. The truth is that I betrayed my country. ...The scandal hit the headlines after seven shots were fired at a house in a quiet Marylebone mews by a jilted boyfriend of Keeler in December 1962. It then emerged the then 19-year-old Keeler had been sleeping with former Secretary of State for War John Profumo, then 48, and a handsome Russian...

Main Core: A List Of Millions Of Americans That Will Be Subject To Detention During Martial Law By Michael Snyder June 10th, 2013 Are you on the list? Are you one of the millions of Americans that have been designated a threat to national security by the U.S. government? Will you be subject to detention when martial law is imposed during a major national emergency? As you will see below, there is actually a list that contains the names of at least 8 million Americans known as Main Core that the U.S. intelligence community has been compiling since the 1980s....

"My job this morning is to be so persuasive...that a light will shine through that window, a beam of light will come down upon you, you will experience an epiphany, and you will suddenly realize that you must go to the polls and vote for Barack," he told a crowd of about 300 Ivy Leaguers--and, by the looks of it, a handful of locals who managed to gain access to what was supposed to be a students-only event. For one thing, under an Obama presidency, Americans will be able to leave behind the era of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney...

Waipahu, Hawaii –  A Hawaii real estate agent says Edward Snowden and his girlfriend moved out of their home in a quiet neighborhood near Honolulu on May 1, leaving nothing behind. . . . . . Snowden is a 29-year-old contractor who says he's the source behind reports about the U.S. government's secret surveillance programs. The Guardian newspaper reported Sunday that he was working in a National Security Agency office in Hawaii. He left for Hong Kong on May 20 and has remained there since. . . . . .

An ex-CIA employee working as a contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency revealed on Sunday it was he who leaked details of a top secret U.S. Surveillance program, acting out of conscience to protect "basic liberties for people around the world." Holed up in a hotel room in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden, 29, said he had thought long and hard before publicizing details of an NSA program code-named PRISM, saying he had done so because he felt the United States was building an unaccountable and secret espionage machine that spied on every American. Snowden, a former technical assistant at...