Snowden

Everything Werner Koch needs to prevent the U.S. National Security Agency, NSA, from properly doing its job is right here in a 10-square-meter room in a basement in Erkrath, a small town outside of Düsseldorf.

Koch opens his front door and invites us into his home. The first thing we see are children's drawings plastering the wall. Downstairs is his company "headquarters," all 10 square meters of it. It's a one-man show. And yet financially, things are looking good. "There is finally enough money in my account," he says.

NSA whistleblower and fugitive Edward Snowden said through his lawyer that he would be willing to return to the United States to face charges for leaking classified NSA documents on the agencies vast spying apparatus used against American citizens, foreign governments, and people around the world.

 Edward Snowden has just one regret.

It's not that he threw Obama's second term in office under the bus by disclosing the vast surveillance by the National Security Agency. Nor did he regret that he condemned himself to the bowels of Russia. (He rightfully pointed out the weather in Moscow has been "warmer than the east coast" this past week, where temperatures have been close to zero.)

NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers said Thursday that the nation needs to debate security versus privacy concerns in the wake of revelations of expansive government surveillance revealed by whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

In a wide-ranging speech at UC San Diego, which operates one of the nation’s largest computer science programs and is a leader in cybersecurity, Rogers contended that the Snowden revelations have hurt the National Security Agency’s counterterrorism efforts.

China now knows what most people in the west are catching up with: that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is a lemon.

The latest round of managed information release by Edward Snowden via Spiegel includes the snippet that Chinese security services copied “terabytes” of data about the aircraft.

The release states that the compromised information includes radar systems data, engine schematics, heat contour maps, and designs to cool exhaust gases. The latest leak confirms the scale of the data theft, which emerged in US media such as The Washington Times March 2014.

The FBI has identified an employee of a federal contracting firm suspected of being the so-called "second leaker" who turned over sensitive documents about the U.S. government's terrorist watch list to a journalist closely associated with ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, according to law enforcement and intelligence sources who have been briefed on the case.

The FBI recently executed a search of the suspect's home, and federal prosecutors in Northern Virginia have opened up a criminal investigation into the matter, the sources said.

Snowden just re-upped for three years in picturesque Russia, a land best known for not being a US military prison. Not exactly ideal, but under the circumstances, not entirely terrible. The government knows where Snowden is (more or less) and many officials have a pretty good idea what they'd like to do to him if he returns, but the NSA is still largely operating on speculation when it comes to what documents Snowden took.

Edward Snowden has given a long interview to Wired magazine in which he reveals that he has not read all of the NSA documents that he took with him when he left, but is shocked by the ones that he has.

Snowden met journalist James Bamford in clandestine circumstances in Russia, a country that recently extended his asylum with a residence permit. During the interview, which took place over several days, he revealed that the NSA has an autonomous system for tracking and retaliating to cyber attacks, and said that it is called Monstermind.

Wired is out with a major cover story this morning featuring former NSA contractor Edward Snowden clutching a giant American flag. In it, Snowden uncovers knowledge about an NSA program known as MonsterMind, which, if true, could signal a big step in how the U.S. government traces cyberattacks back to their source.

MonsterMind can reportedly analyze incoming malware and block it, according to Wired. But the real power lies in MonsterMind's other capability: It's reportedly capable of hacking back at targets automatically:

Russia has extended NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's asylum for three years, allowing him to remain in the country and out of the US authorities' hands.

His initial temporary asylum was granted in August 2013 and ended on 31 July. His temporary asylum came at a time when US authorities had charged him with espionage following his PRISM revelations.