Snowden

Two "security experts" from the British intelligence agency GCHQ have overseen the destruction of hard drives owned by The Guardian, the newspaper that has published leaked NSA documents describing the work of US and UK intelligence agencies.

The revelations are in a column published Monday afternoon by the newspaper's editor, Alan Rusbridger. In it, he describes the escalating concerns of the British government about the leaks given to The Guardian by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

David Miranda—partner of The Guardian's lead NSA-leaks reporter Glenn Greenwald—was detained under local terrorism laws for nearly nine hours on Sunday at London's Heathrow airport. Miranda was eventually released without any charges, but authorities confiscated property such as Miranda's phone, laptop, camera, memory sticks, DVDs, and games consoles, according to The Guardian.

Once it became clear that he was going to be trapped in Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport for a while, National Security Agency (NSA) leaker Edward Snowden chose to end his isolation by inviting several human rights activists to meet with him in July. The e-mails Snowden sent out to organize that meeting reportedly came from the e-mail address "edsnowden@lavabit.com."

Edward Snowden, the fugitive former U.S. security contractor, left the transit zone at Moscow’s international airport Thursday after Russian authorities granted him temporary asylum.

Anatoly Kucherena, an attorney for Snowden, said documents were issued Thursday allowing Snowden to live and work in Russia for up to one year while his application for permanent political asylum is pending. Snowden, 30, had been stranded in Russia’s Sheremetyevo Airport for more than five weeks.

Former US spy agency contractor Edward Snowden has applied for political asylum in Russia, a Russian official said on Monday, but President Vladimir Putin said he was not welcome unless he stopped harming US interests "as strange as that sounds coming from my lips".

Wikileaks activist Sarah Harrison, who is travelling with Snowden, handed his application to a Russian consular official in the transit area at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport late on Sunday, Kim Shevchenko, a consul at the airport, told Reuters.