U.S. Charges Edward Snowden With Espionage
Federal prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint against the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who leaked documents revealing details of top-secret surveillance programs this month. Officials say the U.S. has asked Hong Kong to detain Snowden on a provisional arrest warrant.
Federal prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint against Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old former NSA contractor who leaked documents revealing details of top-secret surveillance programs this month. Officials say the U.S. has asked Hong Kong to detain Snowden on a provisional arrest warrant.
The officials, who spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to disclose the case, say Snowden was charged with espionage, theft and conversion of government property.
Snowden has been in Hong Kong since last month after he left his job at an NSA facility in Hawaii with a collection of documents he acquired while working as a systems analyst for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. He is reported to still be in the city, where he can challenge the request to extradite him in court.
Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic businessman sympathetic to the pro-transparency group WikiLeaks, said Thursday that he would provide a private plane to fly Snowden from China to Iceland if Iceland’s government would grant Snowden asylum.
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By filing a criminal complaint, prosecutors have a legal basis to make the detention request of the authorities in Hong Kong. Prosecutors now have 60 days to file an indictment, probably also under seal, and can then move to have Snowden extradited from Hong Kong for trial in the United States.
… The United States has an extradition treaty with Hong Kong, and U.S. officials said cooperation with the Chinese territory, which enjoys some autonomy from Beijing, has been good in previous cases.
The treaty, however, has an exception for political offenses, and espionage has traditionally been treated as a political offense. Snowden’s defense team in Hong Kong is likely to invoke part of the extradition treaty with the United States, which states that suspects will not be turned over to face criminal trial for offenses of a “political character.”
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The Intercept reached out to nine tech companies, including Facebook, to see where they stand on helping the Trump administration track Muslims.
Before he became the early 21st century's most important whistle-blower, Edward Snowden "was politically conservative, a gun owner, a geek," writes Luke Harding in his new book, "The Snowden Files."
The Russian Orthodox Church warns that the legalization of gay marriage spells impending doom; former President Carter proclaims "America does not have a functioning democracy"; meanwhile, Booz Allen Hamilton took over Washington, and nobody noticed until Edward Snowden blew the whistle. These discoveries and more after the jump.
As a State Department whistle-blower, I think a lot about Edward Snowden. I suspect we have a lot in common, though I’ve never had the slightest contact with him. Still, as he took his long flight from Hong Kong into the unknown, I couldn’t help feeling that he was thinking some of my thoughts, or I his. Here are five things that I imagine were on his mind as that plane took off.
How inconvenient to find the names of France, Italy, Japan and Mexico among the 38 embassies and missions bugged at will by our electronic spooks.
There’s big money to be made in moving government-owned functions and assets into corporate hands.
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