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Edward Snowden is in a “safe place” in Hong Kong, a Chinese newspaper reports, as the United States seeks his extradition after filing espionage charges against him.
The South China Morning Post said Snowden, who has exposed secret US surveillance programs, was not in police protection in Hong Kong, as had been reported elsewhere.
“Contrary to some reports, the former CIA analyst has not been detained, is not under police protection but is in a ‘safe place’ in Hong Kong,” the newspaper said.
Hong Kong Police Commissioner Andy Tsang declined to comment other than to say Hong Kong would deal with the case in accordance with the law.
Documents leaked by the former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor revealed that the NSA has access to vast amounts of internet data such as emails, chat rooms and video from large companies such as Facebook and Google, under a government program known as PRISM.
The South China Morning Post also reported that Snowden had offered new details on US surveillance activities in China.
The newspaper said documents and statements by Snowden show the NSA program had hacked major Chinese telecom companies to access text messages and targeted China’s top Tsinghua University.
The NSA program also hacked the Hong Kong headquarters of Pacnet, which has an extensive fibre-optic network, it said.
“The NSA does all kinds of things like hack Chinese cell phone companies to steal all of your SMS data,” Snowden was quoted by the newspaper as saying during an interview on June 12.
US officials seek extradition
US national security adviser Tom Donilon told CBS News the United States had a “good case” against Snowden and expected Hong Kong to comply with its 1998 extradition treaty with the United States.
“We have gone to the Hong Kong authorities seeking extradition of Snowden back to the United States,” he said.
Mr Donilon added that US law enforcement officials were in a “conversation” with Hong Kong authorities about the issue.
“Hong Kong has been a historically good partner of the United States in law enforcement matters and we expect them to comply with the treaty in this case,” he said.
The US has charged Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorised communication of national defence information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence to an unauthorised person, according to the criminal complaint made public on Friday.
The latter two offences fall under the US Espionage Act and carry penalties of up to 10 years in prison.
America’s use of the Espionage Act has fuelled debate among legal experts about whether that could complicate Snowden’s extradition, since Hong Kong courts may choose to shield him.
An Icelandic businessman linked to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks said on Thursday he had readied a private plane in China to fly Snowden to Iceland if Iceland’s government would grant asylum.
Iceland refused on Friday to say whether it would grant asylum to Snowden.
New leaks implicate British agency
Meanwhile, the Guardian newspaper, citing documents shared by Snowden, reports Britain’s intelligence services are tapping cables that carry the world’s phone calls and internet traffic and gathering vast amounts of data.
The newspaper reported that Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has started processing vast amounts of personal information – including Facebook posts, emails, internet histories and phone calls – and is sharing it with the NSA.
“It’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight,” Snowden told the newspaper.
“They (GCHQ) are worse than the US.”
In reaction, however, GCHQ said it was “scrupulous” in its compliance with the law and declined to comment further.
The Guardian reported that GCHQ was able to tap into and store data from the cables for up to 30 days, under an operation codenamed Tempora.
The newspaper claimed Tempora had been running for 18 months and GCHQ and the NSA were able to access vast quantities of communications between entirely innocent people.
It also said that the intelligence-gathering directly led to the arrest and jailing of a British terror cell, the arrests of others planning acts of terror, and three London-based people planning attacks prior to the city’s 2012 Olympic Games.
The Guardian said the documents it had seen showed that by last year, GCHQ was handling 600 million “telephone events” each day, had tapped more than 200 fibre-optic cables and was able to process data from at least 46 of them at a time.
The two main components of GCHQ’s surveillance programme are called “Mastering the Internet” and “Global Telecoms Exploitation”, the newspaper said, adding that the operations were all being carried out “without any form of public acknowledgement or debate”.
The Guardian added that it understood NSA staff and US private contractors had access to GCHQ databases.
MORE ON [ABC/wires]
