NBC NEWS

US charges NSA leaker Snowden with espionage

Federal prosecutors Friday filed espionage charges against alleged National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, officials familiar with the process said. Authorities have also begun the process of getting Snowden back to the United States to stand trial.

The officials did not describe the charges in detail because they’ve been filed under seal in federal court in Alexandria, Va. The documents are not publicly available.

According to officials, charges accuse Snowden of violating federal espionage laws by sharing classified documents with people who were not cleared to receive them.

Snowden, who is a former employee of defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, leaked details about far-reaching Internet and phone surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post earlier this month. He revealed his identity while in Hong Kong, where it is believed he is still hiding.

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NBC  NEWS

Julian Assange says WikiLeaks helping Snowden gain asylum

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Wednesday said members of his anti-secrecy website have been in contact with lawyers of alleged National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden and are helping him seek asylum in Iceland.

Speaking to reporters during a conference call on the one-year anniversary of his own asylum in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, Assange said his group has a “common cause” with Snowden, but would not comment on whether he personally has spoken with supposed whistle-blower.

Assange did say, “We are in touch with Mr. Snowden’s legal team and have been, are involved, in the process of brokering his asylum in Iceland.”

Snowden leaked details about far-reaching Internet and phone surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post earlier this month. He revealed his identity while in Hong Kong, where it is believed he is still hiding.

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WikiLeaks may publish more revelations promised by Snowden – Assange

WikiLeaks may publish further revelations promised by NSA leaker Edward Snowden, Julian Assange hinted during a conference call with journalists. He reiterated that his legal team is helping Snowden in his quest for asylum in Iceland.

“I feel a great deal of personal sympathy with Mr. Snowden,” the WikiLeaks founder said, adding that he had been in touch with Snowden’s lawyers.

“We are in touch with Mr. Snowden’s legal team and have been, are involved, in the process of brokering his asylum in Iceland,” he said in a conference call from the Ecuadorian Embassy, where he himself has been fighting his extradition to Sweden for nearly a year.

When asked if he had spoken directly with Snowden, the former CIA contractor who fled to Hong Kong before disclosing the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program, Assange declined to offer further details.

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Washington releases Snowden espionage indictment

US federal prosecutors have charged whistleblower Edward Snowden with espionage, theft and conversion of government property in a criminal complaint, and asked Hong Kong to detain him ahead of a move to extradite him.

Though the criminal complaint is sealed, charges of espionage and theft are undoubtedly based on Snowden’s extraction of classified documents from NSA servers, which led to publication of several articles regarding the NSA’s surveillance programs, including PRISM, which is alleged to harvest private user data through cooperation with a slew of American corporations including Facebook, Yahoo, Google, Apple and Microsoft.

The implicated companies have denied granting US intelligence services “direct access” to their servers, though during an online chat on Monday Snowden alleged that they had been purposely deceptive in their responses.

When asked to “define in as much detail as you can what ‘direct access’ means,” Snowden went into greater technical detail:

“More detail on how direct NSA’s accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want,” he said.

The specific details of how Snowden transported the classified NSA documents are somewhat unclear, with The Guardian saying they were extracted using four laptops taken to Hong Kong, though subsequent reports suggested that Snowden simply copied secret files on USB drives. Even though the use of thumb drives is banned in SIPRNET, the Defense Department’s secret network, as a system administrator Snowden had much broader access to data.

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