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The United States may still be the world's preeminent superpower, based on size and reach of military and intelligence operations, but defending the virtual borders of cyberspace is another matter. Cyberattacks by foreign nations and their agents are on the rise, and this new form of conflict doesn't fit easily into the existing paradigms of how to wage, or win, a global war.
The budget to support the U.S. government's cybersecurity efforts is $14 billion for fiscal 2016, about 10 percent more than the $12.5 billion the government budgeted for 2015. Despite this increased spending, the U.S. is still vulnerable to attack.
"You could basically say the attacker has the advantage," said Martin Libicki, senior management scientist at RAND Corp. and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School.
Kaspersky on the Professionalism of Hackers 1:25
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Major data breaches in the past couple months alone have implicated foreign nations with which the U.S. has the most critical, and volatile, relationships in maintaining world order. The most recent attack was carried out by Russia against the Pentagon's Joint Staff unclassified email system. Like Russia's sophisticated attack, the Chinese breach in the server of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was difficult to attribute to either the government or to individual actors. But given the scope of these attacks, in both cases government officials pointed the finger at state actors.
The attack on the federal government's OPM, discovered in June, was noteworthy not only because the personal details of 21.5 million Americans investigated by the government's human resources agency were stolen but because many employees the OPM monitors have security clearances.
In response, sources within the Obama administration told The New York Times the government was planning to retaliate against China.
"One of the conclusions we've reached is that we need to be a bit more public about our responses, and one reason is deterrence," said a senior administration official in a recent comment to the Times. "We need to disrupt and deter what our adversaries are doing in cyberspace, and that means you need a full range of tools to tailor a response."
Actual retaliatory measures taken by the U.S. show that, at least so far, a "hack back" is not a strategy that will work to thwart future attacks. This is especially true if the hacker is located in a country that has Internet restrictions like North Korea.
North Korea stated in December that the U.S. was responsible for shutting down the country's Internet for almost 10 hours in a retaliatory move after North Korea's alleged hack against Sony Entertainment for releasing the movie "The Interview," in which North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is assassinated. Along with several derogatory statements aimed at President Obama, the North Korean government claimed the U.S. "feigned ignorance" of the attack.
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The U.S. didn't deny culpability, but security experts find it implausible that the U.S. would have responded as the North Korean government claimed. Using a term that demonstrates how technology and global conflict are now entwined, experts said that a retaliatory act with the goal of cyber deterrence would be ineffective because an "information asymmetry" exists between the two countries. A limited number of people have access to the Internet in North Korea, and computer ownership requires permission from local government authorities.
Some Ashley Madison personal data released, hackers claim 1:48
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"It is highly implausible the United States hacked North Korea," Libicki said. "We would have nothing to gain, since North Korea is a country that barely has an Internet."
A response to China's hack is more complicated. Breaking through China's Internet censorship program, or "Great Firewall," which blocks websites like Facebook and Twitter, could send a message, though may ultimately be as symbolic as it is effective.
"Maintaining control of their Internet is core to Chinese interests. Going after the Great Firewall would be one way we could show them we mean business in an effort to have them alter current tactics," said Richard Bejtlich, chief security strategist at cybersecurity firm FireEye, and a Brookings Institution senior fellow.
An economic response
Steps the U.S. government has taken to respond to hacking by foreign agents show the tentative nature of its cyber offense. Sanctions have been the primary means of retaliation, and these responses have focused on the government assisting U.S. corporations that have been hacked rather than direct response to government systems' encroachment.
The U.S. extended sanctions on North Korea in response to the attack on Sony it attributed to North Korea's government. This week, government officials told Reuters and The Washington Post that the U.S. is considering sanctions against companies and individuals in China and Russia who have benefited from hacking U.S. trade secrets. The Washington Post report notably said that the sanctions would not be a response to hacks into government systems such as the alleged Chinese hack of the OPM, because these attacks were carried out for intelligence reasons rather than to benefit business interests.
An executive order signed earlier this year allows the White House to use economic sanctions and other trade and diplomatic measures against cyberhackers.
Hacked Government Workers are Unwilling Victims in Cyber War 2:12
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The Post quoted an administration official as saying the possible sanctions move "sends a signal to Beijing that the administration is going to start fighting back on economic espionage, and it sends a signal to the private sector that we're on your team. It tells China, enough is enough."
The spy who came in from the code
Bejtlich said that there is a key distinction between cyberattacks on government systems and those against commercial interests.
"The problem for the U.S. is that it is suffering attacks upon government, military, and intelligence systems, all considered traditional espionage targets and 'within bounds,' while it is suffering attacks upon commercial industry, considered by the U.S. and allies as 'out of bounds,'" he explained.
Governments have always reserved the right to respond to traditional espionage, but Bejtlich said those responses have been based in the physical world rather than in cyberspace—deporting identified spies, declaring certain embassy personnel as personae non gratae, ending joint events, etc. Bejtlich said that to deter China and other states from stealing American national security information, the U.S. will likely implement a mix of punishments.
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Libicki said that it is plausible that the OPM attacks motivated a sense that something had to be done, even though the government positions the response as only a defense of commercial interests.
"The Chinese and Russians do not make such hard and fast distinctions," Libicki said. "Instead of arguing, 'Yes, we spy on commercial companies and that's OK,' they simply deny carrying out cyber espionage on anyone." Libicki said this approach makes it difficult to talk about norms for cyber espionage that would legitimize some targets and de-legitimize others.
Such responses may not appear as proportional to the scale of the Chinese attack on OPM, such as hacking into a Chinese government entity of equal importance and housing similarly sensitive information. But experts warn that the risks of a more potent response may, in effect, represent a new era of mutual deterrence, with computer rather than missile code the key weapon.
"If you point to foreign policy, the biggest failures occur when you assume the other nation is using the same template and tactics," said Jack Devine, former acting director of the CIA's overseas operations and currently president of The Arkin Group, an international risk consulting and intelligence firm. "They might do something crazy back and you end up in a world of escalation."
Devine said that a proportional hacking response could ultimately harm U.S. strategy. Since the U.S. is assumed to be conducting regular surveillance within the networks of foreign countries, a public display of retaliation could compromise efforts already in place meant to obtain critical information from foreign governments.
"I would hope there is a great deal of dormant activity that we are doing to breach their networks, but we should also not feel comfortable," Devine said. "At the policy level, you would not want to compromise a great capability just to even the score by hacking back."
Libicki said any response other than existing, and expected, cyber-espionage efforts of our own pose risks for the U.S. The target country could ignore or downplay what has happened. It can take offense but do nothing further (as China has done with the indictment of 5 PLA officers). The country can retaliate, or it can accede to U.S. demands.
OPM Official Says More Large Scale Data Breaches Wouldn't Be a Surprise 0:53
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He added, "Unless all this talk about a U.S. response is done for domestic consumption (and China and/or Russia realize as much and so do not react), the United States has to answer 'the Petraeus question' when it initiates a standoff: tell me how this ends." In other words, what is the path between a confrontation and some determination that initiating a confrontation has been successful and that the confrontation has ended, Libicki explained.
In the escalating global conflict taking shape in cyberspace, experts contend that the best offense may be focus on a good defense. But simply spending more on cybersecurity without effectively allocating it to government agencies in need, and on a more timely basis, may prove ineffective in preventing future hack attacks. In the case of the OPM hack, for example, much of the data was stolen because the government computers were too old to handle encryption.
"A lot of our systems are aged," said OPM chief information officer Donna Seymour at a June hearing held by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform after the hack was made public. "Implementing some of these tools take time, and some of them we cannot even implement in our current environment."
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A New Global War Front is Taking Shape in Cyberspace
NBCNews.com The United States may still be the world's preeminent superpower, based on size and reach ofmilitary and intelligence operations, but defending the virtual borders of cyberspace is another matter. Cyberattacks by foreign nations and their ... Using a ... |
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This article first appeared on The Daily Signal.
Kiev, Ukraine—I was in Mariupol, Ukraine, when the first cease-fire was signed on September 5, 2014.
Late that afternoon I visited the still smoldering battlefields outside the city. There had been a battle that day and the day prior, involving tanks and artillery. The aftermath was tragic. Many soldiers still lay dead where they had fallen in battle, frozen in the moments and the motions of their deaths.
During the fighting, the sounds of the cannons had rattled windows in central Mariupol. The people of the city weren’t yet used to the sounds of heavy weapons as they are today, and they wore their fears on their faces.
I remember, in particular, eating lunch at a seaside café when the sounds of explosions first started. The young man sitting across from me, who was sipping on a beer and eating a salad, looked up from his meal and into my eyes.
Is this really happening? We both seemed to ask each other with a shared look.
Any doubts about the terrible reality of this war were erased when I visited the battlefields. I could write my impressions again, but I think it would be best to show you what I wrote that evening, when what I had seen was still fresh in my mind and not dulled by a year of reporting on this war.
Sept. 5, 2014:[…]Tank battles, heavy artillery, long distance rocket attacks—this kind of combat is terrifying.But the terror is short lived, and the cease-fire appears to be holding. The bars are open tonight in Mariupol. Across town young brides and grooms are getting married, following through on ceremonies put off by the fighting.Life goes on.Yet out there beyond the city streets, far away from the cheesy music and the embraces of newlyweds, the scars of the last two days of battle are still smoldering. After the fighting ended today, I went out to where the fighting had been to see what war really is.The charred bodies of Ukrainian and separatist soldiers dotted the freshly stilled battlefields. These were the bodies of men who did not die well. Not by the mercy of a gunshot to the head or the heart.Some had their bodies ripped apart by the concussion of artillery blasts. Some were missing limbs. Some with their insides spilled in the earth around them. Others burned to death, trapped inside the steel coffins their tanks became.Quite a few died in the way they desperately clung to life—bodies halfway out of their ruined vehicles or splayed on the ground in fetal positions. All young men. And all of their lives ended today. The convenient forgetting about why they died begins tonight.And still, as Mariupol celebrates, as I write these words, many more scared and tired young men wait in trenches and in tanks poised to once again release the dogs of war.
And I was right. On September 6, the day after the cease-fire, fighting resumed around Mariupol, commencing five months of escalating violence that would last until the second cease-fire, signed February 12, 2015, which immediately collapsed into another six months of war, which leads us to now, and another cease-fire…
The Revolving Door of War
The Ukraine war was again scheduled to end September 1, with a new truce set to coincide with Ukrainian students’ return to school.
On August 26, the trilateral contact group—comprising representatives from Ukraine, Russia and the separatist territories, under Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) oversight—hashed out this latest call to end the fighting. And during an August 29 telephone call, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande called for a full cease-fire on September 1.
At midnight on Tuesday, guns fell silent along the eastern front, according to the Ukrainian military. “From midnight to 06:00 on Sept. 1, the Kremlin-backed mercenaries were not using weapons along the demarcation line,” the Anti-Terrorist Operation press center wrote in a Tuesday morning statement.
It feels like déjà vu in Ukraine.
It seemed like peace was possible one year ago when the guns fell silent in Mariupol. But the war never stopped. It only ebbed and then got worse. Soldiers and civilians kept dying. According to U.N. data, about 2,000 more Ukrainians died before politicians signed the second cease-fire on February 12, 2015, in the Belarusian capital of Minsk.
The intervening months saw some of the war’s most brutal fighting.
There was the Stalingrad-esque close quarters combat at the Donetsk airport during the winter, which turned the $860 million facility (rebuilt for the 2012 UEFA European Championship), with its modern lines, neatly trimmed landscaping and shiny floors, into an apocalyptic wasteland.
Watch: Drone footage of battle damage at the Donetsk airport
There was also the January 2015 Grad rocket attack on a neighborhood in Mariupol, which killed 29; civilian buses caught in the crossfire around Donetsk, killing dozens; a Grad rocket attack on a funeral procession in Sartana on October 24, 2014, that killed seven; and the Smerch rocket attack on Kramatorsk on February 10, only two days before politicians in Minsk agreed to the second cease-fire.
Like in September 2014, the second truce, called “Minsk II,” immediately collapsed. Combined Russian-separatist forces blitzed and surrounded Ukrainian forces in the strategic rail hub town of Debaltseve days after the cease-fire’s signing. The fighting in Debaltseve was some of the most intense of the war, comprising regular Russian soldiers, including Spetsnaz special forces.
On Februry 18, several thousand Ukrainian troops retreated from Debaltseve in the still dark early morning. They were hit with a storm of combined Russian-separatist artillery, tank fire and rockets.
Hundreds of Ukrainians troops died, and more than 100 were taken prisoner. And according to aFebruary 27 U.N. report, the battle ultimately killed about 500 civilians.
Tanks, artillery, rockets. A battle for a European city killing hundreds of civilians. Sounds a lot like World War II. But it was for a European city in 2015.
And the fighting didn’t end in Debaltseve.
On June 3, combined Russian-separatist forces launched an offensive with tanks, artillery and rockets to take the Ukrainian-controlled town of Marinka. Ukrainian forces were able to repel the attack by temporarily spurning the Minsk II rules and moving heavy weapons to the front lines.
There has also been the recent shelling of Sartana, outside Mariupol, which killed three; the months of trench warfare and artillery in Shyrokyne; the artillery, trench warfare, tank battles and sniper duels in Pisky and dozens of other devastated cities up and down the front lines. And there is the daily death toll. Some days one or two Ukrainian soldiers are killed, sometimes more. But whatever the number, soldiers continue to die every day. On both sides too.
Still, one might think things weren’t so bad in Ukraine. Western media reports and politicians have continued to claim the cease-fire is “largely holding,” or that the daily artillery and tank attacks are simply “cease-fire violations,” a daily tally of which officials in Kiev dutifully report.
One could draw a parallel between Ukraine’s “cease-fire violations” and the “acts of genocide” that the U.S. said were occurring in Rwanda in the 1990s as hundreds of thousands died. How many daily cease-fire violations does it take to achieve a war? 50? 75? 100?
The war never stopped, it is now just limited in geography and intensity and fought according to the rules agreed upon by the political leaders who drafted the cease-fire. It’s like two boxers agreeing to spar at half speed to save themselves for the big fight.
Hitting Home
I was living in Washington, D.C., during the Debaltseve battle. I remember sitting down at my computer to briefly check email before leaving for dinner when I received a message from my friend Valentyn Onyshchenko, a then-22-year-old from Kiev who works as a fixer for foreign journalists.
He was hiding in a bunker in Debaltseve, he wrote, and as the artillery thundered outside, he thought he was going to die. He still had Internet access though, huddled in the basement with a Finnish journalist. And even as the battle raged on the streets above he thought to send me a message. It was to say goodbye—just in case.
“We’re fucked man,” Onyshchenko wrote. “I’m in Debaltseve, the separatists surrounded us, I don’t know if I will make it outta here, just wanted to tell that it was very nice knowing you, I can’t hear now because of the explosions near me, take care man, and god bless America and Ukraine!”
His message left my head spinning. I noticed little details in my surroundings, looking to anchor my drifting thoughts. I remember the trace of headlights through my bedroom window as a car drove by, the sound of tires on the road and of people talking on the sidewalk outside my apartment.
Evidence of normal life in Washington co-existing with the hell my friend was going through on the other side of the world. The war seemed so abstract. I had to use my imagination to believe it was real. But I knew it was. And that’s why I came back.
(Onyshchenko, incidentally, survived Debaltseve and is still in Kiev working as a fixer.)
And so here we are. One year after I wrote about the dogs of war that night in Mariupol. More than 7,000 Ukrainians are now dead, and more than 1 million have had to flee their homes. And an unknown number of Russian and separatist soldiers are dead too.
I’ve seen this war firsthand throughout the past year. I’ve visited the trenches and bombed out neighborhoods in Shyrokyne, and have frequently been on the fringes of the war in many other places. And in June I embedded for eight days with the Ukrainian regular army’s 93rd Brigade on the front lines in Pisky, just outside the Donetsk airport. It wasn’t my first time seeing a war, but it was the first time I had ever seen a war like that.
I’ll say it again—tanks, heavy artillery, drones, long-range rockets. And don’t forget the snipers, the trenches, the automatic grenade launchers and the nearly constant small arms gunfights and the relentless pot shots zinging overhead.
That’s what the Ukraine cease-fire looks like. And that is, I assume, what the Ukraine war will continue to look like after September 1. I have no evidence or experience to assume otherwise.
Casualties
One year later. Another year of combat, death, ruined lives and homes. More families living on different sides of the front lines, cut off and divided from each other by the war. And now thousands more young minds and spirits torn apart by the bullets and the bombs. For many Ukrainian soldiers, a lifetime of dealing with the demons of war is just beginning. And for some Ukrainian soldiers, including my friend Daniel Kasyanenko, who was 19 when a mortar killed him in Pisky, a lifetime will never happen.
For a generation of Ukrainians whose dreams for democracy spurred them to overthrow the previous regime, hope for a better future is dimming every day due to the soul-sucking gloom of war and the paralysis of the country’s reforms it has created.
Monday’s violent protests outside Ukraine’s parliament in Kiev highlight this simmering discontent with the war and the difficult concessions politicians must make to secure a peace. Ukrainians want peace, but they are skeptical of making a deal with Russia—they’ve seen the revolving door of failed cease-fires and constant betrayals by the combined Russian-separatist forces.
“They say that we should negotiate, but in my humble opinion, as a citizen, negotiating with Russia is the same as negotiating with an alligator,” Julia Minaeva, a 26-year-old Kiev university assistant professor, told me in a recent interview.
Ukraine’s millennials have no memory of the Soviet Union. Many of them dress like hipsters and enjoy Western movies and music. They hang out in coffee shops and hip bars. They like whisky drinks and craft beer—leave the vodka for the parents, they say. They study English and can quote both Hemingway and Bulgakov.
They also have a vibrant and impressive IT sector. Like Jobs and Wozniak in a California garage, students at the Kiev Polytechnic Institute are building drones for Ukrainian soldiers, and young IT professionals are volunteering their talents and time to build geospatial software from their home computers to help troops better target artillery.
Ukraine’s millennials talk about democracy and freedom with a patriotic passion that one can only compare with what the United States was like in the period immediately following September 11, 2001. And their matter-of-fact attitude toward duty reads like from an Ernie Pyle story.
“There is war, and now if I call myself a man I must show it,” Roman Kulyk, 24, told me the week before he joined the Ukrainian army—he asked to be sent to the front lines in Pisky when he signed up.
“I must go and defend my home, my family and my country,” he said.
Lera Burlakova is a 29-year-old journalist who left her job last December to serve as a front-line soldier with the Karpatska Sich volunteer battalion in Pisky.
“I always felt ashamed that I wasn’t in the war when some 18-year-old guys, even if they’re not patriots, have to go,” she told me in an interview. “If you want to look in the mirror and not turn away, you have to go.”
Marina Komarova, a 33-year-old economist from Sevastopol, Crimea, quit her job in Kiev last year to dedicate all her time to delivering equipment to Ukrainian troops on the front lines.
“The war is very personal for me,” she said. “I was born in Crimea, and I want the war to be won and my home to be back in Ukraine.”
Separated from her parents in Crimea due to Russia’s seizure of the Ukrainian peninsula last March, Komarova says the soldiers have become her new family. But her experiences on the front lines have left her feeling out of place in normal life. Except for the soldiers, no one understands her, she says.
“It feels like I have a piece of unfresh meat for a heart,” she said. “I poke it but nothing happens. I used to feel so many emotions, but now I feel nothing.”
The war is Ukraine’s Achilles’ heel—the violence in Kiev on Monday showed that, and the Kremlin knows it too. The war, above all, has the potential to stifle Ukrainians’ belief that life can be better.
Helga Sas is a 25-year-old journalist who lives in Kiev. She was born the year the Soviet Union collapsed. She hasn’t been out to the front lines but she compiles daily reports from footage shot in the war zone for the Ukrainian TV news channel INTER. Every day she pores over images of the war, and then writes and narrates news stories. She, like nearly all Ukrainians of her generation, has friends in the war and knows people who have died in combat.
“I can’t cry anymore,” she told me one day.
“I used to be a crybaby,” she continued. “I would cry at anything. And when I first started reporting on the war, I would cry all the time. I would stay awake at night crying. I stopped wearing makeup because it was always smeared down my face. But after the Boeing was shot down, I just stopped crying. I would try to, you know. I would watch sad movies and think about sad things. But it was like I had run out of tears.”
Komarova has given up thinking about life after the war. In the beginning, she fantasized about what she would do when it ended. She wanted to go to a tropical island for three months to read books and talk to no one. She also wanted to start a family one day, but she has put that off for as long as the war lasts. She doesn’t have time to date with her frequent trips to the front lines, she told me. And now she fears she will grow old before the war ends.
“I might even leave Ukraine when the war is over,” she said. “Living here after the war would be like living in a house where someone died.”
The costs of a war are often measured in bodies and dollars. Yet, the final measure of a war’s destruction is the loss of the most precious resource of all—hope.
Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine.
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American officials express concern about latest intelligence suggesting Moscow is preparing to send hundreds of personnel to prop up Assad regime
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Secretary of State John Kerry expressed U.S. concern in a telephone call on Saturday with his Russian counterpart over reports of Russia's enhanced military build-up in Syria, the State Department said.
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Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (L) and United States Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt (2nd L) speak with U.S. soldiers during the opening ceremony of the Ukrainian-US Exercise Fearless Guardian in Lviv Oblast on April 20.
© Mykola Lazarenko
© Mykola Lazarenko
KHARKIV - Financial and technical assistance of the United States to Ukraine depends on Kyiv's success in the fight against corruption, United States Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt has said.
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© NTB Scanpix/AFP Svein Ove EkornesvaagA giant screen displays the image of Edward Snowden as the former US intelligence contractor was awarded a freedom of expression prize in the Norwegian city of Molde, on September, 5, 2015
Oslo (AFP) - Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden on Saturday criticised Russia -- the country that has granted him asylum -- calling its crackdown on human rights and online freedom "fundamentally wrong" and said he would prefer not to live in exile.
Snowden said Moscow's restrictions on the web were "a mistake in policy" and "fundamentally wrong" as he accepted a Norwegian freedom of expression prize by videophone from Russia.
"It's wrong in Russia, and it would be wrong anywhere," said Snowden, 32, who sought asylum in Russia two years ago after Washington filed a warrant for his arrest for having leaked documents that revealed the vast scale of US surveillance programmes.
Pushed on Moscow's deteriorating human rights record, the whistleblower said the situation is "disappointing, it's frustrating" and described restrictions on the Internet as part of a wider problem in Russia.
"I've been quite critical of (it) in the past and I'll continue to be in the future, because this drive that we see in the Russian government to control more and more the Internet, to control more and more what people are seeing, even parts of personal lives, deciding what is the appropriate or inappropriate way for people to express their love for one another...(is) fundamentally wrong," he said.
- Russia 'never my plan' -
Snowden said he had "never intended to go to Russia, that was never my plan" and that he had been transiting the country en route for Latin America when US officials cancelled his passport.
"I applied for asylum in 21 countries," he told the audience at the ceremony for the Norwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression's Bjornson Prize. "They were all silent. Russia was actually one of the last countries in that sequence that I applied for."
screenshot/HBOSnowden reacts to Oliver telling him about hthe
The computer expert had left his job with a contractor for the US National Security Agency (NSA) in Hawaii in May 2013 in order to leak his trove of classified information to the British newspaper The Guardian from Hong Kong.
He recalled that the idea of leaving that city for Russia had been suggested by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange -- who himself had to seek asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London to avoid extradition to Sweden over sexual assault allegations.
"I think his (Assange's) intention was good. He was focused primarily on my safety as a publisher, and having a source, he was interested in the source protection angle," said Snowden.
"But for me, the problem is I wasn't interested in my own safety, my own protection. I never expected to be free today. I expected to be in prison."
Dado Ruvic/ReutersA man uses his cell phone to read updates about former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden answering users' questions on Twitter in this photo illustration, in Sarajevo, January 23, 2014.
The technical expert also criticised many "developed countries" for ignoring the public's concern about intelligence monitoring by imposing more restrictive laws, which he said turn out to be useless.
"They say: well these things are necessary to keep us safe, " he said, and cited for instance the deadly attack in January by jihadists on a French satirical magazine over its cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed.
"In the Charlie Hebdo attacks for example, the intelligence services say: 'Oh yes, we knew who these people were'. But it didn't stop the attack."
- 'Normal life' -
Despite his extraordinary situation, Snowden described his life as "normal", while adding: "I mean, I would prefer to live in my own country."
"But exile is exile," he said.
The White House in July rejected a petition to pardon Snowden, saying the fugitive should return to the United States and "be judged by a jury of his peers" for leaking US government secrets.
And despite his criticism of Russian Internet restrictions and laws encroaching on freedom of speech, Snowden said he feels he is allowed to express himself in Russia.
"I do. And I think it's primarily in the context of the fact that most activities happen online. I mean, when people ask me where I live, the most honest answer is on the Internet."
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Crime and Espionage Becoming Tangled Onlineby webdesk@voanews.com (Doug Bernard)
To say that 2015 has so far been seen new heights of corporate and government computer attacks, as well as an escalation in the sheer daring of those hacks, is to risk understatement. The list grows daily: 80 million health insurance records stolen from Anthem Insurance; 27 million private personnel records swiped from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; the breach of unclassified systems and the White House, State Department, and Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on and...
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What to watch for in the Democratic 2016 race this fall
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U.S. News & World Report FILE - In this Sept. 3, 2015 file photo, Lake County Major Crime Task Force Cmdr. George Filenko, right, and Christopher Covelli of the Lake County Sheriff's office, address the media in Fox Lake, Ill. Filenko provided updates in the search for the... Report: Key evidence found in investigation into Illinois officer's killingMilwaukee Journal Sentinel Fox Lake officer's killing: Police find new evidenceWPTV.com The Latest: Funeral arrangements announced for slain officerseattlepi.com Dispatch Times all 27 news articles » |
PARIS (Reuters) - Jean-Marie Le Pen, the expelled founder of France's National Front (FN), launched a new party on Saturday, adding fuel to a family feud that has dogged his daughter Marine's campaign to become president.
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Saudi Officials Say 10 Soldiers Slain in Yemenby THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
It was the first public acknowledgment by the Saudis that they have ground troops in Yemen, where they are leading a coalition to roll back gains by Shiite rebels.
Snowden pans Russia for approach to internet and homosexuality by Amit Sandhu and agencies
The NSA whistleblower, living in ‘exile’ in Russia, called government fundamentally wrong when accepting prize
Edward Snowden has criticised Russia for its crackdown on internet freedom and lax attitude to gay rights, despite having been granted asylum by the country.
The National Security Agency whistleblower branded Moscow’s tightening grip over online activities and treatment of homosexuals as “fundamentally wrong”.
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A two-year old boy has been taken into protective care after he was found by a neighbour feeding from her pregnant dog in Chile. Report by Conor Mcnally.
Exhausted, elated migrants reach their dream destinations, but officials warn human tide was still rising
Matthew Price speaks to one of hundreds of migrants who say they intend to walk to Austria from Budapest railway station.
Vietnamese give their views on old foe America
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Ministers will start to make a case for British military action in Syria next week - with Downing Street keen to take the "next step" against so-called Islamic State - the BBC understands.
Sources said ministers planned to lay the groundwork for a new Commons vote.
The government plans to set out its achievements in Iraq so far with RAF air strikes and training of Kurdish and Iraqi security forces, sources said.
The BBC also understands a small force could be sent to Libya.
The team of about 20 troops would be sent to help Libya secure its borders - which is seen as a crucial step towards stemming the flows of migrants into Europe.
An MoD spokesperson commented: "The UK, along with international partners, is supporting the process to form a recognised Libyan government and we are developing plans to provide support once this is done; it is too early to discuss the exact nature of this."
According to sources, ministers intend to argue that the mission to defeat IS now has to turn to Syria, and that the UK should play a role in that effort.
Describing the government's plans to increase its military involvement in the region, a source said: "The government is essentially posing a question: Could we do more? Should we do more? But Syria is where the fight should be taken to."
Another source added: "The government will say the campaign in Iraq has been a success. IS has been degraded, land has been taken back. Some of their leaders have been killed. But the problem is across the border in Syria."
Two years ago MPs rejected possible UK military action against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's government.
A new parliamentary vote on the issue is not imminent, but the case will continue to be made throughout September in the run-up to the anniversary of the launch of UK airstrikes in Iraq, sources added.
They said any move to extend UK military action to Syria would only involve an extension of airstrikes against IS targets and involvement in coalition special forces operations.
The timing of the separate, small deployment to Libya is expected to depend on when Libya can form a unity government, and may be part of a broader effort. Nato is poised to go back into Libya to rebuild the country's defence and military once there is more political stability.
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The government will start to make a case for UK military action in Syria next week, the BBC understands.
Police and migrants have clashed at a refugee camp at Roszke, Hungary, near the Serbian border.
Rare ancient Egyptian artefacts discovered underwater are going on display in Paris for the first time.
Jailed Guatemala's ex-president Otto Perez Molina rejects corruption allegations during court hearing - and asks to be placed under house arrest
Guatemalans head to the polls this weekend to elect a new president, after the former head of state Otto Perez Molina resigned on Thursday.
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