Snowdon Supporters demonstrate before Obama visit to Berlin.(Photo from instagram.com/rt)

 The American Empire stands naked, called out by one man among a hundred thousand who knew its dirty secrets and systematic betrayal of the world's trust.

While international politics in the West has been leaping over each other to suck up to The Empire's New Clothes following September 11, 2001, the United States wasted no time in reinforcing the order of Pax Americana - that the US would establish peace in the world through superior firepower.

The world was turned into a simple black-and-white "You're with us, or you're against us." In the decade that followed, many countries that were inconvenient to Pax Americana were invaded, none of which had anything to do with the events on September 11.

The rattling of sabers were reminiscent of a high school bully: "if you don't accept that we can do whatever we want, we might be mean to you, so behave." Or, as US Secretary of State John Kerry expressed that sentence in just slightly more diplomatic language recently: "Hand over Snowden, or there may be consequences."

Most people in the United States aren't aware that their country is acting like their hated high school bully to most of the rest of the world. The few who do tend to take it with humor: bumper stickers have been seen satirizing this as "Be nice to America, or we'll bring democracy to your country", playing on the media spin that every war of aggression to maintain Pax Americana is about "bringing democracy" somewhere.

So when one man, Edward Snowden, reveals to the world that the Empire stands naked and that it really has been behaving like a bully, wiretapping everybody wholesale, there are shockwaves. But that's where the similarities with the folklore tale ends. Where the naked emperor cringed and realized the game was up, the naked Empire instead chooses to keep rewarding sucking up, pretending that nothing has been revealed at all, and to punish the whistleblower at all costs as a warning to others.

Politicians in the United States have been quick to call Snowden this, that and the other thing. No wonder. The surveillance hawks who couldn't care less of the human rights of the world would much rather talk about Edward Snowden as an individual than about the fact that the world's trust in the United States has been systematically betrayed wholesale.

  Take Microsoft software as an important example. As part of the NSA unravelings, it was uncovered that Microsoft gives security holes to the National Security Agency for exploiting before it sends out security repair patches to its users and customers - essentially betraying the trust of every customer worldwide, and making sure that no government, corporation, or media outlet can ever trust Microsoft products again: for Microsoft gave the master key to every customers' operations to the NSA.

Without Snowden setting the ball rolling, we would not have known this, and we would continue to have been owned - in the hacker and literal sense of the word - by the United States. Now, we can at least see that any Microsoft-developed software, and probably any closed US-developed software, is a huge security risk that no nation outside the United States can afford to take.

Today, Snowden is said to be comfortable on the inside of Sheremetyevo Airport outside Moscow, pending new travel documents being issued by some friendly country. (You have to love the fact that he's enraging US bully hawks by planning his trip to China, Russia, Cuba, and Venezuela. The only thing missing would be a trip to Pyongyang with a stopover in Tehran - and we find ourselves rooting for the countries that shield him, those countries we have been told sternly are black-and-white evil.)

What's really interesting is how other people who have had their doubts about the United States have started to come forward. There are now rumors that those who have been doubting the Empire's ability to pay back its enormous debts are starting to raise their voices about it. No wonder: the United States has long been bankrupt, but people have been... pretending... otherwise to make sure that a crash to the world economy doesn't happen on their watch.

If the doubts in creditworthiness take hold, things can come crashing down quicker than you would expect. Compare with 1987, at what felt like the height of the Cold War - who would have guessed that the Soviet Union would be formally dissolved just four years later?

If history teaches us anything, it is that all empires come to an end. History books could theoretically point at Snowden's leak of conscience as the starting point of major, major changes to the geopolitical order. At least they ended a blind and naive trust in the United States' interest in doing good for anybody but itself.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The F-35 Lightning II, also known as the Joint Strike Fighter (JSF).(Reuters / Tom Reynolds)

 The US will not try to intercept NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s flight, President Barack Obama said during his tour to Africa.

Obama announced that US will not be using military jets to go after Snowden, rejecting reports that America might force down a plane carrying the NSA leaker.

The president specified that the US will not engage in "wheeling, dealing and trading" to extradite Edward Snowden, adding that extradition will be carried out through legal channels.

"We've got a whole lot of business that we do with China and Russia, and I'm not going to have one case of a suspect who we're trying to extradite suddenly being elevated to the point where I've got to start doing wheeling and dealing and trading on a whole host of other issues," Obama said.

Obama said he has not spoken to Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping or Russia’s President Vladimir Putin about whistleblower Edward Snowden’s extradition, adding that he “shouldn’t have to,” Reuters reported.

The president added he is "still concerned about the other documents" Edward Snowden may have, saying "not all of them have been released."

Edward Snowden was charged with espionage by US federal prosecutors on Friday and currently remains in an airport limbo in Russia’s transit zone after he flew to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport from Hong Kong.

Snowden hasn’t been seen on the latest flight from Moscow to Havana, reports RT’s Irina Galushko, who is among the many journalists hunting for the whistleblower at Moscow’s airport.

Earlier, there were reports that Snowden will be on an Aeroflot’s flight to Havana, Cuba, that will pass through American airspace and that the plane might be forced to land.

Snowden needs to reach Ecuador to get asylum – Interior Minister

 At the same time, Ecuador says it cannot grant asylum to Edward Snowden, since he has not reached “any of its diplomatic premises,” i.e. the country itself or the embassy, Interior Minister revealed in a press conference in the capital city, Quito.

However, entering Ecuadorian soil, including the embassy in Moscow is now impossible for Snowden. The US government revoked his passport, which means he neither has a Russian visa nor can he buy a new flight ticket to Ecuador or Havana, a second transit point, RT’s Lucy Kafanov reports from outside Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

Earlier, there were reports that Snowden would be on an Aeroflot’s flight to Havana, Cuba, that will pass through American airspace and that the plane might be forced to land.

The government of Ecuador has also renounced US trade benefits to prevent Washington from pressuring the country as it decides over asylum for NSA leaker, Edward Snowden.

"Ecuador will not accept pressures or threats from anyone, and it does not traffic in its values or allow them to be subjugated to mercantile interests," Fernando Alvarado, the Ecuadorian government’s spokesman, said.

Alvarado said that Ecuador has “unilaterally and irrevocably” given up the customs benefits, offering $23 million per year to finance human rights training in the US in return.

The funding would be destined to help "avoid violations of privacy, torture and other actions that are denigrating to humanity," Alvarado explained.

The statement comes after US senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, promised that he would seek to end benefits if Ecuador grants Snowden asylum. 

Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom may be suing server hosting company Leaseweb over a “data massacre." The Dutch company says it deleted files from 630 servers due to lack of interest in them, but Dotcom has revealed letters proving otherwise.

The revelation comes a week after Dotcom accused the US government and Leaseweb of deleting millions of personal files without warning, including “petabytes of pictures, backups, personal & business property.”

Most of the permanently deleted data came from European users, with servers then re-provisioned to other customers – despite the fact that Megaupload had specifically requested that the hosting provider preserve the information.

“They deleted petabytes of data in the face of Megaupload’s data preservation notices. Our legal team asked them multiple times not to delete the data while the US court is deciding the pending cases including the rights of our users,” TorrentFreak quoted Dotcom as saying.

But Leaseweb’s senior regulatory counsel, Alex de Joode, said his company deleted the data and re-provisioned the servers “after a year of nobody showing any interest” in them.

“We did inform Megaupload about our decision to re-provision the servers,” de Joode said in a June 19 statement, thus disputing Dotcom’s accusation that the decision was made "without warning.” De Joode said that Leaseweb received no answer from the Megaupload team, so they “commenced the re-provisioning of the servers in February 2013.”

“To minimize security risks and maximize the privacy of our clients, it is a standard procedure at Leaseweb to completely clean servers before they are offered to any new customer,” he said.

To back up his accusations, Kim Dotcom has published an email which was sent from Megaupload’s legal counsel to Leaseweb in March 2012. The letter allegedly shows that Megaupload did, in fact, request preservation of the files.

"Megaupload continues to request that Leaseweb preserve any and all information, documentation and data related to Megaupload - as destruction by Leaseweb would appear to be in violation of amongst other things the applicable civil litigation data preservation rules and would interfere with evidence in a criminal matter [...]," said the letter. The email is signed by Megaupload lawyer Ira Rothken and addressed to Leaseweb’s A.H. Bram de Haas van Dorsser.

The email adds that “the Mega data on the servers at Leaseweb contain private and sensitive customer data and is subject to applicable privacy and data retention laws.”

“Megaupload is negotiating with the United States to discern feasibility of consumer data access and the conditions for the same," Rothken wrote in the letter. 

 The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) representing the file-sharing website in court made a similar request to Leaseweb USA in April.

“We now write to formally request that you preserve that material both for purposes of contemplated future litigation and as a matter of obligation and courtesy to the innocent individuals whose materials have unfortunately been swept up into this case,” the EFF letter reads.

According to Dotcom, Megaupload’s legal team is analyzing whether Leaseweb violated the law.

“I can tell you that we are contemplating legal action against Leaseweb,” he told TorrentFreak on Wednesday.

“We believe that Leaseweb acted inappropriately under the circumstances when they destroyed data,” Rothken told the blogging website. “Ultimately we blame the United States who exercised constructive control over Megaupload’s assets and who had the obligation, resources, and ability to preserve all relevant and exonerating evidence including the data located at Leaseweb and failed to do so,” he added.

But Leaseweb claims it done nothing wrong. In a June 26 statement, the company stressed that “the contract between Leaseweb B.V. and Megaupload was governed by Dutch law.”

“This means the termination, and subsequent data retention needs to be valid under Dutch law. As there was no claim from the Dutch authorities on the data, the data was not subject to evidence rules. Also Dutch and European Privacy legislation prohibit giving third parties (i.e. MegaUpload customers, or Instra) direct access to their data,” the statement read.

Dotcom, who made a fortune from his file-sharing service Megaupload, is currently under a federal investigation, launched by the US Department of Justice after police raided his home. He is currently free on bail in New Zealand, with an extradition trial set for August.

The US has charged the Megaupload founder with facilitating copyright fraud on a massive scale, racketeering, and money-laundering, which carries maximum sentence of 20 years in jail.

Authorities claim Megaupload has cost copyright holders upwards of $500 million in lost revenues, due to content being illegally uploaded to its servers. The Department of Justice also believes Dotcom illegally earned $175 million by selling ads and subscriptions on the site.

On the anniversary of his arrest last January, Dotcom launched a new file-hosting site called ‘Mega.’

AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards

 Sir Tim Berners-Lee has lashed out at Western governments, calling them hypocritical for spying on the internet while reproaching other oppressive nations for doing the same; adding that the revelations may change the way people use computers.

The British computer scientist, who invented the Web in 1989, accused the West of "insidious" online spying after whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked details of the US National Security Agency’s (NSA) dragnet telephone and internet surveillance programs, implicating US and UK in a wave of international criticism.

"In the Middle East, people have been given access to the internet, but they have been snooped on and then they have been jailed," Berners-Lee told The Times newspaper in an interview.

"It can be easy for people in the West to say 'Oh, those nasty governments should not be allowed access to spy.' But it's clear that developed nations are seriously spying on the internet," he added.

Berners-Lee believes that the new revelations about Western government spying could change the way people, especially teenagers, use the internet and their computers.

"Teenagers who are unsure about their sexuality, who need to contact others, or people being abused trying to find helplines... There are things that happen on the net that are very intimate, which people are going to be loath to do if they feel there is somebody looking over their shoulder."

Another concern that Berners-Lee raises is around the safety of the already collected information.

British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with inventing the World Wide Web.(AFP Photo / Carl Court)

  The web’s inventor spoke out before accepting a US$1.5 million joint engineering prize awarded by Queen Elizabeth to five men, who are considered to be the fathers of the internet, including Robert Kahn, Vint Cerf, Louis Pouzin and Marc Andreessen.

Berners-Lee argues that internet freedom must be safeguarded against companies or governments trying to take over control.

"When you make something universal … it can be used for good things or nasty things … we just have to make sure it's not undercut by any large companies or governments trying to use it and get total control," he said at the award ceremony.

One of the award recipients, Google Vice-President Vint Cerf, suggested companies should come up with ways to go around the surveillance, such as developing encrypted web communication.

Snowden blew the whistle on an NSA program called PRISM that collects correspondence and video conversations of foreigners using internet services like Google, Skype, Yahoo and Facebook.

He also provided documents showing the intelligence agency collects data on phone calls handled by the major US telephone companies.

On top of that the whistleblower exposed British spy agency GCHQ’s access to the global network of communications, storing calls, Facebook posts and internet histories, and revealed that it shares this data with the NSA.

Snowden was charged with espionage by US federal prosecutors on Friday and currently remains in an airport limbo in Russia’s transit zone after he flew to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport from Hong Kong.

Snowden’s stopover in the transit zone could be prolonged indefinitely, as his passport, which was annulled by the US on Saturday, leaves him without the necessary documentation with which to travel, a source reportedly connected with Snowden told Interfax.

 Facebook says it has not provided any user data to Turkish authorities in response to protest-related requests. It comes after a Turkish minister said the social media site has been cooperative “for a long time,” and that Twitter will likely comply too.

“Facebook has not provided user data to Turkish authorities in response to government requests relating to the protests,” the company said in a statement. “We reject all government data requests from Turkish authorities and push them to formal legal channels unless it appears that there is an immediate threat to life or a child.”

Facebook has expressed concerns over a draft bill on social media which would require companies to share data with Turkish authorities. Executives plan on raising the issue during this week’s meeting with Turkish officials in the US.

Earlier on Wednesday, Turkish Minister of Transport, Maritime Affairs and Communications, Binali Yildirim, said the country’s government was satisfied with Facebook’s assistance.

“Facebook has been working in coordination with the Turkish authorities for a long time. They have a unit in Turkey. We don’t have any problem with them,” Yildirim said. The statement sparked outrage among Turkish social network users.

Turkish protesters stand in Red Crescent square during a 'duranadam' (standing person) protest in Ankara (AFP Photo / AdemM Atlan)

  Yildirim added that Twitter has not shown such “positive approach” despite “necessary warnings” from Turkey. He said that the Turkish government has asked Twitter, along with other social media sites, to set up a representative office inside the country.

“We have told all social media that...if you operate in Turkey you must comply with Turkish law…When information is requested, we want to see someone in Turkey who can provide this...there needs to be an interlocutor we can put our grievance to and who can correct an error if there is one,” he said.

“Twitter will probably comply too. Otherwise, this is a situation that cannot be sustained,” Yildirim stressed. His statement was presumably referring to social media’s role in the country’s recent anti-government protests. He added that the government seeks only to “turn down the volume of the social media,” rather than restricting it.

Another ministry official told Reuters that Turkey has asked Twitter to reveal the identities of users who posted messages which were considered insulting to Prime Minister Erdogan or the Turkish government. It was not immediately clear if Twitter responded.

Prime Minister Erdogan called social networking sites a “nuisance” during the anti-government protests in June, after local media reported that dozens were arrested for “inciting unrest” via social media.

The country's interior minister previously announced that Ankara was working on new regulations that would target so-called "provocateurs" on social media. A source told Reuters that the justice ministry had proposed that any Turk wishing to open a Twitter account would have to enter his or her national identification number. This was reportedly turned down by the transport ministry for being technically infeasible.

Turkey has a long record of legislative moves which rights groups believe fall under internet censorship. Ankara banned YouTube for more than two years in 2008 after a video clip ‘insulted’ the Turkish Republic’s founder, Ataturk.

Kim Dotcom (Reuters / Nigel Marple)

 Tech mogul Kim Dotcom announced that he plans to be involved in next New Zealand general election while lobbying against a new legislation which would give spy agencies more powers to retrieve internet users’ personal information.

"I'm going to get engaged. I'm going to help as much as I can during the next election to make sure there is a government that takes the internet more seriously," said the founder of the file-sharing service Megaupload at the "Mega Breakfast" annual meeting of the Institute of IT Professionals , the New Zealand Herald reports.

He urged the IT community to carry out a campaign to improve government policy concerning internet business and issues. At the meeting he called to lobby against a new legislation that would require internet and telecoms companies to provide backdoor government access and approval for new technology.

The new proposed  bill would allow the New Zealand’s Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) to spy on its citizens on behalf of another agency, if they have a warrant.

The GCSB carried out domestic surveillance for the Security Intelligence Service, police and other agencies until last August, when the Kim Dotcom case raised questions about its legality. It was found that the GCSB were illegally spying on the Megaupload founder, a German national with New Zealand residency, prior to his arrest in January 2012 for alleged copyright violation.

Dotcom was subsequently arrested by the authorities who were aiding a US investigation into copyright violation. In March, Dotcom was granted the right to sue the secret services agency. According to an inquiry released in April, another 88 New Zealand citizens may have been illegally spied on.

Along with his Mega founder Mathias Ortmann he told the IT colleagues at the meeting that the recent revelations of the US NSA mass surveillance program by former CIA employee Edward Snowden, including New Zealand’s GCSB, had boosted the demand for his company’s encrypted cloud storage system.

At the Breakfast meeting Dotcom dismissed  Prime Minister John Key’s  statement that the spying law had been misunderstood.

"The law says you can't spy on New Zealanders. John Key stands in front of cameras and says 'we misunderstood the law'. How stupid can you get?"

The revelation of illegal spying by government agencies had created a potential shift in responsibility for the Megaupload business, said Dotcom.

"The potential settlement or damages situation has changed quite a bit since we discovered what went on. Potentially, at some point, we could go after the New Zealand government for full damages. I've said before I don't want to be a burden to New Zealand. The majority of that (settlement) would be reinvested in submarine cables, rural broadband."

The internet tycoon announced that he is currently involved with two investor groups and is set to start work on a second submarine cable to bring faster internet to New Zealand within 12 months.

The Institute billed Dotcom and Ortmann’s addresses as a chance to engage with those behind "New Zealand's largest tech start-up this year" said the NZ Herald.

Edward Snowden, a former contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), is seen during a news broadcast on television at a restaurant in Hong Kong June 26, 2013. (Reuters)

Hong Kong’s Justice Secretary said the US confused Snowden’s middle name, lacked his passport number in a request for his arrest and failed to provide evidence for charges, preventing HK officials from detaining the leaker before he left the territory.

The Hong Kong government did not assist Edward Snowden, the man who revealed the top-secret NSA surveillance program PRISM, in leaving the territory, but incomplete paperwork prevented officials from issuing a provisional arrest warrant, Hong Kong Justice secretary Rimsky Yuen Kwok-keung said on Tuesday, according to the South China Morning Post.

The US referred to the former CIA employee and NSA contractor’s middle name as ‘James’, however the Hong Kong Immigration Department had the name ‘Joseph’, Yuen said. The application also lacked Snowden’s passport number, so there was ‘no legal basis’ to prevent him from leaving Hong Kong.

“Therefore, it was impossible and there was no legal basis under Hong Kong law for the Department of Justice to ask a Hong Kong judge to sign off on a provisional arrest warrant,” Yuen said adding  “[Thus] there then was no legal basis to restrict or ban Mr Snowden from leaving Hong Kong.”

The US said Sunday it was “disappointed” by Hong Kong’s “troubling”  failure to detain the man responsible for the biggest leak of US intelligence in history, before he fled the territory on Saturday. The White House has insisted that the personal information in the paperwork of the leaker the US submitted to Hong Kong was correct.

The Hong Kong government on June 15 received the US request to detain Snowden, who also revealed US cyber spying on China. It named three charges including unauthorized disclosure of national defense information, unauthorized disclosure of intelligence and stealing state property.

In this file picture taken on June 13, 2013 protesters shout slogans in support of former US spy Edward Snowden as they march to the US consulate in Hong Kong. (AFP Photo)

 Yuen said that the US failed to clarify the first two charges and did not provide any evidence for the arrest, rejecting suggestions that Hong Kong had been deliberately stalling for time.

“We had not been deliberately delaying the process. All along, we have acted in full accordance with the law,” Yuen said.

According to the extradition treaty between the two countries, the HK officials had no authority to honor the USA’s extradition request due to lack of evidence under the first two charges.

The justice secretary noted that he had requested information from the US on Thursday and the US government has not responded to the request.

"Until the minute of Snowden's departure, the US government had not yet replied to our requests for clarification," he noted. "Any suggestion that we have been deliberately letting Mr Snowden go away or to do any other things to obstruct the normal operation is totally untrue."

Hong Kong had not yet received a reply from the US to this request, as of Tuesday, said the South China Morning Post.

Whistleblower Edward Snowden is reportedly in the transit zone of Sheremetyevo International Airport in Moscow. 

Instead of devoting coverage to surveillance information revealed by Edward Snowden, the mainstream US media has slandered him. This reaction highlights the inadequacies of the American news cycle, geopolitical analyst Eric Draitser told RT.

RT: It appears Snowden is still in Russia, although he is believed to be in an international transit zone. What do you think he will do next?

Eric Draitser: I think that’s impossible to say at the moment. We hear reports about Ecuador, though we’ve seen with the case of Julian Assange that that’s no guarantee. We’re still waiting to see. But what I think is most interesting is the reaction here in the United States. Your reports have talked about what we’re seeing internationally, maybe in governments or people around the world - but in the United States, we see a concerted propaganda campaign designed to demonize and destroy the image, if not the total character, of Edward Snowden. We see this happening from the right wing and also the left wing.  This is now becoming a real story inside the United States – the way in which the controlled media is attacking Snowden and serving the interests of the surveillance state and the partisanship behind President Obama.

RT: The US government wants Moscow to go in and arrest Snowden even though he’s in an international transit zone - a limbo area which is not officially on Russian territory. Do you think this is going to sour relations between the US and Russia?

ED: I think this is going to precipitate a fight out in the open, but remember that relations have been soured long ago. Remember that the United States has been positioning missiles throughout Eastern Europe and Asia for years. Washington has also placed missiles inside Turkey and elsewhere for the purpose of menacing Russia. The United States has engaged in cyber-attacks launched at its enemies in China and Iran, and it’s likely the Russians are involved in that too. So the relationship has been under the assault of the ruling class in the United States for quite a while – and the reason is because President Putin represents opposition. He represents a counter-veiling force to US hegemony. I think that the Snowden case is really simply a microcosm of that. Moreover, we see that Putin and the government in Russia represent the interests of international law, humanitarian concerns, and basic human decency – just like with Syria. The notion of extraditing Snowden to the United States is essentially delivering him into the hands of torturers, into the hands of criminals.

RT: You just talked about these counter-veiling forces rising. One of these forces is China. A lot of reports suggest that China may have helped Snowden leave the country and assisted him along the way. Is Beijing sending Washington a big message here?

ED: Absolutely. And I think the revelations from Snowden about the hacking of computers in Hong Kong is only the tip of the iceberg. We know that the cyber-attacks that have been launched by the United States, Israel, and their partners are only what we know publicly. There’s much more happening behind the scenes and the Chinese are angry about that. They’re also angry at attempts to demonize them as if they are somehow the ones conducting an illegal operation. This is purely deflection away from the fact that the United States is the criminal violator of human rights, that the United States is the one engaged in illegal activity, and that the United States attempts to impose its will through so-called diplomacy on countries like China and Russia against their own interests and against the interests of international law. Ten years ago, this would have stood. Today, not so much.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

The US government pulls out all stops to prosecute, hound, and capture those who reveal classified data. This plus constant control and surveillance makes it impossible to keep anything private or secret, Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges told RT.

RT: The US is focused on chasing Snowden, which seems to have distracted from his revelations - is anyone in the States asking whether the surveillance system prism was constitutional?

Chris Hedges: Some people are, but not many, which is quite distressing. You have Glenn Greenwald, the journalist from The Guardian who broke the story. You have lawyers Michael Ratner from the Center of the Constitutional Rights asking those kinds of questions, but I think that for those of us who care about freedom of information, about protecting sources, about stopping wholesale government surveillance, I think it’s been a very lonely time. And I think one of the things that’s been so distressing is that the serious questions that should be asked are not being asked.

RT: Does that play into the hands of the government and what Washington would like to keep secret?

CH: Well they can’t keep it a secret anymore, it’s exposed. But I think what they have done is divert attention to that kind of a mini-soap opera that is now taking place, as Snowden leaps from Hong Kong to Moscow, to ostensibly Cuba, Ecuador. They knew we saw the same thing happening to Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, to Bradley Manning, who exposed war crimes and is now on trial in military court in Maryland. It’s a very similar and oppressing kind of scenario, where the state propaganda machine has quite effectively diverted attention away from where it should be, which is the effect that there is no more privacy anymore left in the United States, and focused attention on character, on activities of Snowden. Through their lens, it’s not a dispassionate view of either Snowden or what he’s done.

 RT: When do you think Snowden might reveal his whereabouts and where do you think he will go?

CH: He doesn’t have many options: Cuba, Ecuador, maybe Venezuela, that’s about it. He has of course asked for political asylum as [Assange did], although the British government isn’t allowing him to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London. I mean these kinds of questions, again, for me are not the paramount questions as a journalist. The fact that the government sees virtually all the communications, electronic communications of American citizens, means that I can’t work. I think one of the reasons that Snowden went public with his disclosure is that he knew quite well that the US government has all the communications that Glenn Greenwald has made, and there was no way to hide those kind of contacts between himself as a traditional whistleblower and the journalist who wrote up this story of the wholesale spying on most American citizens by the National Security Agency. And that means that in essence you’re shutting down any capacity to shine a light on the internal workings of power. It becomes impossible to challenge the official narrative - and let’s not forget that the government quite selectively leaks classified information all the time to make themselves look good. But once information is exposed, that tarnishes them, and I think it’s quite clearly unconstitutional. Then the security and surveillance state pulls out all stops to prosecute, hound and capture those person or persons who made those revelations, and that’s precisely what we’re seeing, it’s not an uncommon scenario judging by what we’ve seen happening to Julian Assange and given of course what’s been happening to Bradley Manning.

RT: The authorities say surveillance is essential to counter terrorism. But does it justify daily spying on people, including on heads of state?

CH: I covered Al-Qaeda for the New York Times and spent seven years in the Middle East with a variety of Jihadist groups. These people are well aware, acutely aware of the fact that all of their communications is closely monitored by American security and intelligence officials. So there’s nothing new in these revelations to them. What is new is that we as Americans essentially have no privacy left, no capacity to communicate without the eye of the government upon every form of communications that we make – that’s what’s new. And that has nothing to do with terrorism, that has nothing to do with national security, that has to do with control of the population, as we see greater and greater effects - catastrophic effects - from climate change as the very fragile global economy again teeters on the brink of collapse, the security in surveillance state wants the capacity to shut down any form of dissent, and this mechanism of the wholesale surveillance gives them precisely that.

NSA programs revealed by Edward Snowden will continue as they are “lawful, appropriate, and effective” and the US people’s representatives voted in favor of them, former NSA and CIA director Michael Hayden said on RT's SophieCo.

RT: In your opinion, is Snowden a hero or a traitor?

Michael Hayden: Well, he certainly is not a hero. I don’t think he meets the legal definition of being a ‘traitor’ according to our Constitution. But he certainly has done a very, very bad thing and I think he is also a very troubled young man. So perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between the two extremes you’ve pointed out.

RT: Do you think he could be a Chinese spy agent? Dick Cheney seems to think so?

MH: I don’t have evidence of it. It’s a curious thing. Why would he go to Hong Kong for his refuge while other places are available that he could have chosen, and given the state of the Sino-American relations, particularly when it comes to things about the cyber domain, it’s really was a curious choice. But again, no evidence to date. I tell you how I would handle it while still in government. I would make this one of my working hypotheses - one, not all of my working hypotheses - and then try to seek out evidence that proves or disproves the hypothesis.

RT: You were the head of NSA and CIA. What happens when a young colleague of yours, a talented good guy, walks into your office and tells you “Boss, I think we have the problem with PRISM.” What do you say to that?

MH: Actually, that is a great question. What makes all of this so troubling is that Mr. Snowden didn’t do that. If he wants to be a true whistleblower, you need to go to a supervisor, the supervisor’s boss or the General Counsel inside the organization or the Inspector General or even to members of Congress to express his complaints. There is a clear structure within the US Government to do that. Now look. I’ll be the first to admit that requires great courage and human beings being human beings - there might be some of them who would attempt to take retribution against an officer who attempted to do that. But that’s the right way to do these things. When somebody comes to you with a concern, certainly, it’s the truth for me. You’ve got to take those concerns very seriously. This is somebody acting out of conscience and you need to sit down and talk with that individual and if necessary follow up to see if the concerns actually have real merit.

RT: I remember back in 2007 there were also cases of whistleblowing when you were the head of NSA. Did these men address you with their concerns before they went public with their information?

MH: I had actually left NSA by 2005 and so those events of 2007 and 2008 came after I’d left. I’ve no knowledge of that other than complaining about some technological decisions that were made inside NSA, I’ve no knowledge that anything akin to an appropriate whistleblower process had begun at the agency.

RT: General Hayden, with a secrecy breach like this, a disaster basically, what’s going on inside the NSA and CIA right now? You should know as somebody who’s being responsible for this. What are you going to do when the major crisis exposes you?

MH: What you’re looking for is responsibility, not necessarily guilt. You want people to be open to you, you want a clear description with regard to what has happened until you’ve got the individuals to learn, to create lessons that allow you to prevent or at least reduce the possibilities that these kinds of things could happen in the future. And so you’re doing a lot of forensics to the system, you’re talking to people who knew this young man. What kind of things did his action suggest about him? You’re talking to a supervisor. What did you suspect about him? Did this surprise you? Did you see any kind of indicators? And then you are also doing a damage assessment. Let me list for you three different lanes in which damages almost certainly occurred. Number one - it tells our adversaries our capabilities. It tells them what we can do and also tells them what we won’t do - and that can be very damaging. Secondly, this will punish American firms who have cooperated with NSA. Punish them, even though all they have ever done is simply obey American law and help defend the United States. Then finally, if there is anyone else out there in the world, another government or potential source who might want to have cooperated with the United States, why would they trust us when we promise that we can keep a secret. So all those things are damaging.

RT: You brought up firms. From your own experience have social media companies any choice other than to obey NSA orders?

MH: Again, I’m not a part of NSA for a long time now. But my understanding of the program is that these companies, these private concerns were responding to specific court orders and under US law they can fight those orders in court, some have done that. I don’t know the results of any of these contentious cases, but my suspicion is they won some and they lose some.

RT: But if they’re doing everything that is legal, why are you saying they’ll be punished? 

MH: Because these are international firms. And although acting very consistently with the American law, there’ll be others in the world who’ll look at them with suspicion. And certainly, from my point of view, unwanted suspicion. That’s what’s going to happen.

RT: What’s happening to the programs like the ones Snowden made public, this PRISM data collecting tool? Are they being wrapped up right now or is the NSA going to go ahead with it, in your opinion?

MH: I would see no reason why either of the programs that he revealed, the metadata program or the PRISM program, why they would be stopped. They’re lawful, they’re appropriate, they’re effective. But the effectiveness may be the element that is most harmed by these revelations. Again, adversaries now know what we can do and also know what we won’t do - the boundaries of American law and policy. And that gives them a higher probability that they’ll be able to protect their communications from United States agencies trying to intercept them. 

RT: Though the PRISM is huge and it has turned America into a database platform for all its access to Facebook, Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, I mean it missed Tsarnaevs’ [the brothers who allegedly organized two explosions at the Boston Marathon] online activity prior to the Boston bombing. Are you maybe casting a net too wide?

MH: Actually the Tsarnaevs were not detected by any program like this because PRISM isn’t suitable for detecting the kind of communication that Tsarnaev brothers had prior to the Boston bombing. I mean PRISM is about foreigners. It requires a belief on the part of the National Security Agency that those people we want to monitor are foreigners and have foreign intelligence value. We’ve got to prove in broad terms to an American court before we can insist that one of these companies assist us in their effort. 

RT: President Obama has claimed surveillance programs have stopped 50 attacks. But since these programs began operating shortly after 9/11 how many terrorist attacks were prevented solely by information gathered from these PRISM-like programs that could not be gained through any other source? 

MH: Right. That’s a great question and I don’t want to be indirect with my answer, but I’m going to be indirect. I don’t know whether it is a correct answer to your question how many have been prevented only to the efforts of these two programs. In actuality, I cannot point to any program very often that is the sole reason that we have the intelligence success. One of the great achievements of the American intelligence in the past dozen years is that we’ve been able to blend multiple streams of information with a little bit sub-data here and a little bit sub-data there. That we’ve been able to combine into a meaningful picture. In other words we’ve been able to pick up shards of glass that individually have no meaning, but because we have a collectively large number of shards, we can actually combine them into a very meaningful mosaic. 

RT: I’ve got another quote from Snowden: “The consent of the governed is not consent if it’s not informed.” I think it’s frank to say that a lot of people feel uncomfortable after these leaks, because it’s seems like you break into my home, you listen to my phone calls, you intercept  my emails, my private SMSs without telling me you’re doing it. And you’re labeling all that as “war on terror”. I mean, can you really not fight war on terror and protect privacy, my privacy? 

MH: Well, I think the president was right when he said the responsible government has to make choices. You can’t have absolute privacy and absolute security, there always has to be a balance between the two. The balance, frankly, is based upon the totality of its circumstances: what is the nature of the threat? How real is that threat? How imminent is that threat? How effective is this tool in detecting that threat? I think I agree with the president. This is the suitable balance. Now I should point out that some of the things you’ve said Americans are saying, are simply errors of fact. We aren’t doing many of those things. Unfortunately, here in the US, when these kinds of stories get out into the public domain, I am fond of saying, they are rushed into the darkest corner of the room as rapidly as possible. So what is the important thing is to make sure that the American people exactly understand what we’re doing. Now to go back to Snowden’s quote about the concern of the governed - this is not ancient Athens. This isn’t a direct democracy where we allow the entire population to vote on every proposition. We are representative democracy. The people’s representatives were informed of these programs and they voted in favor of them. They’ve been approved by two presidents, they’ve been approved by the American court system. In the American system, at the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch lying out, it doesn’t get any better than that in terms of concern of the governed. 

RT: I mean, the security is not really state religion that cannot be questioned, and if you question it, than you’re not loyal. Now you’re saying that that the PRISM hasn’t spied on Americans? It hasn’t gone into private emails?

MH: No. The predicate for PRISM is that the target of the surveillance is a foreigner and what’s happened is that story has been confused with the metadata story, which is indeed about Americans, but it’s about American phone records, not American conversations or communications. 
RT: What exactly does it tell you about your system when your own people blow the whistle on you? Because it’s not the first time.

MH: No, it’s not. I mentioned before that I believe Mr. Snowden was not a hero, he had committed a crime. But he was also a troubled young man, let me phrase it for you this way: What kind of moral arrogance is required to believe your personal moral judgment trumps that of two presidents, two houses of our Congress, the American courts and over 30,000 of your coworkers. I would admit in American society, as in Russian society, we have a generation of young folks whose kind of absolute commitment to transparency which is well beyond anything of my generation and even my children’s generation. We’re now, like the Russian security services or any security service throughout the world, recruiting from populations whose views toward secrecy and openness are a bit different than those that have been traditionally held by the people we have recruited in a former age. So you’ve got Mr. Snowden, you’ve got Private Manning, both of whom have an almost romantic attachment to revealing secrets. But in both cases this commitment to absolute transparency has created great harm to the security of people around the world.

RT: If not whistleblowers, who else can stop you in case you push it too far? There must be checks and balances everywhere, right? 

MH: You’re right. There is a tactical point for you. A whistleblower has to point out unlawful activity. Even Snowden admits this wasn’t unlawful. He claims that it was unwise, it was inconsistent with his personal value system, but no one claims it was unlawful, it was consistent with law. It was done under the record order with the knowledge of the Congress. And it’s hard for me to imagine that anyone would afford him whistleblower status, at least in the technical, legal definition of the term. Now, where do you get debate? You get debate in our Representative Government. You get debate from a judge who pushes back saying he is uncomfortable with the outlines of the court order we want him to sign. You get debate in the American Congress, where members, particularly at the intelligence oversight committees, get a chance to look at these programs and to pass on their merits of the as to whether or not they would authorized them or appropriate funds for them. 

RT: Are you really saying that giving all the details of my private life to a government agency is the new normal, a new patriotic norm? 

MH: No, no, not at all. And again what you’re saying, that’s a reflection as to how badly-reported this story has been. The details of your private life are not being shared with the government. These two programs that the government gets is a macro database of phone calls that just fact of call, nothing more. With regard to the PRISM program, as I’ve already said, it focuses on foreign communications of intelligence value to the United States. That’s what the National Security Agency might add, what the FSB [Russia’s security agency] is all about. 

RT: The whole thing is that may be if the Security State was a little more transparent - like Obama promised before he was elected president, then maybe the American public and the foreigners would be more comfortable with programs like PRISM.

MH: You bring up a wonderful point. Somebody with my background, coming from the security services - we’re reluctant to say much about anything. We actually think we’re more operationally effective the less our adversaries know about what it is we’re doing. But we also realize we work in a democracy. I’m now fond of saying that in the American democracy the president probably gets to do anything one-off, one time based upon his presidential authority and a narrow definition that it’s simply lawful. But in our system the president doesn’t get to do anything over a long period of time without generalized popular support, and you’re right, you don’t get generalized popular support unless the American people, and especially their representatives, have some sense of broad knowledge, maybe not detailed, but broad knowledge about what their government is doing on their behalf. I now have to admit, even as a security professional, that we may have to make these things more public – things that actually might make us a little less effective, so that we can make the American population more comfortable about what it is we’re doing. Otherwise the American population, the American democracy, will tell us to stop doing all of what we’re doing. We’re going to have to have these tradeoffs – transparency, popular acceptance and operational effectiveness.

RT: General Hayden, you’ve brought up your security background, but you’ve also come from a long line of Republicans. What is the Republican point of view on all of this, I mean, how does the ‘less government’ idea sit in with all of this?

MH: I think your view is very interesting and dynamic here in the United States. I mean, let me first of all challenge the assessment that I was Republican and I was selected to be the head of the CIA by a Republican President, but I was selected to be the head of NSA by a Democratic President [Bill] Clinton. But your question is about the Republican Party. It’s quite interesting here in the American political system that the extreme right of the Republican Party and the extreme left of the Democrat Party seem to be coming together with regard to the coming concern about some of the things that the center is doing to keep Americans safe and free. So you do actually have some Republicans criticizing this program on civil liberties “less government is better government” grounds, rather than addressing the program on what is frankly more traditional Republican ground on the grounds of national security. 

RT: At the end of the day the fact is that the PRISM-gate has damaged Obama’s reputation personally. He has also undermined the reputation of his office, of the American presidency in the eyes of the world. We saw how he was in front of [German Chancellor Angela] Merkel in Germany and he had to justify himself, he had to justify PRISM for the whole world. Do you think this scandal, these leaks, will actually make him push to security state back even if he doesn’t want to do that? Do you think he can challenge the whole thing? 

MH: I think there is a bit of fear going on in this, with all due respect to the leading figures in Germany or the United States, alright? Let’s all admit very candidly that all nations conduct espionage. All of them do. We’ve focused on the US now because we actually are more transparent about espionage than any other country on Earth. That’s really what the issue is here. That’s why this is a publicly discussable item. But it’s not because what America’s doing is unique.

RT: How can ranking officials be an exception? Because leaks say foreign officials were bagged more than once, for example at the G20 summit in London. How does spying over then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s calls help fight the War on Terror?

MH: I have no views on any actual operation activity of American intelligence services and I would also in view that all nations on this planet have legitimate foreign intelligence concerns beyond the War on Terror. This is just not about terrorism, it’s about foreign intelligence. I repeat, all nations conduct foreign intelligence.

RT: Just to wrap it up, given what we’ve discussed, do you for see a rollback on the surveillance state in general, a cut back on it, or is it going to go with the same pace?

MH: What I foresee is these two programs, the very light touch on the American privacy created by the metadata phone program and the PRISM program, my personal judgment – they both go forward. They’ve already had wide bipartisan support. They will continue. But what we’ve been talking about here today, what my country [and] many people around the world have been talking about for the past two weeks, that will generate a global discussion about what is the meaning of privacy in the internet era, what are the true rules, what are the legitimate expectations of privacy in the world in which everyone is connected. I had an advisory board at CIA and I would give them tough problems. One of the tough problems I gave them was this question of security and transparency. Here I frame the question, I said “will the US be able to conduct espionage in the future inside a broader political culture, but every day demand more transparency and more public accountability from every aspect of the national life?” They studied the problem and came back to me and their final answer was “We’re not sure.”