Ex-CIA worker Edward Snowden revealed as US spy agency NSA massive surveillance operation whistleblower

Britain's Guardian newspaper has identified a 29-year-old former CIA technical worker as the source for leaks about US spy agencies that have rattled Washington's security services in the past few days.  

Snowden came forward  and identified himself as the leaker of the NSA's massive surveillance operation

The Guardian, which published revelations that US security services monitored millions of phone calls as well as tapping into internet servers, said its source, Edward Snowden, had asked it to reveal his identity.
"I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," Mr Snowden told The Guardian in an interview posted on the newspaper's website.
According to the Guardian, Mr Snowden has been working for the National Security Agency (NSA) for the last four years, employed by various outside contractors, including tech consultancy Booz Allen, and computer company Dell.

 Edward Snowden

Three weeks ago, he copied secret documents at the NSA office in Hawaii and told his boss he needed time off for treatment for epilepsy.
He packed his bags and on May 20 flew to Hong Kong, leaving behind a salary of about $US200,000, a girlfriend with whom he lived in Hawaii, a stable career and a loving family.
"I'm willing to sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building," he said.
Booz Allen confirmed Mr Snowden had worked for them, saying he had been employed as part of a Hawaii-based team for less than three months.
"News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the company said in a statement.

NSA secret documents

It added that it would cooperate with any investigations into the matter.

Now hiding out in Hong Kong hotel room

Snowden revealed he was currently located in Hong Kong.

“It’s [Hong Kong's] not an independent part of China at all. I’ve talked to a bunch of people in Washington today, in official positions, and they are looking at this as a potential Chinese espionage case,” said Baer.
When he was asked if there was a possibility to extradite Snowden, Baer responded, “We’ll never get him in China. They’re not about to send him to the United States and the CIA is not going to render him, as he said in the tape, is not going to try to grab him there.”
President Obama recently met with China's Presdent Xi Jinping where they discussed issues of cybersecurity.
Baer said, "“It almost seems to me that this was a pointed affront to the United States on the day the president is meeting the Chinese leader,” Baer said, “telling us, listen, quit complaining about espionage and getting on the internet and our hacking. You are doing the same thing.”

Spy boss says leaks caused 'huge, grave damage'

Mr Snowden's actions are comparable to that of the WikiLeaks whistleblower Bradley Manning, who is currently on trial in the US and facing life in prison for aiding the enemy.
The bombshell disclosure of top secret documents by Mr Snowden implicated some of the biggest firms in Silicon valley, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Apple, PalTalk, AOL, Skype and YouTube.

 Source:
http://www.breitbart.com 
http://www.abc.net.au

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Facebook copy hashtag service of Twitter

Facebook today announced that it is bringing hashtags to its service, letting users add context to a post, indicate that it is part of a larger discussion, as well as discover shared interests. The company says hashtags have become “a vital part of popular culture” and since it has seen users using them on the social network organically, it has decided to actually implement the feature.
While you could always technically create a hashtag on Facebook (just put a # before any word), they will now be clickable, taking you to a feed of what other people and Pages are saying about that event or topic. On hashtag pages, you will naturally only be able to see the posts that you would normally see elsewhere on the social network: those that your friends have shared with you as well as those shared as Public.

The new feature means Facebook users can now:

• Search for a specific hashtag from your search bar. For example, #Wimbledon2013, #blogmytuts, #FathersDay or #Wedding.
• Click on hashtags that originate on other services, such as Instagram.
• Compose posts directly from the hashtag feed and search results.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the hashtag is a word or a phrase prefixed with the symbol #. Facebook mentions other services that use hashtags, putting Instagram first on its list, and then noting competitors Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest, but notably excluding Google+. Although Twitter does not own the concept of the hashtag, the company has popularized it to the point most people associate the phrase with the social network – nowadays it’s difficult to find a Twitter feed without multiple hashtags, and many tweets have arguably too many.
Facebook and Twitter regularly grab features from each other as use cases for the two social networks continue to overlap. Many users nowadays have both Facebook and Twitter accounts, although the former service is still significantly larger than the latter.


Facebook is presumably adopting the hashtag for the same reasons as Twitter: to let its users organize and filter messages around a single topic or theme. This offers yet another way to browse the social network, in addition to manually going to people’s Timeline profiles and of course visiting the News Feed.
In fact, the company hints that hashtags “are just the first step” in a series of features that will bring conversations about public events, people, and topics on the social network to “the forefront of people’s Facebook experience.” Some of these include trending hashtags and deeper insights, slated to arrive “in the coming weeks and months,” but Facebook wouldn’t share more.


Source:http://thenextweb.com/facebook

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