Edward Snowden

Vladimir Putin – while giving Oliver Stone a tour of the Kremlin – reportedly told the director, “I am not a woman, so I don’t have bad days. I am not trying to insult anyone. That’s just the nature of things. There are certain natural cycles.”

According to Bloomberg, Stone was visiting the Kremlin to film “The Putin Interviews,” an upcoming four-part documentary.

Vladimir Putin told Oliver Stone that while he agrees that the NSA has gone too far in its snooping practices, and that the public sharing of data can't be called treason, he disapproves of Edward Snowden's decision to leak troves of confidential files.

US soldier Chelsea Manning has been released from prison after serving seven years for leaking hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and military files to Wikileaks.
A US Army spokesperson confirmed to the BBC that she had left Fort Leavenworth military prison in Kansas.

WikiLeaks released what it claims is the 31-page user guide for a CIA device code-named “Weeping Angel.” It can turn some Samsung TVs into surveillance tools with an implant for recording audio from a TV’s built-in microphone.

Germany’s foreign intelligence service BND spied on media e-mails, faxes and phone calls, including more than a dozen BBC numbers in London and Afghanistan, Spiegel news reported.

The surveillance, which began in 1999, also extended to Reuters news agency and the New York Times, it is alleged.

“We are disappointed to hear these claims,” a BBC spokesperson said.

Russia could return Edward Snowden to the US as a “gift” to President Donald Trump, according to two US intelligence sources cited by NBC News on Friday. One unnamed official, who NBC said gleaned information from “a series of highly sensitive intelligence reports,” said such a move could be an attempt to “curry favor” with the Trump administration.

U.S. President Barack Obama on Jan. 17 shortened the prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, the former U.S. military intelligence analyst who was responsible for a 2010 leak of classified materials to anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, the biggest such breach in U.S. history. 

Whistleblower Edward Snowden was given the permission to stay for another two years in Russia according to a Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova.

After that period he has the legal right to become a Russian citizen according to the Russian law.

France's first Boeing B787 taxis on the tarmac after its landing for delivery at Paris-Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Roissy, Paris on Dec 2.

American and British spy agencies have tried to intercept data from passengers' mobile phones on commercial airlines including Air France, French media has reported, citing documents from U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden.

A contractor for the National Security Agency has been arrested on charges that he illegally removed highly classified information and stored the material in his home and car, federal prosecutors said Oct. 5.