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Vodafone reveals existence of secret wires that allow state surveillance (The Guardian):

Vodafone, one of the world’s largest mobile phone groups, has revealed the existence of secret wires that allow government agencies to listen to all conversations on its networks, saying they are widely used in some of the 29 countries in which it operates in Europe and beyond. (…)

The company said wires had been connected directly to its network and those of other telecoms groups, allowing agencies to listen to or record live conversations and, in certain cases, track the whereabouts of a customer. Privacy campaigners said the revelations were a “nightmare scenario” that confirmed their worst fears on the extent of snooping. (…)

(Picture CC from Jonathan Oakley)

Supreme Court refuses to take reporter’s case on revealing confidential source (Washington Post):

(…) The court without comment turned down requests from reporter James Risen and a host of media groups to overturn a lower court order and find that reporters are protected by the Constitution from testifying about their sources. (…)

A district judge had said Risen did not have to testify. But a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond disagreed in a 2 to 1 decision. The majority said that under Supreme Court precedent, the First Amendment does not protect reporters from revealing who supplied them with unauthorized leaks. (…)

(Picture CC by Mike Licht)

Snowden unlikely to ‘man up’ in face of Espionage Act, legal adviser says

In a television appearance on Wednesday morning, Kerry said that if Snowden were a “patriot”, he would return to the United States from Russia to face criminal charges. Snowden was charged last June with three felonies under the 1917 Espionage Act. “This is a man who has betrayed his country,” Kerry told CBS News. “He should man up and come back to the US.”

But

“The laws under which Snowden is charged don’t distinguish between sharing information with the press in the public interest, and selling secrets to a foreign enemy,” Wizner said. “The laws would not provide him any opportunity to say that the information never should have been withheld from the public in the first place. And the fact that the disclosures have led to the highest journalism rewards, have led to historic reforms in the US and around the world – all of that would be irrelevant in a prosecution under the espionage laws in the United States.”

(Picture CC from AK Rockefeller)