WASHINGTON, June 21 (Xinhua) -- U.S. federal prosecutors have filed a sealed criminal complaint against Edward Snowden and charged him with espionage, The Washington Post reported on Friday on its website.
Snowden, a former defense contractor and leaker of classified surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA), was charged with espionage, theft and conversion of government property, the newspaper quoted U.S. officials as saying.
U.S. prosecutors have asked China's Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, where the 29-year-old is believed to have fled, to detain him on a provisional arrest warrant, U.S. officials told the newspaper.
The complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction where Snowden's former employer, Booz Allen Hamilton, is headquartered and a district with a long track record of prosecuting cases with national security implications.
Two classified NSA surveillance programs, one collecting U.S. phone records and the other monitoring internet data, were revealed earlier this month after leaks from Snowden.
According to media reports, under the internet surveillance program dubbed PRISM, the NSA and the FBI had been secretly tapping directly into the central servers of nine U.S. internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, emails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and contacts over time.
Snowden admitted to leaking details of two top-secret NSA surveillance programs on June 9. The U.S. Justice Department has since confirmed that a criminal investigation had been launched into the disclosures.
President Barack Obama and officials of the U.S. intelligence community have stressed that the internet surveillance program targeted foreigners and helped thwart terror plots.
Speaking at a hearing last week, FBI Director Robert Mueller vowed to take "all necessary steps to hold the person responsible for these disclosures," but declined to comment publicly on the details of the ongoing investigation.
BEIJING, June 18 (Xinhuanet) -- China has also rejected claims that Edward Snowden was an agent of China. Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying called the allegation "sheer nonsense" and told Washington to come clean on the PRISM program.
"The United States should take the concerns and demands of the international community and the public over this issue seriously, and give an necessary explanation," Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Hua Chunying. Full story
HONG KONG, June 18 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. whistle-blower Edward Snowden said accusations from American politicians that he is a Chinese spy are a "predictable smear" designed to "distract from the issue of U.S. government misconduct", according to a South China Morning Post report on Tuesday.
In the second public comments since he admitted exposing secret U.S. cyberspying programmes, Snowden told readers of Guardian webchat to ask themselves, "if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now." Full story
BERLIN, June 19 (Xinhua) -- Visiting U.S. President Barack Obama defended the country's internet surveillance programs on Wednesday, saying that lives have been saved and threats averted thanks to the monitored information.
Obama said during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel that at least 50 threats, both in the U.S. and countries including Germany, had been averted because of information the National Security Agency (NSA) was able to access. Full story
BEIJING, June 14 (Xinhuanet) - In the past years, the U.S. Government has been blaming other countries for threatening cyber security. However, the recent leakage of the two top-secret U.S. surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA) has smashed the image of the U.S. as a cyber liberty advocate and revealed its hypocrisy.
Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old defense contractor, revealed last week that the NSA is monitoring a wide swath of telephone and Internet activity as part of its counterterrorism efforts. Full story
Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old American intelligence contractor, has revealed himself as the source who disclosed the U.S. government's secret phone and Internet surveillance programs. (Source:CNTV.CN)
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