Edward Snowden on spyware: 'This is an industry that should not exist'

Governments must impose a global moratorium on the international spyware trade or face a world in which no mobile phone is safe from state-sponsored hackers, Edward Snowden has warned in the wake of revelations about the clients of NSO Group.

Snowden, who in 2013 blew the whistle on the secret mass surveillance programmes of the US National Security Agency, described for-profit malware developers as “an industry that should not exist”.

Digital Dissidents: What it Means to be a Whistleblower

An in-depth look at the most famous whistleblowers of the 21st century and what drives them to speak out.

For some, they are traitors; for others, heroes.

Whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Edward Snowden; and hackers and activists such as the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the former British secret service agent Annie Machon, warn us about the complete surveillance of our society. 

They oppose intelligence agencies, governments and corporations. And for this, they are threatened, hounded and imprisoned. 

Why are they so committed? What drives them? And is there a collective motive?

Digital Dissidents is a two-part documentary that goes into the heart and experiences of what it means to be a whistleblower and the nature of the quests to disclose radical truths hidden from society.

Digital Dissidents

An in-depth look at the most famous whistleblowers of the 21st century and what drives them to speak out.




For some, they are traitors, for others, heroes.

Whistleblowers such as Daniel Ellsberg, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Edward Snowden; and hackers and activists such as the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and the former British secret service agent Annie Machon, warn us about the complete surveillance of our society.

They oppose intelligence agencies, governments and corporations. And for this, they are threatened, hounded and imprisoned.

Why are they so committed? What drives them? And is there a collective motive?

Edward Snowden speaks to Mehdi Hasan

We also look at the narrative regarding refugees, and ask an Iraqi ambassador if it is time to consider a partition.


The Headliner: Edward Snowden and Daniel Ellsberg


When Edward Snowden leaked US government secrets in 2013, he transformed the debate over privacy, liberty and security worldwide.

In Up Front's Headliner segment Snowden responds to his critics, including presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

He describes his life in exile and comments on what it would take for him to return to the US. Mehdi Hasan also asks whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg if the ends justifies the means.

The Week That Was

 The Hair rises to the top.  In an amazing show of ignorance and racism The Hair has ascended to the top of the Republican Presidential national polls.  The Hair appeals to the lowest form of conservative voter, racists, homophobes, the anti immigrant, anti Muslim and the white privilege crowd.  Even with NBC, Univision and and other business partners dropping him like underwater basket weaving 101 it hasn't stopped The Hair from inflecting his racism on the masses at every turn.
 The Hair hit back at Univision by banning them from using his golf course in Florida located next to Univision headquarters.  I'm sure that left a mark.  He'll also be suing Macy's, NBC Universal and Univision. 



Hideo Onishi a member of Japan's Liberal Democratic Party was "reprimanded" by the LDP for voicing their actual feelings about a free press in a public forum.  The editors of the newspapers in question both published in Okinawa slammed Onishi for his asinine remarks.  Last year the LDP sent letters to all of Japan's media outlets "urging" fair coverage in the run up to December's general election. What that letter really meant: LDP policies must always been shown in favorable light.



While America trumpets about freedom of expression and the press the NSA seems to be quite busy not only spying on America's allies but trying to thwart the press in those countries as well.  The NSA's ire was directed at the German magazine Der Spiegel which was involved in the publication of the documents from former NSA contract worker Edward  Snowden.

America loves telling the rest of worlds countries just how screwed up they are. Especially authoritarian governments. Yet, here's America acting just like a second rate dictatorship.




One has to wonder just how obtuse Japanese politicians are?  These people live in, either a parallel universe or  another dimension.  What else explains the ultra stupidity behind nominating  23 sites in the country six of which are associated with forced or slave labour to be designated World Heritage sites by  UNESCO.   That's like nominating the Confederate States of America as a symbol of racial tolerance.  


North Korea is so secretive that most of its citizens have no idea its called North Korea has decided to crack down on the use of the internet by the 50 people who actually have access.  Talk about abject paranoia.  It's like Richard Nixon wiring the Oval Office so he can spy on himself or The East German government hiring half of the population to spy on the other half.  What's Kim Jong-un afraid of?  That given enough information the good citizens of North Korea might rise up and over throw his fat ass after learning they're being allowed to starve just so he can get fat.

Behind the Sunday Times Snowden saga

Anonymous official sources go after Edward Snowden in the UK's media; plus, 30 years of covering Cuba from Miami.

Last week, the front page of Britain's Sunday Times bore the headline: British Spies Betrayed to Russians and Chinese.

For the Rupert Murdoch-owned newspaper's largely conservative audience, the implied breach of security perpetrated by former US National Surveillance Agency (NSA) analyst Edward Snowden could not have been more alarming.

However, standing behind that headline was not a shred of evidence, not one provable fact. Rather, the Sunday Times' bold statement was founded on unnamed government sources making unsubstantiated claims which the journalists involved apparently left unquestioned. Critics panned the piece for swallowing the official line whole - something that Tom Harper of the Sunday Times saw no reason to deny.

"We just publish what we believe to be the position of the British government at the moment," Harper told CNN in an interview.

The idea that a whistleblower may have put national security at risk is a useful one for governments facing ever more scrutiny over the legal and moral basis for mass surveillance and other repressive domestic policies. Daniel Ellsberg and Chelsea Manning will know how Edward Snowden feels.

Erdogan, elections and the future of Turkish journalism

As Turks head to the polls, we look at the country's media; plus, an interview with whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg.




When Turks go to the polls on June 7, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes his Justice and Development Party - the AKP - will secure enough seats in parliament to change Turkey's constitution.

During the campaign, Erdogan and his Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu have been fixated on the media - accusations, arrests, reporting bans and court convictions against journalists.

Last week, Erdogan publicly accused the editor of the Cumhuriyet newspaper of espionage and slammed the New York Times for holding a grudge against him and Turkey itself.

Mass surveillance under the microscope

Two years on from the Snowden leaks, the surveillance debate continues.

The US Patriot Act is the legislation that enabled the National Security Agency (NSA) to conduct mass surveillance on American citizens - as revealed by one if its former contractors, Edward Snowden, nearly two years ago - and on June 1, 2015 one of the most controversial sections of that act will expire.

It will be up to the US Congress to decide on whether or not to renew the law. If undecided, there is a piece of legislation lying in wait called the USA Freedom Act which will reform the NSA and effectively end aspects of the surveillance programme as we know it.

However this debate is not only taking place in Washington. Earlier this month a meeting was held behind closed doors in Britain involving a who is who of tech giants and former intelligence chiefs, all there to discuss the future of surveillance.

UK surveillance under scrutiny

A media post-mortem into the UK's surveillance report. Plus, why five years on in Argentina the media looks so familiar.

It has been close to two years since Edward Snowden blew the lid off the mass surveillance carried out by the US's National Security Agency and by the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). And it has taken almost that long for the UK's Intelligence and Security Committee (the ISC) to figure out what to make of it all in order for an "informed and responsible" debate—as the committee put it—that balances the individual's right to privacy with our collective right to security to take place.

The ISC's report concludes that the GCHQ's surveillance fell within the legal framework and was necessary for uncovering terrorists and cybercrime. These findings are not surprising: the report's authors were appointed by the government. The committee members were supposed to know what GCHQ spies were up to but they did not. It look Snowden to tell them. These findings did not go down well with those close to the story, including Snowden, who provided this British jury with all of the evidence. Some think the state protects their citizens from terrorism; civil liberties groups disagree.