Hong Kong: Edward Snowden, the former CIA technician who blew the whistle on global surveillance operations, has opened a new front against the US authorities, claiming they hacked into Chinese mobile phone companies to access millions of private text messages.
His latest claims came as some Hong Kong politicians called for Snowden to be protected from extradition to the US after the justice department in Washington filed criminal charges against him late on Friday.
The latest developments will raise fears that the US action may have pushed Snowden into the hands of the Chinese, triggering what could be a tense and prolonged diplomatic and legal wrangle between the world’s two leading superpowers.
Snowden, whose whereabouts have not been publicly known since he checked out of a Hong Kong hotel on June 10, was reported by the Chinese media yesterday to be in a “safe place” in the former British colony.
The 30-year-old intelligence analyst has over the past three weeks leaked a series of documents to The Guardian revealing how US and UK secret services gain access to huge amounts of phone and internet data, raising serious questions about privacy in the internet age.
On Friday, based on documents from Snowden, The Guardian reported that Britain’s spy agency GCHQ has secretly gained access to the network of cables carrying the world’s phone calls and internet traffic, without the authorities having made this known to the public.
It was also reported that GCHQ is processing vast streams of sensitive information which it is sharing with its US partner, the National Security Agency.
Yesterday the former British foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who now chairs the intelligence and security committee, said the committee would launch an investigation into the latest revelations. The Guardian
