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v t e

The global surveillance disclosure released to media by Edward Snowden has caused tension in the bilateral relations of the United States with several of its allies and economic partners as well as in its relationship with the European Union. On August 12, 2013, President Obama announced the creation of an "independent" panel of "outside experts" to review the NSA's surveillance programs. The panel is due to be established by the Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, who will consult and provide assistance to them.

Keith B. Alexander, the director of the NSA, asserted that these media leaks had caused "significant" and "irreversible" damage to the national security of the United States and this "irresponsible" release of classified information will have a "long-term detrimental" impact on the intelligence community's ability to detect future attacks.

According to a survey undertaken by the human rights group PEN International, these disclosures have had a chilling effect on American writers. Fearing the risk of being targeted by government surveillance, 28% of PEN's American members have curbed their usage of social media, and 16% have self-censored themselves by avoiding controversial topics in their writings.

Fallout

Shortly after the disclosures were published, US President Barack Obama asserted that the American public had no cause for concern because "nobody is listening to your telephone calls", and "there is no spying on Americans".

Allegations of false testimony

Main article: Calls for the resignation of James Clapper

On June 21, 2013, the Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper issued an apology for giving false testimony under oath to the United States Congress, which is a felony under 18 USC s. 1001. Earlier in March that year, Clapper was asked by Senator Ron Wyden to clarify the alleged surveillance of U.S. citizens by the NSA:

Senator Wyden: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"

Director Clapper: "No, Sir."

In an interview shortly after Snowden's disclosures were first published, Clapper stated that he had misunderstood Wyden's question and answered in what he thought was the "least untruthful manner". Later, in his letter of apology, Clapper wrote that he had only focused on Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during his testimony to Congress, and therefore, he "simply didn't think" about Section 215 of the Patriot Act, which justifies the mass collection of telephone data from U.S. citizens. Clapper said: "My response was clearly erroneous—for which I apologize".

Declassification

To increase transparency and because it is in the public interest the Director of National Intelligence authorized the declassification and public release of the following documents pertaining to the collection of telephone metadata pursuant to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act on July 31, 2013. These documents were:

1. Cover Letter and 2009 Report on the National Security Agency’s Bulk Collection Program for USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization
2. Cover Letters and 2011 Report on the National Security Agency's Bulk Collection Program for USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization
3. Primary Order for Business Records Collection Under Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act

On July 19, 2013, Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the Obama administration, urging it to allow companies involved in the NSA's surveillance to report about these activities and to increase government transparency.

According to a survey undertaken by the human rights group PEN International, these disclosures have had a chilling effect on American writers. Fearing the risk of being targeted by government surveillance, 28% of PEN's American members have curbed their usage of social media, and 16% have self-censored themselves by avoiding controversial topics in their writings.

Treatment of journalism

Press censorship

British government officials issued a confidential DA-Notice to several press organizations, with the aim of restricting their ability to report on these leaks. According to the U.S. Army, its decision to block The Guardian website was based upon the need to prevent service personnel from accessing press coverage and online content related to these disclosures.

Detention without charge

On August 18, 2013, David Miranda, partner of journalist Glenn Greenwald, was detained under Schedule 7 of the United Kingdom's Terrorism Act of 2000. Miranda was returning from Berlin, carrying 58,000 GCHQ documents on a single computer file to Greenwald in Brazil. Greenwald described Miranda's detention as "clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ". The Metropolitan Police and Home Secretary Teresa May argued that Miranda's detention "legally and procedurally sound". However, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, responsible for introducing the bill in the House of Lords, said that under the act, police can only detain someone "to assess whether they are involved in the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorism". He said "I am very clear that this does not apply, either on its terms or in its spirit, to Mr Miranda." Antonio Patriota the Brazilian Minister of External Relations said that Miranda's detention was "not justifiable". The reasons for Miranda's detention were sought from the police by British politicians and David Anderson QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. The United States government later said that British officials had given them a "heads up" about Miranda's detention, while adding that the decision to detain him had been a British one.

Destruction of evidence

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger said the newspaper had received legal threats from the British government and was urged to surrender all documents leaked by Snowden. Security officials from the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) later made a visit to the newspaper's London headquarters to ensure that all computer hard drives containing Snowden's documents were destroyed.

Editing of interview transcript

After the NSA Director of Compliance John Delong was interviewed by The Washington Post regarding these disclosures, the White House sent a "prepared" statement to The Post and ordered that "none of Delong's comments could be quoted on the record". The Post refused to comply.

Criminal investigation

Currently, a criminal investigation of these disclosures is being undertaken by Britain's Metropolitan Police Service.

Comments

On August 18, 2013, Amnesty International asserted that if journalists maintain their independence and report critically about governments, they too may be "targeted" by the British government.

On August 20, 2013, Index on Censorship argued that the British government's "threat of legal action" against The Guardian was a "direct attack on press freedom in the UK".

On September 4, 2013, U.N. Special Rapporteur Frank La Rue stressed that the "protection of national security secrets must never be used as an excuse to intimidate the press into silence."

Forced landing of Bolivian President Morales' plane

Five Latin American countries – Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Venezuela – voiced their concerns to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon after the plane of Bolivia's President Evo Morales was denied entry by a number of western European countries, and was forced to reroute to Austria based on "suspicion that United States whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board". Ban said it was important to prevent such incidents from occurring in the future and emphasized that "A Head of State and his or her aircraft enjoy immunity and inviolability".

Lavabit

On August 8, 2013, Lavabit, a Texas-based secure email service provider reportedly used by Snowden, abruptly announced it was shutting down operations after nearly 10 years of business. The owner, Ladar Levison, posted a statement online saying he would rather go out of business than "become complicit in crimes against the American people." He also said that he was barred by law from disclosing what he had experienced over the preceding 6 weeks, and that he was appealing the case in the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Multiple sources speculated that the timing of the statement suggested that Lavabit had been targeted by the US government in its pursuit of information about Snowden. The following day, a similar email service, Silent Circle, preemptively shut down in order to "prevent spying". Snowden said about the Lavabit closure, "Ladar Levison and his team suspended the operations of their 10-year old business rather than violate the Constitutional rights of their roughly 400,000 users. The President, Congress, and the Courts have forgotten that the costs of bad policy are always borne by ordinary citizens, and it is our job to remind them that there are limits to what we will pay." He said that "internet titans" like Google should ask themselves why they weren't "fighting for our interests the same way small businesses are."

Impact on trade

Late October 2013 there has been a notable dropoff of computer hardware and analytic software in the Chinese market. This has been highly attributed to the Snowden document releases, not market saturation or downticks.

Allegation of adverse consequences for US security

Late June 2013, Keith B. Alexander, the director of the NSA, asserted that these media leaks had caused "significant" and "irreversible" damage to the national security of the United States and this "irresponsible" release of classified information will have a "long-term detrimental" impact on the intelligence community's ability to detect future attacks. Furthermore, these leaks have "inflamed and sensationalized" the work that the intelligence community does lawfully under "strict oversight and compliance".

In early October 2013, former GCHQ director Sir David Omand, speaking of how useful for Russia's intelligence services Snowden's stay in Russia could be, told the BBC: "Part of me says that not even the KGB in its heyday of Philby, Burgess and Maclean in the 1950s could have dreamt of acquiring 58,000 highly classified intelligence documents." Snowden stated that he had not leaked any documents to Russia.

Andrew Parker, the director general of the UK Security Service maintained in October 2013 that the exposing of intelligence techniques had given extremists the ability to evade the intelligence agencies; he said, "It causes enormous damage to make public the reach and limits of GCHQ techniques. Such information hands the advantage to the terrorists. It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will."

Shortly afterwards, The Financial Times editorialised that security chiefs were "right to be alarmed, knowing that terrorists can change their modus operandi in response to new information on their capabilities" and there was "no firm evidence that the intelligence agencies are using these new collection capabilities for malign ends."

On Sunday, August 4, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey was shown on the weekly ABC interview show This Week saying that Snowden "has caused us some considerable damage to our intelligence architecture. Our adversaries are changing the way that they communicate."

Attempts to limit NSA

In response to the information released by Snowden, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) proposed the "Amash-Conyers Amendment" to the National Defense Authorization Act. If passed, the amendment would have curtailed "the ongoing dragnet collection and storage of the personal records of innocent Americans." The House rejected the amendment by a vote of 205–217. An analysis indicated that those who voted against the amendment received 122% more in campaign contributions from defense contractors than those who voted in favor.

In September 2013, Senators Mark Udall, Richard Blumenthal, Rand Paul and Ron Wyden introduced a "sweeping surveillance reform" proposal. Called the most comprehensive proposal to date, the "Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act" seeks to end the bulk collection of communication records made legal in section 215 of the Patriot Act and to reign in other "electronic eavesdropping programs". Wyden told the Guardian the Snowden disclosures have "caused a sea change in the way the public views the surveillance system". The draft bill is a blend of 12 similar proposals as well as other legislative proposals.

At the end of October 2013 U.S. Senators introduced two different reform proposals. One, the USA Freedom Act (H.R. 3361/ S. 1599), would effectively halt “bulk” records collection under the USA Patriot Act, while it also would require a warrant to deliberately search for the e-mail and phone call content of Americans that is collected as part of a surveillance program targeting foreigners located overseas. Another proposal is the FISA Improvements Act that would preserve the program while strengthening privacy protections. It would also codifying the requirement that analysts have a “reasonable articulable suspicion” that a phone number is associated with terrorism to query the NSA phone records database; requiring that the FISA court promptly review each such determination; and limiting the retention period for phone records. Both proposals share the introduction of a special advocate to promote privacy interests before the FISA court. According to the Guardian The Obama administration has yet to take a formal position on the USA Freedom Act, which supporters claim has 120 congressional co-sponsors but has yet to pass.

Obama on reform

In a press conference on August 9, 2013 President Obama announced four steps to reform U.S. intelligence gathering measures, to increase transparency and restore public trust in surveillance by NSA, but made no indication to alter the NSA's ongoing mass collection of phone data and surveillance of internet communications in the short term. These four steps are:

1. Reform Section 215 of the Patriot Act which allows the National Security Agency to collect telephone data from millions of communications without a warrant.
2. More transparency: Declassification of the legal rationale for the US government's phone-data collection, release of NSA information that details its mission, authorities, and oversight, installation of a "civil liberties and privacy officer" at the National Security and a website created by the American intelligence community to inform Americans and the world what the intelligence community does and what it doesn’t do, how it carries out its mission, and why it does so.
3. More balance between security and privacy at the Federal Intelligence Surveillance Court by appointing an adversarial voice – such as a lawyer assigned to advocate privacy rights – to argue against the US government to ensure to make sure civil liberties concerns have an independent voice in appropriate cases.
4. Review of all US government intelligence and communications technologies by a group of external experts (composed of former intelligence officials, civil liberties and privacy advocates, and others) which shall provide an interim report in 60 days and a final report by the end of 2014 outlining how the US government can maintain the trust of the people, how it can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse in terms of how surveillance technologies are used and how surveillance impacts US foreign policy. Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper has been directed on August 13, 2013 to form and review the new Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, which is to brief Obama on its interim findings within 60 days of the establishment of the group. A final report and recommendations are to be submitted through Clapper to the president no later than December 15, 2013. The group's purpose is to assess whether the US "employs its technical collection capabilities in a manner that optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust."

In a reaction to Obama above reform proposals responsible for overseeing the program which collects Americans’ telephone communications data in bulk say that they felt in recent years limited in their ability to challenge its scope and legality. They pointed out to intelligence officials who would not volunteer details if questions were not asked with absolute precision in regular meetings; hearing only from government officials steeped in the legal and national security arguments for aggressive spying; and House members must rely on the existing committee staff, many of whom used to work for the spy agencies they are tasked with overseeing, while Senate Intelligence Committee members can each designate a full-time staffer for the committee who has full access. Additional obstacles stemmed from the classified nature of documents, which lawmakers may read only in specific, secure offices; rules require them to leave their notes behind and restrict their ability to discuss the issues with colleagues, outside experts or their own staff.

On August 12, 2013, President Obama announced the creation of an "independent" panel of "outside experts" to review the NSA's surveillance programs. The panel is due to be established by the Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, who will consult and provide assistance to them. The "independent" panel of "outside experts" is composed of intelligence insiders, former White House officials and Obama advisers, who did not discuss any changes to the National Security Agency's controversial activities at its first meeting.

According to press reports in December 2013 the proposals by the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology tasked by U.S. President Obama to review the NSA's surveillance programs (see above in this section) are modest. According to the reports, the review group will recommend that bulk collection of every American’s phone call data continue, possibly by the phone companies instead of the NSA, with tighter restrictions than the “reasonable, articulable suspicion” standard for searching through them that the NSA currently employs. The reports also suggested that the review group will do less to restrain the bulk spying on foreign nationals that is a more traditional NSA activity, but will recommend to add additional privacy safeguards. For surveillance of foreign leaders, the group looks likely to recommend such spying be personally approved by the president or White House officials. Among the 40 submitted reform proposals are likely regular White House reviews of NSA collection activities, the way covert action by the C.I.A. is reviewed annually, to determine whether the intelligence gathered is worth the damage that would be done if a program were revealed, and the creation of an organization of legal advocates who, like public defenders, would argue against lawyers for the N.S.A. and other government organizations in front of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the nation’s secret court that oversees the collection of telephone and Internet “metadata” and of wiretapping aimed at terrorism and espionage suspects. The panel also suggested the imposition of stricter standards before allowing NSA permission to search the collected data. Another task force recommendation would split the code-making component of NSA, known as the Information Assurance Directorate, from the rest of the agency. Currently, one part of NSA breaks electronic security codes while the other part of the agency develops and promotes them. Revelations from Mr. Snowden showed extensive NSA efforts to break different types of encryption and other security mechanisms. The draft report embraces recent suggestions that a civilian lead the NSA and that the agency be separated from Cyber Command, the military's main cyberwarfare unit. The members of the task force are Richard Clarke, a longtime U.S. counterterrorism chief; Michael Morell, former CIA deputy director; Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago law professor; Cass Sunstein, former White House regulatory official; and Peter Swire, a former economic and privacy official. President Obama is expected to reveal the panel recommendations to the public in January 2014.

As a consequence of proposals made by his NSA-review panel, the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, U.S. President Obama is considering as of January 2014 to propose

1. court approval and review of national security letters compelling businesses, under a gag order, to turn over records about customer communications and financial transactions.
2. to have telecommunications firms or a private consortium, rather than the U.S. government, store vast troves of telephone metadata.
3. the establishment of a public advocate who argue against the U.S. government before the secret intelligence court FISC that oversees surveillance.
4. the extension of the protections of the Privacy Act of 1974 to non-U.S. citizens.

After a speech made on January 17, 2014 by Barack Obama on reform proposals the Obama Administration narrowed how far out from suspects N.S.A. analysts could go in analyzing calling records under the section 215 telephone metadata programm. Instead of three the NSA can only look for records for callers up to two phone calls, or “hops,” removed from the number that has come under suspicion. N.S.A. analysts must also obtain court approval before using a phone number to make queries of the database. As of March 24, 2014 the Obama Administration considered further changes to the section 215 telephone metadata programm. The changes would, if approved by Congress, end shift the telephona date collection from the NSA to telephone companies, limit the retention period of that data from 5 years to 18 months and the N.S.A. could obtain specific records only with permission from a judge who must determine whether the standard of suspicion was met for a particular phone number before the N.S.A. could obtain associated records. In addition the Obama Administration envisioned a new kind of court which would require phone companies to swiftly provide records in a technologically compatible data format, including making available, on a continuing basis, data about any new calls placed or received after the order is received. This new kind of court order would allow the government to swiftly seek related records for callers up to two phone calls, or “hops,” removed from the number that has come under suspicion, even if those callers are customers of other companies.

On March 28, 2014 the White House released a fact sheet containing the Obama Administrations proposal to reform the section 215 telephone metadata program, which despite assurances by President Obama and members of Congress like Michael Rogers and Dutch Ruppersberger that metadata isn't personal it can give revealing insight into the private live of every human being. Metadata reveals the contact networks of individuals, enables the creation of movement profiles and predictions about the possible behavior of those under surveillance. Under that proposal:

• the government will not collect these telephone records in bulk; rather, the records would remain at the telephone companies for the length of time they currently do today;
• absent an emergency situation, the government would obtain the records only pursuant to individual orders from the FISC approving the use of specific numbers for such queries, if a judge agrees based on national security concerns;
• the records provided to the government in response to queries would only be within two hops of the selection term being used, and the government’s handling of any records it acquires will be governed by minimization procedures approved by the FISC;
• the court-approved numbers could be used to query the data over a limited period of time without returning to the FISC for approval, and the production of records would be ongoing and prospective; and
• the companies would be compelled by court order to provide technical assistance to ensure that the records can be queried and that results are transmitted to the government in a usable format and in a timely manner.

State governments

Legislators in several states introduced bills based upon a model act, written by anti-surveillance activists, called the "Fourth Amendment Protection Act". The bills seek to prohibit state governments from co-operating with the NSA in various ways: the Utah bill would prohibit provision of water to NSA facilities; the California bill would prohibit state universities from conducting research for the NSA; and the Kansas bill would require a search warrant for data collection.

Lawsuits

In the wake of Snowden's leaks, conservative public interest lawyer and Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman filed a lawsuit claiming that the federal government had unlawfully collected metadata for his telephone calls and was harassing him (see Klayman v. Obama), and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against Director of National Intelligence James Clapper alleging that the NSA's phone records program was unconstitutional (see ACLU v. Clapper). Once the judge in each case had issued rulings seemingly at odds with one another, Gary Schmitt (former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence) wrote in The Weekly Standard, "The two decisions have generated public confusion over the constitutionality of the NSA's data collection program—a kind of judicial 'he-said, she-said' standoff."

US responses

Executive branch

In early June 2013, the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, James R. Clapper, referring to the surveillance activities reported in The Washington Post and Guardian shortly prior, stressed that those were lawful and conducted under authorities approved by the US Congress and that "significant misimpressions" had resulted from those articles; he called the disclosures of "intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe" "reckless". He condemned the leaks as having done "huge, grave damage" to the U.S. intelligence capabilities.

On 29 January 2014, James Clapper gave public testimony to a session of the Senate Intelligence Committee. He asked that "Snowden and his accomplices" return the purloined NSA documents. When Clapper was asked whether the word "accomplices" referred to journalists, Clapper's spokesperson Shawn Turner responded, "Director Clapper was referring to anyone who is assisting Edward Snowden to further threaten our national security through the unauthorized disclosure of stolen documents related to lawful foreign intelligence collection programs."

The NSA formally requested that the Department of Justice launch a criminal investigation into Snowden's actions. On June 14, 2013, US federal prosecutors filed a sealed complaint, made public on June 21, charging Snowden with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person; the latter two charges being under the Espionage Act.

In June 2013, the U.S. military blocked access to parts of the Guardian website related to government surveillance programs for thousands of defense personnel across the country, and to the entire Guardian website for personnel stationed in Afghanistan, the Middle East, and South Asia. A spokesperson described the filtering as a routine "network hygiene" measure intended to mitigate unauthorized disclosures of classified information onto the Department of Defense's unclassified networks.

United States President Barack Obama was dismissive of Snowden in late June, saying, "I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker." In early August, Obama said that Snowden was no patriot and that Americans would have been better off if they had remained unaware of the NSA surveillance activities that Snowden revealed. Obama also said that he had "called for a thorough review of our surveillance operations before Mr. Snowden made these leaks.... My preference, and I think the American people's preference, would have been for a lawful, orderly examination of these laws; a thoughtful fact-based debate that would then lead us to a better place." On August 9, Obama announced that he was ordering Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to arrange for "a high-level group of outside experts to review our entire intelligence and communications technologies.” Director of National Intelligence James Clapper acknowledged that Snowden may have done a public service and started a needed debate about the balance between privacy and security. “As loath as I am to give any credit for what’s happened here, which was egregious, I think it’s clear that some of the conversations that this has generated, some of the debate, actually probably needed to happen,” he said, “It’s unfortunate they didn’t happen some time ago, but if there’s a good side to this, that’s it.”

In January 2014, an unnamed US government official said that President Obama would soon publicly announce "sweeping" changes to the handling of telephone call data. The changes are expected to include a requirement for "a judicial finding" for users of the information, as well as "the creation of an independent privacy advocate on the secretive court that approves the phone record collections."

Congress

Reactions to Snowden's disclosures among members of Congress initially were largely negative. Speaker of the House John Boehner and senators Dianne Feinstein and Bill Nelson called Snowden a traitor, and several senators and representatives joined them in calling for Snowden's arrest and prosecution.

On July 25, the US Senate Committee on Appropriations unanimously adopted an amendment by Senator Lindsey Graham to the "Fiscal Year 2014 Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Bill" that would seek sanctions against any country that offers asylum to Snowden.

In response to the information release by Snowden, Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) proposed an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act to curtail the NSA gathering and storage of the personal records, but the House rejected it by a narrow margin of 205–217. Arizona Senator John McCain criticized politicians who voted in favor of the PATRIOT Act but were outraged by the NSA spying on phone calls by saying, "We passed the Patriot Act. We passed specific provisions of the act that allowed for this program to take place, to be enacted in operation. Now, if members of Congress did not know what they were voting on, then I think that that's their responsibility a lot more than it is the government's."

Public Reactions to Global Surveillance Disclosures

Public protest

The disclosures have inspired public protests.

"Restore the Fourth" protests

After the June 2013 release, mass protests against government surveillance were reported in many parts of the world. In the United States, a political movement known as "Restore the Fourth" was formed and it gained momentum rapidly. In early July, Restore the Fourth was responsible for protests in more than 80 cities including Seattle, San Francisco, Denver, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City. These protests were loosely coordinated via online messaging services and involved protestors from all over the United States. Towards the end of July, it was reported in the media that the German intelligence agency BND had been actively cooperating with the NSA, which sparked demonstrations in 40 German cities involving thousands of protestors all over the country.

"Stop Watching Us" rally

On October 26, 2013, an anti-NSA rally called "Stop Watching Us" was held in Washington, DC, billed by organizers as the "largest rally yet to protest mass surveillance". A diverse coalition of over 100 advocacy groups organized the event and attracted thousands of protestors calling for an end to the mass surveillance made public by Edward Snowden. Speakers included former governor Gary Johnson and NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake

"The Day We Fight Back" protest

"The Day We Fight Back" is an ongoing protest against mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) scheduled for February 11, 2014. The 'day of action' will primarily take the form of webpage banner-advertisements urging viewers to contact their lawmakers over issues surrounding cyber surveillance and a free Internet. By February 10, more than 5,700 websites and organizations had signed up to show support by featuring The Day We a Fight Back banner for 24 hours.

As February 11 drew to a close, The New York Times posted a blog titled "The Day the Internet Didn't Fight Back," reporting that "the protest on Tuesday barely registered. Misplaced Pages did not participate. Reddit … added an inconspicuous banner to its homepage. Sites like Tumblr, Mozilla and DuckDuckGo, which were listed as organizers, did not include the banner on their homepages. The eight major technology companies—Google, Microsoft, Facebook, AOL, Apple, Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn … only participated Tuesday insofar as having a joint website flash the protest banner."

International response

Europe

European Union

Early July 2013, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, wrote to 2 US officials that "mutual trust and confidence have been seriously eroded and I expect the U.S. to do all that it can to restore them".

On October 20, 2013, a committee at the European Parliament backed a measure that, if enacted, would require American companies to seek clearance from European officials before complying with United States warrants seeking private data. The legislation has been under consideration for two years. The vote is part of efforts in Europe to shield citizens from online surveillance in the wake of revelations about a far-reaching spying program by NSA.

The European Council meeting at the end of October 2013 in its statement signed by all 28 EU leaders while stressing that "intelligence gathering is a vital element in the fight against terrorism" and noting "the close relationship between Europe and the USA and the value of that partnership", said that this must "be based on respect and trust," a lack of which "could prejudice the necessary cooperation in the field of intelligence gathering".

In the European Parliament, the Greens–European Free Alliance and European United Left–Nordic Green Left nominated Snowden for the 2013 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, which includes €50,000.

The European Parliament released on December 23, 2013 the results of its inquiry into the NSA activities. The European Parliament's committee inquiry into the spying scandal was the first of this scale. No individual EU country has looked into the scandal this thoroughly and no EU government has been as explicit in its criticism of the US government. Spanning a period of six months the draft report is hard on the US government, the NSA as well as on hesitant EU governments and companies. The report concludes that revelations in the press by whistleblowers and journalists and expert evidence given during the inquiry, have resulted in "compelling evidence of the existence of far-reaching, complex and highly technologically advanced systems designed by US and some Member States' intelligence services to collect, store and analyze communication and location data and metadata of all citizens around the world on an unprecedented scale and in an indiscriminate and non-suspicion-based manner." The fight against terrorism, according to the committee's draft report, can "never in itself be a justification for untargeted, secret and sometimes even illegal mass surveillance programs." Claude Moraes, British MEP from the group of Socialists and Social Democrats (S&D), and his fellow rapporteurs suspect that NSA's fight against terrorism isn't its only goal, but that there are "other power motives," such as "political and economic espionage." Moraes wrote that "privacy is not a luxury right, but the ... foundation stone of a free and democratic society." Above all, the draft report condemns the "vast, systemic, blanket collection of the personal data of innocent people." The authors add that mass surveillance has potentially severe effects on the freedoms of the press, thought and speech, as well as a significant potential for abuse of the information gathered against political adversaries. In a nutshell, Moraes said, surveillance programs are "yet another step towards the establishment of a fully fledged preventive state."

Among the list of policy 116 findings and recommendations in the draft report are these recommendations:

1. Countries like Germany ought to revise their laws so they're compatible with the basic right to privacy and data protection;
2. UK, Germany, France, Sweden and the Netherlands should revise laws governing the activities of intelligence services to ensure they are in line with the European convention on human rights.
3. parliamentary control bodies that look into secret service activities ought to be equipped with better technological know-how; and
4. the EU's IT infrastructure ought to be better protected against attacks.
5. US authorities and EU states should prohibit blanket mass surveillance activities and bulk processing of personal data.
6. the United States revise its own laws to bring them into line with international law, so they "recognise the privacy and other rights of EU citizens".
7. Suspension of information sharing until companies can show they have taken the all necessary steps to protect privacy.

Germany

According to The Wall Street Journal, "The outcry over NSA eavesdropping has been most pronounced in Germany, a country whose history of dictatorship has left the population particularly sensitive to violations of personal privacy." It was revealed that, beginning in 2002, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone has been "on an NSA target list". It was reported that the NSA also spied on then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder starting in 2002 after the Schroeder criticized plans for the invasion of Iraq.

Documents from Snowden show that cooperation between Berlin and Washington in the area of digital surveillance and defense intensified considerably during time of Chancellor Merkel. The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, is directly subordinated to the Chancellor's Office. Although Merkel denied knowing about surveillance, Germans take the claims seriously. According to Hansjörg Geiger, former head of the BND, findings/claims are Orwellian and mutual political and economic espionage would be explicitly forbidden.

On July 1, 2013, the German Foreign Ministry summoned Philip D. Murphy, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, over allegations that the NSA had spied on institutions of the European Union.

The following day, German Green politician Jürgen Trittin declared "Edward Snowden has done us all a great service. The man who revealed that our US and UK allies are spying on us ought to be given refuge by an EU country. If ever a case demonstrated why we need the protection of whistleblowers, this is it."

In early August 2013, Germany canceled largely symbolic Cold War-era administrative agreements with Britain, the United States and France, which had granted the Western countries which had troops stationed in West Germany the right to request surveillance operations to protect those forces.

Under the orders of the German domestic intelligence agency at the end of August 2013, a federal police helicopter conducted a low-altitude flyover of the United States Consulate in Frankfurt, apparently in search of suspected clandestine eavesdropping facilities. A German official called it a symbolic "shot across the bow."

On October 24, 2013, EU heads of state met to discuss a proposed data protection law. The representatives of Italy, Poland and France wanted the law to be passed before the May 2014 European Parliament elections. Germany, represented by Angela Merkel, and the UK, represented by David Cameron, favoured a slower implementation; their wishes prevailed. About the "Five Eyes" espionage alliance, Merkel remarked "Unlike David, we are unfortunately not part of this group."

Also on October 24, the Foreign Ministry summoned John B. Emerson, the U.S. Ambassador to Germany, to clarify allegations that the NSA had tapped into Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone.

In November 2013, fifty high-profile Germans declared in Der Spiegel in their support for any German offer to grant Snowden asylum.

While the German government had hoped for a "no spy" agreement with the US, by January 2014 it was reported that Germany had "given up hope" of securing such a treaty. The Foreign Office's Philipp Mißfelder declared that "the current situation in transatlantic relations is worse than it was at the low-point in 2003 during the Iraq War".

UK

British Foreign Minister William Hague admitted that Britain's GCHQ was also spying and collaborating with the NSA, and defended the two agencies' actions as "indispensable." Meanwhile, UK Defence officials issued a confidential DA-Notice to British media asking for restraint in running further stories related to surveillance leaks including the PRISM programme and the British involvement therein. British Prime Minister David Cameron issued a veiled threat to resort to prior restraint, through high court injunctions and DA-Notices, if the Guardian did not obey his demands to stop reporting its revelations on spying by GCHQ and the NSA, a development that "alarmed" the Committee to Protect Journalists and that spurred 70 of the world's leading human rights organisation to write an open letter to the newspaper expressing their concern about press and other freedoms in the UK.

France

On October 21, 2013, France summoned Charles Rivkin, the U.S. Ambassador to France, to clarify and explain the NSA's surveillance of French citizens. Speaking to journalists in the French seaport of Lorient, President François Hollande said:

"We cannot accept this kind of behaviour between partners and allies...We ask that this immediately stop."

According to the Wall Street Journal data allegedly collected by the NSA in France was actually collected by French intelligence agencies outside France and then shared with the United States.

Italy

Italy's Prime Minister Enrico Letta asked John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, to clarify if the NSA had illegally intercepted telecommunications in Italy. On October 23, 2013, the Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told reporters in Rome:

"We have a duty to (provide) clarity to Italian citizens - we must obtain the whole truth and tell the whole truth, without regard for anyone."

Spain

On October 25, 2013, the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy summoned James Costos, the U.S. Ambassador to Spain, to clarify reports about the NSA's surveillance of the Spanish government. Spanish EU Minister, Inigo Mendez de Vigo, said such practices, if true, were "inappropriate and unacceptable". An EU delegation was to meet officials in Washington to convey their concerns. According to the Wall Street Journal data allegedly collected by the NSA in Spain was actually collected by Spanish intelligence agencies outside Spain and then shared with the United States. This was confirmed by National Security Agency director Keith Alexander on October 29, 2013, when he said foreign intelligence services collected phone records in war zones and other areas outside their borders and provided them to the NSA.

East Asia

According to Huang Chengqing, Director of China's Computer emergency response team, about 2.91 million mainframe computers in China have been hijacked by more than 4,000 servers based in the United States. On June 17, 2013, two weeks after the first disclosure was published, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry said:

"We believe the United States should pay attention to the international community's concerns and demands and give the international community the necessary explanation"

The South China Morning Post published a poll of Hong Kong residents conducted while Snowden was still in Hong Kong that showed that half of the 509 respondents believed the Chinese government should not surrender Snowden to the United States if Washington raises such a request; 33 percent of those polled think of Snowden as a hero, 12.8 percent described him as a traitor, 23 percent described him as "something in between."

Referring to Snowden's presence in the territory, Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-Ying assured that the government would "handle the case of Mr Snowden in accordance with the laws and established procedures of Hong Kong follow up on any incidents related to the privacy or other rights of the institutions or people in Hong Kong being violated." Pan-democrat legislators Gary Fan and Claudia Mo said that the perceived U.S. prosecution against Snowden will set "a dangerous precedent and will likely be used to justify similar actions" by authoritarian governments. During Snowden's stay, the two main political groups, the pan-democrats and Pro-Beijing camp, found rare agreement to support Snowden. The pro-Beijing DAB party even organised a separate march to Government headquarters for Snowden.

The People's Daily and the Global Times editorials of June 19 stated respectively that the Chinese government was unwilling to be involved in a "mess" caused by others, and that the Hong Kong government should follow the public opinion and not concern itself with Sino-US relations. A Tsinghua University communications studies specialist, Liu Jianming, interpreted that the two articles as suggesting that the mainland government did not want further involvement in the case and that the Hong Kong government should handle it independently.

After Snowden left Hong Kong, Chinese-language newspapers such as the Ming Pao and the Oriental Daily expressed relief that Hong Kong no longer had to shoulder the burden of the Snowden situation. Mainland Chinese experts said that, although the Chinese government did not want to appear to be intervening in the matter, it was inconceivable that the Hong Kong government acted independently in a matter that could have far-reaching consequences for Sino-US relations. One expert suggested that, by doing so, China had "returned the favor" for their not having accepted the asylum plea from Wang Lijun in February 2012. The official Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, the People's Daily denied the US government accusation that the PRC central government had allowed Snowden to escape, and said that Snowden helped in "tearing off Washington's sanctimonious mask."

South America

Robert Menendez, chairman of the United States foreign relations panel, warned Ecuador that accepting Snowden "would severely jeopardize" preferential trade access the United States provides to Ecuador. Ecuador's President Rafael Correa responded by abdicating US trade benefits. A government spokesman said that Ecuador would offer the US "economic aid of US$23 million annually, similar to what we received with the trade benefits, with the intention of providing education about human rights."

Correa criticized the US media for centering its focus on Snowden and countries supporting him, instead of focusing on the global and domestic privacy issues implicated in the leaked documents.

After Bolivian president Morales' plane was, reacting to a false tip that Snowden was on board, denied access to Spanish, French, and Italian airspace during a return flight from Moscow, the presidents of Uruguay, Argentina, Venezuela and Suriname joined Correa and a representative from Brazil, in Cochabamba, Bolivia to discuss the incident. Presidents Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua offered Snowden asylum after the meeting.

In September 2013, Brazil's Chamber of Deputies Foreign Relations Committee decided to send a representative to speak to Edward Snowden about the espionage activities of the NSA in Brazil. Petrobras announced that it was investing R$21 billion over five years to improve its data security.

Brazil

The Brazilian government expressed outrage at the revelations that the National Security Agency directly targeted the communications of president Dilma Rousseff and her top aides. It called the incident an "unacceptable violation of sovereignty" and requested an immediate explanation from the U.S. government.

Brazil's government signaled it would consider cancelling Rousseff's state visit to Washington – the only state visit for a foreign leader scheduled this year. A senior Brazilian official stated the country would downgrade commercial ties unless Rousseff receives a public apology. That would include ruling out the $4 billion purchase of Boeing F-18 Super Hornet fighters and cooperation on oil and biofuels technology, as well as other commercial agreements.

United Nations

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said that "the Snowden case is something I consider to be misuse" and that digital communications should not be "misused in such a way as Snowden did." Birgitta Jónsdóttir, an Icelandic legislator, criticized Ban for expressing a personal view while speaking in an official capacity. She said that Ban "seemed entirely unconcerned about the invasion of privacy by governments around the world, and only concerned about how whistleblowers are misusing the system."

Other countries

Russia, Turkey and South Africa reacted angrily after it was revealed that their diplomats had been spied on during the 2009 G-20 London summit.

 Australia

Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr attacked the U.S. for allowing the leaks in the first place. Saying, "the United States would be critical of any other nation that failed to prevent the release of such material. Certainly if it had gone the other way, if there'd been some official in Canberra, some contractor in Canberra, who allowed a slew of material as sensitive as this to be plastered over the world's media, America would be saying very stern things to someone they'd be regarding as a woefully immature ally and partner."

 Indonesia

On November 1, 2013, the Foreign Ministry of Indonesia summoned Australia's Ambassador Greg Moriarty to explain his country's surveillance of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and other Indonesian political leaders.

On November 18, 2013, the Australian ambassador was summoned again by Indonesian government officials, who pledged to review all types of cooperation with Australia. The Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa called the spying "unacceptable", and added that "This is an unfriendly, unbecoming act between strategic partners." The Indonesian ambassador to Australia was also recalled as a response to the incident.

 Malaysia

On November 2, 2013, the Malaysian Foreign Minister Anifah Aman summoned the ambassadors of Australia and the United States in protest against a vast US-led surveillance network in Asia.

 Mexico

On October 24, 2013, the Mexican Foreign Minister José Antonio Meade Kuribreña met with U.S. Ambassador Earl Anthony Wayne to clarify surveillance details revealed by Snowden.

Non-government organizations

Index on Censorship condemned the U.S. government for its "mass surveillance of citizens’ private communications" and urged all government officials to uphold the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. A statement released by Index on Censorship said: "Whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden — as well as journalists reporting on the Prism scandal, who have come under fire — should be protected under the first amendment, not criminalised."

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