WASHINGTON — WikiLeaks
activists in Iceland are discussing with government officials there the possibility of asylum for Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who disclosed hundreds of classified documents on N.S.A. surveillance,Julian Assange, the founder of the antisecrecy group, said Wednesday.
activists in Iceland are discussing with government officials there the possibility of asylum for Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who disclosed hundreds of classified documents on N.S.A. surveillance,Julian Assange, the founder of the antisecrecy group, said Wednesday.
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“We are in touch with Mr. Snowden’s legal team and are in the process of brokering his asylum in Iceland,” Mr. Assange said in a conference call with reporters. He said both the legal and practical obstacles were under review by Mr. Snowden’s lawyers and supporters.
A spokeswoman for Iceland’s embassy in Washington confirmed that the government had been approached by advocates for Mr. Snowden but would not comment further.
Mr. Snowden, 29, whose leak of National Security Agency documents has shaken American officials and fueled a public debate about government surveillance, is believed to be in hiding in Hong Kong. He has acknowledged that he is likely to be prosecuted for the unauthorized disclosures and has expressed both interest in asylum in Iceland and concern about whether he would be safe there.
American officials have confirmed that Mr. Snowden is under investigation, but he has not been charged publicly. Indictments are sometimes kept secret to avoid alerting the defendant.
Mr. Assange himself understands the complications of hiding out from possible criminal prosecution. As of Wednesday, he had spent a year in Ecuador’s embassy in London, where he fled to avoid being sent to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual offense investigation. He and WikiLeaks are the subjects in a separate leak inquiry by a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., and he has expressed concern that Sweden might send him to the United States to face charges.
Christopher L. Blakesley, a law professor at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, said that Iceland “would be a smart choice” for Mr. Snowden, because authorities there have shown sympathy for the cause of freedom of information and might act favorably on his asylum request.
Obama administration officials, meanwhile, are discussing whether the most contentious N.S.A. program revealed by Mr. Snowden — the agency’s routine collection of data on most telephone calls made in the United States — might be changed to mollify critics who believe it invades Americans’ privacy. One proposal would require the phone companies themselves to store the call data for five years and make it available to government investigators.
But the Federal Bureau of Investigation director, Robert S. Mueller III, warned Wednesday that such a change would slow investigators as they seek to stop terrorist attacks.
“The point being that it will take an awful long time,” Mr. Mueller told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The National Security Agency director, Gen. Keith B. Alexander, hinted Tuesday at a House hearing that he was evaluating changes to the domestic calling log program and raised the issue of “speed in crisis” as a major disadvantage.
In his testimony, Mr. Mueller provided more details about why national security officials were wary of changing the system. First, he said, under current law companies are not required to retain such records, and some dispose of them in much less than five years. Second, rather than being able to instantly query the complete database to see who a suspect has been in contact with, he said, investigators would have to present legal paperwork to a half-dozen carriers and wait for them to gather and provide the records.
“In this particular area, where you’re trying to prevent terrorist attacks, what you want is that information as to whether or not that number in Yemen is in contact with somebody in the United States almost instantaneously so you can prevent that attack,” Mr. Mueller said. “You cannot wait three months, six months, a year to get that information, be able to collate it and put it together.”
Mr. Mueller did not explain why it would take so long for telephone companies to respond to a subpoena for phone data linked to a particular number, especially in a national security investigation.
Lawmakers also pressed Mr. Mueller to explain what attacks, if any, had been prevented by the N.S.A. surveillance programs disclosed by Mr. Snowden.
Mr. Mueller referred — in greater detail than was provided at Tuesday’s hearing — to newly declassified information linking the program to a case in which several men in San Diego were discovered to have sent about $8,500 to the Shabab, a terrorist group in Somalia.
Specifically, he said, the N.S.A. identified a terrorist-linked phone number in East Africa and ran the number against the domestic calls database, discovering that the suspect number had been in contact with a telephone number in San Diego. Investigators then used other legal authorities to find the name and address of the person who used the line in San Diego, and then obtained an individual warrant to start monitoring that line.
But two senators who have been especially critical of the phone records collection, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, both Democrats, disputed intelligence officials’ assertions that the program has been critical in thwarting terrorist attacks. “We have yet to see any evidence that the bulk phone records collection program has provided any otherwise unobtainable intelligence,” they said in a statement.
Also on Wednesday, the chairman of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, a federal panel that is reviewing the N.S.A. programs, said members would sponsor a public discussion of the issues raised next month.
“Based on what we’ve learned so far, we believe further questions are warranted,” said David Medine, the board’s chairman, who was confirmed by the Senate in May and almost immediately faced the debate over N.S.A. monitoring. The five-member board was briefed on the programs by intelligence officials last week.
Mr. Medine said the board planned eventually to issue a public report and recommendations on the N.S.A. programs.
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