Simon Björnell

NSA whistleblower to meet human rights groups at Sheremetyevo airport to discuss his next steps forward as he claims US is illegally denying his right to seek asylum

All scientific outputs should be judged on content regardless of whether the author is male or female, says Laura Waters

Celebrating my 10th anniversary as an academic scientist I find myself as committed as ever to being the best researcher and lecturer I can be. Yet a big part of me is also keen to be waiting at 3:15pm to meet my son as he rushes out the school gates eager to tell me about his day. Is it possible to do both of these things successfully? Can you be a devoted mum, a dedicated scientist and get promoted? That not only depends on you, but also on the people that surround you.

To make it as an academic scientist requires years of training, an incredibly thick skin and long hours. To make it as a mum requires patience, compassion and equally long hours. To do both however, requires an organised mind and a continual 'plan B'.

I'm a scientist but not a feminist. Yes, we could do with more women choosing a career in science and yes, we need more women at the higher levels of management but that doesn't make me a feminist: I'm an 'equalist'. I believe that all scientific outputs should be judged on their content rather than on the fact the author was a female or male scientist. Regardless of gender, ethnicity or any other factor, what matters most is achieving the results by having the best person for the job – male or female.

Where we tend to fall down is ensuring women actively choose to stay in science and climb the promotional ladder. It's a tough climb and if you throw in being a parent alongside this it can make it impossible. I would never say that women have it harder than men, or vice versa – many friends would be considered 'unconventional' where the mother is the major wage earner and the father stays at home. However, having witnessed several accomplished female friends commit career suicide (especially in academia) in favour of a family, I know it does happen.

I've been lucky at the University of Huddersfield to have been able to gradually increase my hours back up to full time this year. That isn't to say it has been easy though. To keep my research group going has meant many late nights working on the laptop after bedtime songs are sung.

To be a successful scientist in academia (children or no children, male or female) you really must love your job, and self motivation is essential. Just as important for me though is having a partner who supports me and a work environment that can be flexible.

Far more could still be done in universities to help encourage women to stay and succeed, some have childcare on campus, some have flexible working hours policies, yet lots of the women I know are still 'choosing' between a career and parenting rather than trying to do both, so clearly more support is needed.

There's no doubt that more men still occupy senior roles in academia and industry, but there are initiatives in place to redress this imbalance. The Athena Swan scheme is one such example of a programme helping universities externally recognise their achievements and internally devise plans for their shortfalls. Even so, there is still far from equal gender representation in academia, especially in subjects such as chemistry and engineering. I am fully devoted to promoting science to women as a great career choice and I honestly believe we need more women at all levels in science, but that is because I am an 'equalist', not a feminist.

Laura Waters is a senior lecturer in pharmaceutical science at the University of Huddersfield – follow her on Twitter @DrLauraWaters

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So we refused to be part of the NSA's dark blanket. That is why whistleblowers pay the price for being the backstop of democracy

What Edward Snowden has done is an amazingly brave and courageous act of civil disobedience.

Like me, he became discomforted by what he was exposed to and what he saw: the industrial-scale systematic surveillance that is scooping up vast amounts of information not only around the world but in the United States, in direct violation of the fourth amendment of the US constitution.

The NSA programs that Snowden has revealed are nothing new: they date back to the days and weeks after 9/11. I had direct exposure to similar programs, such as Stellar Wind, in 2001. In the first week of October, I had an extraordinary conversation with NSA's lead attorney. When I pressed hard about the unconstitutionality of Stellar Wind, he said:

"The White House has approved the program; it's all legal. NSA is the executive agent."

It was made clear to me that the original intent of government was to gain access to all the information it could without regard for constitutional safeguards. "You don't understand," I was told. "We just need the data."

In the first week of October 2001, President Bush had signed an extraordinary order authorizing blanket dragnet electronic surveillance: Stellar Wind was a highly secret program that, without warrant or any approval from the Fisa court, gave the NSA access to all phone records from the major telephone companies, including US-to-US calls. It correlates precisely with the Verizon order revealed by Snowden; and based on what we know, you have to assume that there are standing orders for the other major telephone companies.

It is technically true that the order applies only to meta-data. The problem is that in the digital space, metadata becomes the index for content. And content is gold for determining intent.

This executive fiat of 2001 violated not just the fourth amendment, but also Fisa rules at the time, which made it a felony – carrying a penalty of $10,000 and five years in prison for each and every instance. The supposed oversight, combined with enabling legislation – the Fisa court, the congressional committees – is all a kabuki dance, predicated on the national security claim that we need to find a threat. The reality is, they just want it all, period.

So I was there at the very nascent stages, when the government – wilfully and in deepest secrecy – subverted the constitution. All you need to know about so-called oversight is that the NSA was already in violation of the Patriot Act by the time it was signed into law.

Vast surveillance regime created by willful&deliberate violation 1st/4th/5th Amend N deepest of secrecy, intent 2 spy on all & 'own the net'

— Thomas Drake (@Thomas_Drake1) June 11, 2013

When I was in the US air force, flying an RC-135 in the latter years of the cold war, I was a German-Russian crypto-linguist. We called ourselves the "vacuum-cleaner of the sky" because our capability to gather information was enormous at the time. But it was always outward-facing; we could not collect on US targets because that was against the law. To the US government today, however, we are all foreigners.

I became an expert on East Germany, which was then the ultimate surveillance state. Their secret police were monstrously efficient: they had a huge paper-based system that held information on virtually everyone in the country – a population of about 16-17 million. The Stasi's motto was "to know everything".

NSA - dystopian Stasi on Steroids that just wants "to know everything" about anybody, anytime, anywhere--regardless of any & all constraints

— Thomas Drake (@Thomas_Drake1) June 9, 2013

So none of this is new to me. The difference between what the Bush administration was doing in 2001, right after 9/11, and what the Obama administration is doing today is that the system is now under the cover and color of law. Yet, what Snowden has revealed is still the tip of the iceberg.

General Michael Hayden, who was head of the NSA when I worked there, and then director of the CIA, said, "We need to own the net." And that is what they're implementing here. They have this extraordinary system: in effect, a 24/7 panopticon on a vast scale that it is gazing at you with an all-seeing eye.

I lived with that dirty knowledge for years. Before 9/11, the prime directive at the NSA was that you don't spy on Americans without a warrant; to do so was against the law – and, in particular, was a criminal violation of Fisa. My concern was that we were more than an accessory; this was a crime and we were subverting the constitution.

I differed as a whistleblower to Snowden only in this respect: in accordance with the Intelligence Community Whistleblower Protection Act, I took my concerns up within the chain of command, to the very highest levels at the NSA, and then to Congress and the Department of Defense. I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he's been following this for years: he's seen what's happened to other whistleblowers like me.

By following protocol, you get flagged – just for raising issues. You're identified as someone they don't like, someone not to be trusted. I was exposed early on because I was a material witness for two 9/11 congressional investigations. In closed testimony, I told them everything I knew – about Stellar Wind, billions of dollars in fraud, waste and abuse, and the critical intelligence, which the NSA had but did not disclose to other agencies, preventing vital action against known threats. If that intelligence had been shared, it may very well have prevented 9/11.

But as I found out later, none of the material evidence I disclosed went into the official record. It became a state secret even to give information of this kind to the 9/11 investigation.

I reached a point in early 2006 when I decided I would contact a reporter. I had the same level of security clearance as Snowden. If you look at the indictment from 2010, you can see that I was accused of causing "exceptionally grave damage to US national security". Despite allegations that I had tippy-top-secret documents, In fact, I had no classified information in my possession, and I disclosed none to the Baltimore Sun journalist during 2006 and 2007. But I got hammered: in November 2007, I was raided by a dozen armed FBI agents, when I was served with a search warrant. The nightmare had only just begun, including extensive physical and electronic surveillance.

In April 2008, in a secret meeting with the FBI, the chief prosecutor from the Department of Justice assigned to lead the prosecution said, "How would you like to spend the rest of your life in jail, Mr Drake?" – unless I co-operated with their multi-year, multimillion-dollar criminal leak investigation, launched in 2005 after the explosive New York Times article revealing for the first time the warrantless wiretapping operation. Two years later, they finally charged me with a ten felony count indictment, including five counts under the Espionage Act. I faced upwards of 35 years in prison.

In July 2011, after the government's case had collapsed under the weight of truth, I plead to a minor misdemeanor for "exceeding authorized use of a computer" under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act – in exchange for the DOJ dropping all ten felony counts. I received as a sentence one year's probation and 240 hours of community service: I interviewed almost 50 veterans for the Library of Congress veterans history project. This was a rare, almost unprecedented, case of a government prosecution of a whistleblower ending in total defeat and failure.

So, the stakes for whistleblowers are incredibly high. The government has got its knives out: there's a massive manhunt for Snowden. They will use all their resources to hunt him down and every detail of his life will be turned inside out. They'll do everything they can to "bring him to justice" – already there are calls for the "traitor" to be "put away for life".

#Snowden chose 2 free darkside NatSec info as magnificent act of selfless civil disobedience 2 protect our liberty.m.guardiannews.com/world/2013/jun…

— Thomas Drake (@Thomas_Drake1) June 9, 2013

He can expect the worst; he knows that. He went preemptively overseas because that at least delays the prying hand of the US government. But he could be extracted by rendition, as he has said. Certainly, my life was shredded. Once they have determined that you are a "person of interest" and an "enemy of the state", they want to destroy you, period.

I am now reliving the last 12 years from what's been disclosed in the past week. I feel a kinship with Snowden: he is essentially the equivalent of me. He saw the surveillance state from within and saw how far it's gone. The government has a pathological incentive to collect more and more and more; they just can't help themselves – they have an insatiable hoarding complex.

Since the government unchained itself from the constitution after 9/11, it has been eating our democracy alive from the inside out. There's no room in a democracy for this kind of secrecy: it's anathema to our form of a constitutional republic, which was born out of the struggle to free ourselves from the abuse of such powers, which led to the American revolution.

That is what's at stake here: to an NSA with these unwarranted powers, we're all potentially guilty; we're all potential suspects until we prove otherwise. That is what happens when the government has all the data.

Latest NSA revelations: ppl must get clear & present danger of authoritarian totalitarianism via the Leviathan NatSec state & surveillance

— Thomas Drake (@Thomas_Drake1) June 9, 2013

The NSA is wiring the world; they want to own internet. I didn't want to be part of the dark blanket that covers the world, and Edward Snowden didn't either.

We are seeing an unprecedented campaign against whistleblowers and truth-tellers: it's now criminal to expose the crimes of the state. Under this relentless assault by the Obama administration, I am the only person who has held them off and preserved his freedom. All the other whistleblowers I know have served time in jail, are facing jail or are already incarcerated or in prison.

That has been my burden. I've dedicated the rest of my life to defending life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. I didn't want surveillance to take away my soul, and I don't want anyone else to have to live it.

For that, I paid a very high price. And Edward Snowden will, too. But I have my freedom, and what is the price for freedom? What future do we want to keep?

Information chiefs worldwide sound alarm while US senator Dianne Feinstein orders NSA to review monitoring program

Barack Obama was facing a mounting domestic and international backlash against US surveillance operations on Monday as his administration struggled to contain one of the most explosive national security leaks in US history.

Political opinion in the US was split with some members of Congress calling for the immediate extradition from Hong Kong of the whistleblower, Edward Snowden. But other senior politicians in both main parties questioned whether US surveillance practices had gone too far.

Dianne Feinstein, chairman of the national intelligence committee, has ordered the NSA to review how it limits the exposure of Americans to government surveillance. But she made clear her disapproval of Snowden. "What he did was an act of treason," she said.

Officials in European capitals demanded immediate answers from their US counterparts and denounced the practice of secretly gathering digital information on Europeans as unacceptable, illegal and a serious violation of basic rights. The NSA, meanwhile, asked the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation and said that it was assessing the damage caused by the disclosures.

Daniel Ellsberg, the former military analyst who revealed secrets of the Vietnam war through the Pentagon Papers in 1971, described Snowden's leak as even more important and perhaps the most significant leak in American history.

Snowden disclosed his identity in an explosive interview with the Guardian, published on Sunday, which revealed he was a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden worked at the National Security Agency for the past four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.

In his interview, Snowden revealed himself as the source for a series of articles in the Guardian last week, which included disclosures of a wide-ranging secret court order that demanded Verizon pass to the NSA the details of phone calls related to millions of customers, and a huge NSA intelligence system called Prism, which collects data on intelligence targets from the systems of some of the biggest tech companies.

Snowden said he had become disillusioned with the overarching nature of government surveillance in the US. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.

"My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."

As media interest intensified on Monday, Snowden checked out of the Hong Kong hotel where he had been staying, and moved to an undisclosed location.

Reacting to Snowden's revelations, Paul Ryan, the former Republican vice-presidential nominee, raised questions about whether privacy was being unduly threatened. "I'm sure somebody can come up with a great computer program that says: 'We can do X, Y, and Z,' but that doesn't mean that it's right," he told a radio station in Wisconsin. "I want to learn a lot more about it on behalf of the people I represent," he added.

Pressure was growing on the White House to explain whether there was effective congressional oversight of the programmes revealed by Snowden. The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, said in an NBC interview that he had responded in the "least untruthful manner" possible when he denied in congressional hearings last year that the NSA collected data on millions of Americans.

Clapper also confirmed that Feinstein had asked for a review to "refine these NSA processes and limit the exposure to Americans' private communications" and report back "in about a month".

In Europe, the German chancellor Angela Merkel indicated she would press Obama on the revelations at a Berlin summit next week, while deputy European Commission chief Viviane Reding said she would press US officials in Dublin on Friday, adding that "a clear legal framework for the protection of personal data is not a luxury or constraint but a fundamental right".

Peter Schaar, Germany's federal data protection commissioner told the Guardian that it was unacceptable that US authorities have access to the data of European citizens "and the level of protection is lower than what is guaranteed for US citizens." His Italian counterpart, Antonello Soro, said that the data dragnet "would not be legal in Italy" and would be "contrary to the principles of our legislation and would represent a very serious violation".

In London, the British foreign secretary William Hague was forced to defend the UK's use of intelligence gathered by the US. In the House of Commons, Hague told MPs that British laws did not allow for "indiscriminate trawling" for information. "There is no danger of a deep state out of control in some way," he said.

But Hague was reluctant to go into detail on how Britain handled information offered by US intelligence agencies, as opposed to information requested, or whether it was subject to the same ministerial oversight, including warrants.

Civil liberties groups ask for review of 'secret law'

The Obama administration offered no indication on Monday about what it intended to do about Snowden. The White House did however say he had sparked an "appropriate debate" and hinted it might welcome revision of the Patriot Act, legislation introduced in 2001 which it claims gives legal authority for the programmes carried out by the National Security Agency.

"If [congressional] debate were to build to a consensus around changes [to the Patriot Act] the president would look at that," said spokesman Jay Carney. "Although this is hardly the manner of discussion we hoped for, we would still like to have the debate."

The first polls since the leak stories first broke indicated that the majority of Americans oppose the government scooping up their phone data. According to the Rasmussen poll just 26% of voters are in favour of the government's collection of data from Verizon while 59% are opposed. In total 46% of Americans think that their own data has been monitored. But a poll by the Pew Research Center, asking a more general question, said 56% respondents approved of the NSA surveillance program.

The ACLU and Yale Law School's Media Freedom and Information Clinic filed a motion on Monday asking for secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court opinions on the Patriot Act to be made public in the light of the Guardian's revelations.

The motion asks for any documents relating to the court's interpretation of the scope, meaning and constitutionality of Section 215 of the Patriot Act – which authorises government to obtain "any tangible thing" relevant to foreign intelligence or terrorism investigations – to be published "as quickly as possible" and with only minimal redaction.

"In a democracy, there should be no room for secret law," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. "The public has a right to know what limits apply to the government's surveillance authority, and what safeguards are in place to protect individual privacy."

There was support for Snowden among civil liberty activists. Ellsberg wrote for the Guardian: "In my estimation, there has not been in American history a more important leak than Edward Snowden's release of NSA material – and that definitely includes the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago".

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, an internet rights group, called for a "new Church committee" to investigate potential government infringements on privacy and to write new rules protecting the public. In the wake of the Watergate affair in the mid-1970s, a Senate investigation led by Idaho senator Frank Church uncovered decades of serious abuse by the US government of its eavesdropping powers. The committee report led to the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and set up the Fisa courts that today secretly approve surveillance requests.

Both Snowden and the Obama administration appeared to be considering their options on Monday. Hong Kong, which has an extradition treaty with the US, is unlikely to offer Snowden a permanent refuge. But Snowden could buy time by filing an asylum request, thanks to a landmark legal ruling that has thrown the system into disarray.

The Foreign Correspondents' Club of Hong Kong said the case could be a "strong test" of the Chinese province's commitment to freedom of expression. "The FCC will watch closely how the SAR [Hong Kong] government handles his case, and in particular how it responds to any pressure from authorities both in Washington and Beijing to restrict his activities or to impede access by the media," it said in a statement.

In New York, the mayor, Michael Bloomberg, cancelled at very short notice a planned photo opportunity with the Hong Kong chief executive, Leung Chun-ying. "It would have been a circus, so we decided to catch up with him another time," a mayoral spokesman told the Guardian.

Additional reporting by Matt Williams and Tom McCarthy in New York.