The bad: This is something that is routinely dealt with. (Really? So there's pretty much a huge insurrection in the ranks? A pretty widespread fear in the community that the American people are being phucked?)

[Ecuador's] Secretary of Political Management Betty Tola told a news conference the safe-conduct pass "has no validity and is the exclusive responsibility of the person who issued it."

Tola told reporters that Snowden's asylum application hadn't been processed because he was not in Ecuador as required by law. She also threatened legal action against whoever had leaked the document.

Bagdad Berry:

"No big, we are just trying to leverage everything we possibly can, making over reaching threats and burning all kinds of diplomatic/economic bridges to get him back to the US, but we don't really care one way or another.  By the way, we were going to tell you all about the internet surveillance on all y'all, that we forgot to shut off, even though we said we did, so the Guardian brewha is like the hacker, no big deal."

A little late, the country is in flames and you ain't keeping the infidels out, Berry.

For the first 12 days, the Obama administration's effort to extradite government leaker Edward Snowden from Hong Kong was a by-the-book legal affair -- overseen by the Justice Department and involving few if any diplomatic overtures, according to senior administration officials.

That legalistic approach has resulted in a political and public relations debacle. By the time U.S. officials had begun applying diplomatic pressure on Hong Kong and Chinese authorities last weekend, it was too late: Snowden had boarded a flight to Moscow in search of asylum.

The missteps have thrust the United States into a geopolitical confrontation that has embarrassed the Obama administration and strained relations with China, Russia and other countries.

Army reportedly blocking all access to Guardian coverage of NSA leaks

The Army is blocking all access to The Guardian newspaper's reports about the National Security Agency's sweeping collection of data about Americans' email and phone communications, an Army spokesman said Thursday.

The Monterey (Calif.) Herald reported that employees at the Presidio of Monterey, an Army public affairs base about 100 miles south of San Francisco, were unable to gain access to The Guardian's articles on former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and his professed leaks of classified information about the intelligence programs.

Late Thursday, an Army spokesman told The Herald by email that the newspaper's NSA reports were, in fact, being blocked across the entire Army. He wrote that it's routine for the Defense Department to take "network hygiene" action to prevent disclosure of classified information, The Herald reported.

We may never know all the details of the mass surveillance programs, but we know this: The administration has justified them through abuse of language, intentional evasion of statutory protections, secret, unreviewable investigative procedures and constitutional arguments that make a mockery of the government's professed concern with protecting Americans' privacy. It's time to call the N.S.A.'s mass surveillance programs what they are: criminal.

The issue is not Snowden.

The issue is an out-of-control government.

And I must say that Mr. Obama's statement,

"I'm not going to be scrambling jets to get a 29-year-old hacker," Mr. Obama said.

is barely coherent. It is borderline idiotic.

Would he "scramble" jets to get a 30 year-old hacker? What is the age he would consider appropriate for some jet scrambling?
Is "hacking" the issue? What activities are on the table for a little scrambling of jets carrying civilian passengers?

[Nicole] Wong is serving as a top deputy to the White House's chief technology officer, Todd Park, according to OSTP spokesman Rick Weiss. Beyond that, Weiss wouldn't elaborate on what Wong will be doing. He did say, however, that characterizing her simply as a "chief privacy officer" doesn't fully describe her role.

In the very least, Wong's appointment appears to be part of an effort by the Obama administration to reassure citizens that their privacy rights will be protected. The White House has been under the gun about the government's role in data mining and surveillance, thanks in part to controversy over its PRISM spying program. "The fact that this position exists reflects the importance we attach to the issue," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters last week. "I would point you to everything I just said about the president's views on the balance that we need to strike between our national security interests and protecting the American people, as well as protecting our values and our privacy."

"One program featured a panel of legendary counterintelligence agents, including a man famous for meeting with Lee Harvey Oswald a few months before the assassination of
President John F Kennedy.

Their discussion often turned to the subject of US spying on Russia. Korotchenko, one of the guests, made the case that most of the major US consulting firms in Moscow were actually "structural units of American intelligence," including the National Security Agency.

"The NSA is a global electronic vacuum cleaner, which monitors everything," he said "Look at the top two floors of the new building of the US Embassy - it's a huge antenna, which listens to the Moscow air."

Similar themes were sounded a few hours later on Channel 1, when the pro-Kremlin analyst Vyacheslav A Nikonov warned that the United States, through its dominance over the Internet, could "strongly undermine the security of other states."