The case of fugitive Edward Snowden is adding fuel to the fire in a trade row between the United States and Ecuador.
Euronews
Thought to be holed up in the transit area of Moscow's airport, US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden could really use a tropical getaway. Leaders of several Latin American destinations seem to be tripping over each other to receive him.
Global Post
Two weeks ago his case had a whiff of farce. Despite all the huggle-muggle about his initial revelations, anyone who has been paying attention knows that the National Security Agency is colonoscopy-deep in the world’s electronic communications.
New York Times
As Edward Snowden lies low in the limbo of a Moscow airport, waiting to see if Ecuador will pull the red carpet out from under him, questions swirl.
From the veritable goldmine of facts in the newspaper coverage of the brewing Snowden storm, I've plucked out a few sparkling U.S.D.A. Choice gems to highlight.
David Ignatius weighs in on the swirling questions.
Congress and the courts will sort out the big questions about privacy and surveillance posed by Edward Snowden’s disclosure of National Security Agency (NSA) monitoring programs. In the meantime, there are some nagging smaller questions raised by this hemorrhage of secrets.
Washington Post
The Associated Press takes the temperature of the rising storm.
President Barack Obama tried to cool the international frenzy over Edward Snowden on Thursday as Ecuador stepped up its defiance and said it was preemptively rejecting millions in trade benefits that it could lose by taking in the fugitive from his limbo in a Moscow airport.
Obama, meanwhile, sought to downplay the international chase for the man he called “a 29-year-old hacker” and lower the temperature of an issue that has raised tensions between the U.S. and uneasy partners Russia and China.
AP
A
Post writer seeks direction from Fort Meade.
As the controversy flying around Edward Snowden continues to swirl, the National Security Agency’s director is attempting to boost his staff’s morale.
Snowden upended the intelligence community by revealing government telephone and electronic data mining programs.
Washington Post
A
New York Times writer takes a roundabout trip to the
Odyssey.
Mr. Snowden, who turned 30 last week, has been ensconced out of sight at an international transit lounge in a Moscow airport since Sunday, when he arrived from Hong Kong despite an American effort to extradite him on criminal charges. There had been speculation that he would board a Havana-bound flight on Thursday, but he did not, raising the possibility that his legal limbo could stretch into weeks in his odyssey to reach a third country.
New York Times
At ABC, George Stephanopoulus will tackle the swirling questions mano-a-mano.
In an ABC News exclusive, ABC’s GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS goes one-on-one with WikiLeaks founder and international man of mystery Julian Assange, who has been hiding out in London’s Ecuadorean embassy after fallout from his website’s publication of a trove of classified U.S. material in 2010.
ABC
Meanwhile, from the other side of the political chasm, a journalism teacher really lets it fly.
The Edward Snowden leaks have revealed a U.S. corporate media system at war with independent journalism. Many of the same outlets—especially TV news—that missed the Wall Street meltdown and cheer-led the Iraq invasion have come to resemble state-controlled media outlets in their near-total identification with the government as it pursues the now 30-year-old whistleblower.
While an independent journalism system would be dissecting the impacts of NSA surveillance on privacy rights, and separating fact from fiction, U.S. news networks have obsessed on questions like: How much damage has Snowden caused? How can he be brought to justice?
Unfazed by polls showing that half of the American rabble—I mean, public—believe Snowden did a good thing by leaking documentation of NSA spying, TV news panels have usually excluded anyone who speaks for these millions of Americans. Although TV hosts and most panelists are not government officials, some have a penchant for speaking of the government with the pronoun “We.”
Indypendent
Perhaps I am taking arms against a sea of troubles here. But I wish, about the swirling questions, that the journalists and the journalism professors would put some of the toothpaste back in the tube.
That's a lot of toothpaste to put back in the tube, but the U.S. Army won't shrink from a fight.
MSN