US
intelligence leaker Edward Snowden remains elusive after missing his aircraft
booking from Moscow to Cuba. Germany, meanwhile, wants answers from Britain on
an alleged spy program called "Tempora."
Aeroflot
flight SU150 left Moscow on Monday bound for Cuba without Edward Snowden, the
fugitive intelligence whistleblower, who had a seat on the flight reserved in
his name.
Washington
claimed that the American, who it wants for exposing a huge US Internet
surveillance program several weeks ago, remained in Russia and again demanded
his extradition.
Meanwhile,
Germany sent questions to the British embassy in Berlin on an alleged British
eavesdropping program called "Tempora". According to two German media
outlets, it tapped telephone and data traffic on a glass-fiber undersea cable
linking northern Germany, Britain and the United States.
US program
secret since 2004
On Monday,
former US vice president Dick Cheney told a forum in Washington that he had
briefed Republican and Democrat Congress representatives in 2004 on a program
set up by the National Security Agency, and said they told him they wanted it
kept secret.
The news
agency Associated Press quoted Cheney as saying the NSA program had delivered
"phenomenal results" in preventing terrorist attacks in the wake of
the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington by al-Qaeda
hijackers.
"There
was a time when it was a very, very close hold [secret]," Cheney said,
referring apparently to Prism, one of the schemes operated by the NSA.
"Unfortunately it's become public."
US presses
for extradition
The spokesman
for President Barack Obama's administration, Jay Carney, demanded on Monday the
Russia use "all options" to locate and extradite Snowden back to the
US, adding that Snowden probably remained in Russia.
Carney also
slammed China for allowing Snowden to fly from its semi-autonomous territory
Hong Kong on Sunday to Moscow's Sheremetyevo Airport, where Snowden spent the
night in a transit zone hotel.
"'That
decision unquestionably has a negative impact on the US-China
relationship," Carney said.
Ecuador
receives asylum request
Visiting
Hanoi, Vietnam, on Monday, Ecuador's Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said his
country had received an asylum request from Snowden and had been in touch with
Russian authorities.
Patino said
Ecuador would make its asylum decision based on the principles of "freedom
of expression and with the security of citizens around the world."
Visiting
New Delhi, US Secretary of State John Kerry warned that China and Russia risk
damaging relations with the US.
"He is
an indicted individual, indicted on three felony counts," Kerry said,
referring to Snowden. "Evidently he places himself above the law, having
betrayed his country."
Germany
demands answers from Britain
The claim
made last week by the Guardian newspaper that Snowden had also exposed a
British intelligence service scheme called "Tempora," prompted the
German government on Monday to send a list of questions to Britain's embassy in
Berlin.
Government
spokesman Steffen Seibert said Berlin wanted explanations "on what legal basis
and to which extent" surveillance had been conducted.
The
Guardian said documents from Snowden showed that Britain's Government
Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) began "Tempora" 18 months ago to
tap and store world phone calls and Internet data traffic for 30 days
"without any form of public acknowledgement or debate."
Seibert
said an operation called "Tempora" was unknown to the German
government.
Undersea
cable 'tapped'
The
northern German public broadcaster NDR and the Munich-based newspaper Süddeutsche
Zeitung reported late on Monday that "Tempora" tapped into a
15,000-kilometer-long (9320 miles) undersea cable called TAT-14, running
between northern Germany via Britain to the United States.
The head of
the Bundestag parliament's intelligence supervisory committee, Thomas Oppermann
of the opposition Social Democrats, said EU-wide data privacy legislation -
currently being drafted - was urgently needed.
Veteran
opposition Greens party parliamentarian Hans-Christian Ströbele demand that
Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition government disclose "how much and
which data of German citizens and companies had been secretly accessed by the
Anglo-American intelligence services NSA and GCHQ, for example by tapping glass
fiber cables?"
A senior
German interior ministry official, Ulrich Weinbrenner, told a Bundestag
committee that it was known "in general form" that programs of these
types existed.
ipj/jr (AFP, Reuters, dpa)
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