Edward Snowden backs Russian expansionism ??????

The demonisation of Snowden  sinks to new depths. 

House intelligence chair says Edward Snowden backs Russian expansionism

• Mike Rogers stands by claim that Snowden had Russian help
• Chinese telecoms giant Huawei condemns 'NSA infiltration'

Martin Pengelly in New York and agencies

The chairman of the House of Representatives intelligence committee, Mike Rogers, on Sunday stood by his claim that the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who last year provided thousands of secret documents to media outlets including the Guardian, had been helped by Russia.

On Saturday, in the latest disclosure from such documents, the New York Times and the German magazine Der Spiegel reported that the NSA had obtained sensitive data form the Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei.

Asked on NBC's Meet the Press if he had been irresponsible in making such a charge without evidence, Rogers said: “First of all, I see all the evidence and intelligence, from everything in the activities leading up to this event to very suspicious activity during the event. When you talk to the folks leading the investigation they cannot rule it out.

“No counter-terrorism official in the United States does not believe that Mr Snowden … is not under the influence of Russian intelligence services. We believe he is, I certainly believe he is today.

“For the investigators, they need to figure out when did that influence start. Was he interested in co-operating earlier than what the timeline would suggest?”

Rogers also sought to link Snowden's actions to Russia's occupation of Crimea and concerns over the massing of Russian troops on Ukraine's eastern border.

He said: “He [Snowden] is under the influence of Russian intelligence officials today [and] he is actually supporting, in an odd way, the brazen brutality and expansionism of Russia. He needs to understand that and I think Americans need to understand that in its proper context.”

Elsewhere on Sunday, Huawei defended its independence and said it would condemn any infiltration of its servers, if reports of such activities by the NSA were true.

"If the actions in the report are true, Huawei condemns such activities that invaded and infiltrated into our internal corporate network and monitored our communications," Huawei's global cyber security officer, John Suffolk, told Reuters.

Defending Huawei's independence and security record and saying it was very successful in 145 countries, Suffolk added: "Corporate networks are under constant probe and attack from different sources – such is the status quo in today's digital age.”

In October 2012, Rogers presided over the release of a Houseintelligence committee report which said US firms should avoid doing business with Huawei and another Chinese telecoms company, ZTE, because they posed a national security threat.

At the time, he said in comments broadcast by CBS: “Find another vendor [than Huawei] if you care about your intellectual property; if you care about your consumers' privacy and you care about the national security of the United States of America.”

The New York Times said one goal of the NSA operation against Huawei, code-named "Shotgiant", was to uncover any connections between the company and the Chinese People's Liberation Army. But it also sought to exploit Huawei's technology and conduct surveillance through computer and telephone networks Huawei sold to other countries.

If ordered by the US president, the NSA also planned to unleash offensive cyber operations, the newspaper said.

The paper said the NSA gained access to servers in Huawei's sealed headquarters in Shenzhen and got information about the workings of the giant routers and complex digital switches the company says connect a third of the world's people.

Der Spiegel said the NSA copied a list of more than 1,400 clients and internal training documents for engineers. It said the agency was pursuing a digital offensive against the Chinese political leadership, naming the former prime minister Hu Jintao and the Chinese trade and foreign ministries as targets.

"If we can determine the company's plans and intentions," an analyst wrote in a 2010 document cited by the Times, "we hope that this will lead us back to the plans and intentions" of the Chinese government.

The Times noted that US officials see Huawei as a security threat and have blocked the company from making business deals in the US, worried it would furnish equipment with "back doors" that could enable China's military or Chinese-backed hackers to swipe corporate and government secrets.

"We certainly don't build 'back doors'," Suffolk said. Suffolk, who is British, said the company never handed over its source codes to governments either.

"I can't say what American firms do. We have never been asked to hand over any data to a government or authority or to facilitate access to our technology," he said. "And we wouldn't do this either. Our position on this point is very clear."

US officials deny the NSA spies on foreign companies to give US firms a competitive edge, though they acknowledge that in the course of assessing the economic prospects or stability of other countries, US agencies might collect data on firms.

The Times and Der Spiegel articles were published just days before China's President Xi Jinping visits Europe, where he will hold talks with the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, herself reportedly a target of surveillance by the NSA, like some German companies.

The former NSA chief Michael Hayden – who ran the agency from 1999 to 2005 and then ran the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) until 2009 – told Der Spiegel in a separate interview that the United States had underestimated the reaction of the chancellor and the German population to revelations of mass surveillance.

Hayden said he was not prepared to apologise for US intelligence agencies having had another nation under surveillance.

"But I am ready to apologise for having us having made a good friend look bad," he said. "Shame on us, it was our mistake."

Reuters contributed to this report

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/23/nsa-chinese-company-defends-independence-huawei