NSA leaker Snowden barred from travel to UK

Mr Snowden, 29, burst into the global spotlight last Sunday after admitting

from a hideout in Hong Kong that he was the leak behind a series of exposes

on secretive and highly controversial National Security Agency (NSA)

surveillance programs.

Mr Snowden reportedly flew to Hong Kong on May 20. On Monday he disappeared

from a luxury hotel where he had been staying and today his exact

whereabouts remained unknown.

Reports of the warning to airlines came as a senior foreign policy advisor to

Beijing said China’s top leadership had “no interest in turning this into a

political case” or using Mr Snowden as a stick with which to beat

Washington.

“These things happen every day and both sides know about it. There is nothing

new to this case. Politicising it would make both sides lose,” the source

told the South China Morning Post. The advisor said Beijing would be “”very

discreet” in its handling of the case.

The state-run Global Times newspaper took a harder line, suggesting Beijing

should exploit the trove of information that Mr Snowden appeared to have.

“Maybe he has more evidence. The Chinese government should let him speak out

and according to whether the information is public, use it as evidence to

negotiate with the United States openly or in private,” an editorial in the

newspaper said.

US Attorney General Eric Holder said today that he was confident that the NSA

leaker would face justice. Speaking in Dublin, he refused to say whether the

United States had requested Mr Snowden’s extradition, but insisted that “we

will hold accountable the person responsible for these extremely damaging

leaks”.

He spoke after meeting with EU commissioners who had requested assurances

about the Verizon wiretaps and the Prism internet surveillance programme.

Viviane Reding, the EU justice commissioner, said afterwards that she was

satisfied that the Verizon phone record surveillance was aimed only at US

citizens, although she said there were still “fundamental issues”

over the use of Prism against European targets. She said the EU and US had

agreed “to set up a transatlantic expert group to receive more info on Prism

and look at the safeguards”.

The move comes three days after the EU demanded answers from the US and warned

of a “grave” threat to the rights of European citizens from American

intelligence programmes.

Further details also emerged today of Mr Snowden’s claims about an alleged NSA

hacking campaign against targets in Hong Kong and mainland China.

In a previously unpublished excerpt from an interview conducted on Wednesday,

Mr Snowden told the South China Morning Post: “The primary issue of public

importance to Hong Kong and mainland China should be that the NSA is

illegally seizing the communications of tens of millions of individuals

without any individualized suspicion of wrongdoing.”

Hong Kong-based activists have called a rally in support of Mr Snowden for

tomorrow afternoon.

NSA leaker Snowden barred from travel to UK