The British government has been running a web surveillance program far more intrusive than anything attempted by the NSA, according to Snowden documents published this morning at The Intercept. Dubbed "Karma Police," the GCHQ program pulls web data from intercontinental data cables landing at Cornwall, giving it ongoing access to as much as a quarter of global web traffic since 2009.

The data collected is officially classified as metadata, but it contains full records of sites visited, usernames, and even passwords. Unlike equivalent NSA programs, which require FISA court approval of specific queries to the database, there appears to be no …

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Skynet is real. Well, kinda. According to the latest report from Glenn Greenwald's site The Intercept, the NSA has (or had) a secret program called Skynet. Unlike the Terminator version, which was a computer system that went rogue and attempted to annihilate humanity, the NSA's Skynet uses metadata to try and identify people with terrorist connections. Specifically, in one recorded case, the program tracked the movements of people within Pakistan from cellphone records and raised a flag when those activities appeared to match the movements of suspected Al Qaeda couriers. By sniffing out couriers, the hope was to catch dangerous Al Qaeda lead …

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In the weeks and months prior to his public outing of the NSA's spying programs, Edward Snowden wrote an anti-surveillance manifesto designed to galvanize supporters into signing a petition, to be published should he be arrested for his whistle-blowing. Privacy activist Micah Lee, who was contacted by Snowden before the ex-NSA contractor leaked thousands of documents to the press, says that although the manifesto was written and the site carrying it was built, it was shelved "when it became clear that Snowden wasn't immediately getting arrested or prevented from communicating, and that the US government wasn't forcibly denying the public an …

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The United Nations human rights commissioner, Navi Pillay, has come out in favor of Edward Snowden: Pillay argues that the former NSA contractor did a public service by pulling back the curtain on surveillance, and says he shouldn't be prosecuted by the United States.

"I see some of it here in the case of Snowden, because his revelations go to the core of what we are saying about the need for transparency, the need for consultation," Pillay said at a news conference, according to the Guardian. "We owe a great deal to him for revealing this kind of information."

"We owe a great deal to him for revealing this kind of information."

She decline …

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Edward Snowden has applied for an extension of his year-long asylum in Russia, according to his lawyer. Anatoly Kucherena, who has represented the NSA whistleblower since last year, tells Russia Today that he and Snowden have "fulfilled the procedure to receive temporary asylum … We have submitted documents to prolong his stay in Russia." The decision was widely expected, and Snowden said in a May interview with NBC that although he would like to return to the US, he would "of course" apply for an extension if the asylum looked like it was about to run out. Earlier this month, The Moscow Times cited a report by Russian news service Izvestia …

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Sony's film about whistleblower Edward Snowden may have competition. According to The Guardian, Oliver Stone is set to direct an adaptation of The Snowden Files, an account of the former NSA contractor's theft and release of documents revealing far-reaching government surveillance programs. The film is supposed to start shooting by the end of 2014 and will be produced by Moritz Borman, who has previously worked with Stone. Snowden Files author and Guardian correspondent Luke Harding, as well as other Guardian journalists, will be brought on as consultants. Earlier this spring, Glenn Greenwald's book No Place to Hide was optioned by Sony Pict …

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High-stakes reporting like the Pulitzer Prize-winning NSA exclusives by Glenn Greenwald and others requires a great deal of security. Sources have to be protected at all costs, and valuable, classified documents like those leaked by Edward Snowden need to be kept out of the wrong hands. For First Look Media - the news organization behind publication The Intercept and led by Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras - digital security is one man's job. Micah Lee traveled to Greenwald's home in Brazil to secure his computer, and he's set up redundant encryption protocols to ensure that files and sources are kept safe. On top of it all …

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It's been almost a year since journalist Glenn Greenwald wrote the first story revealing leaked documents from Edward Snowden. Since then, we've seen countless more pieces of information, large and small, about the American (and British) surveillance network. Today, Greenwald and others are giving their accounts of how Snowden was able to get away with thousands of classified documents detailing an increasingly powerful intelligence community - and how we got here in the first place.

Greenwald's book No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the US Surveillance State, released today, is supposed to be part narrative, part analysis, and …

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New leaked NSA documents published in Der Spiegel and The Intercept appear to reveal more details about how that agency targeted a list of world leaders that is larger than previously thought. The documents, leaked to the publications by Edward Snowden, contain a list of 11 world leaders that have been targeted by a system known as Nymrod - however the document implies the actual number targeted was 122. Nymrod is reportedly a system designed to automatically extract citations ("cites") out of a multiplicity of sources, including voice and computer communications. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is listed by name, as are more obvious targets …

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