Since the former Booz Allen contractor had his U.S. passport revoked a few years ago, he’s been in limbo in Moscow while allies including former Wikileaks spokesperson and current leader of the Icelandic Pirate Party Birgitta Jonsdottir have pushed for citizenship for Snowden.

Famed whistleblower Edward Snowden has friends in high places in small countries. No new passport has yet been forthcoming, but changing politics in Iceland may also bode well for Snowden’s search for a new home and security. I took the opportunity to ask if she was still pursuing Icelandic citizenship for the controversial American after nearly two years of being blocked in the Althingi.

For years, the most popular password was "password," until last year when it got bumped by "123456" which is, of course, no better, because your password security can be compromised. 

The problem is we're lazy and having to memorize a complicated string of letters, numbers, and characters for each of our private accounts. Edward Snowden has bad news for you: Your computer password is probably terrible. For somebody who has a very common 8-character password, it can literally take less than a second for a computer to pull that password out. Less than one second.

HBO comedian John Oliver traveled to Russia and spoke with former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last week in a wide-ranging interview that touched on the Patriot Act’s upcoming expiration date, his “vindication” in releasing the NSA documents – and even a comical take on government access to Americans’ naked selfies.

Snowden said that the U.S. was spying on anybody they could remotely link to terrorist activities, and in some cases, no connection whatsoever. Snowden said he felt it was his duty to let the American people decide if this is the government they want. The NSA has the greatest surveillance capabilities that we’ve ever seen in history.

The CIA has been working with security researchers to hack into Apple’s technology since long before we all carried Apple devices around in our pockets.

The story lays out in detail how, for nearly a decade now, the CIA has been working on ways to penetrate Apple’s iPhones and iPads, in order to collect data on Apple customers, which Apple CEO Tim Cook has publicly and repeatedly vowed to protect. Researchers have been targeting Apple’s security keys, which encrypt user data, as well as working on their own version of Apple’s software development tool, which would give the intelligence community access to any apps.

The governments of the USA, UK and Canada characterize hackers as a criminal menace, warn of the threats they allegedly pose to critical infrastructure, and aggressively prosecute them, but they are also secretly exploiting their information and expertise, according to top secret documents.

In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by monitoring hackers as they breach email accounts, often without notifying the hacking victims of these breaches. These revelations about the intelligence agencies’ reliance on hackers are contained in documents provided by Edward Snowden.

British and Canadian spy agencies accumulated sensitive data on smartphone users, including location, app preferences, and unique device identifiers, by piggybacking on ubiquitous software from advertising and analytics companies, according to a document obtained by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Programmers frequently embed code from a handful of such companies into their smartphone apps because it helps them answer a variety of questions: How often does a particular user open the app, and at what time of day? Where does the user live? Where does the user work? Where is the user right now? What’s the phone’s unique identifier?

He says iPhone has special software that allows the government to spy on you. The Edward Snowden insecurity wagon stopped late last week in Russia for just long enough to scatter tales of wide-open iPhone hardware and easily cored user credentials.

Snowden's lawyer told reporters in Russia that he does not use an iPhone. We assume that he does not use a lot of common or open means of communication these days, because he worries about what it means for his liberty. Snowden, who is currently enjoying Russia as his home, does not have time to use the popular phone, and is unlikely to ever make time.

On human rights day Edward Snowden appeared by video link at an event organised by Amnesty International, le Monde, Mediaparte and Arte in Paris. The event, which was simultaneously translated, marks the first time Edward Snowden has spoken live to an audience in France.

Reacting to the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report into CIA torture programmes, Edward Snowden told his audience that the things that we did as a result of this programme are inexcusable crimes. And what we see is quite dangerous in the United States debate.

A secret message was delivered to the National Security Agency. An intelligence unit within the U.S. military’s Africa Command needed help to hack into Libya’s cellphone networks and monitor text messages. For the NSA, the task was easy.

The agency had already obtained technical information about the cellphone carriers’ internal systems by spying on documents sent among company employees, and these details would provide the perfect blueprint to help the military break into the networks. The NSA’s assistance in the Libya operation, however, was not an isolated case. It was part of a much larger surveillance program.

Serious concessions have been made about privacy post-Snowden, in particular about how personal information is processed and consumed online. Results from a survey show that the leaks have raised consumers’ consciousness about not only government, but commercial, collection of personal data.

Americans lack the confidence that they have any control over their personal data. The survey asked about six modes of communication: landlines; cell phones; text messaging; email; chat or IM; and social media. People, according to the results, are less worried about their physical location being disclosed, as well as the content of text messages, whom they’re texting or calling.