違特首訪美慣例 寧矮化香港地位 怕談政改 CY避見奧巴馬

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違特首訪美慣例　寧矮化香港地位
怕談政改　CY避見奧巴馬


■梁振英（左圖）訪美，據稱美方曾邀會見總統奧巴馬（右圖），但遭他拒絕。資料圖片

【本報訊】特首梁振英將於下周日啟程訪美，未有如以往特首般，獲安排與美國總統奧巴馬會面。據可靠消息稱，美方其實有邀請梁振英見奧巴馬，只是遭梁拒絕。立法會議員及學者批評梁避見美國總統，相信是怕被問香港民主普選議題，亦不想「功高震主」，結果矮化香港國際地位。
記者：林俊謙　呂浩然

梁振英將於下周日啟程訪美，出席香港貿易發展局在紐約舉辦的高峯論壇，並與當地政治與商貿領袖會面，包括紐約市長彭博等人，又會參觀紐約證券交易所等。不過梁此行未有安排與美國總統奧巴馬會面，與以往特首首次訪美，必獲總統或副總統接見明顯不同。

強調推廣貿易

據 可靠消息稱，美方其實有向梁振英發出邀請，安排他與美國總統奧巴馬會面，只是梁拒絕美方安排，另一政府消息人士指，由於特首此行不往華盛頓，不想特別為見 美國總統而飛往當地。不過有知情人士指出，以往特首首次訪美，必到華盛頓一行，除了和總統見面，亦可以與美國其他官員、兩黨國會議員、智庫成員見面，加強 他們對香港最新情況的了解、有助鞏固香港國際地位。
本報曾就梁是否曾拒絕美方安排與奧巴馬會面一事，向特首辦及美國駐港總領事館查詢。特首辦未有 直接回應，重申特首此行目的主要是為推廣貿易，是次出訪沒有安排與美國總統會面，而美國駐港總領事館回應稱，歡迎梁訪美，又稱梁會和紐約政商界見面，至於 梁具體行程，就要向特首辦查詢。

被嘲奴才心態

中大政治與行政學系高級導師蔡子強認為，若梁真的拒見美國總统，他會覺得十 分意外，蔡子強指梁振英推卻邀請，無非是怕面對奧巴馬時，將就普選和政改等美國關注問題避無可避，令自己承受壓力，「梁振英知道見奧巴馬時，一定避唔開政 改議題，而佢喺中央未定案前擔心講多錯多，因此選擇避得就避、縮得就縮」，這樣做亦矮化了香港在國際社會的地位，同時破壞了香港有別於其他中國內地城市的 獨特角色。
工黨李卓人更斥責梁振英有「奴才心態」，李認為反正港府對政改問題已經有標準答案，故此質疑梁振英不見奧巴馬是為免「功高蓋主」、因國家主席習近在差不多時間與美國總統見面，但這樣做正正是貶低了香港、令港人蒙羞。

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/06/10/politics/nsa-leak/index.html
 
Hong Kong (CNN) -- A day after former intelligence worker Edward Snowden outed himself as the man responsible for leaking details of U.S. surveillance programs, White House spokesman Jay Carney defended the administration's stance on the initiatives, calling them a necessary middle way between total privacy and unacceptable threat.

He said President Barack Obama would be willing to consider changes should a national debate show the public wants them. But, he wryly noted, "This is not the manner by which he hoped to have the debate."

Meanwhile, the world continued to digest what Snowden had to say in a Guardian newspaper interview published Sunday about the reasons for leaking the classified information.

Snowden, 29, acknowledged in the interview that he was the source of leaks detailing U.S. surveillance programs that collect records on domestic telephone calls and overseas Internet activity in the global hunt for terrorists and criminals.

The former CIA employee who most recently worked for the computer consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton -- which was working with the National Security Agency -- said he did it to end what he sees as an excessively intrusive surveillance system, the Guardian reported.

"The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he told the paper.

How does NSA surveillance affect you?

U.S. Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, called Snowden "a defector" who should be turned over to the United States with an eye toward harsh prosecution.

"This person is dangerous to the country," King said on CNN's "Starting Point" on Monday.

While Snowden has not been charged with a crime, the Justice Department said Sunday night that it had begun a preliminary investigation into what it called "the unauthorized disclosure of classified information by an individual with authorized access."

CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said charges are likely.

"He's in enormous trouble," Toobin said of Snowden, who himself told the Guardian he expects to be charged under the Espionage Act for giving the Guardian and the Washington Post details of the telephone and Internet surveillance programs.

Extradition?

A major question is whether Hong Kong, where Snowden fled, would extradite him to face charges in the United States.

Although Hong Kong is part of communist-ruled China, the former British colony has a free press and tolerates political dissent under a semi-autonomous government.

Hong Kong's extradition treaty with the United States has exceptions for political crimes and cases when handing over a criminal suspect would harm the "defense, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy" of either party.

The man behind the NSA leak

"I think he looked around, this seemed the safest bet," said Ewen MacAskill, one of the two Guardian journalists who reported the story.

Snowden hopes to get asylum, he added, with Iceland his first choice because of the way it dealt with WikiLeaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information through its website. The group reportedly once operated from there.

Kristin Arnadottir, Iceland's ambassador to China, said Icelandic law requires asylum applications to be made from inside the country.

In case Snowden is charged and brought back to the United States, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee started a campaign to raise funds for his legal defense. The group promotes progressive causes and candidates, its website says.

Secrets revealed

Snowden's revelations began Wednesday when the Guardian published a top secret court order demanding that Verizon Business Network Services turn over details of phone calls published from April 25 to July 19. Intelligence officials later confirmed the program, which analysts say likely covers all U.S. carriers.

On Thursday, the Guardian and the Post disclosed the existence of PRISM, a program they said allows NSA analysts to extract the details of people's online activities -- including "audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents" and other materials -- from computers at Microsoft, Google, Apple and other Internet firms.

Intelligence officials similarly confirmed that program's existence, but said it targets only overseas residents who are not U.S. citizens.

U.S. officials argue that outing the programs has armed terrorists with information to help them elude detection and endangered Americans' lives.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said the programs have been reviewed by courts, Congress and the administration, and are legal.

In Britain, where some have raised questions about that country's involvement in the surveillance programs, Foreign Minister William Hague argued along similar lines while crediting the partnership of the GCHQ, -- his country's electronic surveillance agency -- with U.S. intelligence officials.

"Since the 1940s GCHQ and its American equivalents, now the National Security Agency, have had a relationship that is unique in the world," Hague told the British Parliament. "This relationship has been and remains essential to the security of both nations, has stopped many terrorist and espionage plots against this country, and has saved many lives."

Copying secrets

Before joining Booz Allen Hamilton, which provides support technology and computer support to the government, Snowden worked for the CIA, he told the newspaper.

He told the Guardian he worked for the consulting firm in Hawaii, holding down a $200,000-a-year job that gave him easy access to a vast trove of sensitive data.

"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything," he told the newspaper. "With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone records, credit cards."

In a statement released Sunday, Booz Allen Hamilton said Snowden had worked for the company for less than three months. The report that he had leaked American secrets was "shocking" and if true, "represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm," the company said.

Snowden told the Guardian that he began final preparations for his disclosures three weeks ago, copying a last batch of classified documents and telling his boss that he needed time off for epilepsy treatment.

Snowden told the Guardian that he left for Hong Kong on May 20 without telling his family or his girlfriend what he planned.

"I do not expect to see home again," he told the paper, acknowledging the risk of imprisonment over his actions.

"You can't come up against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk," he said. "If they want to get you, over time they will."

Surveillance 'threat'

Snowden said the NSA's reach poses "an existential threat to democracy." He said he had hoped Obama would end the programs once he took office in 2009. Instead, he said, Obama "advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in."

"I don't see myself as a hero, because what I'm doing is self-interested," he said. "I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy, and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."

Surveillance concerns 'fanciful,' Britain says

On Friday, Obama said he entered office skeptical of such programs but decided to reauthorize them after a thorough vetting and the addition of unspecified additional safeguards. He called them only "modest encroachments on privacy" that help thwart terror attacks.

The revelations have inflamed privacy advocates, who have been fighting the government to reveal, and end, such surveillance programs for years.

Strange bedfellows

Snowden's actions, while opposed by many, have also brought together some liberals and conservatives to hail him as a hero.

Liberal activist and filmmaker Michael Moore tweeted that Snowden is "HERO OF THE YEAR." Conservative commentator Glenn Beck, meanwhile, called Snowden a "patriot leaker" who could help America "regain her moral compass."

In Congress, Democratic senators such as Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado have warned about the dangers of excessive surveillance as vociferously as Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky.

On the other side, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, has joined Republicans such as Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia and Rep. Mike Rogers in defending the surveillance programs.

Daniel Ellsberg, who in the 1970s leaked the Pentagon Papers documents showing the government had lied about the progress of the Vietnam War -- said Snowden had done the country an "enormous service."

"It gives us a chance, I think, from drawing back from the total surveillance state that we could say we're in the process of becoming, I'm afraid we have become," Ellsberg said Sunday on "CNN Newsroom."

Glenn Greenwald, the lead author of the Guardian pieces, said on ABC's "This Week" that Americans need an "open, honest debate about whether that's the kind of country that we want to live in."

"These are things that the American people have a right to know," said Greenwald, a lawyer and civil liberties advocate. "The only thing being damaged is the credibility of political officials and the way they exercise power in the dark."

Udall, who has long called for greater transparency in how the government collects data on Americans, said the legal authority for such programs should be reopened for debate after last week's disclosures.

"Maybe Americans think this is OK, but I think the line has been drawn too far toward 'we're going to invade your privacy,' versus 'we're going to respect your privacy,'" Udall said on CNN's "State of the Union."

Plots disrupted, lives saved

But supporters point to successes, including charges against an Afghan-born Colorado man who pleaded guilty to conspiring to bomb targets in New York, and David Headley, who was accused of conducting advance surveillance for the Pakistani jihadists who attacked hotels and other targets in Mumbai, India, in 2008, killing 164 people.

Both men pleaded guilty.

Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC that the "inflammatory nature" of the accusations doesn't fit with how the program actually operates.

"The instances where this has produced good -- has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist attacks -- is all classified," said Rogers, R-Michigan. "That's what's so hard about this."

What do you think? Is Snowden a hero or a traitor? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

CNN's Jethro Mullen reported in Hong Kong; Michael Pearson wrote in Atlanta. CNN's Tom Cohen, Matt Smith, Brian Walker, Anjali Tsui, Elise Labott and Carol Cratty contributed to this report.
美國擬就港政制開聽證會

■單仲偕上月尾赴美，獲副助理國務卿Daniel Baer和Kin Moy及候任美國駐港領事夏千福接見。張柏基攝

【記者陳雪玲報道】特首梁振英首個訪美行程，未安排與美國官員及國會議員會面，相反民主黨單仲偕上月尾赴美，卻接連獲兩位分掌人權及東亞事務的副 助理國務卿，以至候任美國駐港領事接見，他引述美國國會關注本港政制問題，一委員會更擬在本月底就香港政制、人權及民主等事宜召開聽證會。

上月尾訪美五天期間，單先後會見國務院負責民主、人權和勞工事務及負責東亞事務的副助理國務卿Daniel Baer和Kin Moy，也曾與將來港接任美國駐港領事一職的夏千福（Clifford Hart）會面。同時亦與美國國會及行政部門中國問題委員會、美中經濟暨安全檢討委員會的職員見面。

單指出美國官員一貫表示支持香港民主發展，從對方主動接見，已反映美方對港政制發展的關注。他指此行主要向美方提及全國人大法律工作委員會主任委員喬曉陽的講話，引述美方原來未有留意到喬有關特首要愛國愛港、不與中央對抗等言論，他指有國會議員得悉後，更關注香港普選特首選舉是否設篩選機制、泛民能否入閘等，更要求單提供喬的講話文本參考。

轟梁只重招商

單指國會一委員會擬於本月底就香港政制、人權及民主發展召開聽證會，反映美方關注本港政改發展。他指與夏千福的會面，主題也離不開政改，指對方曾問及本港最新政改諮詢時間表，單稱特區政府仍未作諮詢，但對方未作具體評論。

除了政制問題，「香港新聞自由如何？」是單仲偕拜訪的每個部門、委員會均會聽到的問題。他稱其間曾向美方官員提及曾有中聯辦官員致電報章老闆施壓，「佢哋好驚訝，覺得匪夷所思」。

對於梁振英此趟訪美主力招商、不到華盛頓與美國政界人士會見，單仲偕批評安排不妥當：「國際社會對於嚟唔嚟香港投資，一定要了解埋香港政治環境；梁振英如果去到美國只限於經濟領域，係唔足夠。」單估計，梁或擔心會見美國政界時會因政改問題被問到「口啞啞」，「甚至佢根本唔識點答」，因此此行只重招商、不談政治。
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