Moscow expects intl community to take heed of Snowden's revelations - diplomat
MOSCOW. Dec 13 (Interfax) - Moscow expects that the international community will not ignore problems made public by former U.S. National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner on Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law Konstantin Dolgov said.
"It is positive that the impetus caused by Snowden's revelations has not fallen through the cracks. We expect international institutions to keep paying active attention to the problems revealed by the information publicized by Snowden," Dolgov said in his presentation at the World Human Rights Forum in Brasilia, the transcript of which is available on the Russian Foreign Ministry website on Friday.
"Information security experts, particularly American ones, have noted that Snowden's revelations have likely affected only the tip of the iceberg," he said.
"They are sure that the arsenal used by the United States and its partners in global surveillance is much broader and much more sophisticated. This inevitably causes concerns and perplexity, especially against the background of the lecturing regularly heard from Washington and some European capitals, urging other countries to uphold freedom of speech and the media," he said.
Dolgov also referred to former U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning, a WikiLeaks informer, who was recently sentenced to 35 years confinement for violations of the Espionage Act and other offences.
"The American authorities eagerly campaigning for freedom of speech abroad have made an unjustifiably tough decision, paying no heed to any human rights aspects," he said.
"The journalistic community and human rights activists noted in this connection that information publicized by Manning revealed numerous abuses on the part of the U.S. Armed Forces during operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, including deaths of peaceful civilians, torture of convicts, and other gross violations of international law in the human rights area - in other words, everything that the U.S. authorities care so much about and are trying to promote around the world so enthusiastically. What is it if not an obvious double standard?" Dolgov said.
Snowden's revelations caused diplomatic tensions when it turned out that the NSA tapped telephone conversations of 35 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
NSA Director Keith Alexander said in November that Snowden had shared up to 200,000 classified documents with the media. Russia had granted Snowden temporary asylum for one year in August.
