(17/12/2013) For Snowden-watchers, it has been an interesting few days.

CBS broadcast a “60 Minutes” program about the NSA (full transcript), with lots of little gems: some unnamed country has a BIOS attack that could brick all US computers; Snowden might well have 1.7 million documents; he might be offered amnesty in exchange for the rest; Gen. Alexander doesn’t think it’s a great idea and compares releasing documents to shooting hostages. The program’s tone, not very challenging of the NSA, was widely ridiculed across the net, and it didn’t help that the presenter looks to be taking on a job at the FBI any day now. Some of the character assassination attempted in the program was contradicted by an interview with a co-worker in Forbes. Did Snowden really wear the emblem below on his hoodie?

The biggest news was probably that a US judge ruled against the NSA’s surveillance (their hoovering up of all US phone metadata, more specifically). As this is based on the rights of US citizens, it doesn’t help us directly, but at least it’s a start and Glenn Greenwald was right to be gloating on Twitter yesterday.

Also, Snowden has written a letter to Brazil which I read as suggesting he’s offering to help them defend against surveillance which would work even better if he was given amnesty there.

With actions by Brazil, the EU, and the UN ongoing, you might be forgiven for thinking that the tide is turning in favour of Snowden and the people appalled by the practices he revealed.

Not so in the UK though, it seems. I wrote earlier about the Home Affairs Select Committee grilling of Rusbridger of the Guardian, and about the Cyber Security Strategy update. Yesterday, Theresa May attended the Home Affairs Select Committee (summary). Her explanation for refusing that committee’s access to intelligence chiefs appeared to be that the ISC already supervises them, and does so adequately because it does so adequately and behind closed doors. (Circularity intended on my part.) Despite repeated questioning, she failed to provide or even confirm the existence of evidence that “enemies of Britain are rubbing their hands with glee” after the Snowden revelations. It’s not just the Tories who are stuck in a groove there, though. Labour MP Ian Austin also remained worried that “information containing the names of agents had been sent around the world by the Guardian”. Can we move on, please?

Update (18/12/2013): MEPs asked interesting questions of Glenn Greenwald appearing at the EU enquiry into mass surveillance; only one of them threw accusations and inquired into the sources and security of documents. No prize for guessing that it was a UK MEP (Kirkhope, CON). Sigh. It then got worse, with Tory internet trolls misinterpreting the answers, ending with this statement from Greenwald.

PS do tell me if some links on this page die – some are copied from the @CyberSecKent twitter feed and were subjected to Twitter’s link abbreviation, not sure if they will survive forever.