The Guardian's latest scoop on spygate.

Whistleblower charged with espionage reportedly claims US authorities accessed millions of private text messages in China



Edward Snowden, the former CIA technician who blew the whistle on global surveillance operations, has opened a new front against the US authorities, claiming they hacked into Chinese mobile phone companies to access millions of private text messages.

The latest developments will raise fears that the US's action may have pushed Snowden into the hands of the Chinese, triggering what could be a tense and prolonged diplomatic and legal wrangle between the world's two leading superpowers.

Within hours of news breaking that the US had filed charges against Snowden, the South China Morning Post reported that the whistleblower had handed over a series of documents to the paper detailing how the US had targeted Chinese phone companies as part of a widespread attempt to get its hands on a mass of data.

From this story it appears that Snowden is turning information directly over the Chinese media rather than just giving it to the Guardian. Depending on what he has this could get very interesting.