An ex-CIA employee working as a contractor at the U.S. National Security Agency said he was the man who had leaked details of a top secret U.S. surveillance programme, acting out of conscience to protect "basic liberties for people around the world."
Holed up in a hotel room in Hong Kong, Edward Snowden, 29, said he had thought long and hard before publicising details of an NSA programme codenamed PRISM, saying he had done so because he felt his country was building an unaccountable and secret espionage machine that spied on every American.
Both the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian newspaper - to whom he gave the documents he had purloined - published his identity on Sunday.
"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under," he told the Guardian, which published a video interview with him on its website.
"The NSA has built an infrastructure that allows it to intercept almost everything. With this capability, the vast majority of human communications are automatically ingested without targeting. If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards," he said.
More @ Newsmax
Another example of a North Carolina boy having the courage to face the maw of the beast in defiance.
ReplyDeleteI pray for Mr. Snowden
Didn't know that. Checked and he was born in Wilmington and donated to Ron Paul twice. Good man.
DeleteYet I will be cautious in lionizing him until the smoke clears. He could be just another administration attempt to lay a smoke screen and distract from more critical issues like Adam Kokesh or the IRS announcement. Reason for suspicion, his acts were of relative little consequence and he is not concerned about his identity release. In the shadowy world he inhabited, one never really knows who friends or foes are until the deed is done.
ReplyDeletehe is not concerned about his identity release.
DeleteNot I, said the blind man.:)
He's in my hero candidate box for now. But I fear Rappoport may be right on this one and the boy is just another tool being used. My many years of security clearance make his light-weight qualifications and claims of access to everything ring very false. If he had the access he claims then there is no security in government.
ReplyDeletehttp://jonrappoport.wordpress.com/2013/06/11/did-someone-help-ed-snowden-punch-a-hole-in-the-nsa/
Thanks.
Delete