WASHINGTON - Edward Snowden, the former U.S. government
contractor who leaked secret details of official surveillance programs, pledged
Monday to release more information about U.S. intelligence-gathering methods
that he described as “nakedly, aggressively criminal.”
“All I can say right now is the U.S. government is not going
to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me,” Snowden wrote in an
online chat hosted by Britain’s Guardian newspaper. “Truth is coming, and it
cannot be stopped.”
Writing from an undisclosed location believed to be in Hong
Kong, the former CIA and National Security Agency systems administrator
vigorously defended his disclosures about the breadth of U.S. surveillance,
including programs that sweep up data about Americans’ telephone calls, emails
and Internet use.
U.S. officials have said that under laws governing the
surveillance programs, including the Patriot Act and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance
Act, U.S. citizens are not the targets of the surveillance and their
information is “minimized,” or set aside, unless it becomes relevant to a
national security investigation.
But Snowden alleged that intelligence agencies keep the
information on government computers “for a very long time” and are available
for analysts to view as long as they produce a “rubber stamp” warrant.
“The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its
section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on
a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant,”
Snowden said. “They excuse this as 'incidental' collection, but at the end of
the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications.”
Snowden has been in hiding in Hong Kong since last month,
when he left his $122,000-a-year job with federal contractor Booz Allen
Hamilton, which had assigned him to a team working for the NSA in Hawaii. He
checked out of a hotel in Kowloon last Monday, hours after identifying himself
as the source of the leaked material published in the Guardian and the
Washington Post.
Snowden said he traveled to Hong Kong last month “with no
advance booking” because NSA employees’ movements are monitored and he feared
being detained en route. He said he considered traveling to Iceland instead but
worried that the Obama administration would have put pressure on the government
in Reykjavik to surrender him.
Hong Kong, which China has administered as a self-rule
territory since 1997, provided “the cultural and legal framework to allow me to
work without being immediately detained,” Snowden said.
He rejected speculation that he intended to defect to China
and spill U.S. government secrets in exchange for asylum.
“Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have
flown directly into Beijing?” Snowden said. “I could be living in a palace
petting a phoenix by now.”
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