Washington - A 29-year-old American who works as contract
employee at the National Security Agency is the source of The Guardian’s
disclosures about the U.S. government’s secret surveillance programs, the
London newspaper reported Sunday.
The leaks have reopened the post-Sept. 11 debate about privacy
concerns versus heightened measure to protect against terrorist attacks, and
led the NSA to ask the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation.
The Guardian said it was publishing the identity of Edward
Snowden, a former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of
defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, at his own request.
“I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I
have done nothing wrong,” he was quoted as saying.
The director of national intelligence, James Clapper, has
decried the revelation of the intelligence-gathering programs as reckless, and
in the past days has taken the rare step of declassifying some details about
them to respond to media reports about counterterrorism techniques employed by
the government.
An Internet scouring program, code-named PRISM, allows the
NSA and FBI to tap directly into the servers of major U.S. Internet companies
such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and AOL, scooping out emails, video
chats, instant messages and more to track foreign nationals who are suspected
of terrorism or espionage.
The NSA also is collecting the telephone records of millions
of American customers, but not actual conversations.
President Barack Obama, Clapper and others have said the
programs are authorized by Congress and subject to strict supervision of a
secret court.
Snowden is quoted as saying that his “sole motive is to
inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done
against them.”
The Guardian reported that Snowden was working in an NSA
office in Hawaii when he copied the last of the documents he planned to
disclose and told supervisors that he needed to be away for a few weeks to
receive treatment for epilepsy.
He left for Hong Kong on May 20 and has remained there
since, according to the newspaper.
Snowden is quoted as saying he chose that
city because “they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of
political dissent”, and because he believed it was among the spots on the
globes that could and would resist the dictates of the U.S. government.
Snowden is quoted as saying he hopes the publicity the leaks
have cause will provide him some protection and that he sees asylum, perhaps in
Iceland, as a possibility.
“I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no
regrets,” Snowden told the newspaper.
He was said to have worked on IT security for the CIA and by
2007, was stationed with diplomatic cover in Geneva, responsible for
maintaining computer network security. That gave him clearance to a range of
classified documents, according to the report.
“Much of what I saw in Geneva really disillusioned me about
how my government functions and what its impact is in the world,” he says. “I
realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”
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