Prism: Web Spying Whistleblower Goes Public
10/06/2013 10:08
A 29-year-old government contractor has revealed himself as the source of disclosures about the US government's secret surveillance programmes.
Edward Snowden, a former CIA and technician who has contracted for the National Security Agency (NSA), admitted his role in leaks to The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers, saying the public needs to decide whether the programmes are right or wrong.
In an interview on The Guardian's website, Mr Snowden said: "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."
He said he was willing to sacrifice a comfortable life "because I can't in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're secretly building".
The recent stories in The Guardian and The Washington Post have revealed the existence of the Prism system, a surveillance program set up by the NSA that tracks the use of the internet directly from ISP servers.
Mr Snowden, currently holed up in a Hong Kong hotel, risks prosecution.
The leaks have led the NSA to ask the Justice Department to conduct a criminal investigation. The Justice Department said it was in the initial stages of an investigation.
Mr Snowden worked for the NSA as an employee of various outside contractors, including Dell and Booz Allen Hamilton, his current employer.
Internet use data was said to have been passed on to GCHQ in Cheltenham
He flew to Hong Kong on May 20 after copying the last set of documents he intended to disclose at the NSA's office in Hawaii, the reports said.
The Guardian and The Washington Post said they were revealing Mr Snowden's identity at his own request.
"I'm not going to hide," Snowden told The Post. "Allowing the US government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest."
He acknowledged fears of being "rendered" - summarily detained without due process and taken into secret detention by the CIA or its partners - or taken in for questioning by Chinese authorities.
"And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be," he said.
Mr Snowden said he is seeking "asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimisation of global privacy".
"The nation that most encompasses this is Iceland. They stood up for people over internet freedom."
Iceland's International Modern Media Institute, a free press group, said it had yet to hear from Mr Snowden directly. But in a statement the institute said it would do what it could to help him find asylum and was working to set up a meeting with Iceland's interior minister.
However, the law appears to allow for Mr Snowden extradition from Hong Kong, a semiautonomous territory of China, to the United States.
The revelations spurred an outcry, which expanded when The Guardian said the UK's GCHQ monitoring centre has been accessing information about British citizens through Prism.
Facebook is one of firms which has denied being part of the Prism system
GCHQ is due to give a report to parliament's Intelligence and Security Committee over its links with the programme.
Foreign Secretary William Hague defended the integrity of GCHQ, dismissing as "fanciful" claims that the eavesdropping centre has stepped outside the law.
A separate programme, also disclosed by The Guardian, has been used to scoop up the telephone records of millions of Americans.
President Barack Obama and the chief of US intelligence said the secret programmes as vital to keeping Americans safe.
He said the US was "going to have to make some choices between balancing privacy and security to protect against terror".
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who brought to light Prism and the separate programme to gather US phone records, said the public had a right to know and openly debate what the government was doing.
"Every time there's a whistleblower, someone who exposes government wrongdoing, the tactic is to demonise them as a traitor," he told ABC.
"What they were seeing being done in secret, inside the United States government, is so alarming they simply want one thing ... They want the American people to learn about this massive spying apparatus and what the capabilities are, so we can have an open, honest debate."
The director of US National Intelligence, James Clapper, said two plots had been foiled through information obtained through Prism and phone snooping programmes.
Both were in 2009, he said - one was a bomb attack on the New York subway, and the other was linked to David Headley, a conspirator in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Under Prism, which has been running for six years, the NSA has been able to issue directives to internet firms demanding access to emails, online chats, pictures, files, videos and more uploaded by foreign users.
Internet service providers, like Google and Facebook, have denied giving the government unfettered access to customer data, insisting have only done so only when compelled by law.
