Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old employee of a U.S. defense subcontractor is the source of confidential information revealed to The Guardian about communication surveillance programs conducted by the United States, the British newspaper reported on Sunday.
“I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” said Edward Snowden, who is in Hong Kong since May 20, in an interview published on the newspaper’s website.
“I do not expect to see home again,” admits the former CIA employee, given that U.S. authorities announced that they have launched an investigation to find out who is the origin of revelations published by newspapers The Guardian and The Washington Post last week.
British newspaper publishes a video interview with Edward Snowden facing the camera.
A former CIA technician, Snowden, who worked for four years for the National Security Agency (NSA), revealed documents belonging to this agency – as an employee of subcontractors such as Dell or Booz Allen Hamilton, his last employer.
“My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,” said the young man for The Guardian.
Three weeks ago, he left the company, in the context of living a very comfortable life in Hawaii, and went to Hong Kong, before he disclosed the information on secret surveillance, the newspaper said.
“I’m willing to sacrifice all of that 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,” he said.
In an interview with ABC News, the Director of U.S. National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper said that an investigation was opened to determine the origin of the revelations about the methods used by these services.
“In a rush to publish, media outlets have not given the full context – including the extent to which these programs are overseen by all three branches of government – to these effective tools,” Clapper said in a DNI statement published on June 8.
The statement continues: “In particular, the surveillance activities published in The Guardian and The Washington Post are lawful and conducted under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and authorized by Congress. Their purpose is to obtain foreign intelligence information, including information necessary to thwart terrorist and cyber attacks against the United States and its allies.
Our ability to discuss these activities is limited by our need to protect intelligence sources and methods. Disclosing information about the specific methods the government uses to collect communications can obviously give our enemies a ‘playbook’ of how to avoid detection.”
The Washington Post and The Guardian revealed last week the existence of two secret NSA programs. The first one is about data harvesting since 2006 of phone calls in the U.S. by a subsidiary of the telecommunication company Verizon and, apparently, by other telecommunication companies.
The second program, called PRISM, is intended to intercept foreign Internet users, who are outside the United States, through Internet giants such as Google, Yahoo!, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook.
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