UK-owned Guardian newspaper has
revealed 29 year old Edward Snowden, a current employee of defence contractor Booz
Allen Hamilton, as a former CIA technical assistant who leaked details of a secret
US programme that gathered millions of phone and internet records.
The revelations began on
Wednesday night, when a report from Guardian came out indicating that phone
company Verizon had been ordered by a US ‘secret’ court to relay millions of phone
records on telephone call “metadata” to the National Security Agency (NSA).
The report continued, revealing
that the NSA secret surveillance system known as Prism, was undergone, in an
effort to track online communication by tapping directly into servers of nine major
internet firms.
However, the involved internet companies
have denied the allegations, while the papers revealed that the data they (NSA
and the FBI) gathered were used to track suspected foreign nationals in
terrorism and spying cases.
Although, the ex-CIA man’s
identity was revealed by the UK papers with his consent, he claimed that he leaked
the information in order to protect “basic liberties for people around the
world.”
In an interview with the Guardian
newspaper, he said, “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.”
Although, he had no intention of
hiding, he replied “nothing good” when asked what he believed would happen to
him after the information went public.
Snowden has decided to seek
asylum in Iceland, explaining that he had gone Hong Kong because of is strong
tradition of “free speech”.
US Director of National
Intelligence James Clapper has condemned the revelations, calling the leaks “literally
gut-wrenching”, as the NSA asks the Justice Department to conduct a criminal
investigation.
Former senior NSA executive
turned whistleblower Thomas Drake, said that Snowden’s act was an extraordinary
act of civil disobedience, adding that the US intelligence community will do
whatever it can to prosecute him.
Only on Friday, US President
Obama had defended the surveillance programmes of the governnment, calling it a
“modest encroachment” on privacy which is of extreme importance in the
protection of the country from terrorism.
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