US whistleblower says he handed over all digital material to journalists he worked with in Hong Kong
Edward Snowden says
there is no chance of leaked NSA documents falling into the hands of
Russian or Chinese officials. Photograph: AP
Edward Snowden, the source of
US National Security Agency leaks, has said he left all the leaked documents behind when he flew from
Hong Kong to Moscow and there is no chance of them falling into the hands of Russian or Chinese authorities.
In an
interview with the New York Times,
Snowden said he had decided to hand over all digital material to the
journalists he had met in Hong Kong because it would not have been in
the public interest for him to hold on to copies. "What would be the
unique value of personally carrying another copy of materials onward?"
Snowden disputed speculation that he had run the risk of
China and
Russia
gaining access to the secret files. He said he was so familiar with
Chinese spying operations, having himself targeted China when he was
employed by the
NSA,
that he knew how to keep the trove secure from them. "There's a 0%
chance the Russians or Chinese have received any documents," he said.
The
30-year-old said he had previously been reluctant to disclose that he
no longer had the files for fear of exposing the journalists – Glenn
Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill of the Guardian, and the independent
filmmaker Laura Poitras – to greater scrutiny.
Snowden conducted
the interview over the past few days, communicating from Russia, where
he has been granted a year's asylum, with an NYT journalist in the US
via encrypted email. He took the opportunity to try to quash several of
the most widely aired criticisms of his actions.
Snowden said he
had decided to become a whistleblower and flee America because he had no
faith in the internal reporting mechanisms of the US government, which
he believed would have destroyed him and buried his message forever.
One
of the main criticisms levelled at Snowden by the Obama administration
has been that he should have taken up an official complaint within the
NSA rather than travelling to Hong Kong to share his concerns about the
agency's data dragnet with the Guardian and other news organisations.
But Snowden dismissed that option as implausible.
"The system does
not work," he said, pointing to the paradox that "you have to report
wrongdoing to those most responsible for it". If he had tried to sound
the alarm internally, he would have been "discredited and ruined" and
the substance of his warnings "would have been buried forever".
Snowden's
comments go to the heart of the dichotomy within the Obama
administration's policy towards whistleblowers. It has introduced new
protections for whistleblowers uncovering corruption and inefficiency,
including a presidential order that extends the safeguards to the
intelligence services. But contract workers such as Snowden are not
protected by the executive order, and the government has pursued
official leakers with an aggression rarely seen before.
Eight
leakers, including Snowden, have been prosecuted under the 1917
Espionage Act – more than twice the number under all previous presidents
combined.
Snowden singled out one of those eight, Thomas Drake, a
former senior NSA executive who turned whistleblower, after he became
alarmed about the agency's choice of tools for intelligence-gathering.
Drake, who was prosecuted but had all the charges dropped, was in Moscow
last week to honour Snowden with an award.
The author of the NYT
article, James Risen, is himself at odds with the Obama administration.
Risen uncovered the original warrantless wiretapping of phone calls by
the Bush administration, for which he won a Pulitzer prize. He is under
intense pressure to divulge the name of one of his sources at the
criminal leak trial of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent who is
another of the Espionage Act eight. Risen is refusing to reveal his
source, and is likely to appeal right up to the US supreme court.
Snowden said it was a report on the wiretapping programme that Risen uncovered that had first piqued his curiosity.
He
said he was shocked when he came across a copy of a classified report
from 2009 dealing with the NSA's warrantless wiretapping under Bush. "If
the highest officials in government can break the law without fearing
punishment or even any repercussions at all, secret powers become
tremendously dangerous."
He said his main objection to the NSA
dragnet of data was that it was being conducted in secret. "The secret
continuance of these programmes represents a far greater danger than
their disclosure. It represents a dangerous normalisation of 'governing
in the dark', where decisions with enormous public impact occur without
any public input."
Snowden would not discuss the conditions of his
life in Moscow. His father, Lon Snowden, returned to the US this week
from a visit to see him and reported that "he's comfortable, he's happy,
and he's absolutely committed to what he has done".
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Friday, October 18, 2013
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