Edward Snowden: the whistleblower behind revelations of NSA surveillance
The 29-year-old source behind the
biggest intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his
uncertain future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows.
The individual responsible for one of the most significant leaks in US political history is
Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and
current employee of the defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has
been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an
employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.The Guardian, after several days of interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.
Snowden will go down in history as one of America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the world's most secretive organisations the NSA..
In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."
Despite his determination to be publicly unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight. "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."
He does not fear the consequences of going public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."
Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures. "I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in." He added: "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 has had "a very comfortable life" that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "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."
'I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made'
Three weeks ago, Snowden made final preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories. At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of documents he intended to disclose.He then advised his NSA supervisor that he needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after a series of seizures last year.
As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent the last decade working in the intelligence world."
On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong, where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent", and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.
In the three weeks since he arrived, he has been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and, what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills.
He is deeply worried about being spied on. He lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.
Though that may sound like paranoia to some, Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful government on the planet, is looking for him.
Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and vows of prosecution emanating from Washington.
And he knows only too well the sophisticated technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him. The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of any connection to the leaks.
"All my options are bad," he said. The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a plane bound for US territory.
"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.
"We have got a CIA station just up the road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be."
Having watched the Obama administration prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him. "I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice I've made."
He predicts the government will launch an investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and invasive the system has become".
The only time he became emotional during the many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would have on his family, many of whom work for the US government. "The only thing I fear is the harmful effects on my family, who I won't be able to help any more. That's what keeps me up at night," he said, his eyes welling up with tears.
'You can't wait around for someone else to act'
Snowden did not always believe the US government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.By his own admission, he was not a stellar student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but never completed the coursework.
In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help free people from oppression".
He recounted how his beliefs about the war's purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.
After that, he got his first job in an NSA facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA, where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for someone who lacked even a high school diploma.
By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified documents.
That access, along with the almost three years he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the rightness of what he saw.
He described as formative an incident in which he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful recruitment.
"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 realised that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good."
He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at the time, he chose not to for two reasons.
First, he said: "Most of the secrets the CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone". Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.
He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said, that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."
The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."
Over the next three years, he learned just how all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world known to them".
He described how he once viewed the internet as "the most important invention in all of human history". As an adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own".
But he believed that the value of the internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."
Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy", he said.
A matter of principle
As strong as those beliefs are, there still remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."For him, it is a matter of principle. "The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.
His allegiance to internet freedom is reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights: Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.
Asked by reporters to establish his authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about anything in his personal life and he will answer.
He is quiet, smart, easy-going and self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services.
His manner was calm and relaxed but he has been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a CIA ploy to get him out onto the street.
Strewn about the side of his bed are his suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney.
Ever since last week's news stories began to appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place.
He lay, propped up against pillows, watching CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile.
Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's leaks began to make news.
"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."
He purposely chose, he said, to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed.
As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it "harder for them to get dirty".
He views his best hope as the possibility of asylum, with Iceland with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.
But after the intense political controversy he has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets."
Experts surprised at Greece’s finances
The Hellenic statistical authority says the
Greek economy's revised figure of 5.6% is slightly better than its prediction
earlier that the figure would be 5.3%.
The authority said the economy contracted 5.6% in the first quarter compared with the first three months of 2012.
The figure was released shortly after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it had underestimated how much deeper austerity measures would push Greece's economy into recession.
The revised figure was slightly better than the 5.7% shrinkage seen in the fourth quarter, according to finance ministry data.
Weighing on first-quarter GDP was an 8.3% year-on-year drop in consumer spending and an 11.4% fall in capital spending, the body said.
Helping it was a 22.9% decrease in the trade deficit as exports fell 2.6% and imports fell 7.8%.
The IMF admitted last week that there had been "notable failures" in Greece's bailout about how much the austerity mandated of it as part of its international bailouts - the first of which was agreed on in May 2010 - would slow its economy.
Athens so far has received about €200bn in loans from a rescue programme totalling €240bn.
Repeated austerity measures, which include salary and pension cuts as well as tax hikes, have helped reduce the country's budget deficit, but at the same time left it deeper in recession than what the IMF and its European partners had initially forecast.
Unemployment has surged to more than 27%.
The government has predicted that Greece would return to growth and international bond markets by the end of 2014.
The authority said the economy contracted 5.6% in the first quarter compared with the first three months of 2012.
The figure was released shortly after the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said it had underestimated how much deeper austerity measures would push Greece's economy into recession.
The revised figure was slightly better than the 5.7% shrinkage seen in the fourth quarter, according to finance ministry data.
Weighing on first-quarter GDP was an 8.3% year-on-year drop in consumer spending and an 11.4% fall in capital spending, the body said.
Helping it was a 22.9% decrease in the trade deficit as exports fell 2.6% and imports fell 7.8%.
The IMF admitted last week that there had been "notable failures" in Greece's bailout about how much the austerity mandated of it as part of its international bailouts - the first of which was agreed on in May 2010 - would slow its economy.
Athens so far has received about €200bn in loans from a rescue programme totalling €240bn.
Repeated austerity measures, which include salary and pension cuts as well as tax hikes, have helped reduce the country's budget deficit, but at the same time left it deeper in recession than what the IMF and its European partners had initially forecast.
Unemployment has surged to more than 27%.
The government has predicted that Greece would return to growth and international bond markets by the end of 2014.
Koreas hold first talks in two years
North and South Korea held their first official talks for more than two years on Sunday, seeking to set up a high-level meeting in Seoul after months of tensions and threats of nuclear war.
The working-level discussions - weighed down, as always, by decades of mutual distrust - were held in the border truce village of Panmunjom where the armistice ending the 1950-53 Korean War was signed.
"The overall atmosphere was... calm and the discussion proceeded with no major debate," the South's Unification Ministry spokesperson Kim Hyung-Seok said after the morning session between the two delegations, each comprising three representatives.
The talks moved into a fourth session in the evening as the two sides sought to agree a framework for what would be their first ministerial-level meeting since 2007 - tentatively scheduled in Seoul on Wednesday.
The agenda will focus on restoring suspended commercial links, including the Kaesong joint industrial complex that the North effectively shut down in April as tensions between the historic rivals peaked.
Seoul said it would be represented by Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae as chief negotiator and has asked the North to send Kim Yang-on, head of the United Front Department of the ruling Workers Party of Korea, as its top negotiator, according to Yonhap news agency.
"Today's talks were purely preparatory, so there was little room for dispute," said Yang Moo-Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
"We'll get a better sense of where things really stand on Wednesday," Yang told AFP.
Sunday's talks came about after an unexpected reversal on Thursday from North Korea, which suddenly dropped its default tone of high-decibel belligerence and proposed opening a dialogue.
South Korea responded swiftly with its offer of a ministerial meeting in Seoul, the North countered with a request for lower-level talks first and, after some relatively benign to-and-fro about the best venue, Sunday's meet in Panmunjom was agreed.
In a further signal of intent, North Korea on Friday restored its official hotline with the South, which it had severed in March.
The move towards dialogue has been broadly welcomed - given the threats of nuclear war that were being flung around in April and May - but there is sizeable scepticism about Pyongyang's intentions.
"The North Korean offer has all of the hallmarks of Pyongyang's diplomacy," said Stephan Haggard, a North Korea expert at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
"Pyongyang is 'sincerely' and 'magnanimously' inviting the South to fix, and pay for, problems of the North's own creation," Haggard said.
It was the North's decision to withdraw its 53 000 workers in early April that closed Kaesong.
The North also wants to discuss resuming tours by South Koreans to its Mount Kumgang resort. These were suspended after a North Korean soldier shot dead a South Korean tourist there in July 2008.
Kaesong and Mount Kumgang were both significant sources of scarce foreign currency for North Korea, which is squeezed by UN sanctions imposed over its nuclear weapons programme.
There are also suggestions that Pyongyang was playing to a specific audience by proposing talks just before US President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping sat down for their crucial summit in California.
China, the North's sole major ally and economic benefactor, has been under US pressure to restrain its neighbour and has pushed Pyongyang to drop its destabilising strategy of confrontation.
On Saturday, Obama and Xi closely consulted on North Korea's recent nuclear brinkmanship, and agreed to work together on the "denuclearisation" of the Korean peninsula, US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon said.
Analysts say South Korea will approach talks with Pyongyang with a caution born of long experience.
President Park Geun-Hye, who took office in February with a promise of greater engagement with Pyongyang, has welcomed the initiative.
But she remains adamant that any substantive dialogue can only take place if the North shows some tangible commitment to abandoning its nuclear weapons programme.
North Korea has been equally emphatic in declaring its nuclear deterrent is not up for negotiation.
It was the North's nuclear test in February, and subsequent UN sanctions, that triggered the recent crisis, which saw Pyongyang threaten both the South and the United States with pre-emptive nuclear strikes.
Turkey's Social Media And Smartphones Key To 'Occupy Gezi' Protests
In between the boisterous chants calling for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's resignation, the protestors at this city's Gezi Park glance at their Smartphones to quickly browse Twitter for reliable, uncensored news.
The social media stream has become an important means of communication within the Turkish uprising that began in late May as part of efforts to stop the cutting down of trees at the park and replacing them with a mall.
Ayca Malpoc has been camped out in a small tent at the back of the park, near the towering Intercontinental Hotel since almost the beginning of the demonstrations, when getting the real facts about them was practically impossible.
"It was very hard," she told The Media Line. "I have a friend in London and he always texted me. And I learned the news from him."
The Turkish television channels have shown almost none of the protests in their country. At one of the most intense moments, when police forces clashed with protesters here, cars were overturned and buildings torched, one Turkish TV news channel continued to show a documentary on penguins. Those protests now appear to be among the most significant events in modern Turkish history.
Erdogan's opponents also accused other TV channels and newspapers of either neglecting to seriously cover the protests or downplaying them.
"Our professional responsibility is to report everything as in the way it happens,” Cem Aydin, the CEO of Turkish media conglomerate Doğuş, which owns the television channel NTV, told reporters at a staff meeting. “The pursuit of balance within the imbalanced environment affected us as it did the other media outlets. Aydin also reportedly added the channel has "an opportunity to refresh our relationship with our audience."
The behavior of the country's print and electronic media was in keeping with the non-profit Committee to Protest Journalist's (CPJ) labeling Turkey as a threat to independent journalism, imprisoning more journalists than any other country. The latest figures show from 2012 show that Turkey has 49 journalists behind bars. So for an alternative source of information, Turks turned to Twitter and other social media like Facebook, Ustream and Vine.
"Social media are the key to this movement. Because Turkish television didn't show anything," Melih, a protester who would only give his first name told The Media Line.
Protesters directed their anger over this poor coverage at TV news crews who did show up at protests, overturning the crews' cars and gathering outside their Istanbul offices.
Despite the calls for better coverage from the Turkish media, it's still hard to come by. At least six Turkish newspapers ran the same headline for a front page story backing Erdogan on June 7. The headline read “Democracy Demands Sacrifice.”
With little reliable, non-politicized coverage available from the usual media outlets, many Turks have embraced social media sources like Twitter.
"I wasn't very good at using Facebook or Twitter, but after this 'occupy' protest I've become very good at it," protester Burcu Atar told The Media Line
The Turkish protests have been a boon for Silicon Valley-based Anchor Free that sells the application "Hotspot Shield," allowing anonymous Internet surfing through a virtual private network. The ap basically hides your computer's information allowing you to sneak around internet]. Downloads of the software jumped 1,000% to almost 100,000 by the beginning of the month.
A company statement said that the application allows people to safely avoid what it called "government censorship" by enabling access to restricted Websites like Facebook and Twitter.
"When people are fighting for the right to freedom of information, Hotspot Shield is a clear enabler," AnchorFree CEO and Founder David Gorodyansky told The Media Line by e-mail.
Gorodyansky said the application was also instrumental in 2011's Arab Spring protests.
There were reports of access to sites like Twitter and Facebook being blocked within Istanbul, but they have been difficult to verify. The government denies the reports. Nevertheless, government leaders have been critical of social media coverage of the protests. Even Erdogan himself recently branded Twitter as a "menace."
Other government leaders, however, have worked to use social media to their advantage.
After European Union (EU)Commissioner Stefan Fule criticized the Turkish government's response to the Istanbul protesters, during a conference with Erdogan on June 7, Turkey's EU Minister Egemen Bakis fired back on Twitter, defending the government.
Other supporters of Erdogan, including what appears to be his party's official Twitter account for its "youth branch foreign affairs" have also been blasting Turkish and foreign journalists critical of the government's response to the demonstrations.
One response to a Turkish newspaper reporter read: "Taksim is not Tahrir. Erdogan is an elected prime minister, not a dictator.
Nonetheless there can be no denial that all sides in the current unrest have found the social media valuable allies. What's certain is that already is serving as a new catalyst for communications with millions of Turks hungry for information.
