Thread: NSA Whistleblower Revealed! So, Who Is Edward Snowden? Video

NSA Whistleblower Revealed! So, Who Is Edward Snowden?



BY FOX NEWS INSIDER //JUN 09 2013 // 3:45PM
AS SEEN ON AMERICA'S NEWS HEADQUARTERS
Video at the Page Link:

The Guardian newspaper revealed Edward Snowden as the source behind the leaks on the United States’ surveillance program. The British newspaper said Snowden is a 29-year-old American who works as a contractor at the National Security Agency, which is collecting the phone and computer data of millions of Americans. He’s also a former CIA employee.

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The Guardian released video of its interview with Snowden, conducted by journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Snowden is employed by defense contractor, Booz Allen, working at the NSA office in Hawaii where he lived. He recently flew to Hong Kong, where he remains at this time.

Snowden requested the newspaper reveal his name. He said Americans have a right to know what's being done in their name and maintained, “I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong.”

Greenwald suggested today that Snowden is providing a vital public service. The Guardian and The Washington Post first broke the story last week. The Obama administration is reportedly preparing a criminal probe into the leaks.

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POSTED IN: // Who Is Edward Snowden // Edward Snowden // NSA // Cell phone privacy // NSA leak investigation // The Guardian // Glenn Greenwald


http://foxnewsinsider.com/2013/06/09...a-leaks-source

NSA WHISTLEBLOWER: OBAMA TOOK DOWN GENERAL PETRAEUS WITH SURVEILLANCE PROGRAM


VIDEO AT LINK

William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades, said the David Petraeus sex scandal was most likely exposed using illegal surveillance of his email.7 Jun 2013

http://www.breitbart.com/Breitbart-TV/2013/06/07/NSA-Whistle-blower-Obama-Took-Down-General-Petraeus-With-Surveillance-Program

NSA Contractor Outs Himself as Source of Surveillance Documents

BY KIM ZETTER
06.09.13
4:05 PM

NSA contractor and former CIA technical employee Edward Snowden announced today that he was the source for documents published about the NSA’s secret surveillance programs. Image courtesy of the Guardian

Edward Snowden, a former computer security administrator for the CIA and current contractor for the NSA, has outed himself as the source of a string of explosive documents describing NSA surveillance activities against U.S. citizens and foreign targets.
The 29-year-old, who now works for the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton on projects for the NSA in Hawaii, revealed himself as the source of documents provided to the Guardian and Washington Postabout the NSA’s collection of phone records belonging to millions of Americans as well as a surveillance program called PRISM that targets the internet communications and activities of foreign targets.
Snowden made the revelations in a lengthy story and video published by the Guardian today.
“I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,” Snowden said in the interview, conducted last Thursday in Hong Kong where he was in hiding at the time the leaks were published. He added, “I am not afraid, because this is the choice I’ve made.”
He identified himself as an infrastructure analyst for the NSA in Hawaii, earning $200,000 a year, but has worked as a contractor for the NSA for four years on behalf of various contract firms.
He worked previously as a systems engineer and administrator, a senior advisor for the CIA and a telecommunications information systems officer and described his growing distress over the years as his exposure to the government’s surveillance activities grew.
In a note that he wrote to accompany the first documents he gave the papers, he said, “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.”
He also said that he didn’t want media attention for leaking but wanted the spotlight focused instead on the broad surveillance the U.S. government was doing.
“I know the media likes to personalise political debates, and I know the government will demonise me,” he said in the interview. “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…. My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them.”
Snowden said he was willing to sacrifice his career and the stable life he had made with his girlfriend in Hawaii “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 he assumed the government would accuse him of violating the Espionage Act and aiding enemies but this didn’t concern him. The Guardian said the only time he became emotional during interviews was when he pondered the impact this would have on his family, many of whom work for the U.S. 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 told the paper.
Booz Allen Hamilton released a statement confirming that Snowden worked for them but said he had been an employee “for less than 3 months.”
“News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm,” the company wrote. “We will work closely with our clients and authorities in their investigation of this matter.”
The revelation came after the Director of National Intelligence James. R. Clapper announced yesterday that the NSA had begun an investigation into the leaking of the documents.
Prior to Snowden coming forward, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) had criticized the leaker and Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald for publishing information about programs they failed to understand.
“He doesn’t have a clue how this thing works; nether did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous,” Rogers said, adding, “I absolutely think [the leaker] should be prosecuted.”
Snowden’s extensive technical background proves that assertion wrong.
Nonetheless, both the Guardian and the Washington Post were criticized for errors in the explosive stories they broke last week regarding the government’s surveillance — errors they attributed to the documents that Snowden provided and to information that Snowden himself gave them about the nature of the surveillance.
The Guardian led on Wednesday with the revelation that the NSA had obtained a court order to collect the phone records of millions of Verizon customers in the U.S. for a three-month period beginning in April. Senator Dianne Feinstein later acknowledged that the order was actually a re-issue for an ongoing collection order that was renewed repeatedly every three months.
The following day, both the Post and the Guardian published stories claiming that the NSA had direct access into the servers of nine internet companies, including Google, Yahoo and Facebook, and were collecting large volumes of data with the cooperation of these firms, including email and audio and video traffic as well as documents.
Both papers had to step back from that allegation, however, after the internet companies strongly denied that the NSA had direct connections to their servers or that they provided any data that was not targeted and part of a court order.
The Post and Guardian made the false accusations based on a 41-slide PowerPoint presentation that Snowden provided the papers and on assertions from Snowden himself. In a revised story, the Postdeleted mention that the NSA has direct access to company servers but said the system allows analysts to query data through equipment that is housed at company controlled locations.
Snowden first began thinking about leaking back in 2009 when he was stationed in Geneva, Switzerland, for the CIA.
His route to the CIA was circuitous. Snowden never matriculated from high school, but in 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began a training for Special Forces. He got discharged, however, after breaking both of his legs.
After this, he got a job as a security guard for one of the NSA’s covert facilities at the University of Maryland.
He followed that with a job in IT security for the CIA. In 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic cover in Geneva for a computer security job that gave him clearance and access to a wide array of classified documents.
Like Bradley Manning before him, it was that access to documents and his time spent around colleagues that led him to begin questioning the government’s activities.
“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 realized that I was part of something that was doing far more harm than good.”
He thought about exposing government secrets at the time, but didn’t because CIA secrets are mostly about people and he didn’t want to endanger anyone. He also thought the election of Barack Obama in 2008 would change things.
In 2009 he left the CIA for a job with a private contractor and got assigned to an NSA facility at a military base in Japan.
The next three years broadened his education of the NSA’s surveillance activities and increased his disillusionment and dissatisfaction with the NSA.
“[T]hey are intent on making every conversation and every form of behavior in the world known to them,” he told the Guardian, and said agency posed an “existential threat to democracy.”
“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.
Snowden contrasted himself to Bradley Manning, the former Army intelligence analyst who went on trial last week for leaking more than a million documents to WikiLeaks, saying that contrary to Manning he “carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest” and withheld ones that did not fit that goal.
“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 also said he purposely chose to give the documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be public and what should remain concealed.
Much controversy surrounded Manning’s leaks because he leaked entire databases of documents he never viewed before passing them to WikiLeaks. Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has also been widely criticized for taking center stage in the publication of the leaks, seeking payment for them at one point from publishing partners and failing to take care to redact sensitive information.
In a video interview that the Post did on Friday with one of the writers who broke its story, Barton Gellman, the reporter asserted that his then-anonymous source knew it was inevitable that he would be exposed and felt that leaking the information was worth the consequences he faced.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/201...-outs-himself/

Edward Snowden Identified as the Source for NSA Leaks, Is He Now In Danger

June 9, 2013

More articles by Be First In Media Staff »
Written by: Be First In Media Staff




Video: The U.S. goverment is accessing top Internet companies’ servers to track foreign targets. Reporter Barton Gellman talks about the source who revealed this top-secret information and how he believes his whistle blowing was worth whatever consequences are ahead.

Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old system administrator and former undercover CIA employee, unmasked himself Sunday as the principal source of recent Washington Post and Guardian disclosures about top-secret NSA programs, denouncing what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent citizens and saying in an interview, “it’s important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated.”Director of NationalIntelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said Saturday that the NSA had initiated a Justice Department investigation into who leaked the information.

Graphic


NSA slides explain the PRISM data-collection program


A timeline of surveillance in the United States from 2001 to 2013: from the Patriot Act to the PRISM program.

Special Report

Barton Gellman and Aaron Blake2:00 PM ET
Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old Booz Allen Hamilton employee, says he’s “done nothing wrong” in leak of the government’s surveillance programs.
Government, companies argue that surveillance is lawful, limited


Robert O’Harrow Jr., Ellen Nakashima and Barton Gellman JUN 8
U.S. officials and Internet firms say there was no unlimited access or data mining of company servers.


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Surveillance programs renew debate about oversight


Robert Barnes, Timothy B. Lee and Ellen Nakashima JUN 8
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Feinstein: NSA programs thwarted plots in New York, Mumbai


Aaron Blake 9:43 AM ET
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feisntein (D-Calif.) said Sunday that the Obama Administration’s recently revealed surveillance programs have thwarted two major terrorist plots.

Snowden, whose full name is Edward Joseph Snowden, said he understands the risks of disclosing the information, but that he felt it was the right thing to do.“I intend to ask for asylum from any countries that believe in free speech and oppose the victimization of global privacy,” Snowden told the Post.
“I’m not going to hide,” Snowden said Sunday afternoon. “Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest.”
Asked whether he believed his disclosures would change anything, he said: “I think they already have. Everyone, everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten— and they’re talking about it. They have to power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state.”
Snowden’s name surfaced as top intelligence officials in the Obama administration and Congress pushed back against the journalists responsible forrevealing the existence of sensitive surveillance programs and calling for an investigation into the leaks.
The Guardian initially reported the existence of a program that collects data on all phone calls made on the Verizon network. Later in the week, the Guardian and The Washington Post reported the existence of a separate program, code-named PRISM, that collects the Internet data of foreigners from major Internet companies.
Clapper, in an interview with NBC, targeted the leaker but also sought to spotlight the media who first reported theprograms, calling their disclosures irresponsible and full of “hyperbole.” Earlier Saturday, he had issued a statement accusing the media of a “rush to publish.”
“For me, it is literally — not figuratively — literally gut-wrenching to see this happen because of the huge, grave damage it does to our intelligence capabilities,” Clapper said.
On Sunday morning, Clapper got some backup from the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees, who appeared jointly on ABC’s “This Week” to espouse the values of the programs.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) had harsh words for whoever is responsible for the leaks, and for the journalist who first reported the NSA’s collection of phone records, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald.
“He doesn’t have a clue how this thing works; nether did the person who released just enough information to literally be dangerous,” Rogers said, adding, “I absolutely think [the leaker] should be prosecuted.”

http://craigbushonshow.com/edward-sn...now-in-danger/

'I will be made to suffer for my actions': Self-identified source for NSA leaks comes forward

The Guardian


Edward Snowden is the self-identified source of documents and information pertaining to government data collection programs.

By Andrew Rafferty, Staff Writer, NBC News

A 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA revealed in England's the Guardian newspaper Sunday that he is the source who leaked information about secret National Security Administration programs that revealed the widespread surveillance of U.S. citizens.

Edward Snowden, who currently works for defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, told the Guardian that he knows there will punishment for exposing the classified information, but 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."

NBC News has not independently confirmed that Snowden leaked the information.

Last week, the Guardian published a report revealing that the Obama administration had been monitoring Verizon customers phone records in the U.S. Shortly after, the Washington Post reported on a massive NSA program called PRISM, a surveillance program that gathered vast amounts of information from the world's largest web services.

The Post also identified Snowden as the source of the information on Sunday.

Snowden told the Guardian, "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."

The self-identified source of documents and information pertaining to government data collection program said he has been hiding in a hotel room in Hong Kong since divulging the government secrets. For the past three weeks he has only left his room three times and fears he is being spied on, he told the newspaper.

Snowden said he has been pleased so far with the fallout from making the information public, and has no regrets.

"You can't wait around for someone else to act," he said. "I had been looking for leaders, but I realized that leadership is about being the first to act."

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