NSA gathers more data on US citizens than on any other foreigners – Snowden
1 May 2014, 14:46 -- Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said that NSA gathers more data on American citizens than it does about foreigners. Does the NSA know more about Americans in America than Russians in Russia?' Snowden said, appearing by live video during an awards ceremony in Washington.
'We watch our own people more closely than anyone else in the world.' Snowden also took several shots at the National Security Agency and its top officials, and criticized the agency for wearing two contradictory hats of protecting US data and exploiting security flaws to gather intelligence on foreign threats.
During his speech, the whistleblower said he leaked thousands of classified government documents, detailing the NSA's mass surveillance programs because 'it was the right thing to do, and now I see I'm not the only one who felt that way.'
'US government policy directed by the NSA ... is now making a choice, a binary choice, between security of our communications and the vulnerability of our communications,' Snowden said, suggesting the government was biased toward the latter activity.
The former NSA contractor was awarded the Ridenhour Award for Truth-Telling along with Laura Poitras, one of his chief confidants. The 30-year-old fugitive remains in Russia, where he fled and earned temporary asylum following his disclosures of classified information about the NSA's bulk data-collection practices.
In a testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee last March, Clapper stated that the NSA did 'not wittingly gather any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans.' It was later revealed in Snowden's documents that the agency does collect metadata indiscriminately from American telephone and internet companies. This prompted Clapper to go back on his statement, admitting it was 'erroneous' in an apology letter to Congress.
Snowden, who has also been nominated this year for the Nobel Peace Prize, was a natural choice for the Ridenhour award, which has honored in recent years journalist and undocumented immigrant Jose Antonio Vargas and Thomas Drake, a former NSA official who also exposed secrets kept by the spy agency.
The 30–year-old former CIA contractor-turned whistleblower is currently residing in Russia, where he was granted temporary asylum last year after he fled the US.
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden wants to stay in Russia, asks to extend asylum status
Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, who fled to Moscow last year after revealing details of massive US intelligence-surveillence programs, expects his asylum status in Russia to be renewed before it expires this summer, his lawyer said on Wednesday.
Snowden and documentary filmmaker Laura Poitras, who worked with Snowden to reveal NSA documents he took from his job, were given the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, an award to promote transparency and whistle-blowing, at a ceremony in Washington on Wednesday. Snowden appeared on a video link-up from Russia and Poitras appeared from Berlin.
Jesselyn Radack, an attorney for Snowden, said his temporary asylum in Russia will expire at the end of June but that 'prospects are good' for it to be renewed.
'Obviously, he misses America and would like to be able to come home,' she said. 'We just don't see that happening in the near future.'
Snowden was believed to have taken 1.7 million computerized documents. The leaked documents revealed massive programs run by the NSA that gathered information on emails, phone calls and Internet use by hundreds of millions of Americans. The US surveillance programs also had international reach, including monitoring German Chancellor Angela Merkel's cellphone.
He was charged last year in the United States with theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person. Radack said the Justice Department has not wavered on the charges.
'If the Justice Department would like to talk, we'd be glad to,' she said. 'He's not going to come here to be prosecuted for espionage.'
Snowden, who has appeared around the world in similar video link-ups this year, told a crowd at the National Press Club that more laws are needed to protect potential whistle-blowers in the United States.
Asked what advice he had for them, he said, 'Ideally, work with Congress in advance to try to make sure that we have reformed laws, better protection (for whistle-blowers) ... so next time we have an American whistle-blower who has something the public needs to know, they can go to their lawyer's office instead of the airport.
'Right now I'm not sure that they have a real alternative. But if they're going to do something, they better use encryption and they better do it from an IP address that's not at their home.'
In May 2013 Snowden fled Hawaii, where he had worked as a contractor for the NSA, for Hong Kong, where he gave details of US surveillance programs to Poitras and reporter Glenn Greenwald of the Guardian, who shared in a Pulitzer Prize for his Snowden stories.
Snowden then flew to Russia and spent more than a month living in a neutral transit zone in a Moscow airport before being granted asylum over the protests of the Obama administration, Reuters reprots.
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