Snowden: At NSA, racy photos were shared

Racy photos seen as a "fringe benefit" of surveillance positions, says Edward Snowden. Photo: NBC

Washington: Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said the oversight of surveillance programs was so weak that members of the United States military working at the spy agency sometimes shared sexually explicit photos they intercepted.

He also said the British government often pioneered the most invasive surveillance programs because its intelligence services operate with fewer restrictions designed to protect individual privacy than its counterpart in the US and other allies.

The interview in London's Guardian, was conducted in Moscow where Mr Snowden has been marooned for a little more than a year. He fled there from Hong Kong after he gave journalists hundreds of thousands of classified documents he downloaded from the NSA, which specialises in electronic surveillance. He had most recently worked for the agency in Hawaii.

Mr Snowden said that some of the US military personnel working on agency programs were between the ages of 18 and 22 and did not always respect the privacy of those whose communications were intercepted.

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"In the course of their daily work they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work, for example an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation but they're extremely attractive," he said. "So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and they show a co-worker. And their co-worker says: 'Oh, hey, that's great. Send that to Bill down the way.'"

Mr Snowden said that type of sharing occurred once every couple of months and was "seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions". He said that this was "never reported" and that the system for auditing surveillance programs "is incredibly weak".

"Now while people may say that it's an innocent harm - this person doesn't even know that their image was viewed - it represents a fundamental principle, which is that we don't have to see individual instances of abuse," he said.

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said that the agency had zero tolerance for wilful violations of authority or professional standards, and would respond as appropriate to any credible allegations of misconduct.

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Snowden: At NSA, racy photos were shared