Edward Snowden -- traitor or hero
Joshua Rovner, SMU #39;s John Goodwin Tower Distinguished Chair in International Politics and National Security, and others talk with PBS #39;s McCuistion program ho...

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Edward Snowden -- traitor or hero - Video

NSA leaker Edward Snowden said it would be suicide to keep a doomsday cache of state secrets, and claims the agency is fabricating how much information he really possesses.

Who would set up a system that incentivizes others to kill them? he told Vanity Fair in an interview published in the May issue.

Of the 1.7 million documents that Snowden was reported to have taken, he said the figure is simply a scare number based on an intentionally crude metric: everything that I ever digitally interacted with in my career.

Look at the language officials use in sworn testimony about these records: could have, may have, potentially. Theyre prevaricating. Every single one of those officials knows I dont have 1.7 million files, but what are they going to say? Snowden continues. What senior official is going to go in front of Congress and say, We have no idea what he has, because the NSAs auditing of systems holding hundreds of millions of Americans data is so negligent that any high-school dropout can walk out the door with it?

Snowden, a high school dropout who joined the military in 2004, reflected on his decision to leak the documents.

Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away, because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating, he said. But theres a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And Im no longer alone.

Who would set up a system that incentivizes others to kill them?

Though NSA deputy director Rick Ledgett, who ran the internal investigation of Snowden, claims that the former NSA contractor made no formal complaints, Snowden says that he addressed his privacy concerns to the NSA multiple times before dropping the bombshell revelations via a self-selected group of journalists and collaborators scattered throughout the world last year.

The NSA at this point not only knows I raised complaints, but that there is evidence that I made my concerns known to the NSAs lawyers, because I did some of it through e-mail, Snowden says.

He issues a dare, too.

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Snowden: I don’t have a cache of state secrets

STRASBOURG, Austria, April 8 (UPI) -- Testifying in Strasbourg via videolink from Moscow, Edward Snowden told Europes leading human rights body, the Council of Europe, that the U.S. National Security Administration deliberately spied on human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

"The NSA has specifically targeted either leaders or staff members in a number of civil and non-governmental organisations including domestically within the borders of the United States.

In a statement on Monday, the Council of Europe offered their reasoning for inviting Snowden to testify: "Edward Snowden has triggered a massive public debate on privacy in the internet age. We hope to ask him what his revelations mean for ordinary users and how they should protect their privacy and what kind of restrictions Europe should impose on state surveillance."

According to the Guardian, the council asked Snowden if the United States spied on the "highly sensitive and confidential communications" of major human rights organizations as well as on similar smaller regional and national groups.

"The answer is, without question, yes. Absolutely, Snowden replied.

In his testimony, Snowden also offered an forensic account of how the NSA's powerful surveillance programsprograms which use sophisticated data mining techniques to screen countless private communicationsviolate the EU's privacy laws, speaking about XKeyscore, which allows analysts to search the emails, online chats, and browsing histories of millions without any authorization.

"This technology represents the most significant new threat to civil liberties in modern times," he said.

XKeyscore amounts is an egregious form of mass surveillance because it collects data from entire populations, according to Snowden. Anyone might be targeted on the basis of "religious beliefs, sexual or political affiliations, transactions with certain businesses" and even "gun ownership, he claimed.

Snowden advised the council that what the NSA has built is an infrastructure that would allow the government to engage in nightmare scenarios in which they target people based on a belief or affiliation and then round them up and send them into camps, though he said he does not believe the NSA is currently involved in this type of activity.

He warned the assembly that the NSA, its allies, authoritarian governments, and even private enterprise could all abuse this technology, adding that mass surveillance is a "global problem which has led to "less liberal and safe societies.

Originally posted here:
Snowden to the Council of Europe: U.S. spied on human rights workers