In an absolutely stunning Guardian profile, Edward Snowden describes how he leaked the documents to the Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald from a Hong Kong hotel room, padding the door and keeping a hood over his head, and covering his computer’s webcam, to protect himself while he made the first leak of a “Top Secret” classified document since the Pentagon Papers in 1971, in what represents one of the most serious leaks in US history and what may come to be one of the defining moments of Obama’s Presidency.
“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,” he told the Guardian.
Snowden says that he chose Hong Kong, a semi-autonomously governed region of China, because “they have a spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent”, but also, the Guardian reports, because he believed it both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.
This story comes just hours after the former director of the NSA under George W. Bush told the Guardian that surveillance has “expanded” under Obama’s administration.
Obama, is en route – ironically – back to Washington from meeting the new Chinese President Xi Jinping in California, where he was scheduled to complain about Chinese cyber-hacking of American secrets. It is not known whether they mentioned the NSA surveillance scandal in their conversation – nor even whether the White House or the US security forces had any idea where the Guardian’s leaks were coming from.
At time of press, the President has not yet responded to the identification of Snowden, though he did say yesterday that he “welcomes a debate” on national security – a statement it can only be imagined was given through gritted teeth, especially as Rand Paul, the libertarian Senator, said yesterday that he was considering leading a class action law suit against the government. This, it is fair to say, is not going to be a debate that the President relishes.
Before Snowden revealed his identity, the Department of Justice had said that it will seek to prosecute the perpetrators of leaks of American secrets, though Attorney General Eric Holder also said that no journalist would be prosecuted “for doing his or her job”.
Update: this piece was corrected at 9:39 PM to read “it is not known whether they mentioned the NSA surveillance” instead of the earlier, incorrect spelling of “NRA”.
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