The 29-year-old source behind the biggest
intelligence leak in the NSA's history explains his motives, his uncertain
future and why he never intended on hiding in the shadows
• Q&A with NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden: 'I do not expect to see home again'
NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't
want to live in a society that does these sort of things'
The individual responsible for one of the most
significant leaks in US political history is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old
former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defence
contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National
Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside
contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, after several days of
interviews, is revealing his identity at his request. From the moment he
decided to disclose numerous top-secret documents to the public, he was
determined not to opt for the protection of anonymity. "I have no
intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong,"
he said.
Snowden will go down in history as one of
America's most consequential whistleblowers, alongside Daniel Ellsberg and
Bradley Manning. He is responsible for handing over material from one of the
world's most secretive organisations – the NSA.
In a note accompanying the first set of
documents he provided, he wrote: "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."
Despite his determination to be publicly
unveiled, he repeatedly insisted that he wants to avoid the media spotlight.
"I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be
about me. I want it to be about what the US government is doing."
He does not fear the consequences of going
public, he said, only that doing so will distract attention from the issues
raised by his disclosures. "I know the media likes to personalise
political debates, and I know the government will demonise me."
Despite these fears, he remained hopeful his
outing will not divert attention from the substance of his disclosures.
"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." He added: "My sole motive is to inform
the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done
against them."
He has had "a very comfortable life"
that included a salary of roughly $200,000, a girlfriend with whom he shared
a home in Hawaii, a stable career, and a family he loves. "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."
'I am not afraid, because this is the choice I've made'
Three weeks ago, Snowden made final
preparations that resulted in last week's series of blockbuster news stories.
At the NSA office in Hawaii where he was working, he copied the last set of
documents he intended to disclose.
He then advised his NSA supervisor that he
needed to be away from work for "a couple of weeks" in order to
receive treatment for epilepsy, a condition he learned he suffers from after
a series of seizures last year.
As he packed his bags, he told his girlfriend
that he had to be away for a few weeks, though he said he was vague about the
reason. "That is not an uncommon occurrence for someone who has spent
the last decade working in the intelligence world."
On May 20, he boarded a flight to Hong Kong,
where he has remained ever since. He chose the city because "they have a
spirited commitment to free speech and the right of political dissent",
and because he believed that it was one of the few places in the world that
both could and would resist the dictates of the US government.
In the three weeks since he arrived, he has
been ensconced in a hotel room. "I've left the room maybe a total of
three times during my entire stay," he said. It is a plush hotel and,
what with eating meals in his room too, he has run up big bills.
He is deeply worried about being spied on. He
lines the door of his hotel room with pillows to prevent eavesdropping. He
puts a large red hood over his head and laptop when entering his passwords to
prevent any hidden cameras from detecting them.
Though that may sound like paranoia to some,
Snowden has good reason for such fears. He worked in the US intelligence
world for almost a decade. He knows that the biggest and most secretive
surveillance organisation in America, the NSA, along with the most powerful
government on the planet, is looking for him.
Since the disclosures began to emerge, he has
watched television and monitored the internet, hearing all the threats and
vows of prosecution emanating from Washington.
And he knows only too well the sophisticated
technology available to them and how easy it will be for them to find him.
The NSA police and other law enforcement officers have twice visited his home
in Hawaii and already contacted his girlfriend, though he believes that may
have been prompted by his absence from work, and not because of suspicions of
any connection to the leaks.
"All my options are bad," he said.
The US could begin extradition proceedings against him, a potentially
problematic, lengthy and unpredictable course for Washington. Or the Chinese
government might whisk him away for questioning, viewing him as a useful
source of information. Or he might end up being grabbed and bundled into a
plane bound for US territory.
"Yes, I could be rendered by the CIA. I
could have people come after me. Or any of the third-party partners. They
work closely with a number of other nations. Or they could pay off the
Triads. Any of their agents or assets," he said.
"We have got a CIA station just up the
road – the consulate here in Hong Kong – and I am sure they are going to be
busy for the next week. And that is a concern I will live with for the rest
of my life, however long that happens to be."
Having watched the Obama administration
prosecute whistleblowers at a historically unprecedented rate, he fully
expects the US government to attempt to use all its weight to punish him.
"I am not afraid," he said calmly, "because this is the choice
I've made."
He predicts the government will launch an
investigation and "say I have broken the Espionage Act and helped our
enemies, but that can be used against anyone who points out how massive and
invasive the system has become".
The only time he became emotional during the
many hours of interviews was when he pondered the impact his choices would
have on his family, many of whom work for the US 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 said, his eyes welling
up with tears.
'You can't wait around for someone else to act'
Snowden did not always believe the US
government posed a threat to his political values. He was brought up
originally in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. His family moved later to
Maryland, near the NSA headquarters in Fort Meade.
By his own admission, he was not a stellar
student. In order to get the credits necessary to obtain a high school
diploma, he attended a community college in Maryland, studying computing, but
never completed the coursework. (He later obtained his GED.)
In 2003, he enlisted in the US army and began
a training program to join the Special Forces. Invoking the same principles
that he now cites to justify his leaks, he said: "I wanted to fight in
the Iraq war because I felt like I had an obligation as a human being to help
free people from oppression".
He recounted how his beliefs about the war's
purpose were quickly dispelled. "Most of the people training us seemed
pumped up about killing Arabs, not helping anyone," he said. After he
broke both his legs in a training accident, he was discharged.
After that, he got his first job in an NSA
facility, working as a security guard for one of the agency's covert
facilities at the University of Maryland. From there, he went to the CIA,
where he worked on IT security. His understanding of the internet and his
talent for computer programming enabled him to rise fairly quickly for
someone who lacked even a high school diploma.
By 2007, the CIA stationed him with diplomatic
cover in Geneva, Switzerland. His responsibility for maintaining computer
network security meant he had clearance to access a wide array of classified
documents.
That access, along with the almost three years
he spent around CIA officers, led him to begin seriously questioning the
rightness of what he saw.
He described as formative an incident in which
he claimed CIA operatives were attempting to recruit a Swiss banker to obtain
secret banking information. Snowden said they achieved this by purposely
getting the banker drunk and encouraging him to drive home in his car. When
the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the undercover agent seeking to
befriend him offered to help, and a bond was formed that led to successful
recruitment.
"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 realised that I was part of something that
was doing far more harm than good."
He said it was during his CIA stint in Geneva
that he thought for the first time about exposing government secrets. But, at
the time, he chose not to for two reasons.
First, he said: "Most of the secrets the
CIA has are about people, not machines and systems, so I didn't feel
comfortable with disclosures that I thought could endanger anyone".
Secondly, the election of Barack Obama in 2008 gave him hope that there would
be real reforms, rendering disclosures unnecessary.
He left the CIA in 2009 in order to take his
first job working for a private contractor that assigned him to a functioning
NSA facility, stationed on a military base in Japan. It was then, he said,
that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would
be reined in", and as a result, "I got hardened."
The primary lesson from this experience was
that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking
for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to
act."
Over the next three years, he learned just how
all-consuming the NSA's surveillance activities were, claiming "they are
intent on making every conversation and every form of behaviour in the world
known to them".
He described how he once viewed the internet as
"the most important invention in all of human history". As an
adolescent, he spent days at a time "speaking to people with all sorts
of views that I would never have encountered on my own".
But he believed that the value of the
internet, along with basic privacy, is being rapidly destroyed by ubiquitous
surveillance. "I don't see myself as a hero," he said,
"because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a
world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual
exploration and creativity."
Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's
surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of
time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an
existential threat to democracy", he said.
A matter of principle
As strong as those beliefs are, there still
remains the question: why did he do it? Giving up his freedom and a
privileged lifestyle? "There are more important things than money. If I
were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of
countries and gotten very rich."
For him, it is a matter of principle.
"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.
His allegiance to internet freedom is
reflected in the stickers on his laptop: "I support Online Rights:
Electronic Frontier Foundation," reads one. Another hails the online
organisation offering anonymity, the Tor Project.
Asked by reporters to establish his
authenticity to ensure he is not some fantasist, he laid bare, without
hesitation, his personal details, from his social security number to his CIA
ID and his expired diplomatic passport. There is no shiftiness. Ask him about
anything in his personal life and he will answer.
He is quiet, smart, easy-going and
self-effacing. A master on computers, he seemed happiest when talking about
the technical side of surveillance, at a level of detail comprehensible
probably only to fellow communication specialists. But he showed intense
passion when talking about the value of privacy and how he felt it was being
steadily eroded by the behaviour of the intelligence services.
His manner was calm and relaxed but he has
been understandably twitchy since he went into hiding, waiting for the knock
on the hotel door. A fire alarm goes off. "That has not happened
before," he said, betraying anxiety wondering if was real, a test or a
CIA ploy to get him out onto the street.
Strewn about the side of his bed are his
suitcase, a plate with the remains of room-service breakfast, and a copy of
Angler, the biography of former vice-president Dick Cheney.
Ever since last week's news stories began to
appear in the Guardian, Snowden has vigilantly watched TV and read the
internet to see the effects of his choices. He seemed satisfied that the
debate he longed to provoke was finally taking place.
He lay, propped up against pillows, watching
CNN's Wolf Blitzer ask a discussion panel about government intrusion if they
had any idea who the leaker was. From 8,000 miles away, the leaker looked on
impassively, not even indulging in a wry smile.
Snowden said that he admires both Ellsberg and
Manning, but argues that there is one important distinction between himself
and the army private, whose trial coincidentally began the week Snowden's
leaks began to make news.
"I carefully evaluated every single
document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public
interest," he said. "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 purposely chose, he said, to give the
documents to journalists whose judgment he trusted about what should be
public and what should remain concealed.
As for his future, he is vague. He hoped the
publicity the leaks have generated will offer him some protection, making it
"harder for them to get dirty".
He views his best hope as the possibility of
asylum, with Iceland – with its reputation of a champion of internet freedom
– at the top of his list. He knows that may prove a wish unfulfilled.
But after the intense political controversy he
has already created with just the first week's haul of stories, "I feel
satisfied that this was all worth it. I have no regrets."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
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