As former USA defense contractor Edward Snowden continues to receive widespread praise for blowing the whistle on the National Security Agency’s domestic phone surveillance program, a new congressional report said Thursday he is anything but a hero.
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The vast majority of the documents he leaked had nothing to do with programs that affected privacy and civil liberties, they said, but pertained to military and intelligence programs “of great interest to America’s enemies”.
The committee said Snowden stole more than 1.5 million classified documents and questioned his motives, saying that two weeks before “he began mass downloads of classified documents, he was reprimanded after engaging in a workplace spat” with managers at the National Security Agency, where he worked as a contractor.
Snowden is seeking a presidential pardon because he says he helped his country by revealing secret domestic surveillance programs.
Contrary to Snowden’s statements that he meant to reveal programs that intruded on the privacy of Americans, the House report concluded that the vast majority of the 1.5 million documents he stole “have nothing to do with programs impacting individual privacy interests”.
US officials have said that Obama is not considering a pardon for Snowden, who is facing USA criminal charges for providing classified information to unauthorized persons, and that there is no discussion of such a pardon inside the Justice Department.
Snowden has been living in Russian Federation to avoid US prosecution for stealing secrets and turning the information over to reporters and WikiLeaks in 2013. “But that is perhaps why the pardon power exists – for the exceptions, for the things that may seem unlawful in letters on a page but when we look at them morally, when we look at them ethically, when we look at the results, it seems these were necessary things”, he said.
The Committee published the summary findings of a two-year investigation today as a new film about Snowden opens across the country.
Rather, investigators interviewed people with “substantively similar knowledge as the possible witnesses” as well as those who had reviewed reports of interviews with Snowden’s colleagues.
The campaign’s main platform is an online petition urging Mr Obama to give Mr Snowden amnesty before his term as president ends in January.
Snowden is in exile in Russian Federation, where he fled to escape espionage charges in the USA, but he blasted the report on Twitter.
Whistleblower Edward Snowden says the movie is very close to reality when it comes to politics.
The White House has rejected the possibility of a presidential pardon.
Edward Snowden, exiled to Moscow after leaking classified documents, is to vote in the U.S. presidential election.
“A close review of Snowden’s official employment records and submissions reveals a pattern of intentional lying”, the report said.
Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays the computer genius, Shailene Woodley portrays his loyal girlfriend and Melissa Leo and Zachary Quinton play journalists.
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“His conduct put American lives at risk and it risked American national security. This one is awesome: I reported an XSS (hacking) vulnerability in Central Intelligence Agency annual review system”, Snowden said.
