“The vast majority of what he took has nothing to do with American privacy”, said Adam Schiff of California, the leading Democrat on the committee.
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Additionally, the report cites Snowden’s unwillingness to be tried for his actions (“in the tradition of civil disobedience he professes to embrace”) as evidence he is not a whistleblower, but “a serial exaggerator and fabricator”.
“Whether it’s right or wrong, or it matters or it doesn’t matter, are we doing enough or not doing enough, at the end of the day, there’s information that our govnerment has about us as citizens that we’re not disclosed to or savvy”, Woodley said.
The report comes amid a renewed push by Snowden’s supporters, who urged President Obama this week to pardon him before the president leaves office.
The full 36-page Intelligence Committee report has been marked classified but Reps. Rather, the documents pertained “to military, defense, and intelligence programs of great interest to America’s adversaries”.
The case is the subject of an Oliver Stone movie set for release Friday in the United States.
A USA congressional committee on intelligence Thursday ruled that former National Security Agency (NSA) official Edward Snowden was not a whistleblower as he claims, but he “was and remains a serial exaggerator and fabricator”.
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.
The report also fails to acknowledge the substantial changes that have taken place as a result of Snowden’s disclosures, including a global debate about domestic and foreign surveillance, the death of Section 215 bulk collection, which was ruled illegal, and increased transparency requirements for the entire intelligence community.
“Thanks to Edward Snowden’s act of conscience, we have made historic strides in our fight for surveillance reform and improved cybersecurity”, said ACLU executive director Anthony Romero.
The intelligence committee urged President Barack Obama not to pardon Snowden, who the panel said had frequent clashes with superiors.
Snowden, 32, has been living in exile for more than three years.
There are also, in typical Stone fashion, plenty of speeches aimed at making his – and Snowden’s – argument against ever-encroaching government control and monitoring of the entire public under the guise of security against terrorism. It claims a contracting officer reprimanded him for failing to follow proper grievance procedures, and he began downloading classified information two weeks later. The authors of the report accuse him of “stealing the answers” to a test employees take before entering the NSA.
Snowden stole 1.5 million classified government documents that he had access to as an NSA contractor.
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The committee concluded that Snowden is not a whistle-blower because he did not try to raise his civil liberties concerns through official channels or with Congress, and most of the data he stole from NSA computers was not related to privacy concerns.
