National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden is not a whistleblower and most of the documents he stole were defence secrets that had nothing to do with privacy, an official USA report has said.
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The movie, released nationwide on Friday, depicts Snowden as a hero and patriot, following him from precocious CIA worker to contractor for the National Security Agency, when he famously leaked classified documents exposing the wide scope of the government’s Internet surveillance at home and overseas.
Releasing a summary of its 36-page investigation into the case, the House committee said Mr Snowden had fallen out with his colleagues and lied about his background while at the NSA.
The Edward Snowden portrayed in that trailer by actor Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, Rooney says, is not the serial exaggerator and fabricator the committee’s report says he is.
At the movies premiere at the Toronto Film Festival on 9 September, Stone said that while he hopes Obama would pardon Snowden, he was unsure of the likelihood of the whistleblower receiving a pardon, especially given the Obama administrations expansion of mass surveillance programs after Snowden documents first revealed United States government surveillance activities.
As a result of one document he revealed, the government was forced to acknowledge a program of bulk collection of all USA customers’ phone call data – times, dates and numbers dialed, but not content.
This film is a fascinating portrait of a complex individual and we will continue to see this issue play out on the evening news.
But US officials, while adopting measures previous year that regulate the National Security Agency’s (NSA) collection of US citizens’ telephone call metadata, have argued that the surveillance programmes are justified in that they protect US interests. “This report diminishes the committee”, tweeted Snowden.
– Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 15, 2016@Snowden The committee seems to intentionally conflate my authorized government work with my unauthorized whistleblowing.
Ben Wizner, Snowden’s attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, said the committee’ report was an attempt to discredit a “genuine American hero”.
“Mr. Snowden has been charged with serious crimes, and it’s the policy of the administration that Mr. Snowden should return to the United States and face those charges”, Earnest said.
Calling the 1.5 million figure “wildly inflated”, Wizner said that “if they are as loose as that with other facts in their report, there is nothing here of value”. “He claimed to have left Army basic training because of broken legs when in fact he washed out because of shin splints”.
“He also doctored his performance evaluations and obtained new positions at NSA by exaggerating his CV and stealing the answers to an employment test”, the report said.
‘I will be voting, ‘ Snowden said today, speaking at a conference in Athens by video link from Moscow.
Officials released the report just one day before the premiere of a new Oliver Stone movie titled Snowden, a biopic of Edward Snowden’s life and the events that led to his revelations and immediate consequences.
Stone, as we know, is a very capable writer/director, and the film’s subject matter is also of great importance, but, let’s face it, movies are a visual medium and computer hacking is visually boring, if not downright sleep-inducing. But with Snowden, a movie starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception) and Shailene Woodley (The Divergent series), his campaign to get a full presidential pardon is getting some major assistance from Hollywood.
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