The report from the US House of Representatives argues that information released by Snowden – concerning US mass surveillance and data collection by the NSA and other governments around the world – caused “tremendous damage to national security”.
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On Thursday, members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence unanimously approved a report on Snowden, who is facing a 30-year prison sentence on espionage charges for leaking secret documents on United States surveillance programs, that labels him as a “serial exaggerator” and aims to create a sharp contrast with the digital privacy community’s portrayal of the exiled former contractor as a celebrity whistleblower.
While he has claimed that statements made by USA intelligence official James Clapper at a March 2013 congressional hearing amounted to a “breaking point” for him, the report said Snowden began to download classified documents eight months earlier.
A Congressional report on Thursday criticized Snowden as a “disgruntled employee”, not a “principled whistleblower” protected under law.
As a result of one document he revealed, the government was forced to acknowledge a program of bulk collection of all US customers’ phone call data – times, dates and numbers dialed, but not content. “This report diminishes the committee”.
JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT: (As Edward Snowden) There’s something going on inside the government that’s really wrong, and I can’t ignore it.
Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said the probe revealed that the vast majority of what Snowden took had nothing to do with American privacy.
The film is based on the experiences of Edward Snowden, the computer professional who leaked classified information from the US’s National Security Agency in 2013.
Stone told Snowden he was making the movie with or without the subject’s cooperation, Wizner said, so Snowden ultimately decided it was better “to help Oliver tell a more accurate story”.
Snowden and an attorney for Snowden did not immediately respond to ABC News” requests for comment, but Snowden mocked the committee’s findings on Twitter, challenging several points and concluding by saying, “I could go on.
In a column for The Guardian, the physician wrote: “If elected president I will immediately pardon Edward Snowden”.
The committee called Snowden a “traitor” and recommended he “face justice” for disclosing state secrets.
But comments by the current occupant of the White House and the two people competing to replace him don’t indicate any newfound desire to grant him that pardon.
The report coincides with the release of Snowden, a movie directed by Oliver Stone, which portrays Snowden as a whistle-blower and hero.
The Obama administration reiterated that its policy is that Snowden “should return to the United States and face the very serious charges that he is facing”.
The American Civil Liberties Union, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International are behind the campaign to pardon him.
The Russian public it seems is interested both in the hero of the movie and the message that Edward Snowden is sending to the world.
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Instead of releasing the documents in full on his own, he worked with journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewen MacAskill to reveal the NSA’s practices, including surveillance on ordinary citizens.
