Several prominent human rights groups have launched a campaign to convince President Barack Obama to pardon Snowden, who is living in exile in Russian Federation.
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A United States 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’s narrative – that he stole the massive trove of USA intelligence data as a principled whistleblower who wanted to protect Americans’ privacy rights – does not square with the two-year inquiry that resulted in the report, lawmakers said.
Sep 16, 2016- Edward Snowden has dismissed a report by the House of Representatives intelligence committee that heavily criticised his activities.
The committee also described Mr Snowden as a “serial exaggerator and fabricator”.
“He put our service members and the American people at risk after perceived slights by his superiors”, Nunes said in a statement.
“Snowden”, which opens in theatres across Canada on Friday, is a dramatization of the North Carolina native’s life between 2004 and 2013 – from his military training, to his work at intelligence agencies, and his leaking of classified NSA surveillance documents and tactics in 2013. The documents revealed multiple global surveillance programs run by the NSA and Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance.
As a Department of Defense contractor, Snowden had largely unsupervised access to the classified materials.
– Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 15, 2016Army held me for weeks in a special unit for convalescence before separation. Not this one. There is only a three-page unclassified summary of the House Intelligence Committee’s actual 36-page report, which remains classified.
The report said that the vast majority of the 1.5 million documents he stole “have nothing to do with programmes impacting individual privacy interests”.
This report just came one day ahead of the release of a film by Oliver Stone based on the true story of Snowden entitled after his name. “And that’s why the policy of the Obama administration is that Mr Snowden should return to the United States and face the very serious charges that he’s facing”.
According to a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, Snowden would still be eligible to vote because he has not yet been convicted of a crime. “The Committee’s Review … shows his claims to be self-serving and false”.
Snowden once worked as a contractor for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). “The resolve of those of us who fully understand the nature of the man and the damage he caused will not falter in our quest to bring him to justice”. This report diminishes the committee.
All of the committee members separately sent Obama a letter urging him not to pardon Snowden, who revealed the NSA’s collection of millions’ of Americans phone records. “The criminal charges against him accuse him of ‘Theft of government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information, and willful communication of classified intelligence to an unauthorized person”.
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Even Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who portrays Snowden in this weekend’s flick, wasn’t initially clear who the whistleblower was.
