U.S. Rep. Peter King,
chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee's Subcommittee on
Counterterrorism and Intelligence, called Snowden "a defector" who
should be turned over to the United States with an eye toward harsh
prosecution.
"This person is dangerous to the country," King told CNN's "Starting Point" on Monday.
Snowden, 29, identified
himself this weekend in American and British newspapers as the person
who exposed details of a top-secret American program that collects vast
streams of phone and Internet data.
The revelations have set
off a furious debate in the United States about whether the surveillance
program is a disturbing form of government overreach or an important
tool for intelligence agencies trying to prevent attacks against the
nation.
They have also dealt a
fresh blow to the Obama administration, which has found itself on the
defensive early in the president's second term amid other complaints of
intrusions of privacy.
NSA leaker 'doesn't want publicity'
Who is Edward Snowden?
Prosecuting the NSA leaker
As details of the U.S.
government's widespread telecommunications surveillance emerged last
week in reports by the British newspaper The Guardian and The Washington
Post, speculation built about who the source of the information might
be.
Could it be a disgruntled high-ranking official at the National Security Agency, the U.S. electronic intelligence service?
It turned out to be Snowden, who until recently was working as a computer technician for a U.S. Defense contractor.
Snowden told the
Guardian he began final preparations for his disclosures three weeks
ago, copying documents and telling his boss he needed a few weeks off
work for epilepsy treatment before traveling to Hong Kong.
Snowden told the
newspaper he walked away from a $200,000 salary with the computer
consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, a comfortable life in Hawaii and
his girlfriend for a good reason.
"I'm willing to
sacrifice all of that because I can't in good conscience allow the U.S.
government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for
people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they're
secretly building," he said.
He said he chose Hong
Kong because of its "spirited commitment to free speech and the right of
political dissent," and because he hoped its leaders would resist
possible U.S. efforts to extradite him.
Hidden in Hong Kong
It was unclear Monday
where Snowden was staying. But the two journalists who wrote the stories
for The Guardian based on the information Snowden leaked -- Glenn
Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill -- were at the W Hotel in the city's
Kowloon district.
"From morning to night
he's in his hotel room, has his meals in his room," MacAskill told CNN,
declining to give any information about which hotel Snowden is in.
Hotel staff at the W said nobody under Snowden's name was staying there.
Mandy Chan, an employee
at the Mira Hotel in the nearby neighborhood of Tsim Sha Tsui, said
somebody by the name of Edward Snowden had checked out of the Mira on
Monday. She declined to provide further details on his stay.
He has only left his
room three times since he arrived in Hong Kong about three weeks ago,
MacAskill said, "and that was only briefly."
The cost of living in a hotel is threatening to burn through Snowden's remaining funds, according to MacAskill.
Obama defends surveillance programs
Legal risks for NSA whistleblower
NSA leaker speaks
"His credit card is going to max out pretty quickly," he said.
Snowden left the United
States for Hong Kong without telling his family or girlfriend where he
was going or why. Now he's concerned about the repercussions his actions
could have for them.
"The terrible thing is
he is worried about his family, that they'll be victimized," MacAskill
said. "He's basically cut off from family."
But Snowden acted with full awareness of the possible consequences.
"He's thought this out;
he's been thinking about this for a few years," MacAskill said. "He's
not impetuous, and this wasn't a hasty decision."
Will he be extradited?
Snowden has not yet been
charged with a crime, but a spokesman for the office of the Director of
National Intelligence said Sunday the case has been referred to the
Justice Department.
An investigation that could lead to charges is certain, said CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.
"He's in enormous trouble," Toobin said Monday.
Any U.S. request to extradite him from Hong Kong could be complicated, however.
Although Hong Kong is
part of communist-ruled China, the former British colony has a free
press and tolerates political dissent under a semi-autonomous
government.
Hong Kong's extradition
treaty with the United States has exceptions for political crimes and
cases when handing over a criminal suspect would harm the "defense,
foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy" of either party.
"I think he looked around, this seemed the safest bet," MacAskill said.
Snowden hopes to get asylum, he added, with Iceland his first choice because of the way it dealt with Wikileaks.
Iceland is one of the
countries that offered a degree of legal protection to Wikileaks, a
group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information
through its website. The group reportedly once operated from there.
But Kristin Arnadottir,
Iceland's ambassador to China, said that according to Icelandic law, a
person can only submit an application for asylum once he or she is in
Iceland.
'An enormous service'
But freedom of information advocates take a different view.
"I think he's done an
enormous service," said Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers
-- documents showing the government had lied about the progress of the
Vietnam War.
"It gives us a chance, I
think, from drawing back from the total surveillance state that we
could say we're in the process of becoming, I'm afraid we have become,"
Ellsberg said on CNN Newsroom on Sunday.
In Snowden's case, The
Guardian on Wednesday published a top secret court order demanding that
Verizon Business Network Services turn over details of phone calls
published from April 25 to July 19. Intelligence officials later
confirmed the program, which analysts say likely covers all U.S.
carriers.
On Thursday, The
Guardian and The Washington Post disclosed the existence of PRISM, a
program they said allows NSA analysts to extract the details of people's
online activities -- including "audio and video chats, photographs,
e-mails, documents" and other materials -- from computers at Microsoft,
Google, Apple and other Internet firms.
Intelligence officials
similarly confirmed that program's existence, but said it only targets
overseas residents who are not U.S. citizens.
Snowden said the NSA's
reach poses "an existential threat to democracy." He said he had hoped
the Obama administration would end the programs once it took office in
2009, but instead, he said, President Obama "advanced the very policies
that I thought would be reined in."
"I don't see myself as a
hero, because what I'm doing is self-interested," he said. "I don't
want to live in a world where there's no privacy, and therefore no room
for intellectual exploration and creativity."
On Friday, Obama said he
entered office skeptical of such programs, but decided to reauthorize
them after a thorough vetting and the addition of unspecified additional
safeguards. He called them only "modest encroachments on privacy" that
help thwart terror attacks.
Defending the program
James Clapper, director
of the Office of National Intelligence, had no direct comment on
Snowden's admission, but noted, "Any person who has a security clearance
knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified
information and abide by the law."
The Justice Department declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation into the leak.
Leaders of the intelligence committees in Congress defended the program Sunday.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it helped lead to convictions in two cases:
-- Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born Colorado man who pleaded guilty to conspiring to bomb targets in New York.
-- David Headley, who pleaded guilty to conducting advance surveillance for the Pakistani jihadists who attacked hotels and other targets in Mumbai, India, in 2008, killing 164 people.
Patriot Act at center of NSA controversy
Just what is the NSA?
"These programs are
within the law," Feinstein, D-California, told ABC's "This Week." And
Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told
ABC, "The inflammatory nature of the comments does not fit with what
Dianne and I know this program really does."
"The instances where
this has produced good -- has disrupted plots, prevented terrorist
attacks -- is all classified," said Rogers, R-Michigan. "That's what's
so hard about this."
Clapper: Programs authorized
Clapper's office
declassified some details of the programs, which it said were "conducted
under authorities widely known and discussed, and fully debated and
authorized by Congress."
It said PRISM was
created in 2008, targets "foreign targets located outside the United
States" and gets reviewed by the administration, Congress and judges.
And Rogers told reporters Sunday that "there is not a target on
Americans."
But Greenwald, the lead
author of the Guardian pieces, told ABC's "This Week" that Americans
need an "open, honest debate about whether that's the kind of country
that we want to live in."
"These are things that
the American people have a right to know," said Greenwald, a lawyer and
civil liberties advocate. "The only thing being damaged is the
credibility of political officials and the way they exercise power in
the dark."
Sen. Mark Udall,
D-Colorado, who has long called for greater transparency in how the
government collects data on Americans, said the legal authority should
be reopened for debate after last week's disclosures.
"Maybe Americans think
this is OK, but I think the line has been drawn too far toward 'we're
going to invade your privacy,' versus 'we're going to respect your
privacy,'" Udall told CNN's "State of the Union."
The Obama administration
is already under fire following revelations the Justice Department
seized two months of phone records from Associated Press reporters and
editors as part of an investigation into leaks of classified
information.
'I do not expect to see home again'
The Guardian reported
that Snowden grew up in North Carolina and Maryland. He joined the Army
in 2003 but was discharged after breaking both his legs in a training
accident. He never completed a high-school diploma but learned computer
skills at a community college in Maryland.
He started his career as
a security guard for an NSA facility at the University of Maryland,
then went to work for the CIA in Internet security. In 2009, he got the
first of several jobs with private contractors that worked with the NSA.
In a statement issued
Sunday afternoon, Booz Allen said Snowden had worked for the company for
less than three months. Reports that he had leaked American secrets
were "shocking" and if true, "represents a grave violation of the code
of conduct and core values of our firm," the company said.
Snowden told the Guardian that he left for Hong Kong on May 20 without telling his family or his girlfriend what he planned.
"I do not expect to see home again," he told the paper, acknowledging the risk of imprisonment over his actions.
"You can't come up
against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept
the risk," he said. "If they want to get you, over time they will."
What do you think? Is Snowden a hero or a traitor? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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