The individual responsible for blowing the whistle on the Obama administration's unconstitutional surveillance program has identified himself. According to an article in the Guardian, he is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former technical assistant for the CIA and current employee of the defense contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. Snowden has been working at the National Security Agency for the last four years as an employee of various outside contractors, including Booz Allen and Dell.
The Guardian, in an article coauthored by Glenn Greenwald, reports that it was revealing his identity at his request. "I have no intention of hiding who I am because I know I have done nothing wrong," he said.
In a note accompanying the first set of documents he provided, he wrote: "I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions," but "I will be satisfied if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon, and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant."
CC: Whitehouse.gov
At the same time, he emphasized: "I don't want public attention because I don't want the story to be about me. I want it to be about what the U.S. government is doing. I really want the focus to be on these documents and the debate which I hope this will trigger among citizens around the globe about what kind of world we want to live in." He added: "My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them."
He said that he "watched as Obama advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in." That was the turning point for him.
The primary lesson from this experience was that "you can't wait around for someone else to act. I had been looking for leaders, but I realised that leadership is about being the first to act."
Once he reached the conclusion that the NSA's surveillance net would soon be irrevocable, he said it was just a matter of time before he chose to act. "What they're doing" poses "an existential threat to democracy," he said.
"There are more important things than money. If I were motivated by money, I could have sold these documents to any number of countries and gotten very rich."
"The government has granted itself power it is not entitled to. There is no public oversight. The result is people like myself have the latitude to go further than they are allowed to," he said.
A video embedded in the Guardian article captures 12 minutes of Guardian writer Greenwald's interview with Snowden. Asked whether there were any limits to the NSA's authority to bug people, Snowden says it depends on the rank of the NSA analyst trying to do it. "At my level, I could have wiretapped the President," he said.
"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."
"I feel satisfied that this was all worth it," he said in conclusion. "I have no regrets."
