_- WASHINGTON — A 29-year-old former C.I.A. computer technician went public on Sunday as the source behind the daily drumbeat of disclosures about the nation’s surveillance programs, saying he took the extraordinary step because “the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong.”
During a 12-minute video interview that went online Sunday, Edward Joseph Snowden calmly answered questions about his journey from being a well-compensated government contractor with nearly unlimited access to America’s intelligence secrets to being holed up in a Hong Kong hotel room, the subject of a United States investigation, with the understanding that he could spend the rest of his life in jail. The revelation came after days of speculation that the source behind a series of leaks that have transfixed Washington must have been a high-level official at one of America’s spy agencies. Instead, the leaker is a relatively low-level employee of a giant government contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton, that has won billions of dollars in secret government contracts over the past decade, partly by aggressively marketing itself as the premier protector of America’s classified computer infrastructure.
The episode presents both international and domestic political difficulties for the Obama administration. If Mr. Snowden remained in Hong Kong, the White House would have to seek his extradition there and deal with the authorities in China, a country that has been America’s greatest adversary on many issues of computer security.
Then the United States must set up a strategy for prosecuting a man whom many will see as a hero for provoking a debate that President Obama himself has said he welcomes — amid already fierce criticism of the administration’s crackdown on leaks. The court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning, who released a vast archive of military and diplomatic materials to WikiLeaks, resumes Monday.
Mr. Snowden, who said he was seeking asylum abroad, perhaps in Iceland, gave the interview to The Guardian, the British newspaper and global Web site that during the past week published a string of articles about classified National Security Agency programs. Both The Guardian and The Washington Post, which also published articles disclosing the surveillance programs, identified Mr. Snowden on Sunday as the source for their articles.
In his interview with The Guardian, Mr. Snowden said his job had given him access to myriad secrets that the United States government guards most jealously, including the locations of Central Intelligence Agency stations overseas and the identities of undercover agents working for the United States.
But he said he had been selective in what he disclosed, releasing only what he found to be the greatest abuses of a surveillance state that he came to view as reckless and having grown beyond reasonable boundaries. He was alternately defiant and resigned, saying at one point that the C.I.A. might try to spirit him out of Hong Kong, and speculating that it might even hire Asian gangs to go after him.
“If you realize that that’s the world you helped create and it is going to get worse with the next generation and the next generation and extend the capabilities of this architecture of oppression, you realize that you might be willing to accept any risks and it doesn’t matter what the outcome is,” Mr. Snowden said.
Some outside experts said the push in recent years to break down barriers between spy agencies and share information across the government had greatly expanded the universe of government employees and outside contractors with access to highly classified intelligence. “In past years, someone like Snowden may not have had access to briefings detailing these collection programs,” said Cedric Leighton, a former deputy director of the National Security Agency, “but now with the push from a ‘need to know’ to a ‘need to share’ philosophy, it’s far more likely for an I.T. contractor like him to gain access to such documents.”
Mr. Snowden’s disclosures prompted some calls from Congress on Sunday to hold hearings about the surveillance programs or reopen debate on portions of the Patriot Act.
The disclosures also were published just as the Obama administration was grappling with the fallout from its many investigations into leaks to the news media. After it was revealed in May that the Justice Department had secretly obtained phone logs for reporters at The Associated Press and Fox News, criticism of the administration’s leak investigation was heightened. Mr. Obama said he was “troubled” by those developments, and ordered Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to review the Justice Department’s procedures for investigating reporters.
As part of that review, Mr. Holder and senior department officials have met with editors and media lawyers to try to assuage their fears that the administration is trying to silence the press. A day before The Guardian published its first article on how the government was collecting Americans phone data, Mr. Holder met with lawyers for several media outlets about legislation and other measures that may help protect reporters.
A White House spokesman declined to comment on Sunday. A spokesman for James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, referred questions to the Justice Department. In a statement, the department said it was in the initial stages of an investigation into the matter, though it did not name Mr. Snowden... Leer más en el NYT
Ex-trabajador en el C.I.A. Dice que filtró datos para que se conocieran las acciones de vigilancia que se llevan a cabo de forma secreta
Por MARK MAZZETTI y MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT
WASHINGTON - De 29 años de edad, el ex-agente de la C.I.A. perteneciente al equipo técnico, hizo público el domingo que era la fuente que estaba detrás de la serie de documentos que a diario se revelaban sobre los programas secretos de vigilancia de la nación, y dijo que había tomado la extraordinaria medida de difundirlos debido a que "el público (el pueblo) tiene que decidir si estos programas y las políticas que lo deciden están bien o mal. (son aceptables o no)"
Durante una entrevista en vídeo de 12 minutos celebrada el Domingo, Edward Joseph Snowden, calmadamente respondió a las preguntas sobre su viaje desde ser un contratado del gobierno bien recompensado con un acceso casi ilimitado a los secretos de inteligencia de Estados Unidos hasta estar encerrado en la habitación de un hotel de Hong-Kong, y sujeto a una investigación de Estados Unidos, entendiendo que podría pasar el resto de su vida en la cárcel.
La revelación se produjo después de días de especulaciones de que la fuente detrás de la serie de filtraciones que han paralizado Washington, debía haber sido de un funcionario de alto nivel en una de las agencias de espionaje de Estados Unidos. En cambio, el origen de la fuga es un empleado de nivel, relativamente bajo, de un contratista del gobierno, el gigante Booz Allen Hamilton, que ha ganado miles de millones de dólares en contratos secretos del gobierno en la última década, en parte por el agresivo marketing en sí, tanto como por ser el protector principal de la infraestructura de equipos clasificados secretos de América.
El episodio presenta dificultades políticas, tanto internacionales como nacionales, para la administración Obama. Si el Sr. Snowden permanece en Hong Kong, la Casa Blanca tendría que solicitar su extradición allí y tratar con las autoridades en China, un país que ha sido el mayor adversario de Estados Unidos en muchos aspectos de la seguridad informática.
A continuación, los Estados Unidos deben establecer una estrategia para perseguir a un hombre, al que muchos ven como un héroe, por haber provocado un debate, del que el propio presidente Obama ha dicho que da la bienvenida, - en medio ya de la crítica feroz y de la represión del gobierno por las fugas. El consejo de guerra al soldado. Bradley Manning, quien lanzó un vasto archivo de materiales militares y diplomáticos a Wikileaks, se reanuda el lunes.
El Sr. Snowden, dijo que estaba buscando asilo en el extranjero, tal vez en Islandia, dio la entrevista a The Guardian, el periódico británico y el sitio Web mundial que durante la semana pasada publicó una serie de artículos acerca de los programas de la Agencia de Seguridad Nacional. Tanto The Guardian como The Washington Post, que también publicó artículos que describen los programas de vigilancia, identificaron al Sr. Snowden el domingo como la fuente de sus artículos.
En su entrevista con The Guardian, el Sr. Snowden dijo que su trabajo le había dado acceso a los innumerables secretos que el gobierno de Estados Unidos guardaba más celosamente, incluyendo la ubicación de las estaciones de la Agencia Central de Inteligencia en el extranjero y las identidades de los agentes secretos que trabajan para los Estados Unidos.
Pero él dijo que había sido selectivo en lo que él describe, liberando sólo lo que él encontró que eran los mayores abusos de un estado de vigilancia que llegó a ver como imprudente y que había crecido más allá de los límites razonables. Era alternativamente desafiante, diciendo en un momento que la CIA podría tratar de intentar sacarlo de Hong Kong, y especuló que podría incluso contratar pandillas asiáticas para ir tras él.
"Si te das cuenta de que ese es el mundo que ayudé a crear y que va a empeorar con la próxima generación y la siguiente generación y ampliar las capacidades de la arquitectura de la opresión, te das cuenta de que podría estar dispuesto a aceptar los riesgos y no me importa cuál sea el resultado", dijo el Sr. Snowden... continua en el NYT
Fuente de la noticia: NYT
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