NSA Gathers More Data on US Citizens than on Any Other Foreigners: Snowden
TEHRAN (Tasnim) - Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden said that NSA gathers more data on American citizens than it does about foreigners.
"We watch our own people more closely than anyone else in the world,” Snowden said, appearing by live video during an awards ceremony in Washington.
He also took several shots at the National Security Agency and its top officials, and criticized the agency for wearing two contradictory hats of protecting US data and exploiting security flaws to gather intelligence on foreign threats, The Voice of Russia reported.
During his speech, the whistleblower said he leaked thousands of classified government documents, detailing the NSA’s mass surveillance programs because "it was the right thing to do, and now I see I’m not the only one who felt that way."
"US government policy directed by the NSA...is now making a choice, a binary choice, between security of our communications and the vulnerability of our communications," Snowden said, suggesting the government was biased toward the latter activity.
The former NSA contractor was awarded the Ridenhour Award for Truth-Telling along with Laura Poitras, one of his chief confidants. The 30-year-old fugitive remains in Russia, where he fled and earned temporary asylum following his disclosures of classified information about the NSA's bulk data-collection practices.
