Edward Snowden, provocateur, is in the news again. The leaker-in-exile was interviewed by Wired magazine in Moscow, Snowden's home since he left the U.S. to escape consequences not entirely defined, but potentially numerous.
Snowden moved to Russia in June 2013, after several countries would not grant him asylum. He recently received a permit to stay there for another three years.
Snowden, famously, has admitted to electronically stealing thousands, perhaps millions, of National Security Agency documents, and went public with some of the revelations within those files.
In the interview, Snowden somewhat surprisingly said, "I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose. I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can't allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I'm not going to be a part of that."
Snowden claims that he no longer has access to the documents in question. They are under the auspices of journalist Glenn Greenwald's group First Look Media; The UK-based The Guardian newspaper, which now says that the New York Times has them; and Barton Gellman, a writer for The Washington Post. The NSA may never get them back, but one hopes that they already have the originals.
Snowden contests accusations of espionage by saying that he left behind an electronic record of what he took and what he just perused, so that the government would know what to expect in the future from him and give them time to cover their tracks and limit the damage by changing code words and the like.
One of Snowden's biggest fears concerns an aggressive cyberattack and counter-cyberattack bot named Monster Mind could backfire on the U.S. It is designed to fend off cyberattacks from foreign countries and respond in kind to the hackers it uncovers. But the program is entirely automated, and without human interaction the system could easily be spoofed by hackers who can disguise their true location and cause Monster Mind to retaliate against an innocent country.
For the most part, Snowden's stated intention was to expose NSA electronic eavesdropping on the communications (cell phone, email, etc.) of everyone from ordinary citizens to the leaders of countries that are stalwart American allies (it should be stated that our allies, as well as our enemies, are doing the same to us and each other). The brazenness of the spying -- without warrants, in violation of treaties and Constitutional protections -- shocked, horrified or pleased citizens and government officials, depending on their opinions about both Snowden and the NSA. Snowden claims that his motivation for his actions was purely his love for America and its freedoms.
