A Whole Mountain Of Snowden

“We hack everyone everywhere.” As Edward Snow­den made this startling revelation, the 29-year-old contractor yan­ked the veil of secrecy off the US government’s massive surveillance programme.

An employee with the Hawaii office of defence contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, the 29-year-old Snowden systematically expo­sed how National Security Agency programmes like Prism collect the phone logs of millions of Americans, detailed information such as pho­tos and chat logs from internet firms such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft and correspondence with people outside the US. This data mining and surveillance extend up to India.

“If I wanted to see your e-mails or your wife’s phone, all I have to do is use intercepts. I can get your e-mails, passwords, phone reco­rds, credit cards,” Snowden told Guardian journalists Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Ewan MacAskill, whom he had called to Hong Kong to tell his extraordinary story to.

Snowden’s expose puts him in the league of Daniel Ellsberg, the former US defence depar­tment official who leaked the Pentagon Papers that showed how the US government had mismanaged the Vietnam War and lied about it; or Bradley Manning, Wikileaks’ source inside the US army.

They have also engendered a debate on whether Snowden is a hero or a traitor, a crusader or a criminal. “He is a hero,” wrote John Cassidy in the New Yorker. “In revealing the colossal scale of the US government’s eavesdropping on Americans and other people around the world, he has performed a great public service that more than outweighs any breach of trust....” No hero, contended Jeffrey Toobin, also in the New Yorker. “Some are hailing him as a hero and a whistleblower. He is neither. He is, rather, a grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.”

Most Americans, however, don’t seem to care. A poll by the Pew Research Centre found 62 per cent saying it is more important for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if it intrudes on personal privacy. Did Snowden then just waste his time?