WASHINGTON: The National Security Agency contractor who leaked top-secret details of US surveillance programmes remained out of sight yesterday as the Obama administration launched an internal review of the potential damage to national security by the disclosures.
A senior US intelligence official said the review will be separate from a criminal investigation by the Justice Department into Edward Snowden’s disclosures of the NSA’s broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from big companies such as Google and Facebook.
Packs of reporters staked out hotels in Hong Kong in hopes of finding Snowden, who had worked at an NSA facility as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. He went public in a video released on Sunday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper but then dropped from sight and has yet to resurface. Snowden’s disclosures launched a sharp debate about the tradeoffs between privacy rights and national security in the United States in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks, and whether the resulting measures have been given sufficient scrutiny and oversight.
Members of Congress will be briefed by intelligence and security officials on the programmes this week, including a session with the House of Representatives. Lawmakers promised public debate and legislative efforts to tighten the laws on US government surveillance.
“We’ll have a lot of hearings on this,” said Senator Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat. She said there were questions about how Snowden, a high-school dropout, gained a top-secret clearance and access to high-level government secrets.
REUTERS
