In the first hearing dedicated to the programs since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed them earlier this month, members of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee showed little will on Tuesday to pursue significant reforms.

Instead, both U.S. officials and lawmakers spent hours publicly justifying the phone and Internet monitoring programs as vital security tools and criticized Snowden’s decision to leak documents about them to media outlets.

General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, said Snowden’s leaks had inflicted “irreversible and significant” damage on national security.

“I believe it will hurt us and our allies,” Alexander told the House intelligence panel, which oversees the vast surveillance efforts.

Snowden’s disclosures have ignited a political furor over the balance between privacy rights and national security, but President Barack Obama and congressional leaders in both parties have backed the programs and no significant effort has emerged to roll them back.

While critics have blasted the surveillance as government overreach without enough independent oversight, the proposed legislative remedies discussed so far have focused on tightening the rules for independent contractors and making the secret court that approves warrants for surveillance more transparent.

Alexander told the panel the monitoring was not “some rogue operation,” and defended it as legal, closely supervised and crucial to defending Americans.

“I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11,” Alexander told the committee in his second public appearance before Congress since the programs were exposed.

“In recent years these programs, together with other intelligence, have protected the U.S. and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe to include helping prevent … potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11,” he said.

BOMB ATTACKS THWARTED

Alexander promised to give lawmakers classified details of all of the foiled incidents within 24 hours.

Sean Joyce, deputy FBI director, offered information on two of the cases – a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and a conspiracy to give money to a Somali militia designated by the United States as a terrorist group.

Officials had revealed last week two other such potential attacks: a 2009 plan to bomb a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and a plot by Islamist militants to bomb the New York subway the same year.

Members of the intelligence committee said they were holding the hearing to set the record straight about how the programs operated and their importance for national security.

Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the committee, said the leaks “put our country and our allies in danger by giving the terrorists a really good look at the playbook that we use to protect our country. The terrorists now know many of our sources and methods.”

Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, defended the NSA. “People at the NSA in particular have heard a constant public drumbeat about a laundry list of nefarious things they are alleged to be doing to spy on Americans – all of them wrong,” he said.

Snowden, who worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii through a contract with Booz Allen Hamilton, defended his actions in an Internet chat on Monday and vowed to release more details on the extent of the agency’s access.

Snowden is believed to still be hiding in Hong Kong as the U.S. Justice Department conducts a criminal investigation into the leaks.

Asked what was next for Snowden, Joyce gave a one-word response: “Justice.”

Alexander said he had “significant concerns” about how a low-level contractor like Snowden could gain access to so much information and said it was part of the FBI’s investigation. “We do have significant concerns in this area and it is something that we need to look at,” he said.

SMALL REFORMS

A handful of lawmakers have urged their colleagues to rein in the surveillance programs, but they do not appear to be in the majority.

“When all the dust settles we’re likely to maintain the status quo … there doesn’t appear to be a big coalition wanting to change things,” said Darrell West, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution.

Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, a long-time critic of secret spying programs, has called for reopening the Patriot Act, the post-September 11, 2001, law that gave intelligence agencies broader surveillance powers.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, has called for Americans to bring a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. government.

But the main decision-makers on intelligence matters have spent more time defending the programs than talking reform. And the reforms they have discussed have not been sweeping.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last week that Congress would consider legislation to limit government contractors’ access to certain classified information. However, industry executives and some corners of the intelligence community are already pushing back against such a move.

Obama, meanwhile, told PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show that he will meet with a privacy and civil liberties oversight board. He has also sought to ease concerns about the scope of the surveillance programs.

“What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not,” Obama said on Monday’s program.

Google Inc said on Tuesday it has asked the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow it to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests separately from criminal requests.

Microsoft Corp, Facebook Inc and Apple Inc, released limited information about the number of surveillance requests they receive under an agreement struck with the U.S. government last week.

Under that agreement, the companies were only allowed to disclose aggregate requests for data made by government agencies – without showing the split between surveillance and criminal requests – and only for a six-month period.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Susan Heavey; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Tim Dobbyn)

In the first hearing dedicated to the programs since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed them earlier this month, members of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee showed little will on Tuesday to pursue significant reforms.

Instead, both U.S. officials and lawmakers spent hours publicly justifying the phone and Internet monitoring programs as vital security tools and criticized Snowden’s decision to leak documents about them to media outlets.

General Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA, said Snowden’s leaks had inflicted “irreversible and significant” damage on national security.

“I believe it will hurt us and our allies,” Alexander told the House intelligence panel, which oversees the vast surveillance efforts.

Snowden’s disclosures have ignited a political furor over the balance between privacy rights and national security, but President Barack Obama and congressional leaders in both parties have backed the programs and no significant effort has emerged to roll them back.

While critics have blasted the surveillance as government overreach without enough independent oversight, the proposed legislative remedies discussed so far have focused on tightening the rules for independent contractors and making the secret court that approves warrants for surveillance more transparent.

Alexander told the panel the monitoring was not “some rogue operation,” and defended it as legal, closely supervised and crucial to defending Americans.

“I would much rather be here today debating this point than trying to explain how we failed to prevent another 9/11,” Alexander told the committee in his second public appearance before Congress since the programs were exposed.

“In recent years these programs, together with other intelligence, have protected the U.S. and our allies from terrorist threats across the globe to include helping prevent … potential terrorist events over 50 times since 9/11,” he said.

BOMB ATTACKS THWARTED

Alexander promised to give lawmakers classified details of all of the foiled incidents within 24 hours.

Sean Joyce, deputy FBI director, offered information on two of the cases – a plot to bomb the New York Stock Exchange and a conspiracy to give money to a Somali militia designated by the United States as a terrorist group.

Officials had revealed last week two other such potential attacks: a 2009 plan to bomb a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad and a plot by Islamist militants to bomb the New York subway the same year.

Members of the intelligence committee said they were holding the hearing to set the record straight about how the programs operated and their importance for national security.

Representative Dutch Ruppersberger, the top Democrat on the committee, said the leaks “put our country and our allies in danger by giving the terrorists a really good look at the playbook that we use to protect our country. The terrorists now know many of our sources and methods.”

Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, a Republican, defended the NSA. “People at the NSA in particular have heard a constant public drumbeat about a laundry list of nefarious things they are alleged to be doing to spy on Americans – all of them wrong,” he said.

Snowden, who worked at an NSA facility in Hawaii through a contract with Booz Allen Hamilton, defended his actions in an Internet chat on Monday and vowed to release more details on the extent of the agency’s access.

Snowden is believed to still be hiding in Hong Kong as the U.S. Justice Department conducts a criminal investigation into the leaks.

Asked what was next for Snowden, Joyce gave a one-word response: “Justice.”

Alexander said he had “significant concerns” about how a low-level contractor like Snowden could gain access to so much information and said it was part of the FBI’s investigation. “We do have significant concerns in this area and it is something that we need to look at,” he said.

SMALL REFORMS

A handful of lawmakers have urged their colleagues to rein in the surveillance programs, but they do not appear to be in the majority.

“When all the dust settles we’re likely to maintain the status quo … there doesn’t appear to be a big coalition wanting to change things,” said Darrell West, a political analyst at the Brookings Institution.

Democratic Senator Mark Udall of Colorado, a long-time critic of secret spying programs, has called for reopening the Patriot Act, the post-September 11, 2001, law that gave intelligence agencies broader surveillance powers.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a potential 2016 presidential candidate, has called for Americans to bring a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. government.

But the main decision-makers on intelligence matters have spent more time defending the programs than talking reform. And the reforms they have discussed have not been sweeping.

Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said last week that Congress would consider legislation to limit government contractors’ access to certain classified information. However, industry executives and some corners of the intelligence community are already pushing back against such a move.

Obama, meanwhile, told PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show that he will meet with a privacy and civil liberties oversight board. He has also sought to ease concerns about the scope of the surveillance programs.

“What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not,” Obama said on Monday’s program.

Google Inc said on Tuesday it has asked the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to allow it to publish aggregate numbers of national security requests separately from criminal requests.

Microsoft Corp, Facebook Inc and Apple Inc, released limited information about the number of surveillance requests they receive under an agreement struck with the U.S. government last week.

Under that agreement, the companies were only allowed to disclose aggregate requests for data made by government agencies – without showing the split between surveillance and criminal requests – and only for a six-month period.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Susan Heavey; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Tim Dobbyn)

Snowden told an online forum run by Britain’s Guardian newspaper that he revealed the programs in part out of disappointment with President Barack Obama, who he said had expanded “abusive” government programs while in office.

A defiant Snowden, believed to be in hiding in Hong Kong, dismissed suggestions such as comments on Sunday from former Vice President Dick Cheney that he was a traitor who could be sharing secret information with China.

He said being called a traitor by Cheney, instrumental in the expansion of surveillance programs, was “the highest honor” you can give an American.

“I have had no contact with the Chinese government,” said Snowden, who has vowed to stay in the Chinese-run former British colony and fight any effort to extradite him to the United States.

“This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public … Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn’t I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.”

U.S. officials familiar with the investigations into Snowden said there was no evidence so far to suggest he had any contacts with China. In China’s first substantive comments on Monday, a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman rejected the suggestion that Snowden was a Chinese spy and said Washington should explain its surveillance programs to the world.

Snowden, the former employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH.N: Quote, Profile, Research), who worked in an NSA facility in Hawaii before providing details to the Guardian and Washington Post, said the government’s “litany of lies” about the programs helped convince him to act.

He said he was particularly disappointed in what he saw as Obama’s failure to live up to the promises of his 2008 campaign.

As president, Snowden said, Obama has “closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.”

Obama and administration officials have defended the surveillance programs as effective tools in their effort to protect Americans from terrorism and said they were instrumental in helping to disrupt dozens of potential attacks.

Obama reiterated on PBS’s “Charlie Rose” show on Monday that there are trade-offs between privacy and national security but said that the government conducts its surveillance programs with oversight and restraint.

“What I can say unequivocally is that if you are a U.S. person, the NSA cannot listen to your telephone calls, and the NSA cannot target your emails … and have not,” Obama said in the interview taped on Sunday.

He also said he has “stood up,” and will meet with, a privacy and civil liberties oversight board that includes “some fierce civil libertarians.”

The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into Snowden’s actions, and U.S. officials promised last week to track him down and hold him accountable for the leaks.

‘THAT’S NOT JUSTICE’

Snowden said the government had “destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That’s not justice,” he said.

The revelations of widespread monitoring of the phone and Internet data kept by big companies such as Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and Facebook Inc (FB.O: Quote, Profile, Research) ignited a sharp debate about the balance between privacy rights and national security.

Since Snowden went public in a video released by the Guardian on June 9, many U.S. lawmakers have condemned his actions and intelligence officials have said the leaks will compromise national security.

Some lawmakers have been more restrained. Republican Senator Rand Paul, a favorite of the anti-government Tea Party movement, has encouraged Americans to be part of a class-action lawsuit against the U.S. government for the surveillance programs.

General Keith Alexander, director of the NSA, will testify at a House of Representatives Intelligence Committee hearing on Tuesday where details could be made public of some two dozen attacks that officials say the surveillance programs helped thwart.

Snowden answered about 18 questions on the Guardian’s website during the session, which lasted more than 90 minutes and drew more than 2,000 comments and questions.

He said there was no single event that led him to leak details about the surveillance, but rather “it was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress – and therefore the American people – and the realization that Congress … wholly supported the lies.”

Snowden referred to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper’s testimony to Congress in March that such a program did not exist, saying that seeing him “baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.”

Snowden said he was encouraged by the public debate over privacy rights in the aftermath of the disclosures.

But now, he said, the media was more concerned with “what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.”

Snowden’s father, Lonnie, said in an interview on Fox News that he hoped his son would return to the United States to fight any potential criminal charges.

“I would like to see Ed come home and face this. I shared that with the government when I spoke with them. I love my son,” he told Fox, adding “I hope, I pray” that he does not commit any acts that could be considered treason.

“I sense that you’re under much stress (from) what I’ve read recently, and (ask) that you not succumb to that stress … and make a bad decision,” Lonnie Snowden said in an interview published on the channel’s website.

He denied press reports that his son was a high school dropout, saying that after a lengthy illness at the start of his sophomore year, his son enrolled in community college and eventually got a high school equivalency degree.

(Additional reporting by Deborah Charles, Mark Hosenball, Jackie Frank and Patricia Zengerle; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Tim Dobbyn)

Edward Snowden, in his first public comments since he dropped out of view in Hong Kong on Monday, said he did not travel to the former British colony to avoid punishment for leaking details of the surveillance program.

“I am not here to hide from justice. I am here to reveal criminality,” Snowden told the South China Morning Post, an English-language newspaper in Hong Kong, in an interview published on Wednesday.

“My intention is to ask the courts and people of Hong Kong to decide my fate,” Snowden said. “I have had many opportunities to flee Hong Kong, but I would rather stay and fight the United States government in the courts, because I have faith in Hong Kong’s rule of law.”

Snowden revealed details last week of the vast U.S. government monitoring of phone and Internet data at big companies such as Google Inc and Facebook Inc in leaks to Britain’s Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post.

The revelations have sparked a criminal investigation and an internal Obama administration review of the potential damage to national security, as pressure has grown from lawmakers and advocacy groups to impose tighter controls on domestic surveillance.

Snowden, who had been working at an NSA facility as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, has drawn a mix of condemnation and praise for the revelations. The controversy ignited a renewed debate about the balance between privacy rights and security concerns in the United States in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks.

“I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American,” Snowden told the newspaper.

Hong Kong has an extradition agreement with the United States that has been exercised on numerous occasions, but so far Snowden has not been publicly charged and the United States has not filed for his extradition.

In Washington, the head of the National Security Agency will appear before a U.S. Senate panel on Wednesday, offering the NSA’s first public testimony since the revelations of the surveillance programs.

General Keith Alexander, NSA director and head of U.S. Cyber Command, is expected to face pointed questions from the Senate Appropriations Committee. Alexander, who briefed senators on the issue behind closed doors on Tuesday, will be joined in the Senate budget hearing by other cybersecurity officials.

(Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Deborah Charles; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Claudia Parsons)

A senior U.S. intelligence official said the review will be
separate from a criminal investigation by the Justice Department
into Edward Snowden’s disclosures about the National Security
Agency’s broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from
big companies such as Google Inc and Facebook Inc
.

The review is expected to address whether the leaks have
compromised sources or surveillance methods, and would likely
look for chatter among intelligence targets to see if they have
changed tactics due to the leaks.

Reporters staked out hotels in Hong Kong in hopes of
spotting Snowden, an NSA contractor who went public in a video
released on Sunday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper but then
dropped from sight in the former British colony and has yet to
resurface.

Booz Allen Hamilton, the company that most recently
employed Snowden, said it had terminated Snowden’s employment on
Monday for violations of its code of ethics and policies. It
said he had been an employee for less than three months at an
annual salary rate of $122,000.

The revelations from Snowden have launched a sharp debate
about the tradeoffs between privacy rights and national security
in the United States and whether the surveillance measures have
been given sufficient scrutiny and oversight.

Members of Congress promised an extensive public discussion
and more legislative efforts to tighten the laws on U.S.
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.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill designed to
end the secret supervision of the programs by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court by requiring declassification of
significant court rulings.

“Americans deserve to know how much information about their
private communications the government believes it’s allowed to
take under the law,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon
Democrat and chief co-sponsor with Senator Mike Lee, a Utah
Republican.

Big technology companies issued a series of pleas on Tuesday
for the government to lift the veil on national security
requests to the private sector.

Google sent a letter to U.S. authorities asking that secrecy
restrictions be loosened so the company could publish the number
and scope of surveillance court requests in reports it already
issues on data requests from authorities. “Google’s numbers
would clearly show that our compliance with these requests falls
far short of the claims being made. Google has nothing to hide,”
said David Drummond, the company’s chief legal officer.

Microsoft Corp and Facebook also released
statements urging the U.S. government to permit greater
transparency on such requests.

Separately, a coalition of privacy advocacy groups sent a
letter demanding that Congress halt and investigate the
surveillance programs.

In New York, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a
lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the legality of the
telephone surveillance program, saying it violates free speech
and privacy protections in the U.S. Constitution.

‘A TRAITOR’

Snowden said in the Guardian video that he wanted to make
the public aware of the NSA’s broad surveillance programs, but
his disclosures to the Guardian and the Washington Post have
sparked a mix of condemnation and praise.

“He’s a traitor,” House Speaker John Boehner said of Snowden
in an interview with ABC News. He defended the NSA programs and
their congressional oversight, saying Americans are not “snooped
on” unless they communicate with a terrorist in another country.

“The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk,
it shows our adversaries what our capabilities are, and it’s a
giant violation of the law,” Boehner said.

Many other lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have
also called for swift punishment. But Senator Rand Paul, a
Republican popular with the Tea Party movement that campaigns
against intrusive government, said he was reserving judgment on
Snowden and said such acts of civil disobedience happen when
people felt like they had no other options.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sent a
message on Monday to intelligence community workers
re-emphasizing the need to safeguard sensitive data and
reassuring private contractors they are “an integral part of our
workforce and are critical to our national security efforts.”

As of Oct. 1, 2012, about 1.4 million people hold “top
secret” security clearances, Clapper’s office says. Nearly
800,000 government employees had “top secret” clearances.

In Hong Kong, reporters continued to stake out hotels across
the city on Tuesday in search of Snowden, who checked out of his
luxury hotel in the Kowloon district on Monday.

Snowden said he fled to Hong Kong because of its commitment
to free speech and political dissent, but pro-democracy
activists have complained that the former British colony’s
freedoms have eroded since its return to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hong Kong has a longstanding extradition agreement with the
United States that has been exercised on numerous occasions
since 1998, but Snowden could challenge any U.S. extradition
request and make a claim for political asylum, a course of
action that typically takes months if not years.

Russia said it would be willing to consider granting asylum
to Snowden if he asks for it. “If he says: I request (political
asylum), then we will consider it,” Dmitry Peskov, President
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, was quoted as saying in the Russian
daily Kommersant.

Snowden has not mentioned the possibility in public of
seeking asylum in Russia. While fleeing to Hong Kong, he also
has mentioned Iceland as another potential spot for asylum.

The surveillance program rattled some foreign governments
and some dissident and opposition groups in Asia. European
lawmakers threatened to re-open data-sharing agreements with the
United States if Washington has been using the programs to spy
on Europeans.

In a heated debate in the European Parliament in Brussels,
lawmakers said they had yielded to U.S. demands for access to
European financial and travel data for a decade and it was now
time to re-examine the deals and limit access.

“We need to step back here and say clearly: mass
surveillance is not what we want,” said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a
German Green lawmaker in charge of a planned overhaul of the
European Union’s data protection laws.

Dissident and opposition groups in Asia, including three
supported by the United States, said they were worried the data
collected in the surveillance programs could some day be used
against them.

“We share a lot of sensitive data, election-related data,
using Google Docs,” said Ong Kian Ming, a member of parliament
for Malaysia’s opposition Democratic Action Party.

“That’s definitely something we are concerned about because
we don’t know what messages are being tracked and who these
messages would be given to.”

A senior U.S. 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 Sept. 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 programs this week, including a
Tuesday session with the House of Representatives. Lawmakers
promised public debate and legislative efforts to tighten the
laws on U.S. 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.

Booz Allen said it had terminated Snowden’s employment on
Monday for violations of its code of ethics and policies. It
said he had been an employee for less than three months at an
annual salary rate of $122,000.

A bipartisan group of senators introduced a bill designed to
end the secret supervision of the programs by the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court by requiring declassification of
significant court rulings.

“Americans deserve to know how much information about their
private communications the government believes it’s allowed to
take under the law,” said Senator Jeff Merkley, an Oregon
Democrat and chief co-sponsor with Senator Mike Lee, a Utah
Republican.

Snowden said in the Guardian video that he wanted to make
the public aware of the NSA’s broad surveillance programs, but
his disclosures to the Guardian and the Washington Post have
sparked a mix of condemnation and praise.

‘A TRAITOR’

“He’s a traitor,” House Speaker John Boehner said of Snowden
in an interview with ABC News. He defended the NSA programs and
their congressional oversight, saying Americans are not “snooped
on” unless they communicate with a terrorist in another country.

“The disclosure of this information puts Americans at risk,
it shows our adversaries what our capabilities are, and it’s a
giant violation of the law,” Boehner said.

Many other lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, have
also called for swift punishment. But Senator Rand Paul, a
Republican popular with the Tea Party movement that campaigns
against intrusive government, said he was reserving judgment on
Snowden.

“I think most Americans don’t want this surveillance,” Paul
said on CBS’s “This Morning.” He said such civil disobedience
happened when people felt like they had no other options.

In Hong Kong, reporters continued to stake out hotels across
the city on Tuesday in search of Snowden, who checked out of his
luxury hotel in the Kowloon district on Monday.

Snowden said he fled to Hong Kong because of its commitment
to free speech and political dissent, but pro-democracy
activists have complained that the former British colony’s
freedoms have eroded since its return to Chinese rule in 1997.

Hong Kong has a longstanding extradition agreement with the
United States that has been exercised on numerous occasions
since 1998, but Snowden could challenge any U.S. extradition
request and make a claim for political asylum, a course of
action that typically takes months if not years.

Russia said it would be willing to consider granting asylum
to Snowden if he asks for it. “If he says: I request (political
asylum), then we will consider it,” Dmitry Peskov, President
Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, was quoted as saying in the Russian
daily Kommersant.

Snowden has not mentioned the possibility in public of
seeking asylum in Russia. While fleeing to Hong Kong, he also
has mentioned Iceland as another potential spot for asylum.

The surveillance program rattled some foreign governments
and some dissident and opposition groups in Asia. European
lawmakers threatened to re-open data-sharing agreements with the
United States if Washington has been using the programs to spy
on Europeans.

In a heated debate in the European Parliament in Brussels,
lawmakers said they had yielded to U.S. demands for access to
European financial and travel data for a decade and it was now
time to re-examine the deals and limit access.

“We need to step back here and say clearly: mass
surveillance is not what we want,” said Jan Philipp Albrecht, a
German Green lawmaker in charge of a planned overhaul of the
European Union’s data protection laws.

Dissident and opposition groups in Asia, including three
supported by the United States, said they were worried the data
collected in the surveillance programs could some day be used
against them.

“We share a lot of sensitive data, election-related data,
using Google Docs,” said Ong Kian Ming, a member of parliament
for Malaysia’s opposition Democratic Action Party.

“That’s definitely something we are concerned about because
we don’t know what messages are bring tracked and who these
messages would be given to.”

Edward Snowden, 29, who provided the information for published reports last week that revealed the NSA’s broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook, checked out of his Hong Kong hotel hours after going public in a video released on Sunday by Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

The disclosures by Snowden have sent shockwaves across Washington, where several lawmakers called on Monday for the extradition and prosecution of the ex-CIA employee who was behind one of the most significant security leaks in U.S. history.

There were some signs, however, that Snowden’s stance against government surveillance and his defense of personal privacy was resonating with at least some Americans.

Supporters flocked to Snowden’s aid on the Internet – more than 25,000 people signed an online petition urging Obama to pardon Snowden even before he has been charged. A separate effort on Facebook to raise funds for Snowden’s legal defense netted nearly $8,000 in just a few hours.

In Hong Kong, officials were cautious in discussing a spy drama that could entangle U.S.-China relations just a few days after U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping met at a summit in California where cyber security was a prime topic.

Snowden told the Guardian that he went to Hong Kong in hopes it would be a place where he might be able to resist U.S. prosecution attempts, although the former British colony has an extradition treaty with the United States.

On Monday, some local officials suggested that Snowden might have miscalculated.

“We do have bilateral agreements with the U.S. and we are duty-bound to comply with these agreements. Hong Kong is not a legal vacuum, as Mr. Snowden might have thought,” said Regina Ip, a Hong Kong lawmaker and former security secretary.

Snowden said he turned over the documents to The Washington Post and the Guardian in order to expose the NSA’s vast surveillance of phone and Internet data.

The former technical assistant at the CIA, who had been working at the NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said he became disenchanted with Obama for continuing the surveillance policies of George W. Bush, Obama’s predecessor.

“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded,” Snowden told the Guardian, which published the video interview with him, dated June 6, on its website.

In Washington, several members of Congress and intelligence officials showed little sympathy for Snowden’s argument. The U.S. Justice Department already is in the initial stages of a criminal investigation.

“Anyone responsible for leaking classified information should be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” said Republican Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee.

‘A SACRED TRUST’

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told NBC that the leaks “violate a sacred trust for this country. The damage that these revelations incur are huge.”

Some lawmakers were more cautious, however, saying the surveillance programs revealed by the Guardian and The Post raised concerns not just about citizens’ privacy, but also whether the Obama administration had done enough to keep Congress informed about such surveillance, as required by law.

“The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing,” said Ron Paul, a former House member and unsuccessful Republican presidential candidate in 2012 who has long said that the U.S. government is too intrusive into Americans’ daily lives.

“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden,” Paul said.

At the White House on Monday, Obama spokesman Jay Carney sidestepped questions about Snowden. Responding to questions about the White House’s efforts to brief Congress about the NSA’s surveillance programs, a senior administration official released a list of 22 briefings that had been conducted for lawmakers over a 14-month span.

There will be more briefings on Tuesday, when a half-dozen national security, law enforcement and intelligence officials will meet with House members. The Senate will be briefed on Thursday.

Snowden, who the Guardian said had been working at the NSA for four years as a contractor for outside companies, told the Guardian he had copied the secret documents at the NSA office in Hawaii three weeks ago and had told his supervisor that he needed “a couple of weeks” off for epilepsy treatments. He flew to Hong Kong on May 20.

Staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong told Reuters that Snowden had checked out at noon on Monday. Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian journalist, said later in the day that Snowden was still in Hong Kong.

“He didn’t have a plan. He thought out in great detail leaking the documents and then deciding rather than being anonymous, he’d go public. So he thought that out in great detail. But his plans after that have always been vague,” MacAskill said.

“I’d imagine there’s now going to be a real battle between Washington and Beijing and civil rights groups as to his future,” MacAskill said. “He’d like to seek asylum in a friendly country but I’m not sure if that’s possible or not.”

HONG KONG ASYLUM POLICY ‘IN LIMBO’

Legally speaking, where does Snowden go from here?

If Snowden is charged on criminal counts as many lawmakers and officials expect, the focus will turn to the extradition treaty that the United States and Hong Kong signed in 1996, a year before the former British colony was returned to China.

The treaty, which allows for the exchange of criminal suspects in a formal process that also may involve the Chinese government, went into effect in 1998.

It says that Hong Kong authorities can hold a U.S. suspect for up to 60 days after the United States submits a request indicating there is probable cause to believe the suspect violated U.S. law. In Snowden’s case, such a request could lead Hong Kong authorities to hold him while Washington prepares a formal extradition request.

Snowden could try to stay in Hong Kong by seeking political asylum. Simon Young, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said there are strong protections for people making asylum claims under Hong Kong’s extradition laws.

A decision this year by Hong Kong’s High Court requires the government to create a new standard for reviewing asylum applications, putting the cases on hold until the new system is finished.

“He’s come really at probably the best moment in time because our asylum laws are in a state of limbo,” Young said.

MORE REVELATIONS TO COME?

Snowden’s revelations launched a broad national debate on privacy rights and the limits of security programs in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

On Monday, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian’s lead reporter on the Snowden case, used Twitter to chide Clapper for claiming that Snowden’s disclosures harmed national security. Greenwald also suggested that there were more revelations to come.

“Clapper: leaks “literally gut-wrenching” – “huge, grave damage” – save some melodrama and rhetoric for coming stories. You’ll need it,” Greenwald tweeted.

Many members of Congress have expressed support for the surveillance program but raised questions about whether it should be more tightly supervised and scaled back.

“In my mind, things that may have been appropriate in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the weeks and months and even years after that, may no longer be appropriate today,” Republican Representative Luke Messer of Indiana said on MSNBC.

Some officials said the U.S. government might need to reconsider how much it relies on outside defense contractors who are given top security clearances. As of October 2012, about 483,000 government contractors has top-secret security clearances, according to a report issued in January by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“We do need to take another, closer look at how we control information and how good we are at identifying what people are doing with that information,” said Stewart Baker, former general counsel at the NSA and former assistant secretary for policy at the Department of Homeland Security.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, David Ingram, Mark Hosenball, Susan Heavey, Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David Lindsey, Jim Loney and Mohammad Zargham)

Edward Snowden, 29, who provided the information for
published reports last week that revealed the NSA’s broad
monitoring of phone call and Internet data from large companies
such as Google and Facebook, checked out of his Hong Kong hotel
hours after going public in a video released on Sunday by
Britain’s Guardian newspaper.

The disclosures by Snowden have sent shockwaves across
Washington, where several lawmakers called on Monday for the
extradition and prosecution of the ex-CIA employee who was
behind one of the most significant security leaks in U.S.
history.

There were some signs, however, that Snowden’s stance
against government surveillance and his defense of personal
privacy was resonating with at least some Americans.

Supporters flocked to Snowden’s aid on the Internet – more
than 25,000 people signed an online petition urging Obama to
pardon Snowden even before he has been charged. A separate
effort on Facebook to raise funds for Snowden’s legal defense
netted nearly $8,000 in just a few hours.

In Hong Kong, officials were cautious in discussing a spy
drama that could entangle U.S.-China relations just a few days
after U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi
Jinping met at a summit in California where cyber security was a
prime topic.

Snowden told the Guardian that he went to Hong Kong in hopes
it would be a place where he might be able to resist U.S.
prosecution attempts, although the former British colony has an
extradition treaty with the United States.

On Monday, some local officials suggested that Snowden might
have miscalculated.

“We do have bilateral agreements with the U.S. and we are
duty-bound to comply with these agreements. Hong Kong is not a
legal vacuum, as Mr. Snowden might have thought,” said Regina
Ip, a Hong Kong lawmaker and former security secretary.

Snowden said he turned over the documents to The Washington
Post and the Guardian in order to expose the NSA’s vast
surveillance of phone and Internet data.

The former technical assistant at the CIA, who had been
working at the NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen
Hamilton, said he became disenchanted with Obama for continuing
the surveillance policies of George W. Bush, Obama’s
predecessor.

“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of
things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I
do and say is recorded,” Snowden told the Guardian, which
published the video interview with him, dated June 6, on its
website.

In Washington, several members of Congress and intelligence
officials showed little sympathy for Snowden’s argument. The
U.S. Justice Department already is in the initial stages of a
criminal investigation.

“Anyone responsible for leaking classified information
should be punished to the fullest extent of the law,” said
Republican Mike Rogers, chairman of the House of Representatives
Intelligence Committee.

‘A SACRED TRUST’

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told
NBC that the leaks “violate a sacred trust for this country. The
damage that these revelations incur are huge.”

Some lawmakers were more cautious, however, saying the
surveillance programs revealed by the Guardian and The Post
raised concerns not just about citizens’ privacy, but also
whether the Obama administration had done enough to keep
Congress informed about such surveillance, as required by law.

“The government does not need to know more about what we are
doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing,”
said Ron Paul, a former House member and unsuccessful Republican
presidential candidate in 2012 who has long said that the U.S.
government is too intrusive into Americans’ daily lives.

“We should be thankful for individuals like Edward Snowden,”
Paul said.

At the White House on Monday, Obama spokesman Jay Carney
sidestepped questions about Snowden. Responding to questions
about the White House’s efforts to brief Congress about the
NSA’s surveillance programs, a senior administration official
released a list of 22 briefings that had been conducted for
lawmakers over a 14-month span.

There will be more briefings on Tuesday, when a half-dozen
national security, law enforcement and intelligence officials
will meet with House members. The Senate will be briefed on
Thursday.

Snowden, who the Guardian said had been working at the NSA
for four years as a contractor for outside companies, told the
Guardian he had copied the secret documents at the NSA office in
Hawaii three weeks ago and had told his supervisor that he
needed “a couple of weeks” off for epilepsy treatments. He flew
to Hong Kong on May 20.

Staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong told Reuters that
Snowden had checked out at noon on Monday. Ewen MacAskill, a
Guardian journalist, said later in the day that Snowden was
still in Hong Kong.

“He didn’t have a plan. He thought out in great detail
leaking the documents and then deciding rather than being
anonymous, he’d go public. So he thought that out in great
detail. But his plans after that have always been vague,”
MacAskill said.

“I’d imagine there’s now going to be a real battle between
Washington and Beijing and civil rights groups as to his
future,” MacAskill said. “He’d like to seek asylum in a friendly
country but I’m not sure if that’s possible or not.”

HONG KONG ASYLUM POLICY ‘IN LIMBO’

Legally speaking, where does Snowden go from here?

If Snowden is charged on criminal counts as many lawmakers
and officials expect, the focus will turn to the extradition
treaty that the United States and Hong Kong signed in 1996, a
year before the former British colony was returned to China.

The treaty, which allows for the exchange of criminal
suspects in a formal process that also may involve the Chinese
government, went into effect in 1998.

It says that Hong Kong authorities can hold a U.S. suspect
for up to 60 days after the United States submits a request
indicating there is probable cause to believe the suspect
violated U.S. law. In Snowden’s case, such a request could lead
Hong Kong authorities to hold him while Washington prepares a
formal extradition request.

Snowden could try to stay in Hong Kong by seeking political
asylum. Simon Young, a professor of law at the University of
Hong Kong, said there are strong protections for people making
asylum claims under Hong Kong’s extradition laws.

A decision this year by Hong Kong’s High Court requires the
government to create a new standard for reviewing asylum
applications, putting the cases on hold until the new system is
finished.

“He’s come really at probably the best moment in time
because our asylum laws are in a state of limbo,” Young said.

MORE REVELATIONS TO COME?

Snowden’s revelations launched a broad national debate on
privacy rights and the limits of security programs in the
aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

On Monday, Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian’s lead reporter on
the Snowden case, used Twitter to chide Clapper for claiming
that Snowden’s disclosures harmed national security. Greenwald
also suggested that there were more revelations to come.

“Clapper: leaks “literally gut-wrenching” – “huge, grave
damage” – save some melodrama and rhetoric for coming stories.
You’ll need it,” Greenwald tweeted.

Many members of Congress have expressed support for the
surveillance program but raised questions about whether it
should be more tightly supervised and scaled back.

“In my mind, things that may have been appropriate in the
aftermath of 9/11 and in the weeks and months and even years
after that, may no longer be appropriate today,” Republican
Representative Luke Messer of Indiana said on MSNBC.

Some officials said the U.S. government might need to
reconsider how much it relies on outside defense contractors who
are given top security clearances. As of October 2012, about
483,000 government contractors has top-secret security
clearances, according to a report issued in January by the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“We do need to take another, closer look at how we control
information and how good we are at identifying what people are
doing with that information,” said Stewart Baker, former general
counsel at the NSA and former assistant secretary for policy at
the Department of Homeland Security.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, David Ingram, Mark
Hosenball, Susan Heavey, Patricia Zengerle; Editing by David
Lindsey, Jim Loney and Mohammad Zargham)

Edward Snowden, 29, who provided the information for published reports last week that revealed the NSA’s broad monitoring of phone call and Internet data from large companies such as Google and Facebook, checked out of his Hong Kong hotel hours after going public in a video released on Sunday.

In Washington, several lawmakers called for the extradition and prosecution of the ex-CIA employee behind one of the most significant security leaks in U.S. history. Members of the U.S. Congress said they would be briefed on the topic on Tuesday; the U.S. Justice Department is in the initial stages of a criminal investigation.

“If anyone were to violate the law by leaking classified information outside the legal avenues, certainly that individual should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” Eric Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, said on CBS’s “This Morning.”

Snowden, who asked the Washington Post and Britain’s Guardian newspapers to identify him and his role, said he leaked the information because he believed the United States had built a vast and secret espionage machine to spy on Americans.

The former technical assistant at the CIA, who had been working at the NSA as an employee of contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, said he had become disenchanted with President Barack Obama. Snowden said that Obama had continued the overly intrusive surveillance policies of George W. Bush, Obama’s predecessor.

“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things … I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under,” Snowden told the Guardian, which published a video interview with him, dated June 6, on its website.

Snowden, who the Guardian said had been working at the NSA for four years as a contractor for outside companies, copied the secret documents at the NSA office in Hawaii three weeks ago and told his supervisor he needed “a couple of weeks” off for epilepsy treatments, the paper said. He flew to Hong Kong on May 20.

Staff at a luxury hotel in Hong Kong told Reuters that Snowden had checked out at noon on Monday. Ewen MacAskill, a Guardian journalist, said that Snowden was still in Hong Kong.

“He didn’t have a plan. He thought out in great detail leaking the documents and then deciding rather than being anonymous, he’d go public. So he thought that out in great detail. But his plans after that have always been vague,” MacAskill said.

‘A REAL BATTLE’

“I’d imagine there’s now going to be a real battle between Washington and Beijing and civil rights groups as to his future,” MacAskill said. “He’d like to seek asylum in a friendly country but I’m not sure if that’s possible or not.”

The United States and Hong Kong signed an extradition treaty in 1996, a year before the former British colony was returned to China. It allows for the exchange of criminal suspects in a formal process that may also involve the Chinese government.

The treaty went into force in 1998 and provides that Hong Kong authorities can hold Snowden for 60 days, following a U.S. request that includes probable cause, while Washington prepares a formal extradition request.

Regina Ip, a Hong Kong lawmaker and former security secretary, said it would be wise for Snowden to leave Hong Kong.

“We do have bilateral agreements with the U.S. and we are duty-bound to comply with these agreements. Hong Kong is not a legal vacuum, as Mr. Snowden might have thought,” Ip said.

But Simon Young, a professor of law at the University of Hong Kong, said that going to the former British colony was probably a good decision because there are strong protections for people making asylum claims under its extradition laws.

“He’s come really at probably the best moment in time because our asylum laws are in a state of limbo,” Young said.

Snowden’s revelations launched a broad debate on privacy rights and the limits of security programs in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

Many members of Congress have expressed support for the surveillance program but raised questions about whether it should be more tightly supervised and scaled back.

“In my mind, things that may have been appropriate in the aftermath of 9/11 and in the weeks and months and even years after that, may no longer be appropriate today,” Republican Representative Luke Messer of Indiana said on MSNBC.

He said the leaks were obviously a violation of law.

“Our system of security can’t work if folks who have access to classified information are allowed willy-nilly on their own to decide what to leak, so the young man’s going to have to be prosecuted,” Messer said.

(Additional reporting by James Pomfret, David Ingram, Mark Hosenball, Susan Heavey; Editing by David Lindsey and Jim Loney)

The White House spent much of the day defending the National
Security Agency’s secret collection of telephone records from
millions of Americans as a “critical tool” for preventing
attacks, as critics called the program – first reported by
Britain’s Guardian newspaper – a heavy-handed move that raised
new questions about the extent of the U.S. government’s spying
on its citizens.

At day’s end, the flap over the NSA’s mining of data from
customers of a subsidiary of Verizon Communications was
overtaken by a Washington Post report that described an even
more aggressive program of government surveillance.

The Post reported that the NSA and the FBI have been tapping
“directly” into the central servers of leading U.S. internet
companies to gain access to emails, photographs, audio, video,
documents, connection logs and other information that enable
analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.

Some of the companies named in the article – Google, Apple,
Yahoo and Facebook – immediately denied that the government had
“direct access” to their central servers. Microsoft said it does
not voluntarily participate in any government data collection
and only complies “with orders for requests about specific
accounts or identifiers.”

James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said
the report contained “numerous inaccuracies.”

Washington Post spokeswoman Kristine Coratti said the paper
stood by its report, which was based on an NSA document that it
published online.

Taken together, the reports suggested that U.S. domestic
surveillance, long acknowledged to have become more prevalent
since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, was far more extensive than
the public knew.

The Post said that the secret program involving the internet
companies, code-named PRISM and established under Republican
President George W. Bush in 2007, had seen “exponential growth”
during the past several years under Democratic President Barack
Obama.

The Post said an NSA report had found that the agency
“increasingly relies on PRISM” as its leading source of raw
material, accounting for nearly 1 in 7 intelligence reports.

Technology companies taking part in the program, the Post
said, include Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL,
Skype, YouTube and Apple.

Clapper indicated that Thursday’s reports were indeed
significant but disputed the notion that government agents could
use such data without a specific investigative purpose in mind.
He also said the program does not allow the government to listen
in on anyone’s phone calls.

“The unauthorized disclosure of information about this
important and entirely legal program is reprehensible and risks
important protections for the security of Americans,” he said in
a statement.

FUEL FOR CRITICS

The reports on Thursday drew attention to U.S. authorities’
use of a secret federal court, the U.S. Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, which reviews and approves investigators’
requests to conduct extraordinary surveillance in national
security cases.

The NSA surveillance programs are among thousands of
operations approved by the court in the years since the 9/11
attacks. Under federal law, Congress is briefed about the
court’s actions.

For civil libertarians and other critics of expanded secret
surveillance, Thursday’s revelations amounted to a reminder of
how the 9/11 attacks increased the government’s reach into
Americans’ daily lives.

“These revelations are a reminder that Congress has given
the executive branch far too much power to invade individual
privacy (and) that existing civil liberties safeguards are
grossly inadequate,” said Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director
of the American Civil Liberties Union.

As Obama arrived in California late on Thursday for a summit
with China’s new president, Xi Jinping, it was clear that
administration officials were sensitive to such criticism.

A senior administration official emphasized that although
the activities of people in the United States are included in
the data being amassed by the government, the surveillance
programs may target for investigation only non-Americans living
outside the country.

The surveillance program “was recently reauthorized by
Congress after extensive hearings and debate,” the official
said. “Information collected under this program is among the
most important and valuable intelligence information we collect,
and is used to protect our nation from a wide variety of
threats.”

‘IT’S CALLED PROTECTING AMERICA’

Before the Post’s report on the internet companies was
published, leading members of Congress – who routinely are
briefed by the NSA on secret surveillance programs, and were
again on Thursday – defended the agency’s efforts to build a
database of phone records for use in investigations. They said
the program had been going on for seven years.

Republican Mike Rogers of Michigan, chairman of the House of
Representatives Intelligence Committee, said the surveillance
effort had stopped a “significant” attack plot within the United
States, but did not give details.

“It’s called protecting America,” added Senator Dianne
Feinstein, a California Democrat who heads the Senate
Intelligence Committee.

But there also was a diverse group of Republicans and
Democrats – some who knew about the program and its scope,
others who apparently did not – who blasted the gathering of
such a huge database of details about Americans’ phone habits as
an unwarranted intrusion.

“The United States should not be accumulating phone records
on tens of millions of innocent Americans. That is not what
democracy is about. That is not what freedom is about,” said
Senator Bernie Sanders, a liberal independent from Vermont.

Conservative Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky called
the program “an astounding assault on the Constitution” and said
the Obama administration “had sunk to a new low.”

The Wall Street Journal reported that the NSA’s monitoring
of Americans includes customer records from AT&T Inc and
Sprint Nextel Corp in addition to Verizon, as well as
emails and Web searches. The agency also has cataloged
credit-card transactions, the Journal said.

A NEW CONTROVERSY

For an administration that has promoted an activist
government as a helper and protector of Americans, the flap over
the NSA’s surveillance became a new battle front.

Obama’s White House already was under fire on another matter
involving the delicate balance between security and privacy: its
search of the telephone records of Associated Press journalists
and the emails and phone records of a Fox News reporter as part
of an inquiry into leaked government information.

And in the coming days, it’s also likely that the details of
the Guardian and Post reports will be sifted for clues into
other U.S. surveillance activities, and who might have leaked
them despite the risk of federal charges.

The Post story said part of its knowledge about the NSA
programs came from a “career intelligence officer” who cited
“firsthand experience with these systems, and horror at their
capabilities.”

There also was a curious twist to the Post story, which was
written by Barton Gellman and Laura Poitras.

Gellman is a longtime Post reporter; Poitras is a
documentary filmmaker who has been working on a film about
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, the website known for
publishing secret government documents. Last year, Poitras made
a documentary on Bill Binney, a former code-breaker at the NSA
who became a whistleblowing critic of the agency’s surveillance
of U.S. citizens.