HONG KONG (CNN) — Edward Snowden, the man behind of one of the biggest leaks in the history of U.S. intelligence, is a former technical assistant for the CIA who is now holed up in a Hong Kong hotel, in danger of running out of money and hoping to find asylum somewhere in the world.
Snowden, 29, identified himself this weekend in American and British newspapers as the person who exposed details of a top-secret American program that collects vast streams of phone and Internet data.
The revelations have set off a furious debate in the United States about whether the surveillance program is a disturbing form of government overreach or an important tool for intelligence agencies trying to prevent attacks against the nation.
The Guardian reported Wednesday that Verizon Business Network Services had been ordered to hand over telephone records detailing the time, location and telephone numbers involved in domestic calls from April 25 to July 19. An order from a U.S. court that oversees U.S. surveillance efforts backed up the demand, the newspaper reported.
On Thursday, The Guardian and The Washington Post disclosed the existence of PRISM, a program they said allows NSA analysts to extract the details of customer activities — including “audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents” and other materials — from computers at Microsoft, Google, Apple and other Internet firms.
Snowden said the NSA’s reach poses “an existential threat to democracy.” He said he had hoped the Obama administration would end the programs once it took office in 2009, but instead, he said, President Barack Obama “advanced the very policies that I thought would be reined in.”
“I don’t see myself as a hero, because what I’m doing is self-interested,” he said. “I don’t want to live in a world where there’s no privacy, and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity.”
In an interview that the Guardian published Sunday, Snowden said he walked away from a six-figure salary in Hawaii for the computer consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton and is sitting in a hotel in Hong Kong in preparation for the expected fallout from his disclosures.
“I’m willing to sacrifice all of that because I can’t in good conscience allow the U.S. government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building,” he said.
The Guardian reported that Snowden grew up in North Carolina and Maryland. He joined the Army in 2003 but was discharged after breaking both his legs in a training accident. He never completed a high-school diploma but learned computer skills at a community college in Maryland.
He started his career as a security guard for an NSA facility at the University of Maryland, then went to work for the CIA in Internet security. In 2009, he got the first of several jobs with private contractors that worked with the NSA.
The allegations have dealt a fresh blow to the Obama administration, which has found itself on the defensive early in the president’s second term amid other complaints of intrusions of privacy.
The Obama administration is already under fire following revelations the Justice Department seized two months of phone records from Associated Press reporters and editors as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information.
The Justice Department declined to comment, citing an ongoing investigation into the leak.
Leaders of the intelligence committees in Congress defended the controversial program Sunday.
Dianne Feinstein, the chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it helped lead to convictions in two cases:
— Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-born Colorado man who pleaded guilty to conspiring to bomb targets in New York.
— David Headley, who pleaded guilty to conducting advance surveillance for the Pakistani jihadists who attacked hotels and other targets in Mumbai, India, in 2008, killing 164 people.
“These programs are within the law,” Feinstein, D-California, told ABC’s “This Week.” And Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told ABC, “The inflammatory nature of the comments does not fit with what Dianne and I know this program really does.”
In a statement issued Sunday afternoon, Booz Allen said Snowden had worked for the company for less than three months. Reports that he had leaked American secrets were “shocking” and if true, “represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm,” the company said.
Snowden says he acted with full awareness of the possible consequences.
“I do not expect to see home again,” Snowden said to The Guardian, acknowledging the risk of imprisonment over his actions.
The terrible thing is he is worried about his family, that they’ll be victimized,” MacAskill said. “He’s basically cut off from family.”
Snowden left the United States for Hong Kong without telling his family or girlfriend where he was going or why. Now, he’s concerned about the repercussions his actions could have for them.
“You can’t come up against the world’s most powerful intelligence agencies and not accept the risk,” he said. “If they want to get you, over time they will.”
Hidden in Hong Kong
“From morning to night he’s in his hotel room, has his meals in his room,” Ewen MacAskill of The Guardian newspaper told CNN, declining to give any information about which hotel Snowden is in.
If U.S. authorities decide to try to extradite him from Hong Kong, they would first have to charge him.
Though Hong Kong is part of communist-ruled China, the former British colony has a free press and tolerates political dissent under a semi-autonomous government.
Hong Kong’s extradition treaty with the United States has exceptions for “political” crimes and cases when handing over a criminal suspect would harm the “defense, foreign affairs or essential public interest or policy” of either party.
“I think he looked around, this seemed the safest bet,” MacAskill said. Snowden hopes to get asylum, he added, with Iceland his first choice because of the way it dealt with Wikileaks.
Iceland is one of the countries that offered a degree of legal protection to Wikileaks, a group that facilitates the anonymous leaking of secret information through its website. The group reportedly once operated from there.
CNN’s Jethro Mullen reported and wrote from Hong Kong with Matt Smith in Atlanta. CNN’s Brian Walker and Anjali Tsui in Hong Kong; and Elise Labott and Carol Cratty in Washington contributed to this report.