INTERVIEW

Snowden joined contractor to spy on NSA

In an interview with the South China Morning Post, Snowden said he had wanted to be a leaker

Published June 24, 2013 4:33PM (EDT)

             (Reuters/Bobby Yip)
(Reuters/Bobby Yip)

In an interview published today in the South China Morning Post, leaker and international fugitive  Edward Snowden said that he joined the security consulting firm and private spy agency Booz Allen Hamilton in order to gain information he planned to release:

“My position with Booz Allen Hamilton granted me access to lists of machines all over the world the NSA hacked,” he told the Post on June 12. “That is why I accepted that position about three months ago.”

Snowden also showed the paper information "that he claimed showed hacking by the NSA into computers in Hong Kong and mainland China."

“I did not release them earlier because I don’t want to simply dump huge amounts of documents without regard to their content,” he said.

“I have to screen everything before releasing it to journalists.”

Asked if he specifically went to Booz Allen Hamilton to gather evidence of surveillance, he replied: “Correct on Booz.”

His intention was to collect information about the NSA hacking into “the whole world” and “not specifically Hong Kong and China”.


By Alex Halperin

Alex Halperin is news editor at Salon. You can follow him on Twitter @alexhalperin.

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Booz Allen Edward Snowden Hong Kong Interview South China Morning Post