Greenwald: Snowden Has NSA 'Blueprint'

According to Glenn Greenwald, columnist at The Guardian,  Edward Snowden has a documents on how the National Secuirty Agency works but is keeping them private in order not to harm the US Government. 

Greenwald said these documents “would allow somebody who read them to know exactly how the NSA does what it does, which would in turn allow them to evade that surveillance or replicate it.”  He described them as “the instruction manual for how the NSA is built.”

It was necessary for Snowden to take the documents to substantiate his claims about government surveillance. “In order to take documents with him that proved that what he was saying was true he had to take ones that included very sensitive, detailed blueprints of how the NSA does what they do,”  Greenwald told Associated Press. 

The Guardian columnist doesn’t think the documents would be harmful to the US, but Snowden wants to keep them private. They are encrypted to ensure their protection.  

Snowden remains unrepentant according to Greenwald, “I haven’t sensed an iota of remorse or regret or anxiety over the situation that he’s in.”

Last week, Snowden held a press conference from the Moscow airport, where he is believed to be waiting for asylum arrangements. He has reapplied for asylum to Russia and has offers of asylum from three countries in Latin America. 

Greenwald criticized the US’s reaction to Snowden’s leaks, explaining “[the United States] is willing to take even the most extreme steps if they think doing so is necessary to neutralize a national security threat.”  But Snowden has taken steps to protect the information he has taken from the government. “It’s not just a matter of, if he dies, things get released, it’s more nuanced than that,” he said. “It’s really just a way to protect himself against extremely rogue behavior on the part of the United States, by which I mean violent actions toward him, designed to end his life, and it’s just a way to ensure that nobody feels incentivized to do that.”