This weekend the leaker of classified documents from the NSA revealed himself to the public. It turned out the person behind the leak was Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old ex-technical assistant for the CIA. Paul Rozenzweig, a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, and Patrice McDermott, an executive director of OpentheGovernment.org, gave their exclusive comment to the Voice of Russia regarding the Snowden case and the overall scope of surveillance in America.
Over the weekend Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting defended and clarified President Obama's stance on the program, known as PRISM.
“He expressed concern about some of the lack of oversight and safeguards associated with programs in the past – for instance, when you had warrantless wiretapping that did not have that full oversight of a judge. What he's done as President is say which programs are necessary, which capabilities are necessary to protect the American people and which aren't.”
Under President the government has been collecting vast amounts of data from Verizon phone records as well as web services.
