Former NSA agent, Edward Snowden, has called on an EU
Parliament committee to provide protection for whistleblowers and “create better
channels” for them to inform. The committee is currently holding an inquiry into
the 'Prism scandal'.
The inquiry involves a series of
special hearings looking at specific aspects. On September 30 it heard evidence
from the whistleblowers, including the UK's Annie Machon, who revealed an MI6
plot to assassinate Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, in February 1996 – and
Edward Snowden. However, the latter was not able to attend in person.
As US fugitive NSA-leaker,
Snowden submitted testimony to the European Parliament’s civil liberties
committee (LIBE), saying “the surveillance of whole populations
rather than individuals threatens to be the greatest human rights challenge of
our time.”
“I thank the
European parliament and the LIBE committee for taking up the challenge of mass
surveillance,” Snowden wrote in a statement read by Jesselyn Radack of the
Government Accountability Project before the European Parliament’s Committee.
In “returning
public knowledge to public hands” Snowden has made a plea not to rely on “individual sacrifice”, which in his case resulted in “persecution and exile.”
“We must create
better channels for people of conscience to inform not only trusted agents of
government but independent representatives of the public outside
government,” Snowden, who now lives in Moscow, wrote.
Snowden blamed “a culture of secrecy” for removing from society “the opportunity to determine the appropriate balance between
the fundamental right of privacy” and “governmental
interest in investigation.” He says that such decisions should be made by
people, only “after full, informed and fearless debate.”
Snowden explained his reasons in
the statement for leaking documents, saying he did it “with the
sole intention of making possible” a debate about changes in governments'
surveillance programs.
“We see
emboldened courts that are no longer afraid to consider critical questions of
national security,” he writes. “We see brave executives
remembering that if the public is prevented from knowing how they are being
governed, the necessary result is that they are no longer self-governing. And we
see the public reclaiming an equal seat at the table of government.”
Meanwhile, Edward Snowden has
been nominated for this year’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. Snowden is wanted in
the US on espionage charges, after leaking secret documents revealing the US
surveillance program PRISM used to gather private data. In August, he was
granted temporary asylum in Russia, where he currently resides.
