Whistleblower Edward Snowden has revealed that nude images they find during their surveillance of American citizens are a “fringe benefit” for NSA employees, who allegedly pass along explicit photographs of strangers to their coworkers.
Speaking in an interview with The Guardian, the former NSA employee spoke of how young, 18 to 22-year-old guys are enlisted by the organization and are suddenly “thrust into a position of extraordinary responsibility where they now have access to all of your private records.” Snowden claimed that this led to naked images of attractive females being passed around the NSA’s offices, saying that they are “seen as the fringe benefits of surveillance positions.”
He continued: “In the course of their daily work they stumble across something that is completely unrelated to their work in any sort of necessary sense, for example, an intimate nude photo of someone in a sexually compromising situation – But they’re extremely attractive.
“So what do they do? They turn around in their chair and show their co-worker and their co-worker says: ‘Oh hey, that’s great. Send that to Bill down the way.’ And then Bill sends it to George, George sends it to Tom and sooner or later this person’s whole life has been seen by other people. It’s never reported. Nobody knows about it because the auditing of these systems is incredibly weak.
“The fact that your private images, records of your private lives, records of your intimate moments have been taken from your private communications stream from the intended recipient and given to the government without any specific authorization without any specific need is itself a violation of your rights. Why is that in a government database?”
During the interview, Snowden also stated how he would return to the US if a fair trial was to be held, though made it clear that such an event taking place would be unlikely.
[Via The Guardian]
Photo: Getty Images
