Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House intelligence committee, said of Snowden's assertion: "He's lying. US officials vehemently denied this specific claim. "I, sitting at my desk," said Snowden, could "wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email".
The files shed light on one of Snowden's most controversial statements, made in his first video interview published by the Guardian on June 10. They come as senior intelligence officials testify to the Senate judiciary committee on Wednesday, releasing classified documents in response to the Guardian's earlier stories on bulk collection of phone records and Fisa surveillance court oversight. The director of National Intelligence has declassified some documents about its bulk collection of phone and email metadata.The latest revelations will add to the intense public and congressional debate around the extent of NSA surveillance programs. But it has also tried to assuage concerns by civil rights groups. The US has defended the spying programmes, saying they have helped thwart terror attacks. The new revelations will fuel the debate on surveillance practices in the US and the right to privacy of its citizens. He previously revealed other wide-ranging surveillance schemes employed by the US to detect possible threats to national security. Snowden, who is wanted in the US on espionage charges, is seeking asylum but remains stuck at a Moscow airport.
So much content was being collected, the newspaper said, that it could be stored only for short periods of time - generally just a few days. The Guardian quoted another slide as saying that nearly 42 billion records had been captured by the system during a one-month period in 2012. "These types of programmes allow us to collect the information that enables us to perform our missions successfully - to defend the nation and to protect US and allied troops abroad," the statement said. In a statement, the NSA said that figure only included captures up to the year 2008, and pushed back against any suggestion of illegal or arbitrary collection of data. One slide says that XKeyscore has led to the capture of more than 300 terrorists. The newspaper says XKeyscore provides the technological ability - if not the legal cover - to target US citizens for electronic surveillance without the need for a warrant, provided the analyst has information such as an IP or email address. In a second interview with the newspaper, he explained that his claim was based in part on the email search capabilities of XKeyscore, which Snowden says he was authorized to use while working as a Booz Allen contractor for the NSA.
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