Edward Snowden on NSA 'Monstermind': Former Contractor Says Government's Program Operates Without Human Intervention
Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor that exposed top secret government secrets last year, has revealed yet another revelation about the NSA's massive surveillance program.
In a recent interview with WIRED magazine, the NSA leaker said that a cyber-security program known as "Monsterind" has the ability to strike back at cyber attacks from other countries, without human oversight.
As a result, Snowden pointed out that the program can be harmful if it wrongly strikes a country that hackers used to disguise the origin of their attacks. Plus, "the cyber attacks launched by MonsterMind are often routed through third-party computers housed in foreign countries," reports Yahoo! News. This could start an accidental war, he noted.
"These attacks can be spoofed," Snowden said. "You could have someone sitting in China, for example, making it appear that one of these attacks is originating in Russia. And then we end up shooting back at a Russian hospital. What happens next?"
Snowden also revealed that he hasn't combed through the nearly two million classified documents that the U.S. government claims he took before he escaped to Russia last year. Within those documents, he suspects there may be several more bombshells and information that could end the careers of many high-profile political figures.
"I think they think there's a smoking gun in there that would be the death of them all politically," he says. "The fact that the government's investigation failed-that they don't know what was taken and that they keep throwing out these ridiculous, huge numbers-implies to me that somewhere in their damage assessment they must have seen something that was like, 'Holy s--t.' And they think it's still out there."
Although Snowden faces 30 years in prison on two counts of espionage and theft of government property, he claims that his actions were intended only to preserve American ideals, not harm them.
"I told the government I'd volunteer for prison, as long as it served the right purpose," he said. "I care more about the country than what happens to me. But we can't allow the law to become a political weapon or agree to scare people away from standing up for their rights, no matter how good the deal. I'm not going to be part of that."
Subscribe to Latin Post!
Sign up for our free newsletter for the Latest coverage!