Accepting fate, Edward Snowden willing to go to prison to return home
World
Accepting fate, Edward Snowden willing to go to prison to return home
Edward Snowden says he has offered to return to the United States and go to jail for leaking details of National Security Agency programs to intercept electronic communications data on a vast scale. The former NSA contractor flew to Moscow two years ago after revealing information about the previously secret eavesdropping powers, and faces U.S. charges that could land him in prison for up to 30 years. Snowden told the BBC that he’d “volunteered to go to prison with the government many times,” but had not received a formal plea-deal offer. In an interview broadcast Monday on the BBC’s “Panorama” program, Snowden said he and his lawyers were waiting for U.S. officials “to call us back.”
I have paid a price but I feel comfortable with the decisions I’ve made. If I’m gone tomorrow, I’m happy with what I had. I feel blessed.
Edward Snowden
Snowden, 32, allegedly stole up to 1.77 million NSA documents while working at two consecutive jobs for U.S. government contractors in Hawaii between March 2012 and May 2013. Earlier this year, former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said a plea deal with Snowden was a possibility. Snowden’s revelations about the NSA, Britain’s G.C.H.Q. and other intelligence agencies set off an international debate about spies’ powers to monitor personal communications, and about the balance between security and privacy.
