"nsa"

“I’m neither traitor nor hero. I’m an American.” That’s what Edward Snowden tells the South China Morning Post in his first published interview since The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed he was the source who leaked top secret information about government programs that sweep up data on phone calls and Internet activity.

We’re a little late noting this poll, but it’s important so we’re backing up a bit: A Pew poll released Monday finds a majority of Americans — 56 percent — think the National Security Agency’s tracking of phone records “is an acceptable way for the government to investigate terrorism.”

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, says Edward Snowden, the man who leaked top secret documents about an NSA surveillance program, showed “the kind of courage that we expect of people on the battlefield.”

Fresh reports about the massive amount of electronic data that the nation’s spy agencies are collecting “raise profound questions about privacy” because of what they say about how such information will be collected in the future, NPR’s Dina Temple-Raston said Friday on Morning Edition.

The controversial broadening of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court’s powers after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks is under renewed focus after Wednesday’s report that the panel has given the National Security Agency the authority to collect millions of Verizon customers’ telephone records.