The former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden on Thursday called for comprehensive whistleblower protection. He also insisted that not all spying is bad and said the US could take the lead in setting acceptable standards for targeted surveillance.

Taking part, from Russia, in an online Q&A, Snowden did not rule out a return to the US but criticised the Whistleblower Protection Act, the latest version of which was signed into law by President Obama in 2012, for making his return “not possible”.

He also denied tricking colleagues at the contractor Booze Allen Hamilton into giving him their passwords and other login credentials to help him gather up secret NSA documents, an allegation made in a Reuters report in November. “With all due respect to [Reuters reporter] Mark Hosenball, the Reuters report that put this out there was simply wrong,” Snowden said.



Had stronger whistleblower protections been in place when, last year, he leaked thousands of documents to media outlets including the Guardian, Snowden said that he “might not have had to sacrifice so much”.



“My case clearly demonstrates the need for comprehensive whistleblower protection act reform,” Snowden said in the Q&A, which was hosted by the Courage Foundation, which is raising money for his legal costs. “If we had had a real process in place, and reports of wrongdoing could be taken to real, independent arbiters rather than captured officials, I might not have had to sacrifice so much to do what at this point even the president seems to agree needed to be done.”Asked for his view of the appropriate scale of America’s national security apparatus, Snowden replied: “Not all spying is bad.”



He added: “The biggest problem we face right now is the new technique of indiscriminate mass surveillance, where governments are seizing billions and billions and billions of innocents' communication[s] every single day.

“This is done not because it’s necessary – after all, these programs are unprecedented in US history, and were begun in response to a threat that kills fewer Americans every year than bathtub falls and police officers – but because new technologies make it easy and cheap.”



Snowden said now was the time to “push back” against government surveillance overreach, which he said was a “global problem”.

“America needs to take the lead in fixing it. If our government decides our Constitution’s 4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable seizures no longer applies simply because [there's] a more efficient means of snooping, we’re setting a precedent that immunizes the government of every two-bit dictator to perform the same kind of indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance of entire populations that the NSA is doing.”

Snowden said he “wasn’t going to stand by and watch [that] happen, no matter how much it cost” him. The 30-year-old is wanted on espionage charges in the US and has been granted temporary asylum in Russia.

Snowden, who worked for Booz Allen Hamilton, said he had made “tremendous efforts” to report NSA abuses to colleagues, but due to the limitations of the Whistleblower Protection Act – which does not cover contractors – he had little choice but to go to the press.

“If I had revealed what I knew about these unconstitutional but classified programs to Congress, they could have charged me with a felony,” he said.

Asked if it was possible for the US to recover from his NSA revelations, Snowden said: “What makes our country strong is our system of values, not a snapshot of the structure of our agencies or the framework of our laws. We can correct the laws, restrain the overreach of agencies, and hold the senior officials responsible for abusive programs to account.”





