John Bacon and Michael Winter

USA TODAY

Edward Snowden is a former National Security Agency contractor

He has been living in Russia since June

Snowden denies that Russian authorities aided him in leaking sensitive U.S. security information

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, entertaining questions in an online chat Thursday from Moscow, called for global limits on surveillance but said, "Not all spying is bad."

He also said he never stole colleagues' logons or duped them to gain access to secret files detailing mass-surveillance programs.

"I never stole any passwords, nor did I trick an army of co-workers," he wrote during the live chat at the Free Snowden website, disputing a Reuters report in November as "simply wrong."

Fielding questions submitted on Twitter for two hours, he also said U.S. laws governing whistle-blowers do not protect national security contractors and have "so many holes" that they make them ineffective and discourage reporting of abuses.

Those laws also stand in the way of his returning from Russia, where he was granted temporary asylum last year after fleeing Hawaii and Hong Kong.

"Returning to the US, I think, is the best resolution for the government, the public, and myself, but it's unfortunately not possible in the face of current whistleblower protection laws, which through a failure in law did not cover national security contractors like myself," he wrote in response to a question from Jake Tapper, CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent.

In media interviews Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder told MSNBC that prosecutors "would engage'' with Snowden's lawyers if "their client was prepared to take accountability by pleading guilty to the charges filed against him.''

"We would engage with his lawyers on that, as we would with any other defendant," Holder said.

At another appearance, Holder said: "We've always indicated that the notion of clemency isn't something that we were willing to consider.''

Asked about how the "community of states" should respond to mass surveillance, Snowden wrote, "We need to work together to agree on a reasonable international norm for the limitations on spying. Nobody should be hacking critical-to-life infrastructure like hospitals and power stations, and it's fair to say that can be recognized in international law.

"Additionally, we need to recognize that national laws are not going to solve the problem of indiscriminate surveillance."

Snowden, whose revelations about U.S. surveillance practices created a global firestorm, held the chat on the Free Snowden website. It began at 3 p.m. ET and was to last one hour, but he said at 4 p.m. he would "continue into overtime."

He ended the chat at 5 p.m., urging participants to "contact your members of congress and tell them how you feel about mass surveillance. This is a global problem, and the first step to tackling it is by working together to fix it at home."

In his final answer, Snowden said intelligence agencies "do have a role to play, and the people at the working level at the NSA, CIA, or any other member of the IC are not out to get you. They're good people trying to do the right thing, and I can tell you from personal experience that they were worried about the same things I was."

He added that the "people you need to watch out for" are the "unaccountable senior officials authorizing these unconstitutional programs, and unreliable mechanisms like the secret FISA court, a rubber-stamp authority that approves 99.97% of government requests."

He also said, "Not all spying is bad," but added that the biggest problem now "is the new technique of indiscriminate mass surveillance, where governments are seizing billions and billions and billions of innocents' communication every single day."

"This is done not because it's necessary — after all, these programs are unprecedented in U.S. 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.

"I think a person should be able to dial a number, make a purchase, send an SMS, write an email, or visit a website without having to think about what it's going to look like on their permanent record. Particularly when we now have courts, reports from the federal government, and even statements from Congress making it clear these programs haven't made us any more safe, we need to push back."

"The NSA and the rest of the US Intelligence Community is exceptionally well positioned to meet our intelligence requirements through targeted surveillance — the same way we've always done it — without resorting to the mass surveillance of entire populations," Snowden added.

He dismissed U.S. whistle-blower protection laws as too weak to be effective.

"There are so many holes in the laws, the protections they afford are so weak, and the processes for reporting they provide are so ineffective that they appear to be intended to discourage reporting of even the clearest wrongdoing. If I had revealed what I knew about these unconstitutional but classified programs to Congress, they could have charged me with a felony," Snowden wrote.

"Despite this, and despite the fact that I could not legally go to the official channels that direct NSA employees have available to them, I still made tremendous efforts to report these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with the proper clearance who would listen," Snowden said. "The reactions of those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom."

The first question he fielded: "Do you think it is possible for our democracy to recover from the damage NSA spying has done to our liberties?"

His response: "Yes. 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."

Snowden was a contractor for Booz Allen Hamilton when he leaked details of U.S. surveillance programs to The Guardian and The Washington Post. The first report was published in June, setting off an immediate firestorm. Snowden, who was in hiding in Hong Kong, fled to Moscow where he has obtained temporary asylum.

President Obama, in a national security speech Friday, said the NSA would continue to collect metadata on millions of Americans, but would first need a judge's approval. He also said the government might eventually turn the information over to a third party instead of storing it in NSA databases.

On Thursday, the government Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board urged Obama to shut down the bulk collection of telephone data and to purge current records. The board said it could not find "a single instance" where the program changed the outcome of a terrorism probe.

Snowden called the timing of the president's speech "particularly interesting, given that it was accompanied by so many claims that 'these programs have not been abused.' "

He added in his chat that "I don't see how Congress could ignore" the privacy board's report, because "it makes it clear there is no reason at all to maintain the 215 program," the so-called library records section of the Patriot Act.

Obama also twice referenced Snowden during his address. He reiterated that the government would like to prosecute Snowden for divulging details of NSA activities. "I'm not going to dwell on Mr. Snowden's actions or his motivations," Obama said. "I will say that our nation's defense depends in part on the fidelity of those entrusted with our nation's secrets."

Additionally, the president mentioned Snowden in saying that the United States is not the only nation that spies on other nations -- even allies.

"We know that the intelligence services of other countries -- including some who feign surprise over the Snowden disclosures -- are constantly probing our government and private sector networks, and accelerating programs to listen to our conversations, and intercept our e-mails, and compromise our systems," Obama said. "We know that."





Contributing: Doug Stanglin, David Jackson