14 DAY TRIAL // The NSA continues to deny that Edward Snowden, the former contractor that exposed the mass surveillance mechanism from within the NSA, has raised concerns about the issues he didn’t believe to be right. Snowden has said several times so far that he’s sent emails to his colleagues regarding these concerns.
The information from the NSA came as a response to a Freedom of Information request made as a result of the declarations made by Snowden regarding the concerns he raised about the bulk surveillance activities of the intelligence agencies. He said then that he was more or less told to stop asking questions.
Snowden has been criticized for not talking about the issues he found troubling back when he was working with the NSA, but he insisted that he did and that his efforts were rebuked before they even got to reach the higher-ups, as he was told there was nothing wrong with what was happening.
“The NSA has records, they have copies of emails right now to their Office of General Counsel, to their oversight and compliance folks, from me raising concerns about the NSA’s interpretation of its legal authorities,” Snowden told NBC a few months ago.
VICE News pushed a Freedom of Information Act request to see the documents, but NSA officials claim they have been unable to track down any such emails to prove that Snowden has discussed the problems.
Of course the NSA read Snowden's deleted emails
“Following the unauthorized disclosures of NSA information in June 2013, NSA conducted a comprehensive investigation and searched all of Mr. Snowden’s email available on NSA’s classified and unclassified systems,” said David Sherman, NSA’s associate director for policy and records.
He claims that the agency sent through the messages in the sent and received folders, as well as the deleted messages, which were obtained by restoring back-up tapes from the Agency's networks.
The emails were read by multiple members of the Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence, but they said they did not manage to identify any email written by Snowden on the matter.
Aside from the fact that no statement made by the NSA since the leaks has been taken as true, it is quite suspicious how, back in May, the NSA did manage to find an email Snowden sent in which he questioned legal protocols in training materials. That message alone is evidence that Snowden is one to speak up when he finds something that he believes is outside the law.
Back then, Snowden said that the released documents were not complete and the record did not include his correspondence with the Signals Intelligence Directorate’s Office of Compliance, “which believed that a classified executive order could take precedence over an act of Congress, contradicting what was just published,” as he said at the time.