US hasn’t offered plea deal: Edward Snowden

Whistleblower says he’s offered to do time in prison within a deal to come back to US ‘we’re still waiting to allow them to call us back’

Snowden, after leaking thousands of top secret files, who’s needed, said he’d offered to do time in prison within a deal. “We’re still waiting to allow them to call us back,” Snowden said.

His remarks come only months after Eric Holder, who was US attorney general until April, said Snowden’s disclosures had “spurred an essential discussion”.

But senior figures in the security services in both UK and the US are unforgiving, desiring him to become a hindrance to others and also to serve an extended term both.

Former head of the NSA Michael Hayden, inquired by Panorama what would occur to Snowden, said: “If you are asking me my view, he is likely to expire in Moscow.

Snowden, in his first interview together with the BBC since he revealed the records two years back, said: “I have offered to visit penitentiary together with the government many times. What Snowden will not do is I will not function as a hindrance to individuals attempting to do the right thing in tough circumstances.”

Snowden would be attempted under the Espionage Act, which will mean no jury and he’d be studying least at 30 years as well as a life sentence, if he was to go back to the United States with no deal.

But Snowden has some influence. Some of his critics admit an essential debate world-wide has been started by him about privacy and surveillance.

Additional influence is the embarrassment variable to the United States from Snowden’s reception of prestigious awards and his general popularity, especially among the young: since beginning on Twitter a week past, he’s brought 1.36 million followers.

Snowden flew after leaving his job with an NSA facility. The following month Snowden revealed then, and tens of thousands of classified NSA files travelled to Russia, where he was later granted asylum.

Among the effects of the Snowden disclosures continues to be an increasing unwillingness on the section of societal media and internet service providers in handing over data to collaborate completely with police and security agencies.

Mark Rowley, the head of counterterrorism police operations in Britain, said in a speech in London that a few of societal media and the internet companies were not mature.

Rowley said: “Some only undermine us by embracing a policy that when they provide data to us they’ll inform the matter they’ve done that.”

Milner said: “Facebook doesn’t track terrorist content … However, what we do do is rely on reports from the 1.5 billion people using Facebook to let us know when they see things on Facebook that shouldn’t be there, including terrorist activity.”

Milner added: “There is no algorithm that finds terrorist content.”