Snowden In 2009: Leakers Should Be ‘Shot In The Balls’

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden: 'I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things'
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In 2009, NSA leaker Edward Snwoden said in a chatroom that people who leak classified information to media outlets should be “shot in the balls.”

The chats, obtained by Ars Technica, show what appears to be Snowden angry about a New York Times article about US actions in Iran that was based on confidential leaks.

“WTF NYTIMES. Are they TRYING to start a war? Jesus Christ, they’re just like Wikileaks,” he wrote in a channel on Ars Technica’s public Internet Relay Chat (IRC) server. “They’re reporting classified shit.”

When someone else in the chatroom told Snowden that the Times was simply reporting, he responding that they were reporting classified information about “an unpopular country surrounded by enemies already engaged in a war and about our interactions with said country regarding planning sovereignity violations of another country.”

“You don’t put that shit in the NEWSPAPER…moreover, who the fuck are the anonymous sources telling them this?” he added.

Snowden then took another dig at the New York Times, saying that the paper has a “HISTORY of this shit.”

“These are the same people who blew the whole ‘we could listen to osama’s cell phone’ thing the same people who screwed us on wiretappingover and over and over again. Thank god they’re going out of business…Hopefully they’ll finally go bankrupt this year,” he said.

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