Whistleblower Snowden Testifies on Mass Surveillance at Council of Europe

US whistleblower Edward Snowden gives testimony to a parliamentary hearing on mass surveillance at the Council of Europe and says the global community must develop new norms of action to challenge mass surveillance.

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Former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden gave testimony on Tuesday to a parliamentary hearing on mass surveillance at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg.

The US intelligence operative, who spoke from Moscow via live video-link for more than 30 minutes, said that the NSA had deliberately snooped on public bodies and that information being secretly collected on a vast scale by, as he described, the "five I-s" (major, global intelligence services) was not open to approval by public bodies.

"The screening of trillions - and I mean that literally - trillions of private communications for the vaguest indications of association, or some other nebulous, pre-criminal activity, is a violation of the human right to be free from unwarranted interference, to be secure in our communications and our private affairs, and it must be addressed. In these activities routine - I point out, unexceptional activities that happen every day are only a tiny portion of what the 'Five I-s' are secretly doing behind closed doors without the review, consent or approval of any public body," he said.

Snowden added the programs use sophisticated techniques to track trillions of private communications.

"This technology represents the most significant, what I would consider the most significant new threat to civil rights in modern times. The committee should consider what truly 'bad actors' will use these same capabilities for if we allow them to go unchecked and how we will develop enduring norms and technical standards to safeguard against such abuses wherever they occur," he said.

Others at the hearing, organised by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe's Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, included the former head of Germany's Federal Intelligence Service Hansjörg Geiger, who has proposed a 'codex' to regulate intelligence activities between friendly states, and London-based international law professor Douwe Korff.

Snowden fled to Russia in June last year after exposing details of US surveillance programmes and is currently wanted on charges of espionage in the US.