Snowden documents could be 'worst nightmare' for US
Photos of Edward Snowden, a contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), and U.S. President Barack Obama are printed on the front pages of local English and Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong in this illustration photo June 11, 2013.
U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden possesses sensitive information that could become the United States' "worst nightmare" if revealed, according to a Guardian journalist.
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist who first published the documents Snowden leaked, said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday that the leaker of U.S. surveillance programs poses more of a threat to the U.S. than anyone in the country’s history.
"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald told the Argentinean daily La Nacion in Rio de Janeiro.
"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."
Documents disclosed by Snowden have revealed massive surveillance by the U.S. National Security Agency including a major spying program, codenamed PRISM, for tracking the use of U.S.-based web servers by American citizens and other nationals.
The NSA is worried that Snowden has possibly accessed sensitive files that show how the U.S. spies on China and other strategic countries.
The possibility that intelligence about foreign targets might be made public has stirred anxiety among U.S. authorities who fear that fresh leaks could reveal specific intelligence-gathering techniques.
Snowden has been stranded at a Moscow airport since June 23 because his passport has been revoked by the U.S. government. He had fled the U.S. to Honk Kong on May 20 in order to evade persecution by the U.S. government.
Snowden is seeking temporary asylum in Russia until he can travel to Latin America, where several counties have offered him asylum.
