NSA says Snowden e-mails exempt from public disclosure and secret [View all]

[Ichingcarpenter]

The National Security Agency has acknowledged it retains a record of e-mail communications from former contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowden, but says those records are exempt from public disclosure under the federal Freedom of Information Act.

In a letter responding to a June 27 FOIA request from The Desk, the NSA’s chief FOIA officer Pamela Phillips wrote that while the agency has retained records related to Snowden’s employment as a contractor, they are being withheld from public examination because, among other things, releasing the records “could interfere with law enforcement proceedings, could cause an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy, could reveal the identities of confidential sources or would reveal law enforcement techniques and procedures.”

Other records are being withheld because those documents were “also found to be currently and properly classified…and remains classified TOP SECRET, SECRET and CONFIDENTIAL.”

The letter marks the first time the NSA has publicly acknowledged retaining communication and employment records related to Snowden’s time as a contractor.

http://thedesk.matthewkeys.net/2014/07/nsa-says-snowden-emails-exempt-from-public-disclosure/

“The NSA’s new discovery of written contact between me and its lawyers — after more than a year of denying any such contact existed – raises serious concerns,” Snowden told NBC News in a follow-up e-mail. “It reveals as false the NSA’s claim to Barton Gellman of the Washington Post in December of last year.”