[USATODAY] Just one day before a movie about Edward Snowden is set to hit theaters, the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday unanimously adopted an investigative report portraying the former National Security Agency contractor as a disgruntled employee who violated Americans' privacy rights rather than protecting them."Edward Snowden is no hero -- he’s a traitor who willfully betrayed his colleagues and his country," said Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif. "He put our service members and the American people at risk after perceived slights by his superiors. In light of his long list of exaggerations and outright fabrications detailed in this report, no one should take him at his word. I look forward to his eventual return to the United States, where he will face justice for his damaging crimes."
Snowden is famous for revealing the existence of an NSA program that collected the phone data of millions of Americans with no ties to terrorism. The 2013 revelations spurred Congress to pass the USA Freedom Act in 2015. That law ended the mass surveillance program, which had been carried out under Section 215 of the Patriot Act anti-terrorism law passed in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Although privacy advocates have hailed Snowden as a brave whistleblower who exposed an out-of-control surveillance state to the American people, his critics have long accused him of treason for revealing classified information and endangering national security. Snowden took more than 1.5 million classified documents from the NSA.