Why Edward Snowden is spilling U.S. secrets to China

Edward Snowden says he became so concerned about the National Security Agency's widespread collection of U.S. citizens' data, he decided to leak top secret U.S. documents to sympathetic journalists. So on May 20, recounts The Guardian, the NSA IT contractor boarded a plane for Hong Kong with a suitcase, a Rubik's Cube, one book, and four laptops "that enabled him to gain access to some of the U.S. government's most highly-classified secrets."

On the night of June 9, The Guardian posted a video of Snowden in his Hong Kong hotel room, introducing himself to the world as the NSA leaker and explaining why he gave up everything to blow the whistle. By noon the next day, he had checked out of his hotel room and disappeared — until Wednesday, when Snowden gave an interview to Hong Kong's English-language South China Morning Post.

Much of the interview involved Snowden talking about his plans — he says he'll stay in Hong Kong and fight extradition to the U.S. — and saying nice things about the quasi-independent Chinese territory. But the SCMP says Snowden also let the paper view some "unverified documents" showing that "the NSA had been hacking computers in Hong Kong and on the mainland since 2009."

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The documents didn't show any hacking of military targets, Snowden says, but the NSA did reportedly target Hong Kong's Chinese University, businesses, public officials, and students, plus servers on mainland China. "We hack network backbones — like huge internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one," Snowden tells the SCMP.

Patrick Chovanek, a financial strategist who once taught economics at a Beijing university, asks the obvious question:

Snowden's answer, relayed through the South China Morning Post, is that he wants to expose "the hypocrisy of the U.S. government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries." Snowden continues: "The reality is that I have acted at great personal risk to help the public of the world, regardless of whether that public is American, European, or Asian."

The Washington Post's Jia Lynn Yang has another theory. Noting that China has been accusing the U.S. of cyber attacks to counter accusations that it is engaging in widespread cyber-espionage of U.S. companies and government agencies, Yang suggests:

Law blogger Ann Althouse notes that "The Guardian published its first story using Snowden's leaks as President Obama was meeting with the President of China." Add in this hacking claim, she says, we now "have some data — enough dots to connect?"

Freelance journalist Joshua Foust has a simpler explanation:

China already knows we hack into its servers — as does anybody "with a pulse and a functioning brain," says Bryan Preston at Pajamas Media. So Snowden "must be trolling the NSA along with the media and the rest of the world, because while damaging to disclose, it is not news."

This isn't a game for Snowden, says David Weigel at Slate. With each leak, it's becoming clear that "Snowden's problem is larger than domestic spycraft. It's a problem with spycraft, period." His decision to shift from protecting the civil liberties of Americans to exposing America's likely justifiable cyberwar poses a real test for all the "libertarian-minded people grateful that Snowden exposed the NSA's PRISM program."

Whatever Snowden's intentions for telling Chinese media about America's hacking habits, China has decided to take umbrage. "The massive U.S. global surveillance program revealed by a former CIA whistle-blower in Hong Kong is certain to stain Washington's overseas image and test developing Sino-U.S. ties," which are "constantly soured on cybersecurity," says the state-run China Daily newspaper. Li Haidong, an American studies researcher at China Foreign Affairs University, rubs salt in the NSA's wounds:

David Zweig, a China expert at Hong Kong's University of Science and Technology, tells The New York Times that whatever secrets Snowden is carrying on his laptops probably aren't enough to convince China to risk damaging U.S. relations. But if China wants to embarrass the U.S. and justify its own security apparatus, it doesn't really have to do anything but sit back and let Snowden keep on talking, Li Siling, a social media expert at the China Executive Leadership Academy, tells the Times: "They will say the U.S. is supposed to be the most free country in the world, but they still monitor the internet and tap every phone."