America’s intelligence community is clearly not pleased with Edward Snowden. His revelations about the extent of the snooping on all kinds of communications by America’s super-secretive National Security Agency (NSA) call for a public debate about where the line should be drawn between intelligence gathering and personal privacy in the digital era.
According to some reports, America’s Justice Department will open an investigation into the leaks and the chairs of the intelligence committees in both houses of Congress expect the whistleblower to be prosecuted if possible.
Both Barack Obama and James Clapper, America's director of national intelligence, defend the PRISM system and another initiative involving the gathering of “metadata” about phone calls (which includes things such the calls' duration and the phone numbers involved). They argue that such data-gathering is necessary to safeguard the nation, and that it is conducted within strict legal guidelines. But some lawmakers are questioning the legal basis for broad surveillance programs, such as PRISM.
There are other significant issues. One is the extent to which private companies such as internet firms and phone companies should share data with the intelligence community—and how they do so. Both Larry Page, the boss of Google, and Mark Zuckerberg, the head of Facebook, claim that their companies do not give American intelligence "direct access" to data about customers. But they are clearly sharing information in more indirect ways.
Another issue is the role of private-sector firms in providing services to the intelligence community. Mr Snowden was an “infrastructure analyst” employed by Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting company that handles many government projects. The firm put out a statement saying that if the reports that he leaked information are true, his actions would constitute a “grave violation” of the firm’s code of conduct and its core values.
Given all this, it is hardly surprising that Mr Snowden is expecting reprisals for his leak. “I understand I will be made to suffer for my actions,” he says in the video. But he adds that his biggest fear for America is that, in spite of his disclosures about PRISM, nothing much will change.
adapted from The Economist
Click on the Play Button to listen to the Economist's correspondents discuss the scale of the USA government's domestic
surveillance programs and the type of information being collected. 
