The father of Edward Snowden told ABC News he's concerned for his son since Edward revealed himself to be the source of a series of top secret leaks from the National Security Agency.
Lonnie Snowden, who spoke briefly with ABC News Sunday, said he's still digesting and processing the news reports about his son, who he last saw months ago for dinner. Lonnie Snowden said the two parted that meal with a hug.
Edward Snowden, 29, went from obscurity as an NSA contractor to a controversial international figure Sunday when The Guardiannewspaper published an interview in which Snowden said he was the source of headline-grabbing news stories about the NSA's vast surveillance programs -- from the shadowy agency's penchant forvacuuming up millions of Americans' phone call information to spying on foreigners' internet activity.
He did it, Edward Snowden said, because he believed the U.S. government had "granted itself power it is not entitled to" in the form of a "horrifying" surveillance capability.
"You are not even aware of what is possible. The extent of their capabilities is horrifying," he told The Guardian. "I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded... That is not something I am willing to support or live under."
Snowden has been reportedly in hiding in Hong Kong, and an employee at Hong Kong's Mira Hotel told ABC News he checked out of that hotel earlier today.
Now, on the run and in apparent fear of U.S. recriminations, a complex portrait is being revealed of a man who went from being a high school dropout to a CIA computer specialist to a highly-paid private contractor and, eventually, to a man in hiding from the most powerful country in the world.
"I do not expect to see home again, though that is what I want," Snowden told The Guardian.
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