'The truth is coming and can't be stopped'

Snowden takes to live web chat to defend leaking NSA secrets and slams Obama on broken promises over civil liberties

• Edward Snowden answers questions from readers in live web chat
• 'The government won't be able to cover this up by murdering me'
• Says civil liberties have worsened under Obama despite his promises

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has defended his disclosure of top-secret U.S. spying programs in an online chat as he attacks President Obama over his broken promises.
As he answered readers' questions online, Snowden lambasted U.S. officials for calling him a traitor and said the government won't silence him by 'jailing or murdering' him.
'The US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me,' he said in the live chat, which was launched on Monday. 'Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.'
The Guardian hosted the online chat with Snowden, who has been in hiding in Hong Kong since fleeing the U.S., as reporter Glenn Greenwald received and posted Snowden's answers.

Speaking out: Edward Snowden is taking part in a live web chat, where he is defending leaking information

Among his responses, he said he waited until after the election to release the information as he had been hopeful that Obama would make good on his promises about civil liberties.
In fact, Snowden said, privacy and civil liberties have actually worsened since the re-election.
'Shortly after assuming power, [Obama] closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge,' he said.

He said he saw no option but the flee the country as the administration would never have given him a fair trial.
'The U.S. Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason,' he said. 'That's not justice.'
But Snowden added that he did not think it was too late - that the leaks gave the president a chance 'for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men'.

Connection: Snowden is responding via Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who broke the story

He called for Obama to set up a special committee to review the surveillance programs and set up a special investigator to review presidents' policies for wrongdoing.
He added that he did not reveal any U.S. operations against what he called legitimate military targets, but instead showed that the NSA is hacking civilian infrastructure like universities and businesses.
U.S. officials say the data-gathering programs were legal and operated under court supervision.
Snowden explained his claim that from his desk, he could 'wiretap' any phone call or email - a claim top intelligence officials have denied.
'If an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc. analyst has access to query raw SIGINT (signals intelligence) databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want,' he said. 'Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same.'
Director of National Intelligence James Clapper has said that the kind of data that can be accessed and who can access it is severely limited.
His online chat comes after China denied that Snowden is working for them after former US Vice-President Dick Cheney branded the leaker a 'traitor and possible Chinese spy'.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said at a daily briefing today, 'This is sheer nonsense,' when asked if Snowden worked for China.
Snowden himself added in the web chat: 'Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.'
Several nations, including U.S. allies, have reacted angrily to revelations by the ex-CIA employee that U.S. authorities had tapped the servers of internet companies for personal data.

National defense: Former Vice President Dick Cheney spoke on Fox News Sunday in Washington about the need for surveillance

'We believe the United States should pay attention to the international community's concerns and demands and give the international community the necessary explanation,' Hua said.
The Chinese government has previously not commented directly on the case, simply repeating the government's standard line that China is one of the world's biggest victims of hacking attacks.
A senior source with ties to the Communist Party leadership said Beijing was reluctant to jeopardise recently improved ties with Washington.
Cheney said how the controversial surveillance methods used by the NSA could have prevented the September 11 attacks and said the revelations have done 'enormous damage' to America's security.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Cheney took credit for crafting the program of data collection, saying that he 'worked with [former Director of National Intelligence] Mike Hayden when we set this program up.'

'Traitor': According to Cheney, Snowden could be leaking U.S. security secrets to China. Supporters in Hong Kong have come out strongly in defense of the former CIA employee, as pictured

'As everybody who's been associated with the program's said, if we had had this before 9/11, when there were two terrorists in San Diego - two hijackers - had been able to use that program, that capability, against that target, we might well have been able to prevent 9/11,' Cheney told Wallace.
In the webchat, Snowden added: 'Journalists should ask: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicion-less surveillance that could not be gained via any other source?
'Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it.'
Cheney ridiculed the notion that the NSA was listening in to personal calls of ordinary Americans.
'The allegation is not that we get all this personal information on Aunt Fanny or Chris Wallace, that's not the way it works,' he said.

Anger: Snowden said civil liberties had worsened ever since President Obama was re-elected last year

'What information [was collected]?' he said. 'And the answer is phone numbers and who contacted who. But we don’t have any names associated with it. It’s just a big bag of numbers that’s been collected.'
Of Snowden, Cheney said the breach of security was one of the worst in history.
'I think he's a traitor. I think it's one of the worst occasions, in my memory, of somebody with access to classified information doing enormous damage to the national security interests of the United States,' he said.
He suggested that Snowden, who is thought to have fled to Hong Kong, could be working with the Chinese government.
'I am very, very worried that he still has additional information that he hasn't released yet, that the Chinese would welcome the opportunity and are probably willing to offer immunity - or sanctuary, if you will - in exchange for what he presumably knows or doesn't know,' said Cheney.