Does a government have the right to snoop around its citizens’ privacy on the pretext of protecting the country from terrorism? The US has been debating this question in the past few days.

On June 9, a 29-year-old former CIA employee admitted responsibility for one of the most extraordinary leaks of classified information in US history. Edward Snowden told The Guardian he exposed the documents because he thinks Americans should know how the government has intruded on their privacy.

“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building,” Snowden told The Guardian in an interview.

The development was the latest in a week that saw unauthorized publication of a “Top Secret” order from the US’ Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to authorize collection of domestic telephone records; internal documents and detailed descriptions of a US National Security Agency (NSA) program code-named PRISM that can obtain data on foreigners from US Internet companies; a directive from US President Barack Obama ordering preparation of a secret target list for cyber-warfare; and a digital map of the world that shows where the NSA spies the most.

The Guardian said Snowden decided to leak the classified material three weeks ago while working in Hawaii. It said he copied the documents and then told a supervisor that he needed to go away for several weeks due to medical treatment. He left for Hong Kong on May 20.

In the Guardian interview, Snowden identified himself as an infrastructure analyst at an NSA facility in Hawaii for Booz Allen Hamilton, a major defense contractor. He previously worked for the CIA as a systems administrator and telecommunications systems officer.

Snowden described enjoying a comfortable lifestyle and a career that included a $200,000 (1.23 million yuan) annual salary, and a home in Hawaii that he shared with his girlfriend.

The Guardian said Snowden is considering seeking asylum in Iceland. Hong Kong media reported that Snowden checked out of his hotel room in Kowloon on Monday. His whereabouts are unknown, but he is believed to still be in the city.

Snowden told The Guardian that he’s willing to stand behind his actions in public because he knows he has done nothing wrong. “My sole motive is to inform the public as to that which is done in their name and that which is done against them,” he said.

The Guardian said Snowden is so worried about surveillance that he pads his hotel room door with pillows to prevent eavesdropping and drapes a hood over his head and laptop to avoid password detection by hidden cameras.

“I don’t want to live in a society that does these sort of things,” he said in the interview. “We collect more digital communications from Americans than we do from the Russians.”

James R. Clapper, the director of the US’ National Intelligence, said on June 8 that the Justice Department had launched an investigation into what he called “reckless disclosures of intelligence community measures used to keep Americans safe”, he told NBC during an interview.

The Obama administration has prosecuted six people for illegal disclosures of classified information — more than all other administrations combined. Also, a military court-martial is underway for Bradley Manning, a former US Army intelligence officer. He’s accused of violating the Espionage Act by giving a large number of classified US military and diplomatic documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks.