Carter slams Snowden at tech conference for damaging national security

The actions of Edward Snowden, the former Booz Allen Hamilton contractor who is seeking a presidential pardon after famously leaking information about the U.S. government's highly classified surveillance program, did “tremendous harm” to national security and broke a “special trust,” according to Defense Secretary Ash Carter.

When Carter, who appeared at a technology conference in San Francisco today, was asked whether Snowden should be pardoned he said that was a question he couldn't answer.

“I will say this: All of us who enjoy the public trust and therefore who handle classified information have a responsibility,” he said. “To arrogate to oneself the authority to basically take something that has been entrusted to you . . . that is something I can't condone. We can't all just decide by ourselves and I object to that.”

Snowden, who has emerged as a hero to some in the technology community, made his case for a presidential pardon in a Tuesday interview with the The Guardian.

Carter, however, argued Snowden had “plenty of other avenues” to make his ethical concerns known without putting U.S. security at risk.

“This did tremendous harm to our security, it did tremendous harm to many American companies in the world and complicated our relations with foreign powers,” he said.

Carter's comments came at a technology conference hosted by TechCrunch amid a three-day trip intended to build stronger bridges between the Pentagon and the technology sector.

The secretary told the conference of Silicon Valley insiders that he was aware of “trust issues” between the defense community and private sector technologists, partly driven by the government-run eavesdropping programs revealed by Snowden.

“I understand that and I absolutely respect that,” he said. “There's no way we're going to come up with some right answer to that all by ourselves.”

Carter appealed to engineers and innovators in the audience to consider contacting the Pentagon's Defense Innovation Unit Experimental team with new ideas to improve U.S. security or to spend time in the new Defense Digital Service solving complex military problems.

“What I find out here is that people are doing what they're doing out here because they want to make a difference,” he said. “They don't have to believe we're doing everything right; that's not important. They just have to believe that . . . they can help make it right.”