Snowden to reply to Obama's statements on reforms of NSA next week

Former US intelligence officer, whistleblower of National Security Agency (NSA), Edward Snowden will respond next week to President Barack Obama's speech on the reform of the security services in the United States, said in an interview with CNN founder of the controversial website WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, the Voice of Russia reports. 

Obama said on Friday that Snowden's revelations would affect security services for many years. He recalled that the audit of programs of surveillance of US intelligence did not find any violations of the law, but ordered them to reconsider.

In particular, he said, the program of collection of metadata of cell phones will be discontinued (in its current form) and special services would receive a provision not to store the information that is collected that way.

"It is clear that the president would not have acted today if it was not for the sake of addressing Edward Snowden and his whistleblowers. Edward Snowden will respond to the president's statements next week," Assange said on CNN.

According to Assange, in his 45-minute speech, Obama did not say anything of substance.

"We have not heard anything from the president about the significant technological protection of business in the US. My biggest concern ... is regarding something that was not mentioned – the absence of restrictions of the law on secrecy," stated the founder of WikiLeaks.

In June 2013 Snowden forwarded to Washington Post and Guardian number of secret materials regarding the surveillance operations of secret agencies of the US and UK through the Internet.

According to the NSA, more than 200 thousands of secret documents could have ended up at the disposal of journalists. After their transfer Snowden flew to Hong Kong and from June 23 of last year was in the transit area of the Moscow airport "Sheremetyevo." In August he received temporary asylum in Russia for one year.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said that "we heard a lot of lies" responding to President Barack Obama's speech on NSA reforms. "He said for example that the NSA has never abused what it has done,"Assange added.

"My greatest concern looking at this broader package is what was not said - there was no restriction on secret law," WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said.

He added that "it's clear the President would not be speaking today if it wasn't for Edward Snowden and whistleblowers before him."

"I think it's embarrassing for a head of state to go on like that for forty minutes and say almost nothing," according to Assange.

"What we didn't hear from the president was any meaningful protection of the US tech business."

Assange believes that "when you have an organization as powerful as the NSA, that is a threat to constitutional government in the US and other countries."

"Obviously the internal mechanisms failed, this administration failed, NSA failed to hold itself accountable," he adds.

Speaking about former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, Assange said that the whistleblower "will be quite happy that there is at least 45 minutes of the president speaking about these issues."

"Edward Snowden will be responding to the President's statements next week," Assange said.

WikiLeaks founder states that "formally the investigaiton into me and WikiLeaks continues in the United States."

"The FBI, the NSA, the CIA etc - 12 US agencies; the investigation into WikiLeaks has been the largest into a publisher ever."