UpdateNSA accused of wanton industrial spying in Snowden's latest TV interview

Former US National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden told German TV on Sunday about reports that US government officials wanted to assassinate him for leaking secret documents about the NSA’s collection of telephone records and e-mails.

Snowden said the NSA was active in industrial espionage and would grab any intelligence it could get its hands on, regardless of its national security value. He says the NSA does not limit its espionage to issues of national security and he cited German engineering firm Siemens as a target.

“If there’s information at Siemens that’s beneficial to US national interests – even if it doesn’t have anything to do with national security – then they’ll take that information nevertheless,” Snowden said in ARD’s six-hour interview filmed in a Moscow hotel suite. ARD aired 40 minutes of the six-hour interview.

It wasn’t clear what exactly Snowden accused the NSA of doing with such information – he only said he did not want to reveal the details before journalists did.

Snowden’s claim follows a report by The New York Times earlier this month that the NSA put software in almost 100,000 computers around the world, allowing it to carry out surveillance on those devices and could provide a digital highway for cyberattacks.

The NSA planted most of the software after gaining access to computer networks, but has also used a secret technology that allows it entry even to computers not connected to the internet, the newspaper said, citing US officials, computer experts and documents leaked by Snowden.

The newspaper said the technology had been in use since at least 2008 and relied on a covert channel of radio waves transmitted from tiny circuit boards and USB cards secretly inserted in the computers.