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Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst who leaked NSA surveillance information, has made claims about his ability to access private phone conversations and email. Some in the industry dispute the range of activities he says analysts are able to do.

The White House maintains it had sufficiently briefed Congress on the Internet and phone data monitoring programs leaked last week, but many lawmakers vehemently disagree.

The ACLU claims the government's surveillance violates the Constitution's guarantee of free speech, association and privacy.

Citing its work to earn its users' trust, Google asks to reveal the numbers of national security requests it receives, including those made under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

A lawyer who turned to blogging and then to writing books and columns, Greenwald isn't shy about sharing his opinions. Now he's at the center of the stories about U.S. spy agencies' surveillance programs. It's Greenwald who broke the news in The Guardian.

One day after Edward Snowden went public, he was terminated for violating its code of ethics, the defense contractor says. Booz Allen Hamilton adds that the things Snowden has claimed to do are "shocking."

The sentiment has changed little since the question was asked during the Bush administration in 2006.

Edward Snowden, who says he's behind the revelations about National Security Agency surveillance programs, has dropped out of sight. He was last seen in Hong Kong. The journalist who broke his story says there are more revelations to come. And CBS °µºÚ±¬ÁÏ says officials are prepping criminal charges.

When surveillance laws were revised in 2012, Congress expressed great concerns that without proper oversight intelligence agencies would engage in the sort of monitoring that has been uncovered in recent days. Congress put a number of safeguards in place, but rejected others that would have guarantee more public discussion about what the NSA does.

Edward Snowden, the 29-year-old computer technician at the center of the NSA surveillance controversy, was an employee of Booz Allen Hamilton. In recent decades, the government has grown increasingly reliant on such firms to do critical work on national security.