PRISM scandals 棱镜门 (leng jing men)

Earlier this month, Edward Snowden, a former CIA agent and contractor with the US' National Security Agency flew from Hawaii to Hong Kong and offered classified US government documents to media outlets, including London-based The Guardian. The documents revealed the existence of a high-level clandestine NSA surveillance program codenamed PRISM.

Whistleblower Snowden told the South China Morning Post that the NSA has conducted more than 61,000 hacking operations across the globe, and Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland have been on the target list for years.

Some US politicians accused Snowden of being a Chinese spy. In response, Snowden said such accusations were a "predictable smear" to "distract from the issue of US government misconduct", according to the South China Morning Post. On Monday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying told a daily news conference that allegations that Snowden is a Chinese spy are "totally groundless".

Snowden's expose is making waves among Chinese people and the rest of the international community. And some netizens even say Snowden's story will sooner or later be made into a blockbuster. They see Snowden's story as having all the ingredients for a successful Hollywood thriller: a charismatic hero, a sexy pole dancer girlfriend, CIA as the antagonist, the hustling and bustling Hong Kong as the background, leaks of top secret US spying program, a matter of life and death, and the conflict between individual privacy and national interest.

(China Daily USA 06/21/2013 page16)