A separate program, also disclosed by The Guardian, has been used to scoop up the telephone records of millions of Americans.
In an interview with NBC News aired on Sunday, Clapper called the disclosures “literally gut-wrenching” and said they had caused “huge, grave damage” to US intelligence capabilities.
“The NSA has filed a crimes report on this already,” he said, before Snowden’s identity was revealed. “This is someone who for whatever reason has chosen to violate a sacred trust for this country.”
Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter who brought to light the PRISM program and the separate program to gather US phone records, said the public had a right to know and openly debate what the government was doing.
“Every time there’s a whistleblower, someone who exposes government wrongdoing, the tactic is to demonize them as a traitor,” he told ABC.
Clapper insisted two plots have been foiled through information obtained through the programs, both in 2009 – one, a bomb attack on New York subways, and another linked to David Headley, a conspirator in the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
The intelligence chief has declassified some details of the PRISM program in the face of a storm of controversy over suggestions the government had backdoor access to the servers of Internet giants like Google, Facebook and Yahoo.
Internet service providers denied they had given the government unfettered access to customer data, insisting they did so only when compelled by law.
Under PRISM, which has been running for six years, the US National Security Agency can issue directives to Internet firms demanding access to emails, online chats, pictures, files, videos and more, uploaded by foreign users.
But Clapper said the government must apply to a secret court for permission to target individuals or entities and then issue a request to the service provider.
Obama has defended the data trawls, saying America was “going to have to make some choices between balancing privacy and security to protect against terror.” There was no immediate White House reaction to Snowden’s declaration.
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