Backlash over US snooping intensifies The Obama administration came under mounting political pressure on Sunday from both political parties to scale back electronic surveillance following revelations last week that have raised new questions about government intrusion of privacy. The calls came as the Guardian newspaper revealed that the whistleblower who leaked information about surveillance activities is Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former CIA employee who later became a contractor, who has now taken refuge in Hong Kong, setting up a potentially delicate political issue with the Chinese authorities about his fate. Democratic senator Mark Udall called on Sunday for the US to reopen the far-reaching Patriot Act, which was written in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. He was speaking after revelations that US government surveillance of telephone calls and online activity was more extensive than previously thought and could go beyond what is authorised by federal court warrants. Mr Udall, who has been warning for years about the expansion in government surveillance, said the law needed to be revised to restore public confidence that privacy was being protected. "My main concern is Americans don't know the extent to which they are being surveilled," he told ABC's Sunday talk show. Rand Paul, the Republican senator with libertarian leanings, said on Sunday that he would consider organising a class-action lawsuit over the collection of telephone and internet information. We are looking through so much data that I think it makes our fight against terrorism worse. Following controversies over drones and leak inquiries, President Barack Obama is now being accused of pursuing the anti-terror policies he once denounced. Last week, the Guardian and the Washington Post newspapers published stories alleging that the National Security Agency collects details about the phone calls of millions of Americans and downloads emails and other online information of non-Americans from the servers of leading US tech companies. While the administration has admitted that the telephone data story is true, technology companies such as Google and Yahoo and the head of the US intelligence services denied at the weekend that any online information not covered by a federal court warrant was handed over to the government. The Guardian revealed on Sunday that the leaks had come from Mr Snowden, who had been working at the NSA for the past four years while being employed by outside contractors. Mr Snowden, who asked for his identity to be disclosed, said he had gone to Hong Kong three weeks ago because it "was one of the few places in the world that both could and would resist the dictates of the US government," according to the Guardian. US officials have said that they will pursue an investigation of the leak, however they might need to secure his extradition from China in order to speak with him. Mr Snowden reflected that the Chinese authorities might also want to speak to him. Senators Udall and Paul, who are part of a growing group of members of Congress who believe the surveillance activities are going too far, are opposed by some influential figures in the Congress. Mike Rogers, the House intelligence committee chair, said the collection of telephone data had been instrumental in preventing a 2009 plot to explode a bomb on the New York subway. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate intelligence committee, said that there was substantial oversight of surveillance activities by both the courts and Congress. "Part of our obligation is keeping Americans safe," she said. Human intelligence isn't going to do it. The accusation that US authorities routinely snoop on the online activity of non-Americans has drawn strong condemnation from Microsoft's former chief privacy adviser. Caspar Bowden, who advised the software company on privacy until 2011 and is now a privacy campaigner, warned that the US's access to global personal data consigned the rest of the world's cloud data to a "privacy -Guantánamo Bay." Mr Bowden said US legislation provided a "carte blanche" for the US to collect business and technical data, and that political information was also expressly covered. He said the definition of "foreign intelligence information" covered by the US law included anything "with respect to a foreign territory that relates to the conduct of the foreign affairs of the US." Mr Bowden added: "We've reached a decision point about European sovereignty. Either we rely on the US for our data capacity forever or we bite the bullet and say we need our own cloud software industry. Meanwhile, William Hague, UK foreign secretary, has dismissed as "nonsense" fears that the UK's GCHQ eavesdropping service has been seeking to circumvent Britain's spy laws by using data gathered by foreign intelligence systems. Additional reporting by Hannah Kuchler in London