棱镜哥斯诺登爆美国政府网上偷听中国境内数以百计的目标

The NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden vowed yesterday to fight an expected move by the US to have him extradited from Hong Kong, saying he was not there to "hide from justice" and would put his trust in its legal system.

In his first comments since revealing his identity in the Guardian at the weekend, Snowden also claimed that the US had been hacking Hong Kong and China since 2009, and accused the US of bullying the territory to return him because it did not want local authorities to learn of its cyber activities.

As a debate raged over whether Snowden should be praised or prosecuted for his actions, he told the South China Morning Post: "I'm neither traitor nor hero. I'm an American."

Snowden claimed that the US had hacked hundreds of targets in Hong Kong – including public officials, a university, businesses and students in the city – and on the mainland. These were part of more than 61,000 NSA hacking operations globally, he alleged.

"We hack network backbones – like huge internet routers, basically – that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one," he said.

The Post said it had seen a document that, Snowden alleged, supported his claims. The Post said it had not verified the document, and did not immediately publish it.

Snowden said he was releasing the information to demonstrate "the hypocrisy of the US government when it claims that it does not target civilian infrastructure, unlike its adversaries".

A senior Chinese official said last week he had "mountains of data" on cyber-attacks from the US, after Washington turned up the pressure over hacking by China.