Washington, February 13 (RHC)-- U.S. intelligence officials are claiming Edward Snowden stole internal National Security Agency documents by using cheap and widely available software that still went mostly undetected.

Speaking to the New York Times, investigators looking into Snowden’s case say he deployed a simple "web crawler" that automatically downloaded some 1.7 million files.

In a statement, Snowden responded: "It’s ironic that officials are giving classified information to journalists in an effort to discredit me for giving classified information to journalists. The difference is that I did so to inform the public about the government’s actions, and they’re doing so to misinform the public about mine."