Obama dismissed Snowden as a “29-year-old hacker” during a press conference in Senegal and said the damage was done when Snowden leaked information about the National Security Agency's data-mining programs to the press.
He wasn't a "hacker", as he didn't have to hack into US security information. He was a US govt contractor who had presumably passed security tests and was given complete access to secret files. He has reported on US hacking, however, so maybe that's what has the prez confused.
