In a recent television message from Edward Snowden – his comment “I’ve already won” undoubtedly has people talking.
Edward Snowden, the National Security Agency (NSA) leaker, has given a revealing interview to The Washington Post about how the disturbing information he shared with the media has shed a light on the U.S. surveillance tactics.
The secrets revealed from Snowden, a former NSA contractor, about the American government’s surveillance of its citizens and even its allies have generated suspicion and doubt over our governmental intelligence-gathering practices.
Snowden said, in the more than 14-hour interview to The Washington Post, that he was satisfied because journalists have been able to tell the story of the U.S. government’s collection of bulk Internet and phone records, an activity that has grown dramatically in the decade since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” he said in the interview, which was published online Monday night. “I already won.”
“As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated,” Snowden told the Post. “Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”
He spoke about his life in Russia – living like an “indoor cat” and not getting out much.
Hey conveyed why it is wrong for government to survey their own people and allies, because of privacy issues. “The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it,” he says, according to excerpts from the message released by Channel 4. “Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel asking is always cheaper than spying.”
In a message to the UK, Snowden calls modern surveillance more invasive than any envisioned by “1984” author George Orwell, saying that children today will grow up without knowing what it means to have an unrecorded or private moment.
“That’s a problem because privacy matters, privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be,” he says.
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