Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, wanted to reveal the reason behind his decision to go before the public with documents that confirm the NSA’s domestic surveillance of American citizens.
The interviews that were published on July 8 by Spiegel Online and the Guardian were conducted over a month ago, and the purpose of his disclosure was explained along with other information about the U.S. government’s connections with other nations such as Germany and Israel.
Snowden, because of his leaking of classified documents, predicted that he would receive accusations from the U.S. government. “I think the government's going to launch an investigation. I think they're going to say I committed grave crimes, [that] I violated the Espionage Act. They're going to say I aided our enemies in making them aware of these systems. But this argument can be made against anyone who reveals information that points out mass surveillance systems.”
His prediction came to pass. As far as the general public knows, Snowden is stuck in the transit area of a Moscow airport. He has received offers of asylum from the nations of Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela.
Snowden, 30, was not always against the government’s actions. He supported the government by enlisting in the US Army after the invasion of Iraq, believing in “the goodness of what we were doing. I believed in the nobility of our intentions to free oppressed people overseas.”
However, he continued to see propaganda in the news instead of truth. “We were actually involved in misleading the public and misleading all the publics, not just the American public, in order to create certain mindset in the global consciousness and I was actually a victim of that.”
“I don’t want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything that I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded. And that’s not something I’m willing to support, it’s not something I’m willing to build, and it’s not something I’m willing to live under,” Snowden explained. “I think anyone who opposes that sort of world has an obligation to act in a way they can. I’ve watched and waited and tried to do my job in the most policy-driven way I could, which is to wait and allow other people – wait on our leadership – [to] correct the excesses of government when we go too far. But as I’ve watched, I’ve seen that’s not occurring. In fact, we’re compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it worse and more invasive. And nobody is really standing to stop it.”
