14 DAY TRIAL // Edward Snowden gave his first major interview for the US media where the talked about the NSA, mass surveillance, terrorism and more.
The whistleblower has told NBC Night News that he believes he’s done the right thing to share the documents with the media because the mass surveillance operations conducted by the NSA have reached a dangerous point.
“The intelligence capabilities themselves are unregulated, uncontrolled, and dangerous. People at the NSA can actually watch Internet communications and see our thoughts form as we type. What’s more shocking is the dirtiness of the targeting. It’s the lack of respect for the public and for the intrusiveness of surveillance,” Snowden said on the topic.
One major statement made by the White House in regard to the leaks is that they’ve been of great help to terrorists. Many have said that Snowden has effectively aided the enemy by revealing NSA’s mass surveillance practices that impact the privacy of millions upon millions of perfectly innocent people.
“I’ve never told anybody this, but I was on Fort Meade on September 11. I was right outside the NSA, so I remember the tension of that day. I take the threat of terrorism seriously. I think it’s disingenuous for the government to exploit the national trauma that we’ve all suffered to justify programs that have never been shown to keep us safe but cause us to give up liberties our Constitution does not let us give up,” Snowden said.
In the past year, since the first files were published, Snowden’s status has been disregarded by the White House. Every chance they had, various officials have dubbed him as a low-level system administrator, a young man that had no idea what he was talking about.
Seeking to clear his name, Snowden says that such statements are misleading. He says that he’s a technical expert and he’s worked as a spy for the US Defense Intelligence Agency, the NSA and the CIA, living and working undercover abroad.
“What I do is I put systems to work for the United States. And I’ve done that at all levels, from — from the bottom on the ground all the way to the top. Now, the government might deny these things; they might frame it in certain ways and say, ‘Oh, well, you know, he's a low-level analyst.’ But what they’re trying to do is they’re trying to use one position that I’ve had in a career here or there to distract from the totality of my experience,” Snowden said.