14 DAY TRIAL // While the US is accusing Edward Snowden of espionage and aiding the enemy, something he predicted when he made the leaked documents available, he doesn't view himself as a traitor. In fact, he believes in the US and thinks that the country and its people are fundamentally good.
However, the government no longer works for the country, but only to further its own ends, Snowden said in an interview on June 6, part of which was only now published by The Guardian.
When asked if he could determine the point at which he realized he had to make these disclosures, Snowden explained that he grew up with the Internet and with the freedom it provided. He believed his communications on the Internet to be free, open, and unrestricted.
But as he found out more and more about the NSA's operations and as governments pushed for more control and more regulation, he realized that the Internet was no longer a place for unmonitored and unrestricted expression.
Still, as an NSA agent himself, he didn't have much to fear or to lose from government control and surveillance of the Internet and other means of communication. Still, the simple fact it was happening was enough to motivate him to abandon his life so that the public is informed.
"I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say, everything that I do, everyone that I talk to, every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded," he said.
"That's not something I'm willing to support and it's not something I'm willing to build and it's not something I'm willing to live under. So I think anyone who opposes that sort of world has an obligation to act in the way they can," he explained his motivation.
Snowden also explained that he didn't want to be a whistleblower and hoped that the Obama administration would reign in the abuses of the NSA. But that didn't happen. In fact, it was quite the opposite.
"Now, 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 and allow our leadership, our figures, to sort of correct the excesses of government, when we go too far," he said in the interview.
"But as I've watched I've seen that it's not occurring and, in fact, we're compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it worse and more invasive. And no one is really standing to stop it," he concluded.