In June 2013, Edward Snowden had the entire world gasping in surprise as he leaked highly classified information about the US government during interviews with The Guardian and The Washington Post. Now, as a former NSA contractor, Snowden finds himself in an extremely dangerous position. He has become forced to seek asylum in Russia, and interviews with anonymous officials from the US government have resulted in direct death threats to the so-called traitor. Nevertheless, he says that he has not lost any sleep whatsoever. Snowden is confident in the righteousness of his actions, supporting them with saying that he is serving the people's interest by revealing governmental abuse.
During his interview with the german television channel NDR, Snowden states that national intelligence organizations have come together as one, collecting and trading sensitive information between eachother. This way, the countries involved can work their way around laws, specifically among spying and lobbyism. Furthermore, Snowden mentions that the US government is in possesion of the means needed to collect and preserve any sort of information. In an example, he says that they can record a single person's general behavior and network activity in order to create a so-called "fingerprint". With this fingerprint they can accurately track, locate, and monitor the person on any given location in the world.
The leaks that Snowden has revealed are definately frightening. They let us know that even the US, a presumed role-model for other countries, is involved in illegal activities, and is even lying about them to its' population. Despite his actions, Snowden states that he is not a traitor, as he gave all of his information to the American public. He says that if they see issues in the information given, their enemy is the government, not him. I quote him from this interview where he says: "If I am a traitor, who did I betray?" He considers himself an enemy of the government's abusive actions, and an advocate of the people. He will never rest, nor be safe, until the abusive governmental systems have changed.
Sources:
Interview with Edward Snowden by NDR
Wikipedia Article
