Six months after being forced to seek asylum in Russia, NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden is content with the work he’s done to expose how the U.S. government was spying on its own people.
He told the Washington Post in his first interview since arriving in Moscow that his ‘mission’s already accomplished’.
‘I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated,’ he said.
Snowden explained that he wasn’t out to change society by releasing secrets on the NSA’s wiretapping programs. He just wanted the public to have the information necessary to make a decision on whether they were comfortable with such wide-reaching intelligence gathering.
This greater good has come at a huge personal cost to Snowden, as a target appeared on his back the moment the first articles were published using his leaked information last May.
By then, Snowden was already out of the country in Hong Kong, but he soon outstayed his welcome there.
En route to Latin America, the U.S. cancelled his passport and he was stuck in limbo in the Moscow airport.
President Vladimir Putin eventually agreed to give Snowden a temporary asylum in the country last August, but Snowden still seems uneasy in his current home.
During his two days of interviews with the Post, the reporter notes that the ‘ascetic’ never goes outside once.
Snowden says he lives off ramen noodles and chips and spends most of his hours on the internet keeping up on the progress of his cause back in the states.
Read more: dailymail.co.uk
