LONDON: Rogue American intelligence analyst Edward
Snowden has declared his “mission accomplished” after unveiling huge US surveillance programmes, but urged citizens
to insist their governments stop spying on them.
In excerpts of his first major media appearance since claiming
asylum in Russia — which will be broadcast on British television on Christmas Day — Snowden issued a staunch defence
of individual privacy.
“Together we can find a better balance, end mass surveillance and remind the government
that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying,” he says in extracts released by
Britain's Channel 4.
The former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor sent shockwaves around the world by revealing
the extent of Washington's electronic eavesdropping.
The short, pre-recorded broadcast will be his first television
appearance since arriving in Moscow in June.
The 30-year-old has also given his first in-person interview since claiming
asylum, telling Tuesday's Washington Post: “I already won.
“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the
mission's already accomplished,” he said.
“As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that
I had been trying to do was validated,” he added.
“Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I
wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”
Snowden leaked explosive details of
the secret surveillance schemes to media including the Washington Post and Britain's Guardian, and has fled the United States
to avoid prosecution.
He arrived in Russia in June as a fugitive and spent more than a month holed up in a Moscow airport
before being granted a year's asylum.
US federal prosecutors have filed a criminal complaint against him, charging him
with espionage and felony theft of government property.
His leaks have deeply embarrassed President Barack Obama's administration
by revealing the massive scale of America's spying efforts, including on the country's own allies such as German Chancellor
Angela Merkel.
The young know no privacy
In his Christmas Day broadcast to Britain, Snowden says
that children born into today's world will “grow up with no conception of privacy at all”.
“They'll
never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves — an unrecorded, unanalysed thought,” he says
in the broadcast, due to be aired at 1615 GMT.
“And that's a problem because privacy matters. Privacy is what
allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.” He signs off the broadcast by wishing Britons a merry Christmas.
Channel
4 has aired a short “alternative” Christmas message every year since 1993, intended as a response to Queen Elizabeth
II's annual Christmas Day broadcast on the rival BBC.
The channel caused a political row in 2008 when it chose former
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as its Christmas broadcaster.
The NSA's collection of communications data has
grown dramatically since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
On Friday, Obama said he welcomed a debate about the NSA's
role as he weighs possible changes to its broad powers amid a public outcry over rights to privacy.
The president said
he would make a “pretty definitive statement” in January about how the NSA should be overhauled.
A panel
of legal and intelligence experts chosen by the White House has recommended curbing the agency's powers, warning that its
sweeps in the war on terror have gone too far.
And a federal judge has warned that the NSA's routine collection of nearly
all Americans' phone records was probably unconstitutional.
Snowden insisted in the Post interview that he had not
been disloyal to his former employers.
“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA,”he
said. “I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don't realise it.”
Snowden blamed
lawmakers' decision to keep the NSA programmes hidden and their failure to ask probing questions for his decision to spill
the secrets.
“The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight,
each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility,” he said....IPSNEWS.
