Snowden says his mission already accomplished

PanARMENIAN.Net - Former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor Edward Snowden, who leaked details of U.S. electronic surveillance programs, says he's achieved his aim.

"In terms of personal satisfaction, the mission's already accomplished," he told the Washington Post.

"I already won," said Snowden, whose extensive leaks have caused a reassessment of U.S. surveillance policy.

The 30-year-old was interviewed in Russia, where he was granted temporary asylum on August 1, according to BBC News.

Snowden fled the U.S. in late May, taking a huge cache of secret documents with him. He faces espionage charges in the U.S.

"As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn't want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself," he told the newspaper. "All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed."

Last week, a federal judge declared the mass collection of telephone data unconstitutional and a presidential advisory panel suggested reforms. Both the judge and the panel said there was little evidence that any terror plot had been thwarted by the program.

A few days later, in his end-of-year news conference, U.S. President Barack Obama suggested there may be a review of surveillance by the NSA. In "light of disclosures that have taken place" and public concerns about the programs "there may be another way of skinning the cat", he said.

However, he accused the ex-NSA contractor of causing "unnecessary damage" by leaking documents.

President Obama said he would make a "definitive statement" in January about recommendations by the White House panel.

The NSA, accustomed to watching without being watched, faces scrutiny it has not endured since the 1970s, or perhaps ever, the Washington Post says.

Snowden told the newspaper he had no way of knowing whether the public would share his views. "You recognize that you're going in blind... But when you weigh that against the alternative, which is not to act, you realize that some analysis is better than no analysis."

More details of people and institutions targeted by UK and U.S. surveillance were published last week by The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel.

The papers said the list of about 1,000 targets included an EU commissioner, humanitarian organizations and Israeli officials including a prime minister.

U.S. technology giants including Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are taking steps to block the collection of data by their government.

In October, news that the NSA had monitored the phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel triggered a diplomatic row between Berlin and Washington.

Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff was also angered by revelations that the NSA had hacked the computer network of Brazil's state-run oil company Petrobras to collect data on emails and telephone calls.