In NBC interview, Snowden says NSA watches our digital thoughts develop

In his first interview with a major US network news organization since leaking a treasure trove of documents related to the US national security apparatus a year ago, former US intelligence contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden told NBC “Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams that he has been misrepresented by the mainstream media outlets, and aimed to set the record straight.

In early 2013, Snowden disclosed thousands of top-secret US government documents to filmmaker Laura Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald, which revealed that the US government has established phone and Internet dragnets to sweep up data en masse, sparking a global debate about government surveillance ever since.

During the filming of the hour-long special “Inside the mind of Edward Snowden” in the Kepinski Hotel in Moscow last week, which aired on Wednesday night at 10 p.m. ET, the two spoke at length about a wide range of topics that included a discussion of Snowden’s technical training and work as an undercover “spy,” his reasons for continuing to reside in Russia under a temporary asylum agreement, and what he describes as our government’s exploitation of our national trauma in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.