Ever since he leaked NSA records of government spying in the summer of 2013, Edward Snowden has been one of the biggest news stories of the decade.
But even with all that's have been written about him, it can be hard to get a clear idea of exactly why he put himself into a situation where he's now wanted by the US government and exiled in Russia.
In a new interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson on his StarTalk podcast, Snowden succinctly describes just what he thinks is at stake with government spying.
Essentially, the government can figure out both your identity and your ambitions from private communications. Then it can choose to disempower all of us as it sees fit.
Here's the transcript, which comes on about 42:30 of the episode:
When you're talking about invading everybody's private communications, their associations, the network of who they call on the phone, you're getting their political affiliation. You're getting the people who matter the most to them based on the frequency of the communications. You get indications of their travel. You get the books that they read, you get the things that they buy. You get the people that they love.
And you can get indications of who they are today, but who they want to be. For example, maybe they're looking at applying to a certain college program or a method of study or a fellowship or they're looking to get a job at a certain kind of company.
These are intensely private things that have traditionally been up to the individual to disclose and share with people they trust.
But if the government knows all of that, about all of us, regardless of whether we've done anything wrong, it invests them with an extraordinary and unprecedented measure of power, not only to know about us, but to act upon this information, particularly when these programs are regulated by secret policy rather than public law, what that means is they can disempower the public, the citizens, of their country around the world, at the flip of a switch.
For more from the Tyson interview with Snowden, head to the StarTalk website.
