DHAKA: Just six months after first leaking National Security Agency secrets in a move that triggered a revaluation of US surveillance policies, Edward Snowden is declaring ‘mission’s already accomplished’.

Snowden told The Washington Post in his first in-person interview since his June arrival in Russia, which granted him temporary asylum, that he was satisfied because the public is now informed about the US government’s massive sweep of Internet and phone records.

‘For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,’ he said in the interview published Tuesday, reports The Straits Times.

‘I already won.’

‘As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated,’ Snowden told the Post.

‘Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.’

The NSA’s collection of communications data has grown dramatically since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

BDST: 1530 HRS, DEC 24, 2013
Edited by Robab Rosan, Current Affairs Editor