Edward Snowden during his interview (Photo: Alan Rusbridger for the Guardian)NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden gave a video interview to the Guardian this week to discuss the state of internet privacy, the changing landscape of investigative journalism, and what his life has been like since he released the classified documents last year that exposed the U.S. government's global surveillance program. In one of the more poignant moments of the interview, Snowden spoke thoughtfully and bluntly about what his future might be if he leaves asylum in Russia and returns home to the U.S.

"If I end up in chains in Guantanamo," Snowden told his interviewers, "I can live with that."

Snowden also called on lawyers, journalists, doctors, and others who handle sensitive information to use alternative "zero-knowledge" security software and search engines that would protect confidentiality of sources and clients online better than Skype, Dropbox, or Google, for example. In some cases, he said, the big companies are actively anti-privacy, noting that Dropbox just added surveillance advocate Condoleezza Rice to their board of directors and calling them a "wannabe PRISM partner."

Technology can be useful for privacy, he said, as long as we don't "sleepwalk" into accepting new apps. "We shouldn't trust them without verifying what their activities are, how they're using our data, and deciding for ourselves whether it's appropriate where they draw the lines," he said.

Google and Skype have been useful for hosting public chats and interviews, Snowden said, but he would never rely on them in his personal life.

Currently, with a lack of reliable privacy software and the consequences of unlimited government power, journalism has become "immeasurably harder," Snowden said. The first contact with a source, "before encrypted communications are established, is enough to give it all away." He said new training for professionals who handle private information is necessary to ensure safety for the "average member of our society," particularly as technical literacy has become "a rare and precious resource."

There should be no distinction between digital information and printed or spoken information, Snowden said. "If we confess something to our priest inside a church, that would be private, but is it any different if we send our pastor a private email confessing a crisis that we have in our life?"

Before leaking the NSA documents to the public, Snowden said he first tried to address the matters that concerned him internally, asking colleagues and supervisors about the more nefarious elements of the program.

"I said, 'What do you think about this? Isn't this unusual? How can we be doing this? Isn't this unconstitutional? Isn't this a violation of rights?'" he recalled.

He was particularly worried about the fact that the many of the NSA's invasive systems were used for fun. Snowden described a troubling work environment where unlimited access to private information was regularly taken advantage of by individual employees. If the surveillance program happened to pick up a person's nude photographs, for example, co-workers would distribute them around the office, where a culture of lax supervision meant that no one was ever held responsible.

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Edward Snowden to the Guardian: "If I End Up in Chains in Guantanamo, I Can Live With That"

Edward Snowden, the former NSA systems administrator and whistleblower has revealed that during his time at the NSA employees would regularly share nude photos of people that were under surveillance.

According to Snowden, whilse he was working at the office employees would stumble across intercepted images of people either nude, or in compromising sexual positions, and then share them with colleagues.

"They turn around in their chair and they show their co-worker. And their co-worker says: 'Oh hey, that's great. Send that to Bill down the way.' And then Bill sends it to George, George sends it to Tom. And sooner or later this person's whole life has been seen by all of these other people."

In the interview Snowden goes on to lambast the processes that allow this behaviour suggesting that because management are unable to monitor such low-level behaviour it goes completely unchecked.

Even worse he implies that as far as the employees are concerned, many see the access to people's nude photos as just one of the 'perks to the job'.

The revelation came out during a seven hour interview with the Guardian which covered Snowden's daily life in Russia, what would happen if he was finally caught and how he would cope if the US had him sent to Guantanamo Bay.

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Edward Snowden Reveals The NSA Shared Nude Photos

Until we can destroy all this excess personal information from various organizations both public and private, keeping only that information obtained by court order, there is nothing we can do to warn the public of the possible results.

Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, Associated Press

Enlarge photo

In Glen Greenwalds book "No Place to Hide," Mr. Greenwald quotes Edward Snowden saying Massive Data Depositories are being built worldwide with the largest at the new data center in Utah. A question can be asked about Snowdens statement. If Snowden had come out with this before the NSA storage facility had been built, would the good people of Utah have wanted this gigantic facility in our state? I think not. However, so long as it is now here, I believe we need to articulate a policy toward the facility and what it does to both our personal viewpoints and the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.

One statement heard often in defense of NSA and this storage is let them do it, I have nothing to hide! You personally may not if you have no personal information, but nearly everyone else does have information they do not want shared. This information is not illegal or criminal, but personal such as health, business strategies, future plans for love and life, financial situations both good and bad, political or religious views and many other written or video pieces of life. It is my belief that Edward Snowden did what he did out of the highest love of the Constitution and at the highest level of patriotic whistle-blowing to protect that Constitution.

Suppose there is another person far less patriotic and obsessed by money and power still working for NSA at the same level as Snowden. What is to prevent this person from downloading files on business plans of corporations and individuals, financial information of many entities and perhaps most damaging, political information on policies, financial sources and human flaws of a candidate to act upon by an opponent and offer these for sale?

In a presidential or other national election, such information could be catastrophic in determining the outcome. I am sure that only a very small number of NSA employees could ever act in this manner, but look at what Snowden did by himself. It would also seem that NSA condones lies to protect itself if necessary as witnessed by James Clapper, the head of U.S. intelligence, telling a congressional panel and the entire country that the government does not collect massive information on U.S. citizens purposefully.

What would covert files for money do to the NSA? Perhaps what is all right for the boss to do should be all right for the employees as well. I cannot excuse such unnecessary lies, no comment would work just fine. Clapper chose to willfully commit perjury in my view, and has he been called to account for his lies as Snowden has been for his patriotic whistle-blowing?

In the last few weeks, the Supreme Court blocked police from rifling through a personal cellphone because of the large amount of personal data that can be found there. When Snowdens efforts get to that court as I believe they must, what will the court say about the NSA policies of attempting to collect everything while lying about it?

It is my belief that when government data collection is added to the volumes of commercial personal data they can access under present regulations and also pirate information, there will be enormous amounts of individual information available for exploitation.

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My view: NSA, Edward Snowden and Utah