Edward Snowden talks politics, why he did what he did, in latest Vanity Fair

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last updated 8 January 2015

His life in Russia, his motivation for leaking top secret documents, and Julian Assange are just some of the things Edward Snowden talks about in a new Vanity Fair interview.

The magazine released portions of its interview with the famous former National Security Agency contractor on Tuesday, a few days before the May issue hits newsstands in Los Angeles and New York. The 20,000-word article delves deep into Snowden's life pre- and post-leak, and what caused him to go public. "Every person remembers some moment in their life where they witnessed some injustice, big or small, and looked away, because the consequences of intervening seemed too intimidating," he told Vanity Fair. "But there's a limit to the amount of incivility and inequality and inhumanity that each individual can tolerate. I crossed that line. And I'm no longer alone."

Snowden also discussed his politics ("moderate") and clarified how he is different from WikiLeaks founder Assange. "We don't share identical politics," he said. "I am not anti-secrecy. I'm pro-accountability. I've made many statements indicating both the importance of secrecy and spying, and my support for the working-level people at the NSA and other agencies.... They [WikiLeaks] run toward the risks everyone else runs away from. No other publisher in the world is prepared to commit to protecting sources — even another journalists' sources — the way WikiLeaks is." Read more at Vanity Fair, and if you're a little hazy on the Snowden story, the magazine provides this video primer:

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.