In an interview with The Guardian:

Snowden said it helped that Russia viewed him as useful publicity.

“A country whose political troubles are legendary, whose problems with human rights we hear about every single day has finally, somehow, managed to have one bright spot on their human rights record … Why would they give that up?”

He toyed with calling his memoirs The New Forever or Welcome to Forever before settling on Permanent Record, which reflects his concerns about the way state-run and private companies are hoarding data.

To counter this, he argues for both legislative reform and increased use of end-to-end encryption to protect emails, chat and other communications. But these are not enough, he says, to counter accelerating technological changes allowing greater intrusions of privacy and he calls for a worldwide protest movement, similar to those on climate change.

“You have to be ready to stand for something if you want it to change,” he said. “That is what I hope this book will help people come to decide for themselves.”

Snowden, 36, lives in a two-bedroom flat on the outskirts of Moscow and makes a living mainly from fees for speaking to students, civil rights activists and others abroad via video link-ups.

He was given temporary asylum when he first arrived and now has permanent residency, the equivalent of a US green card, renewable every three years, though he said this was just a formality.

He had been on his way from Hong Kong via Russia and Cuba to what he hoped would be sanctuary in Ecuador when the US cancelled his passport, leaving him stranded in Russia.

He likes to travel, in spite of being restricted to within Russia’s borders, and has visited cities such as St Petersburg and the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

“One of the things that is lost in all the problematic politics of the Russian government is the fact this is one of the most beautiful countries in the world. The people are friendly. The people are warm,” he said. “And when I came here I did not understand any of this. I was terrified of this place because, of course, they were the great fortress of the enemy, which is the way a CIA agent looks at Russia.”

In the past, he would not have openly spoken so warmly about Russia, worried about how it might be perceived back home in the US.

We met in a flat – not his – on Tsvetnoy Boulevard, near the city centre. A minute’s walk to the left of the flat there is a Starbucks and to the right a Krispy Kreme. Snowden, who loves fast food, said one of the things Americans did not realise about Russia was that almost all the things you could get in the US were available there, apart from, he added wistfully, a Taco Bell.

Throughout history, exile meant being cut off from society, “a punishment worse than death”. But exile did not mean that any more, he said. He could communicate with students in New York via video and three hours later do a similar event in Germany. [Continue reading…]