Whistleblower Edward Snowden has been circling the news this month. The 29-year-old ex-National Security Agency (NSA) technologist, has explained “why” he leaked NSA documents.

But on Monday, Snowden gave The Guardian readers exclusive access to his reasoning and thoughts, in a public Q&A session.

Here are some of the most interesting responses and questions, for the full set, click here. OR visit #AskSnowden on Twitter where you can follow all the ranting and raving.

Q: Did you lie about your salary? What is the issue there? Why did you tell Glenn Greenwald that your salary was $200,000 a year, when it was only $122,000 (according to the firm that fired you)?

A: “I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was that $200,000 was my ‘career high’ salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I’ve been paid.”

 

Q: Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?

A: “Obama’s campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we see in Guantánamo, where men still sit without charge.”

 

Q:

1) Define in as much detail as you can what “direct access” means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

A: 1) More detail on how direct NSA’s accesses are is coming, but in general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on – it’s all the same. The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only 5% of those performed.

2) NSA likes to use “domestic” as a weasel word here for a number of reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702 authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as “incidental” collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of “warranted” intercept, it’s important to understand the intelligence community doesn’t always deal with what you would consider a “real” warrant like a Police department would have to, the “warrant” is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.

 

Q: Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese government, some are saying you didn’t answer clearly. Can you give a flat no?

A: “No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with The Guardian and The Washington Post, I only work with journalists.”

 

Q: What are your thoughts on Google’s and Facebook’s denials? Do you think that they’re honestly in the dark about Prism, or do you think they’re compelled to lie?

A: “Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we’re finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for the first time since their inception.”