Snowden: 'I have to work a lot harder in Russia than at NSA'

Whistleblower Edward Snowden claims that he is working very hard. He is doing a lot of things that are very significant while he is in Russia, compared to what he used to do as a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), according to rt.

"The fact is I was getting paid an extraordinary amount of money for very little work [at the NSA] with very little in the way of qualifications," Snowden said via satellite link during an event at Stanford University on Friday.

However, it is very different in Russia, and "that's changed significantly," said the ex-NSA contractor. He disclosed his agency's huge, controversial surveillance activities in America as well as outside.

"I have to work a lot harder to do the same thing. The difference is that, even though I've lost a lot, I have a tremendous sense of satisfaction," the whistleblower said, as cited by Business Insider.

Yet, he does not disclose what he is working on, as he believes that he should only be judged by the result.

He also told the audience that he had never published any document on his own, but just worked with mediapersons. He looked at it as an ethical part of "whistleblowing".

Reporters in the incident permitted a system of checks and balances while disclosing all the facts, he felt. He said that he could not leak the files anonymously, as it would have unleashed a "witch-hunt" that would lead his colleagues into problems.

"Whistleblowers are elected by circumstance. Nobody self-nominates to be a whistleblower because it's so painful. Your lives are destroyed whether you are right or wrong. This is not something people sign up for," he stressed.

Having reached one critical point, Snowden said that he was neither "hero nor traitor, but only a man", so he had to act and reveal the truth.

"We all have a limit of injustice, of incivility, of inhumanity in our daily life that we can kind of accept and ignore. We turn our eyes away from the beggar on the street. We also have a breaking point and when people find that, they act," he explained.

"You have to have a greater commitment to justice than a fear of the law," Snowden added.

Snowden revealed his opinions one week after a US federal appeals court ruled that the "NSA's bulk collection of American citizens' telephone records was illegal." The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York called the bulk phone records collection "unprecedented and unwarranted."

By June 1, Congress has to renew one section of the Patriot Act permitting the NSA's bulk data surveillance.