Germany: Edward Snowden interviewed over new memoir

W/S Screen, Berlin
SOT, Edward Snowden, whistleblower: "For me, I think the book is always the classic example of this, so I don't mind talking about myself, honestly when I set out to write a book, it was not initially a memoir. I was going to write a book about figures from history such as [Carl von] Ossietzky, such as Harriet Tubman [from] the United States who helped runaway slaves. People who were figures of conscience that were breaking the law in order to serve greater good, but the publisher said, of course, we would like something more personal. So this is where I realised that that same method of storytelling was maybe something that could serve public interest here. So this book, while it's certainly a memoir of how I became who I am as a person, it's actually larger, it's a dual history, it's the story of a person, but more centrally and I think more importantly, it's a story of a time and a change in technology and perhaps an argument for how we can retrieve so much of the power that has been stolen from us, both by corporations and governments."
W/S Journalists *CUTAWAY*
SOT, Edward Snowden, whistleblower: "The greatest regret of my life is how easily I was transformed into a tool of factions in my country's government, not even the government itself, but factions within my country's government, who were pursing this neo-conservative and then neo-liberal strategy to dominate the world, and I did this quite unskeptically because I grew up in a culture and in a family that believed the United States government was the greatest force for good in the history of the world."
C/U Journalists *CUTAWAY*
SOT, Edward Snowden, whistleblower: "In a free country you are not supposed to trust a government. The government is always supposed to be fighting a losing battle to persuade the people of a free society that the authority that they seek that the spending they desire, that the policy that they like is necessary, and they should win just by the skin of their teeth, by the tiniest margin, to convince us to agree with them, because then we have a government that only does what it must, then we have a government that does what is necessary to protect the common welfare, right, instead of doing everything that it can."
M/S Presenters *CUTAWAY*
SOT, Edward Snowden, whistleblower: "It's OK for people to have different opinions about what I did. It's OK for people to disagree about whether I'm good or bad guy. These disagreements are actually important, they are useful for democracy, because our disagreements produce better outcomes. It is that conversation, it is that argument that allows us to distant the truth from the false, the fact from the feeling, and we live in a time unfortunately where feelings have become so much more important than facts."
W/S Journalists *CUTAWAY*
SOT, Edward Snowden, whistleblower: "It is the press's role in free society to make the government uncomfortable and if the government wants to say the work of journalism is dangerous, if it wants to say the things that a whistleblower says are dangerous or have caused harm, I would hope that in at least six years they could show us evidence for it."
W/S Auditorium
SCRIPT
National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden presented his new book 'Permanent Record' via video link from an unknown location in Russia on Tuesday.
In an interview with German journalist Holger Stark from Berlin, Snowden answered a number of questions regarding his life in Russia, the role of the press in a free society and the relationship between the people and their governments.
The US government filed a civil lawsuit against Snowden on Tuesday over the publication of the memoir. While it does not seek to block publication, the suit aims to recover all proceeds earned.
Snowden, 36, is a former CIA intelligence officer who leak top secret documents on global surveillance programmes run by American and British spy agencies to media outlets. He currently lives in exile in Moscow.