Fugitive leaker Edward Snowden has hit back at critics in the United Sates who claim that his life in Russia is "miserable" and that he will turn to drinking to numb the pain of loneliness and boredom.
"Russia’s great," the disgraced former National Security Agency contractor said in an interview filmed seven months ago, which will air soon on PBS,
according to Nova Next.
"Mike Hayden, former NSA, CIA director … as talking about how I was
— everybody in Russia is
— miserable," Snowden said. "And I'm going to end up miserable, and I'm going to be a drunk and I'm never going to do anything.
“I don't drink. I've never been drunk in my life. And they talk about Russia like it's the worst place on earth. Russia’s great!"
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Snowden has leaked thousands of pages classified agency documents to the media, and some critics have suggested that he has passed on U.S. secrets to the Russian government, which has given him temporary asylum in the country.
In his extensive interview in a Moscow hotel room, Snowden mainly talked about America’s cybersecurity, saying the U.S. is poorly equipped to handle cyberattacks from foreign governments or from sophisticated hackers,
according to the National Journal.
Snowden, in fact, blamed the U.S. for creating the international cyberterrorism environment that resulted in North Korea allegedly targeting Sony in retaliation for producing the controversial film comedy "The interview," in which the country’s leader is blown up.
"We're creating a system of incentives in our country and for other countries around the world that mimic our behavior or that see it as a tacit authorization for them to perform the same sort of operations," Snowden told Nova Next journalist James Bamford.
"We're creating a class of Internet security researchers who research vulnerabilities, but then instead of disclosing them to the device manufacturers to get them fixed and to make us more secure, they sell them to secret agencies."
Snowden pointed out that the U.S. used the so-called "Stuxnet virus" in 2010 to cripple an Iranian nuclear facility, which "started this trend" of governments launching cyberattacks against each another, according to the Journal.
Snowden has been living in Russia since he fled from the U.S. to Hong Kong after he leaked secret documents in 2013 revealing the NSA's mass surveillance programs, including its bulk collection of U.S. phone and Internet data.
Created in 2012, Nova Next says it features in-depth articles on science and technology from some of the most respected journalists, scientists, and engineers in the country.