“If I defected at all, I defected from the government to the public.”

That’s just one of the striking things NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden told the Washington Post’s Barton Gellman during two-days of “near constant conversation” in a hotel room in Russia—a rare person-to-person interview with the man who has rocked the world by revealing vast details about how the most powerful spy agencies in the world use clandestine technologies to gaze on an increasingly digitized and interconnected population.

“I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.” –Edward Snowden

In perhaps the most telling exchange, Snowden explained to Gellman that as far as he is concerned, the global conversation that the revelations have made possible has made all the risks to his personal welfare worth it.

“For me, in terms of personal satisfaction, the mission’s already accomplished,” Snowden said. “I already won. As soon as the journalists were able to work, everything that I had been trying to do was validated. Because, remember, I didn’t want to change society. I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself.”

“All I wanted was for the public to be able to have a say in how they are governed,” he said. “That is a milestone we left a long time ago.”

What follows is a few choice selections from Gellman’s piece and direct quotes from Snowden. For the entire story, go here.

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