Snowden Makes Distinction Between Himself and Assange in Vanity Fair Interview

The May edition of Vanity Fair,
available online to subscribers on Friday, includes
“a 20,000-word narrative” on NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.
Vanity Fair’s website has a preview of some of the
responses Snowden gave to the magazine for the article.

Among the more interesting responses Snowden gave to Vanity
Fair’s questions are those that relate to his politics and how
he sees himself as different from Wikileak’s Julian Assange.

From
Vanity Fair:

On the crucial ways he differs from WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange: “We don’t share identical politics. I am
not anti-secrecy. I’m pro-accountability. I’ve made many statements
indicating both the importance of secrecy and spying, and my
support for the working-level people at the N.S.A. and other
agencies. It’s the senior officials you have to watch out for.”

While both Snowden and Assange have been hailed as heroes by
those who favor less transparency and more accountability, both
have demonstrated different attitudes about the possible impact
their leaked information could have. Snowden has said he is working
with journalists who are
using their discretion in deciding what parts of the leaked
information should be published.
Glenn Greenwald, who has reported on the Snowden leaks, pointed
out last month that Snowden could have uploaded all of the
documents online himself:

When Snowden furnished documents to the journalists with whom he
chose to work (which, just by the way, expressly did not
include the NYT), he made clear that he did not
believe all of those materials should be published. Obviously, if
he wanted all of those documents published, he could have and would
have just uploaded them to the internet himself; he wouldn’t have
needed to work with journalists.

Assange does not have the same attitude towards discretion. When
a reporter expressed concern about Wikileaks publishing documents
from the State Department that included the names of Afghans who
had cooperated with Americans Assange simply
reportedly replied, “So, if they get killed, they’ve got it
coming to them. They deserve it.”

Although Snowden did make a distinction between himself and
Assange when it comes to politics, he also told Vanity
Fair he admires Wikileaks:

They run toward the risks everyone else runs away from. No other
publisher in the world is prepared to commit to protecting
sources—even other journalists’ sources—the way WikiLeaks is.

Snowden, who donated hundreds of dollars to
Ron Paul‘s presidential campaign in 2012, also told Vanity
Fair that he would describe his political thought as
“moderate.”

The preview of Vanity Fair‘s article ends with a
description of how Snowden, who is currently in Russia, told a
German politician that he would like to be granted asylum in
Germany or “another democratic state.” Snowden’s temporary one-year
asylum in Russia ends in June,
although Russian lawmaker Alexy Pushkov, who is the head of the
Foreign Affairs Committee in the Duma, has said that Russia
will extend asylum protections.