"All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me," Snowden wrote in a live online chat with the Guardian on Monday. "Truth is coming, and it cannot be stopped.

The 29-year-old former defense contractor, who exposed the National Security Agency's massive domestic surveillance program after fleeing the United States, answered a series of questions submitted through the Guardian's website and Twitter (hashtag #AskSnowden).

First, Snowden stressed that his controversial leaks did not reveal any U.S. "operations against legitimate military targets":

I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries—the majority of them are our allies—but without asking for public permission, NSA is running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is meaningless.

He was asked how many copies of the NSA documents he made, and "if anything happens to you, do they still exist?"

[Related: Is Edward Snowden a hero or traitor? ]

According to the U.K. newspaper, the hour-and-a-half chat was subject to Snowden's "security concerns and also his access to a secure Internet connection." Snowden did not disclose his location.

Earlier this month, Snowden was interviewed by the Guardian's Glenn Greenwald in his hotel room in Hong Kong. After the paper revealed his identity (at his request), he reportedly checked out of the hotel and went into hiding.

"I carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that each was legitimately in the public interest," Snowden said in his original interview. "There are all sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."

On Monday, Snowden was asked if he was "suggesting that Manning indiscriminately dumped secrets into the hands of WikiLeaks" and intended to harm people. Bradley Manning, whose trial by court-martial is in its third week, is a former Army intelligence analyst charged with aiding the enemy.

"No, I'm not," Snowden responded. "WikiLeaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the argument that 'documents were dumped' to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a valid assertion here."

[Also read: NSA whistle-blower’s girlfriend feels ‘adrift’ ]

He was asked to elaborate on how much "direct access" the NSA had to phone-call records and if analysts could listen to the content of domestic calls without a warrant.

"The reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on—it's all the same," Snowden replied. "The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications."

Under authorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, Snowden continued, "Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as 'incidental' collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the content of your communications":

All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets saved for a very long time—and can be extended further with waivers rather than warrants.

Snowden was also asked why he did not fly directly to Iceland, where he told the Guardian he would have preferred to seek asylum:

Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration.

Snowden, who said he had not had contact with the Chinese, scoffed at speculation that he would provide classified information to the Chinese or other governments in exchange for asylum.

"This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US media has a knee-jerk 'RED CHINA!' reaction to anything involving [Hong Kong] or the [People's Republic of China] and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct," Snowden replied. "Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now."

He also responded to the argument, made by U.S. officials, that the NSA spy program has foiled dozens of terror plots:

Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

Snowden thinks his revelation of the NSA spy program gives President Barack Obama "an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it."

Snowden added that he's become disillusioned with the public debate over his leak:

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

斯諾登：美國“不能覆蓋監禁或謀殺我

愛德華 斯諾登，美國最想要的舉報人說，他透露政府間諜程序的真相最終將出來，無論什麼發生在他身上。

我可以說，現在是美國政府不會是能夠覆蓋監禁或謀殺我，斯諾登寫道：與衛報上週一在一個實時在線聊天。 真理就要來了，它不能被停止。

今年29歲的前國防承包商，誰暴露後逃離美國國家安全局的龐大的國內監控計劃，回答了一系列問題通過衛報的網站和Twitter（包括hashtag＃AskSnowden）的提交。

首先，斯諾登強調的，他有爭議的洩漏，沒有發現任何美國的;合法的軍事目標的行動，打擊：

我曾指出，NSA已經砍死民用基礎設施，如大學，醫院和民營企業，因為它是危險的。這些赤裸裸的犯罪行為，積極不管目標是錯誤的。不僅如此，當國家安全局作出技術性的錯誤剝削操作過程中，關鍵的系統崩潰。國會已經沒有宣戰的國家，其中大部分是我們的盟友，但不要求公共許可，NSA正在運行網絡運營對他們影響數百萬無辜人民。為了什麼？因此，我們可以有秘密訪問計算機的國家，我們甚至還沒有戰鬥？所以，我們有可能揭示了潛在的恐怖的潛力比我們自己的警察殺死美國人少？ ，公眾需要知道的事情是政府確實在其名稱中，或同意的管轄，是沒有意義的。

有人問他多少他NSA的文件副本，如​​果有什麼發生在你身上，它們仍然存在嗎？

[相關閱讀：愛德華·斯諾登是英雄還是叛徒？]

據英國報紙，一小時和半聊天是斯諾登的安全顧慮，也是他獲得一個安全的互聯網連接。斯諾登沒有透露他的位置。

本月早些時候，斯諾登在他的旅館房間在香港接受衛報的格倫 格林沃爾德。揭示了他的身份（在他的要求）後，據說他簽出了酒店，並躲了起來。

我仔細評估，我說出了每一個單一的文件，以確保每個在公共利益的合法，斯諾登說，在他原來的採訪。 有各種不同的文檔，已經取得了很大的影響，我沒有改過，因為傷害的人是不是我的目標。透明度。

週一，有人問他是否是曼寧不分青紅皂白地傾倒到維基解密手中的秘密，並無意傷害人斯諾登。布拉德利 曼寧，軍事法庭的審判是在它的第三個星期，是前陸軍情報分析員被控通敵。

不，我不斯諾登回應。維基解密是一個合法的新聞出口，他們仔細節錄所有版本根據公共利益的判決。電纜未編輯的版本，是由於合作夥伴記者未能控制密碼。不過，我知道，許多媒體網點使用的參數文件被傾倒塗抹曼寧，想明確表示，這不是一個有效的斷言。

[相關閱讀：NSA舉報人的女友覺得'漂泊']

有人問他闡述多少直接進入國家安全局的電話呼叫記錄，如果分析家們聽取國內電話，無須手令的內容。

現實情況是這樣的：如果國家安全局，聯邦調查局，中央情報局，DIA，等分析師查詢原料SIGINT數據庫的訪問，他們可以進入任何他們想要得到的結果。電話號碼，電子郵件，用戶ID，手機聽筒ID（ IMEI），等等，這都是一樣的，斯諾登回答。 對這種限制的政策基礎，而不是基於技術，可以在任何時候改變。此外，審計是走馬看花，不完整，容易上當假的理由。

斯諾登外國情報監視法的授權下，繼續說，美國人的通信的分析師的認證，而不是權證每天的基礎上收集和查看他們藉口這是'偶然'的集合，但在結束一天，有人在NSA仍然有您的通訊內容

所有。 IP地址，原始數據，內容，標題，附件，應有盡有。它被保存了很長的時間，並且可以進一步延長豁免，而不是權證。

斯諾登也有人問他為什麼不直接飛到冰島，在那裡他告訴衛報，他寧願尋求庇護：

離開美國是一個令人難以置信的風險，因為國家安全局員工必須申報國外旅行提前30天進行監視。我會在途中被停職是一個明顯的可能性，所以我不得不去旅行沒有提前預訂一個國家的文化和法律框架，讓我的工作沒有被當即扣留。香港規定。冰島可以推更難，更快，在公眾面前有一個機會，使他們的感情，我不會把目前美國政府過去。

斯諾登說，他沒有與中國的接觸，在猜測，他會提供分類信息，以換取中國政府或其他庇護嗤之以鼻。

這是一個可預見的塗抹，我預計在上市之前，美國媒體有下意識的'中國紅'！反應任何涉及[香港]或[中華民國]，目的是分散的問題，美國政府的不當行為，斯諾登回答。 問問自己：如果我是一個中國的間諜，為什麼不會我已經直接空運到北京，我可以住在皇宮現在撫摸鳳凰。

他還回應，美國官員的說法，即的NSA間諜程序已經挫敗了數十名恐怖陰謀：

記者應該問一個具體的問題，因為這些程序開始運行後不久，9月11日，多少完全被阻止恐怖襲擊的來自這個suspicionless監控信息無法通過任何其他來源獲得？然後問多少個人通信攝入acheive，並問自己，如果它是值得的。浴缸下降和警察殺死更多的美國人比恐怖主義，但我們已經被要求犧牲我們最神聖的權利，生怕犧牲品。

斯諾登認為他的啟示的NSA間諜程序給奧巴馬總統“的機會呼籲回歸理智，憲法的政策，規則的法律而不是男人，他仍然有足夠的時間來名垂青史作為主席看著入深淵，退後幾步，而不是躍進。“

斯諾登說，他已經成為幻滅與他的洩漏的公開辯論：

最初我是很鼓勵。不幸的是，現在的主流媒體似乎更感興趣的是什麼，我說，當我17歲時看起來像我的女朋友，而不是，比方說，計劃中規模最大在人類歷史suspicionless監測。