"The Stuff I Saw Really Began to Disturb Me": How the U.S. Drone War Pushed Snowden to Leak NSA Docs

In his new book, "No Place to Hide," journalist Glenn Greenwald provides new details on Edward Snowden's personal story and his motivation to expose the U.S. surveillance state. "The stuff I saw really began to disturb me. I could watch drones in real time as they surveilled the people they might kill," Snowden told Greenwald about his time as a National Security Agency contractor. "You could watch entire villages and see what everyone was doing. I watched NSA tracking people's Internet activities as they typed. I became aware of just invasive U.S. surveillance capabilities had become. I realized the true breadth of this system. And almost nobody knew it was happening."

Greenwald joins us in studio to describe the inside story of the man behind the NSA leaks. "The fact that this individual with no power was knowingly risking everything in his life for a political cause, and really ended up changing the world, I think is a remarkable lesson for everybody," Greenwald says. "It's certainly something that's inspired me and has shaped how I think about things -- and probably will for the rest of my life."

Watch the full interview with Glenn Greenwald, as well as all Democracy Now! interviews with him over the past year:

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