In a Christmas Day message broadcast on British television's Channel 4, Snowden alleged that NSA surveillance had surpassed the intrusive activities of the Big Brother, dystopian state in George Orwell's 鈥�1984." The message came just two days after The Washington Post's published a story after a 14-hour interview with Snowden, who remained in Russia on temporary asylum. In that interview, Snowden told the Post he had "already won" against the NSA and its British parallel since journalists were telling, and would continue to tell, the stories he had hoped would be told when he turned over NSA documents to them.
Why is this important? The two-minute, Dec. 25 message and the Post interview both confirmed Snowden's continued celebrity and his central position to the scandal that has unfolded around the revelations he had handed to the Guardian. The parallels that Snowden drew between the US and British governments and Big Brother were also embarrassing to both nations and were a rebuttal to the countries' insistence that the NSA and the British equivalent had committed no wrongdoing.
