Screenshot of the encrypted video interview with Edward Snowden. Think Inc co-founder Suzi Jamil (bottom right) was the intermediary putting Fairfax Media's questions to the US whistleblower who is holed up in Russia. "I don't see myself as such a personally significant figure," he told The Age. The journalists to whom he first passed his copied information, he said, were the truly important figures in the story, because they were "in contest with the government for what we should know, for what we should be allowed to know." "I was simply the mechanism of disclosure," he added. "And I never published a single document." In so saying he's being disingenuous, of course, but from whence does his elision spring? Is it from modesty, or humility, perhaps an understandable desire to keep his cards near his chest? Or is it, ironically enough, because these days Edward Snowden, the champion of free speech, needs to stick pretty closely to a script?

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, at present living somewhere in Russia. Credit:Getty Over the past 12 months, while living at his undisclosed location in Russia, Snowden has spoken a few times with media. In February, he even zapped in via video link to a libertarian forum in New Hampshire. He will do the same in Australia in May, in a series of capital city talks put together by Sydney-based "edu-tainment" event organisers, Think Inc. Like many aspects of Snowden's profile, however, these interviews invite differing interpretations. One is that they represent extensions of Snowden's continuing activism in the field of civil liberties. Another is that for a man charged with espionage by a country with a history of suspect rendition, black prison sites, enhanced interrogation techniques and covert assassinations, hiding in plain sight is a bloody good idea. Defend your privacy: Snowden is calling on people to protect their rights online. Credit:Reuters Certainly, it's crossed his mind that his biography might end early.

"If something happens to me tomorrow, if I get hit by a bus, or mysteriously fall downstairs, or simply disappear, that's obviously not something I'm hoping for," he said. Snowden leaked US internet and phone monitoring details. Credit:AFP via AAP/The Guardian "But it's something I'm prepared to accept. The nature of liberty, of being truly free, is founded on a willingness to accept risk. Of course there could be a backlash. Of course, there could be some crazy person, or government, who tries to take direct action – but all they'll do is prove my own point." Few people, if any, would call Edward Snowden "truly free", even given his oddly utopian assertion in a previous exchange in which he said his physical location was unimportant because he "lives on the internet". He relies on the largesse of Vladimir Putin for continued asylum. He has no US passport. Most countries to which he has applied for permanent asylum have refused. The charges he faces under the US Espionage Act carry prison sentences of up to three decades. The trial would be held in secret. New York City Parks workers remove a moulded bust of Snowden that was erected by a group of anonymous artists in 2015. Credit:Reuters

Talking to him involves a series of hoops and cut-outs. In the case of this interview, discussions between Snowden, his lawyer, and Think Inc started the process. Suzi Jamil, one half of Think Inc, then approached this reporter – by phone only; nothing was to be put in writing. Interest was confirmed, but the timing remained open for weeks: the decision to talk was Snowden's and Snowden's alone. Questions were demanded in advance, drafted, and provided to Think Inc, which in turn sent them to Snowden and his lawyer. He would choose five, we were told – although in the event he answered 10, and talked for a generous 90 minutes. Snowden receiving the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence Award (SAAII) alongside UK WikiLeaks journalist Sarah Harrison (second from right) who took Snowden from Hong Kong to Moscow and obtained his asylum, and the United States government whistleblowers who presented the award, Coleen Rowley (FBI), Thomas Drake (NSA), Jesselyn Raddack (Department of Justice) and Ray McGovern (CIA) in October 2013 in Russia. Credit:Getty Images On no account would he speak directly to the reporter. The questions had to be asked by a trusted intermediary. The interview, with Jamil asking the questions and recording the results, took place via a Google Hangout (he refuses to use Skype). It can be assumed the call was rerouted through an anonymising service such as Tor. If the US National Security Agency or ASIO were listening in, the spooks would be unable to trace the contact back to his current place of residence.

A protester carries a picture of Snowden with the German word for ''asylum'' during a 2013 protest in Berlin. Credit:Getty Such a level of paranoia is understandable, whether or not one views his actions as admirable whistle-blowing or damnable treason. The bleak fate of Chelsea Manning and the parlous living arrangements of Julian Assange must serve as graphic examples of what can happen when you get on the wrong side of the American spy guys. Unlike Manning and Assange, however, Snowden says he doesn't find his new life difficult. Passengers eat at a cafe with a TV screen showing a news program report on Snowden, in the background, at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow. Credit:AP "My psychological strength is very strong," he said. "Of course I paid a price, though. I was living an extraordinarily comfortable and privileged life. Nobody in the world knew my name."

When he downloaded his explosive collection of secret documents he was living in Hawaii. Before that, he spent time as a CIA employee in Geneva, and then as an NSA operative in Tokyo. Throughout, he said, he was "extraordinarily well paid, for very little work." Think Inc founders Desh Amila (left) and Suzi Jamil found some companies were worried about being associated with US whisteblower Edward Snowden's virtual tour of Australia. Credit:Peter Rae "I was living with the woman that I loved, surrounded by friends, able to contact my family freely. And you have to ask yourself, when you have everything that you've ever wanted, what would it take, how bad would it have to get, for you to light a match and burn it all to the ground?" It's plain that he has asked that question many times. When he answers himself, it has the ring of practised testimony. "We all have a line, a level of incivility and inhumanity and injustice that we can tolerate," he said. "And there's that one step beyond to that point that we can't tolerate. I found my line.

"Despite that, despite the things that I've lost, I'm more connected today than I've ever been. My family supports me, and, despite the global manhunt, I'm still with the same woman. I can go to sleep at night proud of the work I did during the day." He pauses a lot when he talks. They are long lacunae – 15, 20 seconds of dead air at a time – and when he speaks again he rarely smiles and almost never laughs. He looks away from the camera a lot. When he hits his stride, however, he has a natural rhythm, and perhaps a well-rehearsed collection of responses, that lend his words a definite oratorical air. This comes to the fore particularly when he talks about internet activism. He notes, for instance, that "governments will always have a political incentive to control speech" online. "This leads inevitably to a context of diminishing liberties, diminishing freedoms, because the public commons becomes more regulated over time," he said. "It's sort of a death by a thousand cuts, because exceptions are carved out until you can only stand and speak in a particular way. If we can provide a platform for public discussion even in the most closed-off and repressive regimes, what we are building is a foundation for liberty that is irrevocable without regard to time and tide."

Indeed, it is when talking about the internet that he reveals a belief in a kind of technologically-mediated freedom that is dramatically at odds with the evidence of widespread online surveillance that his actions revealed. While condemning the spying, he remains an apologist for the structure that enabled it. "You can abuse any tool. We don't set the value of our tools based on whether or not they've ever been abused," he said. "There is a global cohort of skilled and technical people developing new technical means of enforcing human rights across borders without regard to jurisdictions. The aim is to guarantee the same rights that are recognised in countries such as Australia or France to, for instance, a young woman growing up in central Africa." The dream that somehow the internet can transform human rights and bring about equal, uniform enfranchisement across the globe is pervasive, and seems touchingly innocent. It also provides an ethical framework through which to interpret Snowden's theft of thousands of secret documents. But there are other frameworks available, too. In a book published last month, Michael Hayden, retired director of both the NSA and CIA, described Snowden as "an incredibly ​naive, hopelessly narcissistic and insufferably self-important defector."

The evidence suggests that in one respect, at least, Hayden is wrong. Snowden has not defected to Russia; he has unsuccessfully applied for asylum to more than a dozen countries, many in South America. He is on record as saying he would return to the US and take his chances with the legal system if he wasn't facing charges that prevented him testifying in public. (One of the few times he chuckles during the interview is when he recounts that the only guarantee he has received from the US is the assurance that he won't be tortured.) Hayden's allegation of naivety, however, perhaps strikes a chord, especially in the matter of Snowden's desired "global cohort" of self-described and self-appointed human rights monitors happy to operate "without regard to jurisdictions." It doesn't take a lot to imagine such a body inviting much the same kind of objection that Snowden makes about today's globally interlinked and legally questionable state-sponsored security agencies. "You see programs and policies that were ​publicly justified on the basis of preventing terrorism – which we all want – in fact being used for very different purposes," he said. "This raises a question. It suggests that abuse is the natural by-product of power in the same way that pollution is the by-product of industry. This is not a new or novel occurrence. It's recognised in the language of our public discourse. It's the reason our leaders are called public officials and we are called private citizens."

During the interview, he often framed his arguments in terms of the liberty of the individual and its progressive erosion by the state. Without guaranteed rights, he said, government "starts to look less like the rule of law and more like the rule of men." The position constitutes a further irony. In his libertarian argument he puts himself (perhaps unintentionally) in close proximity to the Tea Party loud-mouths who frame their gun-toting notion of freedom around getting governments out of the affairs of individuals – and who regard him as a traitor. "Increasingly," he said, "we're seeing that we the public – we, the people – are becoming more and more transparent to government, but at the same time it is becoming more and more opaque to us." Snowden has always maintained that in reality there is no great philosophical distance between him and those at the highest levels of the US government entrusted with safeguarding his nation's constitution. Perhaps he is right – and perhaps, in that position, he is not quite the hero of the left he is often thought to be. Regardless, as the catalyst for the post-Snowden era of surveillance and suspicion, he can't be ignored. It seems vanishingly unlikely that he, Assange and Manning will ever be able to meet up in a Manhattan bar for a beer or two – or, perhaps more poignantly, that he will ever again sit down in his dad's house for Thanksgiving.

If the cost of his actions has been too high in personal terms, however, he isn't about to admit it any time soon. "People ask me, would you do it again," he said, "and I say, yes, absolutely. Not only would I do it again, I regret I didn't do it sooner." An Evening With Edward Snowden Fri, May 20: Riverside Theatre, Perth Sat, May 21: Adelaide Convention Centre, Adelaide

Sun, May 22: The Plenary, MCED, Melbourne Fri, May 27: Courier Mail Piazza, Brisbane Sat, May 28: Hordern Pavilion, Sydney Sun, May 29: Llewelyn Hall, Canberra When the whistle blew

July, 2010: Chelsea (then, Bradley) Manning, an intelligence analyst based in Baghdad, is charged by the US military, which alleges he provided classified documents to Wikileaks. June, 2011: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange seeks refuge in London's Ecuadorean embassy, and requests asylum. February, 2013: Manning pleads guilty to misusing classified information and is jailed. June 5, 2013: The Guardian newspaper reveals that the US NSA has been secretly collecting millions of telephone records. June 9, 2013: Edward Snowden, having fled to Hong Kong from Hawaii, outs himself as the source for the Guardian story.

June 14, 2013: The US charges Snowden with theft of government property and a warrant is issued for his arrest. Snowden attempts to flee to South America, but finds himself effectively trapped in Moscow Airport after the US cancels his passport mid-flight. July, 2013: Vladimir Putin provides Snowden with a one year temporary residence visa. It is later extended to three years. February, 2016: The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention rules that Assange has been arbitrarily detained, and calls for the UK to pay him compensation. David Cameron ridicules the judgment and refuses to guarantee the Wikileaks' founder's safe passage from the embassy, where he remains.