Edward Snowden says he has 'no regrets' five years after he leaked reams of classified NSA data to the press.

Snowden, who now lives in exile in Russia, believes 'everything has changed' since he exposed government schemes to collect phone data from millions of people.

While he acknowledges that mass surveillance still exists, he says now that people know about it they are beginning to fight back.

Edward Snowden says he has 'no regrets' about leaking classified NSA data to the press, five years after he exposed shadowy government surveillance schemes

Speaking to The Guardian, Snowden said: 'People say nothing has changed: that there is still mass surveillance. That is not how you measure change. Look back before 2013 and look at what has happened since. Everything changed.

'The government and corporate sector preyed on our ignorance. But now we know. People are aware now. People are still powerless to stop it but we are trying. The revelations made the fight more even.'

Asked if he had any regrets he said 'no', before adding: 'If I had wanted to be safe, I would not have left Hawaii.'

Hawaii is where Snowden was living while he worked as a contractor for the NSA.

It was there that he acquired the data he would later leak, before fleeing America for Hong Kong and subsequently settling in Russia.

In response to the anniversary Jeremy Fleming, head of British spy agency GCHQ, renewed calls for Snowden to be 'accountable' for his actions.

He said: 'What Edward Snowden did five years ago was illegal and compromised our ability to do that, causing real and unnecessary damage to the security of the UK and our allies. He should be accountable for that.'

Snowden says 'everything changed' following the leak and while he admits that government surveillance still exists, he says people are now fighting back because they are aware of it

Meanwhile intelligence chiefs in America have also renewed their criticisms of Snowden, saying that his leaks will continue to cause problems for years to come.

Revelations from the documents Snowden leaked are still emerging, including recent reports on a mass surveillance program run by close US ally Japan.

A further report revealed how the NSA targeted bitcoin users to gather intelligence to support counterterrorism and to combat narcotics and money laundering.

Both pieces were run by The Intercept, an investigative publication run by Glenn Greenwald, the former Guardian journalist who helped publish the original leak.

A top U.S. counterintelligence official said journalists have released only about 1 per cent of the data taken by the 34-year-old American.

'This past year, we had more international, Snowden-related documents and breaches than ever,' Bill Evanina, who directs the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said at a recent conference.

'Since 2013, when Snowden left, there have been thousands of articles around the world with really sensitive stuff that's been leaked.'

On June 5, 2013, the first story based on Snowden's disclosures appeared.

It revealed that a secret court order was allowing the U.S. government to get Verizon to share the phone records of millions of Americans.

Later stories, including those in The Washington Post, disclosed other snooping and how U.S. and British spy agencies had accessed information from cables carrying the world's telephone and internet traffic.

Snowden's defenders maintain that the U.S. government has for years exaggerated the damage his disclosures caused.

Greenwald said there are 'thousands upon thousands of documents' that journalists have chosen not to publish because they would harm peoples' reputation or privacy rights or because it would expose 'legitimate surveillance programs.'

'It's been almost five years since newspapers around the world began reporting on the Snowden archive and the NSA has offered all kinds of shrill and reckless rhetoric about the "damage" it has caused, but never any evidence of a single case of a life being endangered let alone harmed,' Greenwald said.

U.S. intelligence officials say they are still counting the cost of his disclosures that went beyond actual intelligence collected to how it was collected.

Evanina said intelligence agencies are finishing their seventh classified assessment of the damage.