NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has commented on some of the latest surveillance news in an interview with James Bamford, who is currently working on a new cyber warfare film called NOVA.

On the topic of new NSA director Michael S. Rodgers claiming the leaked information from Snowden did not cause major issues, he replied that the only people claiming the information was damaging "were the officials that were personally embarrassed by it. For example, the chairs of the oversight committees in Congress, the former NSA director [Keith Alexander] himself."

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Keith Alexander, the previous NSA director, claimed the Snowden leaks would cause huge damage to U.S. security, but so far there has been no evidence of a connection between the leaked information and the severity of attacks.

However, Snowden does see more government hacking groups sprouting up due to the U.S. involvement in the nuclear program in Iran, saying "it is important to highlight that we really started this trend in many ways when we launched the Stuxnet campaign against the Iranian nuclear program.

"It actually kicked off a response, sort of retaliatory action from Iran, where they realized they had been caught unprepared," he said "The Iranians targeted open commercial companies of U.S. allies. Saudi Aramco, the oil company there - they sent what's called a wiper virus, which is actually sort of a Fisher Price, baby's first hack kind of a cyber-campaign."

Iran has been reported to have launched attacks on 18 nations during the past two years, using a hacking group based in Tehran to launch cyber warfare against oil, infrastructure, banking and other private sector organizations.

To Snowden, this is all due to the U.S. enforcing the rules, allowing other countries to follow them and attack their neighbors, he goes on to say " I do agree that when it comes to cyber warfare, we have more to lose than any other nation on earth.

"The technical sector is the backbone of the American economy, and if we start engaging in these kind of behaviors, in these kind of attacks, we're setting a standard, we're creating a new international norm of behavior that says this is what nations do. This is what developed nations do. This is what democratic nations do. So other countries that don't have as much respect for the rules as we do will go even further."

The full article and video highlights are available at Nova Next, although the video appears to have been taken down.

TagsEdward Snowden, U.S. Government, cyber crime, online black market