Edward Snowden, the whistleblower who leaked secret information of the National Surveillance Agency, addressed the issue of government over-classifying information in a recorded video to Oxford University students, Wednesday.

Governments in the West have kept several facts, figures and activities in secrecy that is damaging democracy, Snowden told the students attending the award ceremony for Chelsea Manning, the US Army private, who was given 35 years of imprisonment for revealing secret information to WikiLeaks.

"I'm going to comment general on an issue that she raised to public prominence, that's very important but less well acknowledged," said Snowden. "That issue is over-classification."

"Over-classification, where the government uses the state's secrets privilege to withhold information from the public that's not related to national security and is otherwise unjustified, has been a serious problem," he said.

He also said that the White House told them that 95 million records were created and classified in 2012. This was more than any other year on record, reports The Independent. "Many other western governments are on the same trajectory," he argued. Snowden also said the Western nations were keeping more secrets than even ever. For instance, such secrets include a ruling by Australia that stated the price of shrimps and clove cigarettes in Indonesia are a "matter of national security."

The 30-year-old fugitive, who is under temporary asylum in Russia, said that the revelations Manning made to WikiLeaks were absolutely necessary for public ends. "How can we vote without evidence of the true costs of the wars in which we are involved?" he asked. "It's this self correcting, self determining form of unapologetically American government in which Chelsea Manning so valuably participated," he said.

"The foundation of democracy is the consent of the governed. After all, we cannot consent to programmes and policies about which we are never informed. The decline of democracy begins when the domain of government expands beyond the borders of its public's knowledge."

Recently, a memo released by NSA to chief Congress members stated that Snowden received help from a NSA employee to get access to the classified documents.