Edward Snowden appears at TED via telepresence robot

Justin Kahn

Posts: 752   +6

NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at the TED Conference in Vancouver yesterday. Snowden didn't appear in person, as he is still in Russia where he has been granted asylum for one year, he spoke via a robotic mobile camera system from overseas.

"I am living proof that an individual can go head to head with the most powerful intelligence agencies around the world — and win," Snowden said.

Snowden was joined by chief of TED Chris Anderson and later, the father of the internet Tim Berners-Lee, to answer a number of questions on the state of the internet along with how Snowden is coping with his current situation.

Based on a transcript of the talk, Snowden said that Americans who haven't done anything wrong should still be very concerned about the clandestine activities being perpetrated by various intelligence groups. "In democratic societies around the world, people should be able to pick up the phone, call family, send text messages to loved one, travel by train, buy an airline ticket — without wondering how those events will look to an agent of government, possibly not even your government but one years in the future," Snowden said. "Trusting any government authority with the entirety of human communications without any oversight is too great a temptation to be ignored.

Snowden clearly has a target on his head right now, the American government wants to prosecute him for espionage and there is said to be various members of the intelligence community that want him dead. "It’s no mystery that there are governments that want to see me dead. I’ve been clear again and again and again, I go to sleep thinking about what I can do for the American people," Snowden explained to Anderson. "I don’t want to harm my government, I want to help them. But the fact that they are willing to completely ignore due process, they are willing to declare guilt without ever seeing a trial, these are things we need to work against as a society."

While many want to quiet the former NSA analyst for good, according to reports of the TED event, the crowd erupted with applause when asked if Snowden made the right choice leaking private agency data. After being called on stage by Anderson, Tim Berners-Lee called Snowden a "hero."

The talk continued with Snowden reiterating the idea that the NSA and agencies of this nature use terrorism as an excuse to spy on innocent civilians and that in a "post 9/11 era, they used secrecy and justification of terrorism to start programs in secret without asking Congress or the American people. Government behind closed doors is what we must guard against."

Snowden also said there is still more revelations to come from the more than 1.7 million documents he acquired from the NSA, especially regarding the agency tricking corporations to open up back doors for them to syphon data through.

The robotic mobile camera system used allowed Snowden to appear on a screen mounted on a robotic pedestal, allowing him to move freely on the stage and view the entire crowd from his location in Russia. It was Suitable Tech's Beam Bot Robot product, according to reports.

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"I am living proof that an individual can go head to head with the most powerful intelligence agencies around the world — and win," Snowden said.
He didn't go head to head with them, he ran. I'm not holding it against him, but that simply is not true. If he had gone head to head with them, we would not have heard anything about it. Which is why he had no choice but to run, if he was to personally stand behind the leak.
 
"I am living proof that an individual can go head to head with the most powerful intelligence agencies around the world — and win," Snowden said.
He didn't go head to head with them, he ran. I'm not holding it against him, but that simply is not true. If he had gone head to head with them, we would not have heard anything about it. Which is why he had no choice but to run, if he was to personally stand behind the leak.

Agreed. Regardless whether you agree or not with what he did, being stuck in Russia on a one year visa with no chance of ever returning to your home country without instant arrest and more than likely significant jail time and calling that "winning" just shows you how clueless this guy is. He most definitely is a legend in his own mind, though.
 
Not personally a fan of the guy simply because of the way he "took on" the gov, he didn't win anything, he's stuck in a foreign country and has to worry about never seeing the morning every night he sleeps. He stole information and ran with it, some of that information might actually be very sensitive to our national security not saying all of it is, but almost 2 million documents... To me anyone who actually bothered to learn any history knows that the US government(or any government) has been doing as it pleases as far as civil intelligence gathering since WWII, you could even say earlier then that, almost since our founding. Many different excuses have been used for it, some of it has helped, most of it was just invasion of privacy. But I am in no way comfortable with a rogue person who stole information then fled the country instead of standing up and fighting, sitting in a country that would like no more then to defame and discredit the United states more then anything else, what was snowden's price for his stay in Russia? The biggest thing I hate more then anything is just how much people believe him anymore, he could say the NSA has UFO's that fly through the center of the earth at mach 27 and listen to your thoughts at night while you sleep and half the country would believe it and be in uproar. If you look you can find the documents he is leaking, but how do we know there legit? Surely if the NSA had all these super powers of technology they could attempt to contain as much of the damage he leaks as possible. But the biggest thing is how do we know anything he shows is legit, I haven't seen many NSA classified documents, I have no idea what modern NSA documents look like, and neither do 99.9% of the rest of the earth. Its a blind faith assumption that everything he is leaking is the truth and he altered it in no way. But that's one of my big things on the internet in general, how do you really know anything someone shows you when trying to prove there point is actually legit, so many things are presented with such vague evidence its astonishing to me when people believe it. The whole thing has started this stupid hysteria where any decent looking leaked gov document must be legit and it tells about some evil plot the gov had a some point. I guess basically the short end of it is this news is getting old, either leak everything and return to your country and "fight" for the Americans citizens, or you will lose all credibility just leaking 1-2 documents a week so you can stay in the spotlight just for a few more seconds before no one cares about you or what you did, and reveal yourself for the narcissistic coward you are.

PS not a huge fan of our gov either, not okay with info gathering and all, but this man should never be called a hero.
 
Don't miss what happens next Monday on "The Whistleblower" starring Edward Snowden...
Am I the only one that sees this as a TV series?

On the other side, its funny to see how it's all evolving, first releasing data once a week, everything was fine for some time, then nobody cared anymore, so he made his first appearance on stream, then after a few weeks again, after few weeks again, seems to be a pattern here, soon he will appear daily or something, and at some point he'll probably even strip on camera just to get some attention, I can already see the headline "Edward Snowden appears naked on camera covered only by NSA stolen documents".

Makes me sad to see this happening in the tech world, there is no difference anymore between a "X superstar made some plastic surgery" and "Edward Snowden releases stunning truths about NSA", and I will chose to go check what X augmented.
 
The biggest thing I hate more then anything is just how much people believe him anymore, he could say the NSA has UFO's that fly through the center of the earth at mach 27 and listen to your thoughts at night while you sleep and half the country would believe it and be in uproar.
Do you suspect, there is no possible way all of what he presented can be true? If not, then why did you bring up UFO's?
 
Snowden reiterating the idea that the NSA and agencies of this nature use terrorism as an excuse to spy on innocent civilians and that in a "post 9/11 era, they used secrecy and justification of terrorism to start programs in secret without asking Congress "
Well.. first off, it's not without asking Congress, but whatever... It’s best to get facts wrong when they don’t agree with your point. The problem with Snowden is he thinks the NSA is the bad guy. This is normally how it goes…. After a terrorist attack we demand safety and we sacrifice freedoms (like taking liquid on an airplane)… after a while there is no terrorism we start to get upset with the invasions of our lives, and we ask for the freedoms back. The politicians go along with whichever way the wind is blowing so they take our sides, and before you know it, the organization that was protecting us is now the bad guy. Meanwhile the terrorists have no problem just waiting the 15 years for this cycle to play out because they literally have nothing better to do with their lives.

If you want a good read on this topic, check out the WIRED article. They actually get to interview some folks at the NSA and their discussion is pretty revealing. After reading it, I didn’t view the NSA as scary any more. And don’t think this is biased…. There isn’t a political agenda out there that is in favor of NSA spying.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2014/01/how-the-us-almost-killed-the-internet/
 
Why does a man from the land of free speech have to leave the country to have the freedom to speak? As many a sentiment expresses, people don't have to listen to him. In fact we can continue to turn a deaf ear and a blind eye to the policy and practice of our government but then is it really a government "by the people"? This all seems to me to be a battle for control and not just control it self but also who retains it.
 
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