Edward Snowden to participate in live Q&A session on January 23rd at 3PM ET

[Justin Kahn]

Edward Snowden, the well known whistleblower that has almost single handedly pushed major US surveillance reform, is now set to make another public appearance with an hour long question and answer session scheduled for tomorrow.

The is the first time Snowden has actively participated in something of this nature since last June. The Q&A is scheduled for January 23rd at 3PM ET. You can tune in over at freesnowden.is tomorrow afternoon.

At the moment, Snowden is still in exile in Russia after traveling there from Hong Kong earlier this year and is still quite hesitant to give interviews of any kind (understandably so). Having said that, the whistleblower has become more open to speaking out as of late, having given quite a deep and involved interview just last month with The Washington Post and then appearing on UK television to give an alternate Christmas address pertaining to "indiscriminate surveillance."

He has recently dismissed claims that he is some kind of Russian spy during an interview with The New Yorker. Snowden says this "‘Russian spy’ push is absurd” and that "outlets report statements that the speakers themselves admit are sheer speculation."

The session will run for about an hour tomorrow, the public can submit questions via Twitter using the hashtag: #AskSnowden. Apparently his answers will appear later on freesnowden.is/asksnowden, so even though it is scheduled as a live Q&A, it is unclear whether or not Snowden will answers questions live as well or not.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/55415-edward-snowden-to-participate-in-live-qa-session-on-january-23rd-at-3pm-et.html

 

[MilwaukeeMike]

Wow is this story full of bogus facts...

Edward Snowden, the well known whistleblower that has almost single handedly pushed major US surveillance reform.

He's not a whisleblower. A whistleblower is someone who exposes illegal activity. What the NSA has been doing is perfectly legal. Yes, that probably makes the spying worse, but no one from the NSA will end up paying a fine, going to jail, or even getting fired after all this.

At the moment, Snowden is still in exile in Russia after traveling there from Hong Kong earlier this year and is still quite hesitant to give interviews of any kind

He's not in exile either. He went to Russia on his own choice. Granted, the Russians may keep him if he were to try to leave, but he wasn't kicked out of the US. In fact, I'm pretty sure the US would love to have him back.

And the website is called freesnowden?! From what? Is he locked up?

 

[Ranger12]

My prediction is the website crashes, hard. Would love to know how many people they are planning on being able to serve at once.

That being said, I think this comment section will get pretty entertaining. Queue the Snowden debate!

 

[Guest]

In fact, I'm pretty sure the US would love to have him back.

Absolutely, to give him the Bradly Manning treatement.

 

[Guest]

Don't be obtuse, we all know what they mean

 

[Ranger12]

Absolutely, to give him the Bradly Manning treatement.

*Chelsea Manning

 

[Guest]

*Chelsea Manning

Very important, thank you.

 

[davislane1]

The Bradley Manning treatment isn't necessarily a bad thing if you can get placed in the female population without getting sliced up first. In fact, some might even call that situation desirable.

On a serious note, this Q&A session smells of publicity stunt to me. Answering tweets for an hour won't achieve anything useful beyond giving politics junkies a bone to chew on for a few weeks.

 

[cmbjive]

If the Russian spy comment is absurd why did he purposely fly to Russia after leaving Hong Kong?

 

[Guest]

Traitor... If he wanted to expose the NSA he could have done so without dumping information to China and Russia. The reality is that he put many American lives at risk. Could he have achieved the same level of exposing the NSA spying on Americans without compromising our nation? Yes - he could have achieved political asylum in a country where he would have been protected and worked with US authorities to expose the dangers of tracking innocent Americans and at the same time not provide information to our adversaries who found a treasure trove thanks to Snowden. Yes, he is a traitor.

 

[cliffordcooley]

The reality is that he put many American lives at risk.

Prove it! If it were true, you wouldn't have any trouble doing so.

 

[davislane1]

Come now, Cliff. You know it's mean to burst people's speculative bubbles.

 

[cliffordcooley]

I wasn't trying to burst a bubble, I want to know how Snowden put any of us in danger. But then thats probably classified as well and we would need another volunteer like Snowden. Another volunteer to give us proof, we should have rights to as a citizen. It is all BS classifying (pun intended) someone a traitor for telling the truth. That is the same as saying you support someone as long as they stand behind a governmental lie, especially if their civil freedom will be lost if they speak up. People that won't speak up and tell the truth are the traitors. The one at the top of the list sits in the oval office, during every election campaign.

Forget about the fact that Snowden fled the country. Think about all the lies we were told. People can't get passed the idea he fled, long enough to concentrate on the lies we were being feed.

 

[davislane1]

Forget about the fact that Snowden fled the country. Think about all the lies we were told. People can't get passed the idea he fled, long enough to concentrate on the lies we were being feed.

That has been par for the course over the whole of the history of civilization. 99 out of 100 people at the top of the food chain are there because they know how to misdirect, hoodwink, cheat, and out-fox the vast majority of the population.

Personally, it's not so much the lies that bother me; I expect the lies. It's that after more than 2000 years hardly anyone has wised up to the con game.

 

[2BlueFrogs]

If the Russian spy comment is absurd why did he purposely fly to Russia after leaving Hong Kong?

OMG! I cannot believe you asked that question, the answer has been known for months, right from the beginning. Have you been drinking NSA cool-aid?

 

[2BlueFrogs]

People can't get passed the idea he fled, long enough to concentrate on the lies we were being feed.

He fled the country because he is not stupid, he knew what happened to others before him, the whistleblowing laws are a "Venus flytrap designed to catch them not give them support in reporting things the right way.
Unfortunately the tinfoil hatters of the anti conspiracy theories, cling like leaches to anything the government says.

 

[2BlueFrogs]

Forget about the fact that Snowden fled the country. Think about all the lies we were told. People can't get passed the idea he fled, long enough to concentrate on the lies we were being feed.

That has been par for the course over the whole of the history of civilization. 99 out of 100 people at the top of the food chain are there because they know how to misdirect, hoodwink, cheat, and out-fox the vast majority of the population.

Personally, it's not so much the lies that bother me; I expect the lies. It's that after more than 2000 years hardly anyone has wised up to the con game.

Mostly because people just wanna be left alone, they only rise up when they've been pushed too far too often, don't worry, the pushers have a weakness too, they never know when to stop pushing, eventually they cause their own demise and the circle of society starts again.

 

[cmbjive]

OMG! I cannot believe you asked that question, the answer has been known for months, right from the beginning. Have you been drinking NSA cool-aid?

No, but it seems you've been eating Snowden cones. Yeah, that was bad.

As for whether he would be mistreated in the United States, that's absolute B.S. This is a country where they still haven't put the mastermind of 9/11 on trial, let alone put him to death. Edward Snowden wanted out of the country because he knew he did something terribly wrong and would be punished for it.

 

[cmbjive]

Forget about the fact that Snowden fled the country. Think about all the lies we were told. People can't get passed the idea he fled, long enough to concentrate on the lies we were being feed.

Because we all know that whistleblowers fly the coop to authoritarian regimes in order to tell "the truth".

And asking the question of whether he put peoples lives in danger is like trying to prove a negative. None of us work in the intelligence community so we don't know to what extent the damage that Snowden caused. What we do know now is that the Europeans don't fully trust us because we busted at a game that all countries play, al Qaeda and various networks have changed their communications strategies so as not to get caught by our intelligence analysts, and Russia, at least when it comes to their own domestic monitoring, have used the information. Here is what a Russian intelligence officer said about the exploits of Snowden and how it helped strengthen Russia's domestic spying (because we all know that the Russians love staying close to their own people):

For journalists, human rights activists, and ordinary people,Snowden became a hero, eclipsing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.But in Russia, unfortunately, Snowden’s revelations led mainly to negative consequences. They gave the Russian authorities carte blanche to regulate the Internet and provided a formal pretext for an onslaught on Internet giants like Google and Facebook.

 

[amstech]

Another volunteer to give us proof, we should have rights to as a citizen.

Hello, welcome to earth, have we met?
( )