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Vladimir Putin during the nationwide phone-in in Moscow. (Photograph: RIA Novosti/Reuters)

Vladimir Putin Must Be Called to Account on Surveillance Just Like Obama

I questioned the Russian president live on TV to get his answer on the record, not to whitewash him

Edward Snowden

 by The Guardian

On Thursday, I questioned Russia's involvement in mass surveillance on live television. I asked Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, a question that cannot credibly be answered in the negative by any leader who runs a modern, intrusive surveillance program: "Does [your country] intercept, analyze or store millions of individuals' communications?"

I went on to challenge whether, even if such a mass surveillance program were effective and technically legal, it could ever be morally justified.

The question was intended to mirror the now infamous exchange in US Senate intelligence committee hearings between senator Ron Wyden and the director of national intelligence, James Clapper, about whether the NSA collected records on millions of Americans, and to invite either an important concession or a clear evasion. (See a side-by-side comparison of Wyden's question and mine here.)

Clapper's lie – to the Senate and to the public – was a major motivating force behind my decision to go public, and a historic example of the importance of official accountability.

Read the rest of this article at The Guardian...

• Edward Snowden wrote for the Guardian through the Freedom of the Press Foundation

© 2020 The Guardian
Edward Snowden Profile

Edward Snowden

Whistleblower Edward Joseph Snowden is a US former technical contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA) and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) employee who leaked details of top-secret US and British government mass surveillance programs to the press.

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