Former
intelligence contractor Edward Snowden came out of exile in Russia
yesterday, in the form of a remotely-controlled robot to make a surprise
appearance at the TED2014, which is being held in Vancouver British Columbia,
March 17–21.
You can read an edited transcript of Snowden's talk here, or view his TED Talk here.
In answer to the question, "You might think if you haven’t done anything wrong then it doesn’t really matter. Why should we care about all this surveillance?" Snowden answered:
In
other words, it's not a matter of privacy ... it's one of freedom. And
ultimately, of democracy, open societies, in which free citizens are
self-governing. You can read an edited transcript of Snowden's talk here, or view his TED Talk here.
In answer to the question, "You might think if you haven’t done anything wrong then it doesn’t really matter. Why should we care about all this surveillance?" Snowden answered:
The
first thing is you’re giving up your rights. "I don’t think I’m going
to need them so I’ll get rid of them, it doesn’t really matter, these
guys will do the right thing." But your rights matter because you never
know when you’ll need them. 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. How
might this be misinterpreted? We have a right to privacy. We require
warrants to be based on probable causes. Trusting any government
authority with the entirety of human communications without any
oversight is too great a temptation to be ignored.
Sergey Mikhaylovich Brin is an American computer scientist and Internet entrepreneur who, with Larry Page, co-founded Google. Here's a photo of him taken with Edward Snowen at TED2014:
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