Snowden: From Russia with video
Appearing via video from Moscow, Mr. Snowden will be the featured speaker at the Davis Levin First Amendment Conference on February 14. He will speak and answer questions at the conference after a showing of Citizenfour, the Laura Poitras documentary about him.
The film, which opened in the U.S. last October, details his work at the NSA, the information he leaked from there, and his journey that led him to live in exile in Russia. It features the U.S. born journalist that Snowden confided in, Glenn Greenwald.
The conference will focus on the future of America’s first amendment rights in a society seemingly dominated by surveillance. Snowden was living and working for the NSA in Hawaii as a high-level intelligence analyst in June of 2013 when he left the country with thousands of classified documents detailing the PRISM wiretapping program.
President Obama defends PRISM
After days in Hong Kong he flew to Russia and, after failed attempts to land in Cuba or Ecuador, has been living there since. America revoked his passport and he will almost certainly be arrested and put on trial should he return home.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and President Barack Obama have both defended PRISM and the NSA, with Obama saying that there were checks and balances on the NSA that ensured no phone records of Americans could ever be examined without a court order after due cause had been shown.
The conference that Snowden is to speak at will also feature his attorney, Ben Wizner, who is the Director of the national ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project. Mr. Wizner will be there in the flesh.
