File:Edward Snowden's Surprise Appearance at TED.jpg

Summary

Speaking with Chris Anderson and Tim Berners Lee on a telepresence robot, beaming in from a secret location in Russia.

The <a href="<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://on.ted.com/skGP">http://on.ted.com/skGP</a>" rel="nofollow">video is online</a>, and more <a href="<a rel="nofollow" class="external free" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/13332430295/page1/#comment72157642827945753">http://www.flickr.com/photos/jurvetson/13332430295/page1/#comment72157642827945753</a>">photos below</a>

Some of his zingers:

I am living proof that an individual can go head to head against the most powerful agency in the world and win.

Democracy may die behind closed doors. We don’t have to give up privacy to have good government, we don’t have to give up liberty to have security.

Boundless Informant is a program the NSA hid from Congress. It tells us that more communications are being intercepted in America about Americans than there are in Russia about Russians. I’m not sure that’s what an intelligence agency should be aiming for.

Dick Cheney is really something else.

The public interest is not always the same as the national interest.

At the NSA, "terrorism" is used as a cover for action. Terrorism provokes an emotional response that allows people to rationalize and authorize programs they wouldn’t have otherwise. They asked for this authority in the 1990s and Congress said no.

I grew up in the Internet. Although I never expected to have the chance to defend it in such a direct and practical manner, or to embody it in this unusual, avatar manner, there’s something poetic about it.

(Facing Tim Berners Lee on stage): A Magna Carta for the Internet is exactly what we need to encode values not just in writing but in the structure of the Internet.

PRISM is about content. It deputizes corporate America to do the dirty work for the NSA. Even though some companies did resist, they lost. But this was never tried by open court, only by secret court... making secret interpretations of the law. There have been 34,000 warrant requests in 33 years and they only rejected 11 government requests.

(Of 1.7 million documents, only a hundred have been shared so far. Is there more to come?). There are absolutely more revelations to come. Some of the most important reporting is yet to come.

The biggest thing an Internet company in America can do today without consulting lawyers to protect users worldwide is to enable SSL web encryption on every page you visit.

(When asked if he would return to America If given amnesty): Absolutely. There’s really no question. The government has hinted they want some kind of deal, a compromise deal to come back. But I want to make it very clear. I did not do this to be safe. I did this to do what was right. I won’t stop working in the public interest just to benefit myself.

Licensing

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