Edward Snowden Explains Why He Blew the Whistle on the NSA in Video Interview with Lawrence Lessig

Most like­ly every­thing you know about Edward Snow­den’s unmask­ing of gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance pro­grams has come through an indi­rect source — mean­ing, you haven’t had the chance to learn about Snow­den’s moti­va­tions, thought process­es, goals, etc. from Snow­den him­self. Here’s a chance to change that.

In the video inter­view record­ed on Octo­ber 20th at Har­vard Law School, Lawrence Lessig spent an hour talk­ing with Snow­den on a Google Hang­out. Lessig, a law pro­fes­sor with dual inter­ests in keep­ing infor­ma­tion open and lim­it­ing gov­ern­ment cor­rup­tion, was a nat­ur­al choice to con­duct the inter­view. How­ev­er, I would­n’t say that he gives Snow­den a soft inter­view. He asks some good ques­tions, which gives Snow­den the chance to spell out his think­ing — to explain the prob­lem he observed while work­ing in the NSA and how he went about address­ing it.

One thing that comes across is that Snow­den has thought things through. Snow­den might not have the cre­den­tials of the Har­vard Law stu­dents in the audi­ence — he got a GED and took a few com­mu­ni­ty col­lege cours­es, after all — but you get the sense that he could teach a pret­ty good Intro­duc­tion to Amer­i­can Gov­ern­ment course, if not a thought-pro­vok­ing sem­i­nar on con­sti­tu­tion­al law. Regard­less of what posi­tion you take on Snow­den, it’s worth watch­ing this inter­view before you declare final judge­ment.

via Boing­Bo­ing

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