Snowden Responds to Criticism of His Putin Question

In answer to my speculation about whether Edward Snowden asked his security question of Russia’s President Putin merely to get an answer on the record, today, the Guardian has a post from Snowden himself.

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.

[...]

[If] we are to test the truth of officials' claims, we must first give them an opportunity to make those claims.

[...]

In his response, Putin denied the first part of the question and dodged on the latter. There are serious inconsistencies in his denial – and we'll get to them soon – but it was not the president's suspiciously narrow answer that was criticised by many pundits. It was that I had chosen to ask a question at all.

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[J]ournalists might ask for clarification as to how millions of individuals' communications are not being intercepted, analysed or stored, when, at least on a technical level, the systems that are in place must do precisely that in order to function. They might ask whether the social media companies reporting that they have received bulk collection requests from the Russian government are telling the truth.

  Guardian

Hopefully, Mr. Snowden will be receiving offers of asylum from and legal passage to other countries soon, because I have a feeling he won’t be getting an extension from Russia now.

Brave and/or foolhardy.