Live Q&A with Edward Snowden: Thursday 23rd January, 8pm GMT, 3pm EST

[tangent4ronpaul]

Someone please YouTube this!

http://www.freesnowden.is/asksnowden/

Edward Snowden will be answering questions submitted by the public on his official support site, freesnowden.is, this Thursday 23 January at 8pm GMT, 3pm EST. The support site is run by The Courage Foundation and is the only endorsed Snowden Defence Fund.

This is the first Snowden live chat since June 2013 and will last for an hour starting at 8pm GMT, 3pm EST. Questions can be submitted on twitter on the day of the event using the #AskSnowden hashtag. Edward Snowden’s responses will appear at http://www.freesnowden.is/asksnowden

The live chat comes exactly a week after US President Barack Obama gave an address in response to the public concerns raised by Edward Snowden’s revelations about US surveillance practices. In the live chat, Edward Snowden is expected to give his first reaction to the President’s speech.

Courage (formerly the Journalistic Source Protection Defence Fund) is a trust, audited by accountants Derek Rothera & Company in the UK, for the purpose of providing legal defence and campaign aid to journalistic sources. It is overseen by an unrenumerated committee of trustees. Edward Snowden is its first recipient.

freesnowden.is was commissioned by the trustees of Courage to provide information on the threats Edward Snowden faces and what can be done to support him, and details all revelations made to date in a convenient central archive.

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Has anyone asked a question yet? #AskSnowden

how about posting suggested tweets and tweet um and RT others tweets. There are a bunch of kinda dumb questions by ppl that didn't do their HW, so maybe we could stack the deck with interest in some good questions.

Keep in mind that his stay in Russia is based on his promise to do no further harm to the US Gvmt. so questions like what crypto can NSA crack and what can't it crack are not a good idea. However, asking him what crypto he personally trusts/would recommend to a friend - his OPINION, should be OK.

Ones I'm thinking of:

Lets start with the really TS stuff: What brands and models of HDs have the best MTBF? Google aint talkin'...

If you could be dictator of IETF, how would you "fix" the Internet? Make it PRISM proof?

US concerned you have tasking docs (what we know/don't know). If you possess, will you promise to not release?

What crypto do you trust/would U rcmd to a frnd? TC, GPG, AES, Tails, OTR have been mentioned. Others?

What crypto do you personally NOT trust/would NOT recommend to a friend? - why?

What are your thoughts about the anonymity and safety of DarkNets? Tor, FREENET, i2p, etc.

Greenwald claims you gave him 40K docs, USG says up to 1.7M How much data did you walk off with?

So please find my tweets and RT and tweet some of your own, but point us at them so we can RT

-t

 

[RickyJ]

That's cool, I hope he is in an undisclosed location and that he is well guarded. Very powerful people want him dead and they tend to get what they want.

 

[DamianTV]

Heres my question for Snowden (if someone wants to ask on my behalf):

HOW CAN WE HELP?

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Heres my question for Snowden (if someone wants to ask on my behalf):

HOW CAN WE HELP?

Several people have already asked.

WikiLeaks is taking donations for their whistle blowers defense fund which is supporting him.

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Reading through the tweets has been interesting.

So far only one hate tweet.

Lotta people just saying thank you, we <3 U, admire your courage, and so on.

Lotta people asking if he would do it again. The impact on his family. How's your Russian - stuff like that.

Asking advice on books to read, fav website, fav OS...

Some ppl asking about TOR, crypto, how to be safe on the internet.

Some people asking about <fill in the blank> spying against X country.

One producer from Dutch TV asked for an interview.

...and the usual suspects are asking about UFO's, ET, 9/11. NWO, Agenda 21 and so on...

This feed is going to turn into a fire-hose later. Maybe 35-40% of the tweets are advertising the event in about 12 languages.

What's interesting is what's NOT being asked: His thoughts on Obama's reform proposals.

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

3 hours till showtime.

You can tell the DC area work force woke up. There are some real jerks tweeting.

und a Swedish groupie who tweeted him a marriage proposal...

She's been tweeting at him hot and heavy all night...

They mentioned that tweets sent closer to the start time are more likely to get answered. So if you tweeted before, re-tweet. The Free_snowden account said they would tweet a good time to start sending.

-t

 

[brandon]

I want to donate to him. Can anyone tell if definitively if that site "http://www.freesnowden.is/" is a legit way to donate? Will the money actually go to him? Will it be changed hands a dozen times first with everyone taking a little off the top for themselves?


Can I just send him bitcoins directly?

 

[Warlord]

tangent, can you post his responses?

 

[CaseyJones]

bump

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

responses won't be via tweet, but rather his responses will appear here and stay up after it:

http://freesnowden.is/asksnowden.html

Surprise find: NSA wall of honor pic. You see CIA's often, but I've never seen a pic of NSA's.

-t

 

[ClydeCoulter]

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

User Actions
Follow

Marianna
‏@otmarianna
#AskSnowden The committee for NSA-related issues in the Hungarian parliament would like a hearing with you. Have you heard about it?

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

3 hours

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

We got a second one!!! LOL!

C_Z0 ‏@Ciudadano_Zer0 1h
.@enfermarebelde Would you marry me? #AskSnowden

not clear who she(?) is asking, though...

Starts in just over an hour

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Starts in 15 minutes, but there is plenty of activity on the twitter channel.

#AskSnowden started trending for a bit

http://freesnowden.is/asksnowden.html

If you want to ask a question, now would be the time. I think they stop taking them after it starts.

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Free Snowden ‏@free_snowden 44s
freesnowden.is hosts the only endorsed #Snowden defence fund. Please consider making a donation: http://freesnowden.is/donate/ #AskSnowden

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Just started:

@savagejen Do you think it is possible for our democracy to recover from the damage NSA spying has done to our liberties? #AskSnowden

Yes. What makes our country strong is our system of values, not a snapshot of the structure of our agencies or the framework of our laws. We can correct the laws, restrain the overreach of agencies, and hold the senior officials responsible for abusive programs to account.

@midwire How quickly can the NSA, et. al. decrypt AES messages with strong keys #AskSnowden Does encrypting our emails even work?

As I’ve said before, properly implemented strong encryption works. What you have to worry about are the endpoints. If someone can steal you keys (or the pre-encryption plaintext), no amount of cryptography will protect you.

However, that doesn’t mean end-to-end crypto is a lost cause. By combining robust endpoint security with transport security, people can have much greater confidence in their day to day communications.

-t

 

[tangent4ronpaul]

Looks like the site is having some technical problems. Either being slammed by the invite going viral or a DDoS attack.

ok, another question:

@VilleThompson What do you think about Obama’s whistleblowing protection act? #AskSnowden

One of the things that has not been widely reported by journalists is that whistleblower protection laws in the US do not protect contractors in the national security arena. There are so many holes in the laws, the protections they afford are so weak, and the processes for reporting they provide are so ineffective that they appear to be intended to discourage reporting of even the clearest wrongdoing. If I had revealed what I knew about these unconstitutional but classified programs to Congress, they could have charged me with a felony. One only need to look at the case of Thomas Drake to see how the government doesn’t have a good history of handling legitimate reports of wrongdoing within the system.

Despite this, and despite the fact that I could not legally go to the official channels that direct NSA employees have available to them, I still made tremendous efforts to report these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with the proper clearance who would listen. The reactions of those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom to go to through what Drake did.

My case clearly demonstrates the need for comprehensive whistleblower protection act reform. If we had had a real process in place, and reports of wrongdoing could be taken to real, independent arbiters rather than captured officials, I might not have had to sacrifice so much to do what at this point even the President seems to agree needed to be done.

-t

 

[Todd]

bump.

I see only three questions asked. I sure hope more are coming. This guy needs as much time as he can to get this thoughts out there.