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Edward Snowden says he could live with ending up in Guantanamo. In an interview with the Guardian, the now-wanted former tech government contractor — who leaked the secret documents that have revealed massive government spying in the U.S. and elsewhere — said he would prefer to be tried in front of a U.S. jury instead of a single judge.
Snowden is living in asylum in Russia and says he spends his days working on encryption tools to help protect journalists sources and data. An unfortunate side effect of the development of all these new surveillance technologies is that the work of journalism has become immeasurably harder than it ever has been in the past, he told the Guardian.
Meanwhile, will the Senate take action soon on reining in NSA surveillance? The House in May passed the USA Freedom Act, which will reform the NSA s bulk collection of phone records, but Politico notes that the Senate has limited time and plenty on its plate, not to mention a possible lack of political will.
Is digital privacy a human right? That s what Navi Pillay, the United Nation s High Commissioner for Human Rights, says, according to the Washington Post. In a report by her office, Pillay says governmental mass surveillance [is] emerging as a dangerous habit rather than exceptional measure. Pillay on Wednesday said we owe a great deal to Snowden for helping to start a worldwide discussion on pervasive surveillance in this day and age.
Photo: Edward Snowden speaks to European officials via videoconference during a parliamentary hearing on improving the protection of whistleblowers at the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, eastern France, on June 24, 2014. (Frederick Florin/AFP/Getty Images)
