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Edward Snowden regularly hangs out in the ACLU's NYC offices
Every Friday, when the interns have left the building and the most important cases have been fought out in court, Ben Wizner ascends to the nineteenth floor. There, there is a robot, a screen on stilts, with electrical rollers for legs. Wizner has postitioned the rectangle monitor “head” to face the water, in the far distance it sees with its webcam “eye” the statue of liberty. Directly in front of it is Governors Island. Snowden’s grandfather was once stationed there as admiral.
If Snowden has the time, he logs on to this New York robot from his hideout in Moscow. He can move the device backwards and forwards with his keyboard. When it happened for first time, hundreds of ACLU staff got together and waved at him. Sometimes when Wizner has to answer the phone quickly to get rid of another journalist, Snowden moves around the offices of his new friends as a robot and discusses constitutional law with them. “It would be great if we had more of these robots,” says Wizner. So that Snowden, for example, could appear at the University of Glasgow, which has made him rector. In March 2014, he talked from such a robot on stage at the Ted-Talks, an internet format which has millions of viewers. After he has answered the usual questions about himself and his future, he campaigns for winning back the internet; he campaigns for encryption and for a debate about targeted as opposed to limitless, indiscriminate surveillance.
Has Snowden always been like this? Is he interested in more than his own salvation? People who have experience of Wizner urealise that this man must have influenced Snowden too. He must have turned him into an activist at last. It was Snowden, however, who wanted it to not be all about himself, it was Snowden who retreated so that his documents could speak, explains Wizner.
If Snowden has the time, he logs on to this New York robot from his hideout in Moscow. He can move the device backwards and forwards with his keyboard. When it happened for first time, hundreds of ACLU staff got together and waved at him. Sometimes when Wizner has to answer the phone quickly to get rid of another journalist, Snowden moves around the offices of his new friends as a robot and discusses constitutional law with them. “It would be great if we had more of these robots,” says Wizner. So that Snowden, for example, could appear at the University of Glasgow, which has made him rector. In March 2014, he talked from such a robot on stage at the Ted-Talks, an internet format which has millions of viewers. After he has answered the usual questions about himself and his future, he campaigns for winning back the internet; he campaigns for encryption and for a debate about targeted as opposed to limitless, indiscriminate surveillance.
Has Snowden always been like this? Is he interested in more than his own salvation? People who have experience of Wizner urealise that this man must have influenced Snowden too. He must have turned him into an activist at last. It was Snowden, however, who wanted it to not be all about himself, it was Snowden who retreated so that his documents could speak, explains Wizner.
http://www.tagesspiegel.de/weltspiegel/in-english/edward-snowden-and-his-team-nsa-national-supermarket-association-/10013120-3.html
16 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
Kick for the techie ghost. 
