PHONING IT IN: After her “End Vulture Capitalism” talk at Saturday’s FutureFest in London, Vivienne Westwood helped anchor a panel that caught up with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The subject of this year’s Oscar-winning documentary “Citizenfour” dialed in from what was described as “an undisclosed bunker in Russia.” During the 45-minute chat, Westwood cut straight to the chase, asking such questions as whether Snowden would like to see more of his documents published and if mass surveillance is as bad in the U.K. as its is in the U.S. “Absolutely” was Snowden’s answer to the first, and the U.K. was singled out for the second. Snowden noted that only a fraction of his files were given to The Guardian, and that Der Spiegel, The Washington Post and The New York Times have more.
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Snowden said, “..The U.N. actually filed a report that found that mass surveillance is a violation of human rights. We have to call mass surveillance mass surveillance. We can’t let governments around the world to redefine and to sort of weasel their way out of it, by saying this is really a bulk collection. Bulk collection means all of your communications are being secretly intercepted. They’re being stolen and stored in these silos so that they can be rifled through at the convenience of secret agents basically. Now that may be justified if the public of the day says, ‘We want to do that.’ I think it would be an unallowable violation of inherent fundamental rights. But ultimately these are questions the public debates all the time. But we have to at least say, ‘This is happening. We can’t wish it away.’”
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Westwood also wanted to know how much help Wikileaks’ Julian Assange offered Snowden once in Hong Kong. “There really were so many individuals who sacrificed so much to try to protect the principle of source protection. Julian Assange and Wikileaks’ [investigative editor] Sarah Harrison have really been extraordinary in standing up while many organizations around the world sort of ran away in terror when the hammer came down.”
There were a few lighter moments when one or two Google hangout visitors unknowing dropped into the video call. “Oh sh*t!” one exclaimed. “I see a guy in his bed,” Snowden joked.
While Oliver Stone has lined up Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Shailene Woodley and Nicolas Cage to appear in his biopic “Snowden,” the film’s namesake has a significantly more framed view of his own future. “Weirdly, I don’t think about it much any more. Before any of this happened, I think I had a much more forward looking perspective where you think about retirement, you think about vacation, where you’re going next,” Snowden said “One of the unexpected liberating things of becoming this global fugitive is the fact you don’t worry so much about tomorrow. You think more about today and unexpectedly I like that very much.”