Father of the Web Meets a Robot Edward Snowden, Calls Him a Hero
Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at TED today, telling the mostly supportive crowd to expect more revelations from his vast cache of secret National Security Agency documents.
The NSA whistleblower took to the stage during the conference’s second day via a video chatbot he controlled from what TED organizer Chris Anderson called an “undisclosed location.” Snowden said there are still revelations to be made and stories to be told about the intelligence agency. “I don’t think there’s any question that some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come,” Snowden said, just one week after appearing at SXSW in Austin, Texas.
Rather than the traditional 18-minute TED talk, in which a single speaker addresses the audience, Anderson essentially interviewed Snowden. Through a strikingly clear connection, the bot-ified Snowden was poised and good-humored as he called on tech companies to make SSL encryption the default for browsing the web. “To people who have seen and enjoyed the free and open internet, it’s up to us to preserve that liberty for the next generation to enjoy,” he said.
