Edward Snowden: "The pandemic will make the world less free..."

Infamous former CIA and US National Security Agency operative Edward Snowden starred in the interview film "Shelter in Place" for the American youth lifestyle magazine. VICE, which answers questions from co-founder of this publication, Shane Smith.

It's worth reminding that at the beginning of June 2013, Snowden gave American and British journalists secret information about the total surveillance by American intelligence services of citizens of other states around the world. In this regard, the American authorities in absentia charged Snowden with espionage and theft of state property, disclosure of data on national defense and deliberate transfer of classified information to unauthorized persons, and he himself was put on the international wanted list. For all these charges, Snowden faces up to 30 years in prison, and possibly the death penalty. However, he managed to escape from the United States, first to Hong Kong, and then to Russia, where he lived for more than a month in the transit zone of the Sheremetyevo airport. In August 2013, he received temporary asylum in the Russian Federation, and in October 2020 - an unlimited residence permit. Snowden's exact whereabouts have not been disclosed for security reasons. It is known that he wanted to return to the United States a few years ago, but then changed his mind and now intends to obtain Russian citizenship, explaining that he does not want to part with his recently born son due to the fact that they will have different citizenship.

In the premiere episode of the film, Snowden talks about surveillance of individuals and the future of civil liberties in relation to the policies of autocratic regimes to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

The point is, according to the analyst, that global pandemics are unpredictable. And even despite the fact that the authorities of all world states were warned many times about the impending pandemic, they could not prepare for it:

"All scientists and researchers who watched the spread of the coronavirus knew that sooner or later a pandemic would break out, but this knowledge was in vain".

The world intelligence services also knew about this, Snowden is sure, but the Chinese authorities expelled Western journalists from the country just at the moment when there was an urgent need for reliable information about the development of the pandemic.

“As tough authoritarian measures spread and a state of emergency is declared, we are not just sacrificing our rights, we are also sacrificing the ability to stop the slide into a less liberal and less free world. Are you sure that with the recession of the first, second, sixteenth waves of coronavirus, the positions won by the authoritarian authorities will not be maintained? That there will be no interaction algorithms? It doesn't matter how they are used now, but what is being built in the world today is a system of oppression".