Video appearance of NSA whistleblower sparks debate at Upper Canada College
U.S. National Security Agency whistleblower and international fugitive Edward Snowden told students at Upper Canada College that the mass collection of data by government spy agencies can get in the way of foiling terrorist plots.
Such programs can sometimes take resources away from targeted data collection of specific threats, Snowden, told students at the private school in Toronto, where he was invited to speak.
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The problem with mass surveillance is when you collect everything, you understand nothing,” he said during the video conference Monday evening.
Snowden, who exposed the NSA’s domestic spying program in 2013, was the keynote speaker at the World Affairs Conference, which is co-organized by Upper Canada College, where he also took questions from students.
The title of the talk, which also included journalist Glenn Greenwald, was “Privacy vs. Security: A Discussion of Personal Privacy in the Digital Age.”
He told students that electronic spying programs constitute a threat to democracy and ought to be subject to more public debate about limits on how information is collected and used.
“This fundamentally changes the balance of power between the citizen and the state,” he said.
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