In the weeks prior to taking office, Donald Trump repeatedly cast doubt on the work done by the U.S. intelligence services. He expressed scepticism regarding their assessment of the role of Russian cyber attacks during the presidential election. Then, in an apparent about-face after his inauguration, he promised them his full support. One person who is intimately familiar with the activities of the U.S. intelligence community is former CIA employee Edward Snowden.
How will the U.S. intelligence services go about their business now that Trump is in office? Possible answers to this burning question will be shared by the world’s most famous whistleblower at the upcoming CeBIT. At 5:30 p.m. CET on Tuesday, 21 March, Edward Snowden will address the visitors at the CeBIT Global Conferences via video link from his exile in Russia. What’s more, interested persons can, effective immediately, pose their questions to Snowden via Twitter and CeBIT’s Facebook page using the hashtag #ESatCGC17 . As many of these questions as possible will then be put to Snowden by TV anchor Brent Geoff during a live, on-stage interview with the former U.S. CIA employee at the CeBIT Global Conferences in Hannover, Germany.
Shortly after the U.S. presidential election in November 2016, Snowden gave a video interview in which he cautioned against viewing Donald Trump as the only threat to privacy rights. Referring to Trump’s election, he said, “This is a dark moment in our nation’s history, but it is not the end of history,” noting that state-sponsored mass Internet surveillance was an ongoing global threat.
Prior to his whistleblower days, Edward Snowden worked as a technical consultant and systems administrator for various organisations, including America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA). In early 2013, he leaked a large volume of classified NSA information to investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald. The first news stories based on this material were published in June 2013. They revealed the previously unimaginable mass surveillance of worldwide digital communications by Western intelligence services. Snowden has been living in exile in Russia since mid-2013.
About the CeBIT Global Conferences
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In the weeks prior to taking office, Donald Trump repeatedly cast doubt on the work done by the U.S. intelligence services. He expressed scepticism regarding their assessment of the role of Russian cyber attacks during the presidential election. Then, in an apparent about-face after his inauguration, he promised them his full support. One person who is intimately familiar with the activities of the U.S. intelligence community is former CIA employee Edward Snowden.
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- CIA Roadsign Langley: Flickr / Ben Stanfield | CC BY 2.0
