Moscow: Edward Snowden, the Ex-NSA contractor, might have bit off more than he can chew on Thursday.
During a live broadcast on Thursday, Mr Snowden called in to ask Mr Putin if Russia’s surveillance programmes were similar to the United States.
“I’ve seen little public discussion of Russia’s policy of mass surveillance,” Mr Snowden was quoted as saying by The Gawker.
“So I’d like to ask you: Does Russia intercept, store, or analyse the communication of millions? And do you believe that simply increasing the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies can justify placing societies, rather than individual subjects, under surveillance?”
Mr Putin welcomed Mr Snowden’s question, even recognising him as a sort of colleague. “Mr. Snowden, you are a former spy. I used to work for an intelligence agency,” Mr Putin said. “We can talk one professional language,” he said.
“First of all, our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law,” he was quoted as saying.
“You have to get the court’s permission to stalk a person. We don’t have a mass system of interception. With our law, it cannot exist. Of course, we know criminals and terrorists use technology for their criminal acts and of course the special services have to use technical means to respond to their crimes. Of course, we do some efforts like that but we do not have mass scale effort. I hope we don’t do that. We don’t have the money or the kind of devices they have in the United States,” he added.
Alaska too cold to annex, jokes Putin
l In a patriotic fervour, Russians are asking President Vladimir Putin to bring back the US state of Alaska, sold off to the United States in Tsarist times. Mr Putin’s answer? It’s too cold. During Mr Putin’s annual marathon phone-in session on Thursday, when Russians pose questions to the Russian leader, a pensioner asked him to possibly follow the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine with the taking of Alaska.
