Edward Snowden lives a free life - like a robot

Edward Snowden drives a TED conference in Vancouver, 2014

“Edward Snowden lay in the back of my Ford Escape, hidden from prying eyes and temporarily unconscious while I drove it to the Whitney Museum early in the morning to meet friends from the art world,” writes journalist Andrew Rice from New York. Magazine . He spent some time with Snowden, driving him to art exhibitions, technology conferences and television shows.

For one of the most wanted people being hunted by the FBI, Snowden lives a surprisingly free and busy life, speaking to the public and giving out interviews. The former special agent and hacker found a great life hack: he moves around the world in the body of a robot connected to the Internet.

Snowden is not at all hampered by the fact that his body is physically locked up somewhere in Russia. Reliably hidden from US intelligence. Consciousness temporarily "moved" to the mobile robot for teleconferencing model BeamPro, but the robot is not arrested. More precisely, it can be arrested, but then Edward Snowden will "move" to another robot, continue to speak by direct video link and lead twitter. That is, it will not change anything. In the era of modern communications, it doesn’t matter where your body is.
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Snowboat with security experts at Princeton University. Photo: Courtesy of Surveillance Workshop

Lawyer Ben Wizner of the American Civil Liberties Union constantly oversees the actions of his ward. For example, in April 2016, he watched a public flogging , which Edward Snowden gave live on CNN to journalist Farid Zakaria (Fareed Zakaria), who defended the desire of the US authorities to access any encrypted digital information by a court decision.

After that, Snowden in the body of the robot spoke at the Disruptive Innovation Awards conference , where he was greeted with stormy applause.

Edward, with a grin, drove up to the microphone and made a speech (with small lags), then answered questions and carefully left the stage.



The BeamPro robot is a commercial production model of Suitable Technologies. The so-called “Smart Presence System”, costing about $ 14,000, is designed for more realistic teleconferencing, where one or more participants are physically absent from the room.

Avatar Snowden (unofficially called Snowboot) lives in the New York office of the American Civil Liberties Union, he holds meetings and receives guests in his office, and sometimes he goes to conferences or important meetings.


Google co-founder Sergey Brin is photographed with Snowboat. Photo : Chris Anderson

For Snowden, this technology has a specific practical meaning - it is much more convenient to ensure its “presence” at public events and to communicate with interlocutors practically alive. After a few minutes of conversation, you already forget that there is a robot in front of you. “At first there is always some confusion when everyone is admired and watched with curiosity,” he says. But then this barrier disappears. People begin to communicate with Snowboat as with an ordinary person, as if Edward himself was really next to them.


Snowboot talks to technology entrepreneur Peter Diamandis at a CES 2016 conference in Las Vegas. Photo: Done Clark for the Wall Street Journal

Here there is also a symbolic role: this is a clear demonstration of the fact that no authorities or super-power special services are able to impose their will in the modern era of the Internet. It is impossible to “block” a person, it is impossible to isolate him from the outside world and to prohibit communication. Not those times. Now the Internet is everywhere - and it gives people unlimited freedom .

(It should be noted that the Internet is missing in some places, and there are also limited opportunities for Snowbot to move around. Snowden himself jokes about this: he says that people have nothing to fear robots while we have stairs and Wi-Fi is not accepted in elevators) .

Snowboat greeted with applause at events. This is also a demonstration that the American people - at least the techno-elite - supports Edward and his deed, even if the official authorities call this “treason”.

In the New York gallery, the Whitney Avatar of Snowden visited the multimedia exhibition of Laura Poitras , the director of the Citizenfour documentary about Edward Snowden. For her work, Laura Poitras won the Pulitzer Prize and the Oscar - another proof of the importance of the mission that Snowden dared to take on.

The exhibition at the Whitney Gallery is called Astro Noise , after the name of the encrypted file containing documents that Edward Snowden rendered on a flash card from the NSA secret computer center in Hawaii.


Snowboat at Astro Noise. Photo: Henrik Moltke

Sitting in his close Russian apartment, Edward Snowden can remotely control his avatar in New York via a computer. The robot moves and quickly maneuvers, turns to face the person with whom he is talking.

Sometimes help is needed. At the exhibition, Astro Noise for Snowboat arranged a personal tour. When he was shown unusually located parts of the gallery — for example, the night sky over Yemen, from where the CIA unmanned killer drones flew, or the drone of civilians shot on the screen — the assistants would turn or tilt Snowboot so that he could carefully observe everything. Edward thanked for help.

Surprisingly, now Edward Snowden is hiding in a secret shelter somewhere in Russia (most likely in Moscow). He cannot walk in the park on the street, but at the same time his avatar in New York is free to travel around anywhere, infuriating former US intelligence chiefs. Although they no longer joke about adding Edward Snowden to the list for being destroyed by drones, as former CIA director Michael Hayden joked in 2013 . But they still unequivocally say that Edward did real harm to the United States of America when he issued specific technical details of secret mass surveillance programs for the population, spoke about secret diplomatic agreements and about specific objects of observation of US foreign intelligence.

Edward Snowden and his robot became real national favorites in the USA. He is considered a hero. He exposes dangerous mass-surveillance government programs that threaten the civil rights of people and violate the Constitution. He is constantly invited to speak at various conferences and television shows: over the past year he gave more than 50 speeches. Most of them are free, but for others, Edward can receive several thousand dollars - he has to look for a livelihood, because Edward’s personal financial reserves ended last year.

Edward Snowden is quite consistent in his position. He announced his refusal to cooperate with the FSB officers who wanted to obtain the secret information he had. He welcomed the publication of the Panama archive with information about billions of dollars in secret offshore friends of Russian officials. In the end, Snowden criticizes government surveillance of the Internet and censorship in any country, not only in the United States. For example, he spoke very sharply about the package of “anti-terrorism” amendments of Irina Yarovaya to the legislation adopted by the State Duma of the Russian Federation on June 24, 2016. The amendments provide for a total tapping of Internet traffic and telephone conversations of all Russians, recording and storing traffic and conversations, as well as the obligation of providers to provide keys for decrypting encrypted traffic at the request of the authorities. They will enter into force after approval by the Council of Federations on June 29 (which there is practically no doubt ) and after signing by the President of the Russian Federation.

“Mass surveillance does not work. This law will take money and freedom from every Russian without any improvement in security. It should not be signed, ” said Edward Snowden.


"The new Russian law on Big Brother is an impracticable, unjust violation of rights that should not be signed," he added later.


Hopefully, Edward's bold remarks will not lead to the fact that the Russian special services will declassify his deployment.


Edward Snowden in his secret apartment. Photo: shot from the movie Citizenfour

Problems with the Russian authorities to Edward Snowden to anything. He is so difficult. Despite the help of the avatar, the forced loneliness is most likely to be saved only by the visits of his girlfriend.