Edward Snowden, the former US intelligence official who in 2013 blew the whistle on mass state surveillance through consumer technology platforms, has told the opening night of the Web Summit inMr Snowden, the first big speaker at this year’s event, addressed close to 20,000 attendees inside Lisbon’s Altice Arena via video live link from Russia, where he lives in exile from US authorities.
Mr Snowden, a former contractor for the CIA and NSA until he leaked details of the citizen spying programme to journalists, said he was a “square” who had faithfully taken an oath to defend his country’s citizens against enemies, “foreign and domestic”. Mr Snowden said GDPR , a European Union system of rules on data privacy, was a “good first step” but he criticised the law’s focus.