Snowden: Fake news ‘excuse to gag’ truth
Lisbon, May 30: Democracy and political legitimacy are increasingly under threat from attacks by politicians like US President Donald Trump on “fake news” and free speech, former US national security agency contractor Edward Snowden said on Tuesday.
“The costs of autocracy is illegitimacy, and though none of us have wished for this, it is increasingly near,” Mr Snowden told the Estoril Conferences, a meeting held this week in Portugal on human rights and migration.
Mr Snowden was speaking through video link from Moscow, where he has been in asylum since 2013, after he revealed secretdetails of surveillance programmes by US intelligence agencies. Many civil rights activists see him as a hero, but athome in the United States, he is wanted to stand trial for espionage. He said the world stood at the “crossroads of history”, warning that the direction it is heading now is “paved withfear, therein lies the world of walls, literal and figurative.”
He said that surveillance programmes by governments of their citizens, “the denunciation of inconvenient journalism as fake news, and the prosecution of those who are speaking facts,” represents a world of fear and political illegitimacy.
“A government willing to trade public awareness forpolitical comfort may rule, but they don’t lead,” Mr Snowden said. He criticised that militants represent the biggest threat to Western countries, saying the loss of rights was a bigger concern.