Last Week Tonight with John Oliver went on location in Russia for an exclusive interview with Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum in the country after leaking documents obtained while working for the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). The host described him as “the most famous hero and/or traitor in recent American history.”
Snowden’s sacrifice may have been all in vain based on an accompanying man on the street interview. When asked about Snowden, most people where unaware of who he was or mistook him for Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks.
Oliver suggested that he frame his argument against domestic surveillance in more relatable terms such as the privacy of our dick pics.
“The good news is there’s no program named the dick pic program,” Snowden assured him. “The bad news is they are still collecting everyone’s information including your dick pics.”
Oliver asked Snowden to go through each NSA program in relation to his own dick pic, which he confidentially shared with him so expect it to be released shortly.
“If you have your email somewhere like Gmail hosted on a server overseas or transferred overseas or at anytime crosses outside the borders of the United States, your junk ends up in the database,” Snowden explained Section 702 surveillance. “Even if you send it to somebody within the United States, your wholly domestic communication between you and your wife can go from New York to London and back and get caught up in the database.”
A program known as Prism allows the government to actually deputize companies such Google, Yahoo and Facebook to surveil it users and actively participate in contributing to the database.
“They’re a dick sheriff,” Oliver coined it.
Oliver proposed it’s patriotic to share dick pics rather than submit to this dictatorship.
