Snowden Reportedly Regrets Asking Putin Surveillance Question

Two
unnamed sources have told The Daily Beast that NSA
whistle-blower Edward Snowden regrets asking Vladimir Putin a
question about government surviellance during the Russian
president’s annual call-in show. I wrote about the incident

last week.

According to The Daily Beast‘s reporting it did not
occur to Snowden that the segment could be interpreted as a victory
for the Kremlin. From
The Daily Beast:

“He basically viewed the question as his first foray into
criticizing Russia. He was genuinely surprised that in reasonable
corridors it was seen as the opposite,” added Ben Wizner, the
American Civil Liberties Union attorney who serves as one of
Snowden’s closest advisers.

According to Wizner and others, Snowden hadn’t realized how much
last week’s Q&A—with Putin blithely assuring Snowden that
Moscow had no such eavesdropping programs—would appear to be a
Kremlin propaganda victory to Western eyes. And so the leaker
quickly decided to write an op-ed for the Guardian to explain his
actions and to all but label Putin a liar for his televised
response.

As Reason‘s Scott Shackford
noted last week, Snowden defended asking Putin about mass
surveillance, saying in an op-ed for The Guardian that, “I
regret that my question could be misinterpreted, and that it
enabled many to ignore the substance of the question – and Putin’s
evasive response – in order to speculate, wildly and incorrectly,
about my motives for asking it.”

Some have criticized Snowden for seeking asylum in Russia. But,
as I pointed out shortly after the first publication of a Snowden
revelation, Snowden seeking asylum in Russia
does not mean he is sympathetic to Russia’s authoritarian
policies. That said, he might want to be more careful about
nonintentionally portraying himself as sympathetic to the Russian
government in the future.