Edward Snowden

Last night I went to Think Inc’s An Evening With Edward Snowden. Obviously, Snowden could not be there in person but arrived by controlling a screen and rolling out onto the stage.

Not much of the content discussed was new to me. Snowden discussed the importance of a true democracy, the role whistleblowers play in a democratic society and the importance of our right to privacy.

One interesting factoid I learned last night was the origin of the ‘i don’t care about privacy as I have nothing to hide’ argument. In a very crowd pleasing moment, Snowden told the audience to tell anyone who repeated this argument that its origins lay in nazi propaganda and that you don’t want to hear it in Australia.  I thought that was pretty interesting and decided to double check it:

“If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear” origins are unclear but is often attributed to Joseph Goebbels the Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany.

The component I most enjoyed about last night was being able to see Snowden’s candor. Snowden spoke about his predicament with humor and repeatedly referred to himself as an idealist.  This was something I did now expect. I expected him to be quite a cynic and ‘end of the world-ist’. This difference is something that makes me admire him much more than I already did. As I also consider myself to have a love for democracy in the way he does.