Edward Snowden appears via video at Toronto debate

TORONTO (AP) - Edward Snowden, the former U.S. intelligence contractor who has been leaking information about government data collection programs, said Friday before a debate on state surveillance that entire populations, rather than just individuals, now live under constant surveillance.

Snowden, who appeared via video link at Torontos Roy Thomson Hall during a semi-annual Munk debate that state surveillance today is a euphemism for mass surveillance.

Its no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing, Snowden said in the brief video. It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love.

The video was screened as two of the debaters - former U.S. National Security Administration director General Michael Hayden and well-known civil liberties lawyer and Harvard law professor Alan M. Dershowitz - argued in favor of the debate statement: Be it resolved state surveillance is a legitimate defense of our freedoms.

In opposition were Glenn Greenwald, the journalist whose work based on the Snowden leaks won a Pulitzer Prize last month, and Alexis Ohanian, the co-founder of social media website reddit.

The Snowden documents, first leaked last June, revealed that the U.S. government has programs in place to spy on hundreds of millions of peoples emails, social networking posts, online chat histories, browsing histories, phone records, phone calls and texts. Nearly everything a typical user does on the Internet, in the words of one leaked document.

Greenwald opened the debate by condemning the NSAs own slogan, which he said appears repeatedly throughout its own documents: Collect it all.

What is state surveillance? If it were about targeting in a discriminate way against those causing harm, there would be no debate, said Greenwald. The actual system of state surveillance has almost nothing to do with that. What state surveillance actually is, is defended by the NSAs actual words, that phrase they use over and over again, collect it all.

Hayden and Dershowitz spent the rest of the hour and a half or so denying that the pervasive surveillance described by Snowden and Greenwald even exists and that the ongoing surveillance programs are necessary to prevent terrorism.

Collect it all doesnt mean collect it all! said Hayden, drawing laughs from the audience.

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Edward Snowden appears via video at Toronto debate