U.S. fugitive Edward Snowden is set to address hundreds of high school students at a world affairs conference being held Monday night at a Toronto private school.

The former NSA contractor is the keynote speaker at the annual World Affairs Conference, which was organized by students from Upper Canada College and Branksome Hall in Toronto.

The moderated discussion is called Privacy vs. Security: A Discussion of Personal Privacy in the Digital Age.

Snowden, who now lives in asylum in Russia, will be joined by journalist Glenn Greenwald via video link from Brazil.

Snowden fled the U.S. in 2013, after leaking thousands of classified documents. Greenwald, then a journalist for a British daily newspaper, worked with Snowden to expose American espionage secrets. The leak sparked a global discussion on government, mass surveillance and privacy.

The 31-year-old remains a polarizing figure in the U.S., with some viewing him as a courageous whistleblower, while others slam him for potentially endangering public safety.

In Toronto, his involvement in the student-run conference has sparked a similar division within the UCC community.

On the schools website, a commenter who identified himself as a UCC alumnus expressed his concern with having a self-admitted thief as keynote speaker.

By condoning his participation at the WAC, UCC is lending its name to legitimization of his actions. I fear this will have negative repercussions for the schools reputation and it is not a lesson that I personally want my son to receive, the commenter wrote.

Another commenter suggested the school take a more balanced approach.

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NSA leaker Edward Snowden to address Toronto school from Russia

GOD REIDERS FUCK YOU EDWARD SNOWDEN STAY OUT OF THE FUTURE AND OUT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE YOU SUCK !
DOTDOTDOTBLUEDOT.

By: JOURNEY REID

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GOD REIDERS FUCK YOU EDWARD SNOWDEN STAY OUT OF THE FUTURE AND OUT OF NATIONAL DEFENCE YOU SUCK ! - Video

Snowden Reveals Canada #39;s Global Internet Spying Program #LEVITATION
A revelation from the Edward Snowden document leaks shows a CSE (Communications Security Establishment) program called LEVITATION has been monitoring, analyzing, and tracking millions of ...

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Snowden Reveals Canada's Global Internet Spying Program #LEVITATION - Video

More than a thousand Toronto high school students are hanging out on Monday evening with Edward Snowden. The fugitive whistleblower will appear live for 90 minutes via video chat to speak and take students questions at Torontos Upper Canada Colleges World Affairs Conference (technical difficulties scuttled efforts to have him show up as a hologram), along with journalist Glenn Greenwald. Mr. Snowden, who exposed massive surveillance by government spy agencies, accepted an invitation from Conor Healy, an 18-year-old UCC student with a talent for singing opera and a knack for math, who chairs the conference.

How did the idea of inviting Snowden first come to you?

It was recommended to me by Upper Canada Colleges alumni relations department that I meet with a guy named Jameel Jaffer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) while I was in New York in August. Hes the head of the democracy project there. I was basically asking him if he wanted to speak, or maybe if he could connect me with someone like Glenn Greenwald. Never in my wildest dreams did I think he would be able to put me in touch with Edward Snowden. What [Jaffer] said to me is, The best I can do is pass on a letter and make sure he reads it, and if theres a way you can make it distinct from the 50 other invitations he gets that day, then try your best.

How did you make it distinct?

Well, to a certain extent I was lucky. He hasnt spoken to high school students before and I think he was looking for an opportunity. But what I think came through is how much I thought the community would be fascinated by the opportunity to listen to him. I have peers who are right-leaning and left-leaning, I have peers who think hes a traitor, and others who think hes a hero. But everybody agrees the debate on privacy is the debate were having, and he is the foremost authority on one particular side of that debate.

Whats your impression of Snowden and what hes done?

It was complicated, to be honest. My general inclination is that I think he acted responsibly. And he started a debate worth having. But given how divisive he is, its something I think a lot about. [Inviting him] didnt really come out of an admiration for him, so to speak. It was just from a desire to expose people to an incredible perspective which, undeniably, he has.

You call him divisive. Why?

Let me put it this way: If you asked my dad, he would have him drawn and quartered. I think partially its a generational thing. Often the people who dont support him and dont care too much about whats being done to our privacy are older or of a different sort of mindset than I think is espoused by a lot of youth.

How did you set this up?

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How a student secured Edward Snowden for a chat at his high school

Levitation might suggest a matter of levity, but the project of the Communications Security Establishment Canada that goes by that name is another unsettling example of tradecraft disclosed by Edward Snowden.

The objective of the program is detecting terrorists, but Levitation appears to do this by broadly surveilling Canadians just what CSEC is not allowed to do.

Mr. Snowden found a deck of CSEC slides explaining how Levitation sweeps up vast quantities of files from upload sites, searching for suspicious videos or other electronic documents that, for example, provide instructions to terrorists on how to make a gas bomb.

The Levitation presentation uncovered by Mr. Snowden is businesslike, and has a relaxed and often jocular language. For example, it explains how, in searching through millions of uploaded files, Levitation is able to filter out episodes of the musical-comedy television show Glee.

If uploaded episodes of TV programs and enormous quantities of other data are being searched and accessed, it suggests that CSEC is collecting huge libraries of files and signals from millions of Canadians. Which, again, is not what CSEC is supposed to be doing.

The CSEC presentation says that it sees 10 to 15 million free file uploads (FFU) per day from around the world. The presentation says that out of all of this trawling, CSEC is finding about 350 interesting download events a month. One example of success was finding a hostage-taking strategy for Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which the CIA and other agencies then shared.

The CBC asked CSEC 13 questions about Levitation. None received a clear answer. Instead, the agency replied with four paragraphs insisting on the muddy distinction between data and metadata think of the former as the words of a conversation and the latter as information about the conversation. CSEC added that it doesnt direct its activities at Canadians or anyone in Canada.

But CSEC appears to be constantly bumping into Canadian data and metadata. This countrys signals intelligence policy is using sophistries to walk a thin line between legality and illegality.

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Snowden and the dark sophistry of CSEC

Former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden won't use an Apple iPhone because he says it has "special software" that can be activated remotely, allowing the government to spy on its user.

"Edward never uses an iPhone; he's got a simple phone," Anatoly Kucherena, Snowden's attorney, said in an interview with RIA Novosti, a Russian media company, reports Tech Times.

Kucherena told the publication that the "iPhone has special software that can activate itself without the owner having to press a button and gather information about him; that's why on security grounds he refused to have this phone."

It wasn't made clear whether Snowden, who fled the United States and ended up in Russia after leaking sensitive intelligence documents from the NSA, believes intelligence agencies have a way of compromising the iPhone's operating system, or if the software comes from standard diagnostic tools.

Apple has denied claims that it participated in the NSA's PRISM data mining project, after accusations were made when Snowden released the NSA documents that its devices are vulnerable to spying.

The leaked documents revealed that the NSA operates an iPhone backdoor surveillance program that allows officials to snoop through virtually any communication sent or received using an Apple product.

The PRISM project involved gathering materials including audio, video, pictures, documents, emails, and connection logs from mobile devices, which allowed analysts to track the device users' movements and communications.

Apple said it does not allow government agencies to have direct access to its servers.. However, further NSA leaks showed how the agency developed spyware to target iPhones, allowing information to be gathered from devices, and Apple denied further being involved in the spyware development.

Further, with the latest operating system, iOS 8, Apple says it is not even able to decrypt messages itself that come through its devices, as it values its emphasis on user security.

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Edward Snowden: Apple iPhone With Secret iFeature Allows ...

Edward Snowden Sam Adams Award Speech (2015) NEW
On the 22th January 2015, Edward Snow held a speech for NSA Technical Director William Bill Binneyr who received the 2015 Sam Adams Award.

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Edward Snowden Sam Adams Award Speech (2015) NEW - Video

EDITORIAL: Young, voting-age Americans give the NSA the thumbs-up

A June 9, 2013 photo provided by The Guardian Newspaper in London shows Edward Snowden in Hong Kong.

GLENN GREENWALD AND LAURA POITRAS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

Say what you will about Edward Snowden, the computer specialist who leaked informaton from the National Security Agency.

He played a big game. No, not a game to take down the U.S. government or even to take down the surveillance-industrial complex.

Mr. Snowdens true gambit was to dramatically change public opinion about how the Internet should be governed. Even if you didnt hold as critical views of our foreign policy as Edward Snowden, you might very well have been shocked by his disclosures and concerned that, without some better legislation, too many of our taken-for-granted freedoms would disappear online.

But in order for public opinion to shift as swiftly and decisively as that kind of change required, Mr. Snowden had to do more than change the minds of elites. He had to create a groundswell among the Americans who spent the most time immersed in online technology. He had to hit a home run with millennials.

Well, the data is in, and guess what? He struck out.

The latest polling from Pew paints a stark picture: Young people are more likely than older Americans to view the intelligence agency positively, the organization reports. About six-in-10 (61 percent) of those under 30 view the NSA favorably, compared with 40 percent of those 65 and older.

Thats a remarkable set of figures. Not only do the youngest of voting-age Americans give the NSA the thumbs-up possibly excusable given the level of news ignorance prevalent among teenagers but even those well into their twenties support the NSA in a landslide.

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EDITORIAL: Young, voting-age Americans give the NSA the thumbs-up

Canada's electronic spy agency sifts through millions of videos and documents downloaded online every day by people around the world, as part of a sweeping bid to find extremist plots and suspects, CBC News has learned.

Details of the Communications Security Establishment project dubbed "Levitation" are revealed in a document obtained by U.S. whistleblower Edward Snowden and recently released to CBC News.

Under Levitation, analysts with the electronic eavesdropping service can access information on about 10 to 15 million uploads and downloads of files from free websites each day, the document says.

"Every single thing that you do in this case uploading/downloading files to these sites that act is being archived, collected and analyzed," says Ron Deibert, director of the University of Toronto-based internet security think-tank Citizen Lab, who reviewed the document.

In the document, a PowerPoint presentation written in 2012, the CSE analyst who wrote it jokes about being overloaded with innocuous files such as episodes of the musical TV series Glee in their hunt for terrorists.

CBC analyzed the document in collaboration with the U.S. news website The Intercept, which obtained it from Snowden.

The presentation provides a rare glimpse into Canada's cyber-sleuthing capabilities and its use of its spy partners' immense databases to track the online traffic of millions of people around the world, including Canadians.

That glimpse may be of even greater interest now that the Harper government plans to introduce new legislation increasing the powers ofCanada's security agencies.

Though Canadas always been described as a junior partner in the Five Eyes spying partnership, which includes the U.S., Britain, NewZealandand Australia, this document shows it led the way in developing this new extremist-tracking tool.

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CSE Tracks Millions Of Downloads Daily: Snowden Documents

Why Edward Snowden Owns a Stupidphone
Anybody who does not understand what these three stories have to do with the collapse of global industrial civilization obviously needs to dig a little deepe...

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Why Edward Snowden Owns a Stupidphone - Video