A monument to Edward Snowden was erected in Fort Greene on Monday morning.Photo: Justine Williams

Even a fake Edward Snowden cant spend a day in NYC before getting carted away by authorities.

A 100-pound bronze bust of the infamous whistleblower was erected early Monday morning on top of Fort Greene Parks Prison Ship Martyrs monument, which pays homage to Revolutionary War soldiers.

Two anonymous artists took it upon themselves to modernize the monument by sneaking into the park at 4 a.m. and adhering Snowdens plaster head to the top of a pillar.

We have updated this monument to highlight those who sacrifice their safety in the fight against modern-day tyrannies, the artists wrote in a statement to ANIMAL New York.

It would be a dishonor to those memorialized here to not laud those who protect the ideals they fought for, as Edward Snowden has by bringing the NSAs 4th-Amendment-violating surveillance programs to light, they added. All too often, figures who strive to uphold these ideals have been cast as criminals rather than in bronze.

The artists worked with a West Coast sculptor for a year to create the 4-foot-tall replica. They devoted a lot of time to matching the monuments original aesthetic and figuring out a way to seamlessly adhere it in case city officials removed it.

Their attention to detail proved invaluable to the Parks Department, who raced to the scene and immediately covered the statue with a blue tarp.

Workers spent at least two hours strategizing how to remove the $30,000 statue and a plastic plaque bearing Snowdens name in block letters before taking both down just after 2 p.m, leaving behind a thin layer of glue on the monument.

The Parks Department didnt immediately respond to questions from The Post as to the statues future, but the NYPD did confirm it was investigating the incident.

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100-pound Snowden bust appears in NYC park

Since its debut nearly a year ago, "Last Week Tonight With John Oliver" has been steadily gaining awareness among viewers for going "The Daily Show" one better by taking complex subjects and tackling them in a comedic way. But on Sunday's show, Oliver seems to have taken the show to the next level, both in comedy and audience respect with his surprise interview with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The longer episode, at 45 minutes, included a 33-minute discussion of the upcoming renewal of the Patriot Act and its implications for the American public. It turns out, at least according to Oliver's random sampling of Americans in New York City's Times Square, that the public is ill informed about the controversy surrounding Snowden and the implications of the information that he leaked.

Snowden, the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary "Citizenfour" is in Russia, so Oliver traveled to Moscow to sit down with the computer specialist and explain to him, with video assist, that the American public has no real idea who he is or what he's trying to tell them.

Oliver also demonstrated the problem with a clip from MSNBC in which host Andrea Mitchell interrupted a congresswoman discussing a key part of the Patriot Act to bring viewers "breaking news" on Justin Bieber's arrest.

Oliver's interview with Snowden was not a comedy puffball. Though he started off with jokes about Hot Pockets, he quickly began pressing Snowden about his responsibilty for some of the more sensitive information he leaked getting mishandled by the media.

And when Snowden tried to argue his points about unchecked government surveillance, Oliver brusquely waved him off, the same way people would get bored by an IT guy droning on about computer stuff.

Instead, Oliver gave Snowden an easily graspable way for the public at large to understand the things he's talking about. Forget surveillance of charities or overseas phone calls. Can the government look at our own private nudie pics?

The answer, not surprisingly, is yes. And Snowden discussed all the various ways the government could access our nudie pics, all while sitting with a folder containing a nudie pic of Oliver himself on his lap.

The interview walked a tightrope between comedy and actual journalism; the reaction on Twitter has been overwhelmingly positive.

With the public's privacy fears boiled down to just one subject very close to home, it seems as if Snowden's message may start to resonate.

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Viewers react to John Oliver's Edward Snowden interview

NEW YORK Has incisive investigative journalism, sharp-eyed cultural criticism, and engaging news-related interviewing found its most contemporary television voice with John Oliver?

Just about to mark its first-year anniversary, HBOs Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, version 2.0 of the so-called fake news genre popularized by the likes of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert over the past decade, surprised its growing number of viewers on Sunday with an unannounced taped interview with the most famous hero and/or traitor in recent American history, Edward Snowden.

And with the interview, Mr. Oliver, with an even more aggressively lewd and profane brand of HBO-permitted humor, once again upped the ante for the liberal-leaning comedy genre. He has transformed traditional satire and news parody into what some are calling some of the most effective civic journalism on television today.

Hes trying to make abstruse policy relatable in a way that closes the loop for citizens to participate actively in the process, says Aram Sinnreich, professor at Rutgers Universitys School of Communication and Information in New Brunswick, N.J. And he did it in a way that was rigorous, nonsensationalistic, and surprisingly nuanced.

Indeed, many credited the British-born comedian with changing the national debate over net neutralitylast year, introducing Title II of the hoary Federal Communications Act to many viewers and causing millions of them to inundate the Federal Communications Commission with pro-net neutrality comments. The agency eventually decided to regulate the Internet as a utility under said Title II a move few ever thought politically feasible.

Its been nearly two years since Mr. Snowden, the exiled former National Security Agency contractornow living in Russia, infamously leaked top-secret government documents, exposing the stunning scope of the American governments massive domestic surveillance operations, authorized by the post-9/11 USA Patriot Act in 2001. He faces espionage charges in the United States.

And this time, Oliver has reintroduced Section 215 of the Patriot Act, the part of the law that has given the federal government a virtual carte blanche to spy on US citizens and is set to expire on June 1.

Refresh your memory: Section 215, which Im aware sounds like an eastern European boy band, Oliver said during Sundays telecast. Then, with a Slavic-tinged accent: We are Section 215; prepare to have your hearts throbbed. Theres the cute one, the bad boy, the one who strangled a potato farmer, and the one without an iron deficiency. Theyre incredible!

Yet jokes decidedly not aside, Oliver has brought a civic earnestness and unabashed advocacy to the news that his staff researches thoroughly, observers note.

A lot of people have been critical ... that the younger generation gets its news this way, and that they dont know the difference between comedy and the news, says Paul Levinson, media critic and professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University in New York. But I always thought the criticism itself was nonsense, because whoever was getting their news that way was getting real news.

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Did John Oliver just trump Jon Stewart with Edward Snowden interview?

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Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sat down with comedian John Oliver to chat about US government surveillance debate in terms all Americans can understand.

Former US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who blew the whistle on mass government surveillance, has dodged questions about whether he had read all the classified documents he leaked to the public and explained the practical realities of the mass data collection in terms most internet users clearly understand: how easily the government can access your "dick pics".

Snowden made the rare face-to-face interview with comedian and host of satirical program Last Week Tonight John Oliver, who proved once again he does journalism better than many professional journalists. Oliver travelled to Moscow a week ago to speak to Snowden, who sought asylum in Russia after going public with the material.

Oliver, who has fiercely resisted being labelled a journalist in the past, pushed Snowden with a direct and challenging line of questioning in parts of the interview about whether he had actually read all the documents he leaked, asserting that there had been "f...-ups", as Oliver termed them.

Edward Snowden opened up in an interview with John Oliver.

Snowden replied that he had evaluated and "understood" all the documents, but would not confirm that he had actually read them.

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The British host and his subject also provided perhaps the simplest explanation yet for how the surveillance program actually worked, using the nude pictures people send to each other online as an example.

"This is the most visible line in the sand for people," said Oliver, "can they see my dick?"

Originally posted here:
Snowden tells Oliver how the government is collecting 'dick pics'

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden sat down for an interview with comedian John Oliver nearly two years after he leaked classified documents about U.S. government surveillance programs and fled to Russia to escape prosecution.

"I do miss my country. I do miss my home. I do miss my family," Snowden said.

Oliver, the host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight," encouraged Snowden to explain bulk surveillance in colloquial terms so the general public could better understand it. He showed Snowden a video of Americans who were concerned that the government improperly intercepted nude photos, or "dick pics," as part of its mass surveillance programs.

"The good news is that there's no program named the 'dick pic' program. The bad news... they are still collecting everybody's information, including your dick pics," Snowden said while stifling a chuckle.

"If you have your email somewhere like Gmail hosted on a server overseas or transferred overseas or anytime it crosses outside the borders of the United States, your junk ends up in the database," Snowden added.

Snowden then went on to explain the "PRISM" program, which collects data from tech companies like Google, Facebook, Apple and others.

"PRISM is how they pull your junk out of Google, with Google's involvement," he said. "I guess I never thought about putting it in the context of your junk."

So should Americans stop taking photos of their private parts and sending them online?

"You shouldn't change your behavior because of a government agency somewhere that's doing the wrong thing," Snowden said. "If you sacrifice your values because you're afraid, you don't care about those values very much."

CORRECTION: A previous version of this story quoted Snowden as saying PRISM collects data without Google's involvement. He said that Google is involved in the process.

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Edward Snowden Explains How The Government Can Get Your ...