American whistleblower Edward Snowden has just released a
dystopic techno music video with French musician Jean-Michel Jarre
that's a little bit Bourne Identity with a touch of The Matrix.
The
thumping electronic beat of the song Exit underlines an intimidating
mood with rapid-fire images of sophisticated surveillance technology and
satellite and drone images of various spots on the planet. The
punchline consists of dire warnings of breached privacy rights from
Snowden.
"Technology can actually increase privacy," a deadly serious
Snowden drones on the track. "The question is: Why are our private
details that are transmitted online [or] stored on our personal devices
any different than the details and private records of our lives that are
stored in our private journals?"
He adds: "Saying that you don't care about the right to
privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you
don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.
It's a deeply anti-social principal because rights are not just
individual — they're collective.
Then Snowden asks, repeatedly: "If you don't stand up" for privacy, "then who will?"
The new-age electronic music wizard Jarre posted the video to his YouTube channel. He described the work to The Guardian
as a "hectic, obsessive techno track, trying to illustrate the idea of
this crazy quest for big data on one side and the manhunt for this one
young guy by the CIA, NSA and FBI on the other."
The track is part of Jarre's new album Electronica 2: The Heart of Noise.
Jarre
connected with the fugitive whistleblower after he asked The Guardian
to put him in touch with Snowden during a 2015 interview.
Snowden is still a refugee in Russia where he is safe from
charges of treason in the US that were levied against him for revealing
American state secrets of widespread snooping of people around the world
as well as law-abiding US citizens by the National Security Agency.
He has been living in Russia for nearly three years. If
convicted of the US Espionage Act crimes he is charged with, he could
face 30 years in prison. Snowden has said he would return to the US if
he could be guaranteed a fair trial.
In the meantime, Snowden is reportedly considering suing Norway
to block that nation from extraditing him to the US should he decide to
visit Oslo to accept the prestigious Ossietzky Prize he was recently
awarded by PEN International.
The closest Snowden will next get to film scenes will be via
actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt playing the whistleblower in Oliver Stone's upcoming movie Snowden.
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