Edward Snowden made headlines in 2013 when, while employed as an NSA contractor, he revealed top-secret information about the NSA’s and CIA’s global surveillance activities. As a result, the U.S. Government has charged Snowden with violations of the Espionage Act. His actions sparked international debates over information privacy, mass surveillance and government secrecy. Snowden has been invited to speak on these issues around the world, including recent appearances to audiences at Princeton, Stanford, the University of Iowa and the University of Colorado, Boulder.

As one of the first journalists contacted by Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, who is also a constitutional lawyer, has in-depth knowledge of the inner workings of government surveillance in the U.S. and Britain. Since his original Guardian exposés of Snowden’s revelations, Pulitzer-winner Greenwald continues to stoke public debate on surveillance and privacy, including in his most-recent book “No Place to Hide: Edward Snowden, the NSA, and the U.S. Surveillance State.”

Noam Chomsky is a world-renowned linguist, public intellectual and political activist. A professor emeritus at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chomsky has written more than 100 books, his most recent being “Masters of Mankind: Essays & Lectures, 1969-2013 (2014)” and “Propaganda & the Public Mind” (2015). Chomsky has argued that mass surveillance is ineffective in stopping terrorism. He will be a visiting scholar in the UA Department of Linguistics for two weeks in March.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR

President and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, Nuala O’Connor is an internationally recognized expert in Internet and technology policy, particularly in the areas of privacy and information governance. At the U.S. Department of Commerce, she has served as deputy director of the Office of Policy & Strategic Planning, chief privacy officer and chief counsel for technology. She was also the first chief privacy officer at the Department of Homeland Security.