Edward Snowden’s Cowardice on Russian TV

[ProSense]

3. Yup,

UPDATE, April 18, 11:00 a.m.: Snowden unrepentantly defended himself in a commentary the Guardian published on Friday. He claims he was trying to force Putin on the record about Russian state surveillance, and that journalists can now follow-up on his answer. This reasoning demonstrates that Snowden is either tragically, improbably naive about the role he played on Russian state television, or that he is extremely disingenuous. The bottom line is that Snowden helped Putin manipulate his Russian audience, most of whom will never see the sort of follow-up accountability journalism on Putin’s answer that one would expect in a liberal democracy...

...and I go with "extremely disingenuous."

In his op-ed, Snowden tries to hype the importance of his question by linking to a Daily Beast piece that calls him out for being a tool. From his op-ed:

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The investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, perhaps the single most prominent critic of Russia's surveillance apparatus (and someone who has repeatedly criticised me in the past year), described my question as "extremely important for Russia". It could, he said, "lift a de facto ban on public conversations about state eavesdropping."

From the piece linked to in that paragaph:

“I think it was ridiculous,” says Mark Galeotti, an expert on Russia’s security services who is also a professor at New York University. Andrei Soldatov, a Russian journalist who has broken major stories on the Russian intelligence service, the FSB, and is a Daily Beast contributor, was only slightly more charitable. “Putin never directly lies, he just tells half truths and his answer was a half truth,” he said. “In terms of what is going on inside the country, he was not correct. We have all signs of mass surveillance. My view is Russian surveillance is much more intrusive than what you have in the United States.”

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Galeotti says he found the display of Snowden’s question for Putin on eavesdropping to be depressing. “I believed he was an honest man who made some stupid choices,” says Galeotti. “But in this case he was doing what was in his handler’s interests.”

“We have to think of two Snowdens,” Galeotti tells The Daily Beast. “There was the original whistleblower who thought he was doing something good for the world. Now there is the Snowden—to put it crassly—who is bought and paid for entirely by the Russians. The Russians are not altruistic, if they are protecting him they are doing so because there are things he can do to repay them.”

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Soldatov said Snowden’s question could lift a de facto ban in Russia on public conversations about the state’s eavesdropping. “Before this question both Snowden and Greenwald refused to talk about surveillance in Russia,” he said. “Now we can ask Greenwald about this. Now we can start the debate. This is extremely important for Russia. I suspect Kremlin propaganda wanted to play Snowden, nevertheless this was a positive thing because it helps us to start the debate about the mass surveillance in Russia.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/17/sorry-snowden-putin-lied-to-you-about-his-surveillance-state-and-made-you-a-pawn-of-it.htm

Soldatov was being generous. He basically said, yeah, Snowden was used, but people are talking about what happened.

The fact is that nothing came out of this charade except a debate about Putin's and Snowden's character.

A more direct question (which likely couldn't happen) mentioning a specific program or incident would have sparked a debate inside Russia. As it stands, even Soldatov admits there is no debate in Russian. I could understand why, as a journalist, he would want to use this as an opportunity to spark a debate. A staged event and a lame-ass question isn't going to do it, and neither is Snowden's op-ed, which is just another lame attempt to cover his ass after a humiliating event.

In summary: Putin's show promoted his propaganda to its intended audience, Russians. Snowden's op-ed attempts to spin it to the rest of the world.