The upper house of Russia’s legislature is considering hiring NSA leaker Edward Snowden to work on a project tasked with protecting the data and privacy of Russian citizens.
According to Russia’s Interfax news service, the Russian Federation Council’s working group intended to monitor Russians’ “constitutional rights to the inviolability of private life” is planning to meet with Snowden to discuss hiring him as a data expert. Interfax explains that the group “has been paying great attention to the need to enhance personal data protection after Snowden leaked details of the U.S. National Security Agency’s massive electronic spying operations, among them efforts to secretly eavesdrop on telephone conversations all over the world, including those held by Russian citizens.”
But, according to the group’s head, Ruslan Gattarov, that’s not what’s really of interest to the council; rather, he says the group, the Information Policy Council, would like to have Snowden work with them on their efforts to reduce Russian companies’ leaks of customer data, contending that the governmental commission is ”not interested in the issue of U.S. special services’ unlawful use of personal data.”
“Mr. Snowden is a top-class specialist,” Gattarov explained. ”We would like to cooperate with him in order to track down bottlenecks in the sphere of personal data protection.” Snowden surely is an elite programmer, but Russia’s a big country that doesn’t usually lack for technical specialists . . .