Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance at TED today, telling the mostly supportive crowd to expect more revelations from his vast cache of secret National Security Agency documents. 
 
 The NSA whistleblower took to the stage during the conference’s second day via a video chatbot he controlled from what TED organizer Chris Anderson called an “undisclosed location.” Snowden said there are still revelations to be made and stories to be told about the intelligence agency. “I don’t think there’s any question that some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come,” Snowden said, just one week after appearing at SXSW in Austin, Texas. 
 
 ‘To people who have seen and enjoyed the free and open internet, it’s up to us to preserve that liberty for the next generation to enjoy.’ 
 
 —Edward Snowden 
 
 Rather than the traditional 18-minute TED talk, in which a single speaker addresses the audience, Anderson essentially interviewed Snowden. Through a strikingly clear connection, the bot-ified Snowden was poised and good-humored as he called on tech companies to make SSL encryption the default for browsing the web. “To people who have seen and enjoyed the free and open internet, it’s up to us to preserve that liberty for the next generation to enjoy,” he said. 
 
 Anderson suggested that Snowden’s sentiments parallel those of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, who has recently used the 25th anniversary of the world wide web to call for an “internet bill of rights.” But because this was TED, Anderson didn’t have to speculate on the similarities between the goals of Snowden and Berners-Lee. He simply brought Berners-Lee on stage to find out. 
 
 Asked by Anderson whether he thought Snowden was a traitor or a hero, Berners-Lee went with “hero, if you have to make the choice between the two.” Snowden said internet rights were not just about principles but about technology. “I believe a magna carta for the internet is exactly what we need,” Snowden said. “We need to encode our values not just in writing but in the structure of the internet.” 
 
 Berners-Lee told Snowden that his hope on the web’s 25th anniversary was to get everyday users who don’t normally consider the internet in terms of rights to consider the web they really want. He asked Snowden how he thought the web would best work. “When we think about it in terms of how far we can go, I think that’s a question that’s limited only by what we’re willing to do,” Snowden said. “I think the internet that we’ve enjoyed in the past has been exactly what we, not just as a nation but as a people around the world, need.” If the web’s technologists can truly enlist the web’s casual users as allies, he said, “we’ll get not just the internet we’ve had, but a better internet.” 
 
 At the end of Snowden’s appearance, Anderson stuck a TED conference badge on Snownden’s bot and invited him to stick around for the week. With that, he rolled offstage, accompanied by his lawyer. ||||| Zoom in on this story . Explore all there is to know. 
 
 Edward Snowden appears by robot at a TED conference in Vancouver. Photo: AFP 
 
 Former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden has emerged from his Russian exile in the form of a remotely-controlled robot to promise more sensational revelations about US spying programs. 
 
 The fugitive's face appeared on a screen as he manoeuvred the wheeled android around a stage at the TED gathering, addressing an audience in Vancouver without ever leaving his secret hideaway. 
 
 "There are absolutely more revelations to come," he said. "Some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come." 
 
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 Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who has been charged in the United States with espionage, dismissed the public debate about whether he is a heroic whistleblower or traitor. 
 
 Instead, he used the conference organised by educational non-profit organisation TED, or Technology Entertainment Design, to call for people worldwide to fight for privacy and internet freedom. 
 
 Internet creator Tim Berners-Lee briefly joined Snowden's interview with TED curator Chris Anderson, and came down in the hero camp. 
 
 When Anderson posed the question to the TED audience – known for famous, innovative, and influential attendees – the idea that Snowden was a force for good met with applause. 
 
 Hero or traitor? 
 
 "Hero patriot or traitor; I would say I am an American citizen just like anyone else," Snowden said. 
 
 "What really matters here is the kind of government we want; the kind of internet we want." 
 
 He sais he was inspired to pass a huge trove of NSA files to reporters when he saw US spying tactics going too far and intruding into the private data of millions of internet and telephone customers. 
 
 Snowden argued that if he had gone to the US Congress with his concerns he would have risked being "buried along with the information". 
 
 Snowden instead urged the "adversarial press" to challenge government and ignite public debate "without putting national security at risk". 
 
 He argued the dangers critics have played up regarding disclosure of information have not materialised, and insisted he remains comfortable with his decisions. 
 
 He depicted the NSA's PRISM program for getting user information from internet firms as a way for the US government to "deputise corporate America to do its dirty work". 
 
 And he blasted a US secret court for seldom rejecting NSA requests to compel internet companies to turn over user data and US legislators for showing little oversight. 
 
 Snowden urged internet companies to stand against online snooping by encrypting online activity by default so spies could easily note anything from book browsing at Amazon.com to visiting websites. 
 
 People should be able to book air travel, order books, make phone calls and send text messages without worrying about how it will look to an agent of the government, Snowden declared. 
 
 "More communications are being intercepted in America about Americans that there are in Russia about Russians," Snowden said. 
 
 Terrorism mantra 
 
 Snowden argued the NSA is making the US, and the world, less safe by lobbying for weak standards that could open back doors into online venues or services such as online commerce or banking. 
 
 "Our basic freedoms are not a partisan issue," he said. 'It is up to us to protect them; it is up to us to preserve the open internet." 
 
 Snowden endorsed the campaign by Berners-Lee for a global Magna Carta laying out values and rights on the internet. 
 
 "A Magna Carta for the internet is exactly what we need," Snowden said. 
 
 Anderson said the NSA had been invited to take part in the TED chat with Snowden, but it did not work out "for logistical reasons". 
 
 AFP 
 
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 It wasn't the newsiest moment in Edward Snowden's address to TED, which he delivered via video that was streamed through a robot. (Check out the picture.) The news, as ever, was probably Snowden's claim that "some of the most important reporting" on his revelations "is yet to come." This is probably true. The archives of documents stolen by Snowden have been enough to support breaking news at the Washington Post, the Guardian, and Pro Publica, to name a few outlets that got some access; an entirely new media company, First Look, was launched on the strength of what Glenn Greenwald, et al. could find in the archives. 
 
 So, no, not newsy, but the part of Snowden's Q&A that stuck out to me was his gleeful swipe at Dick Cheney. 
 
 At the time Julian Assange was doing his greatest work, Dick Cheney was saying he’d endangered governments worldwide, the skies were going to ignite, seas would boil off. Now he says it was a fleabite. We should be suspicious of overblown claims from these officials. But! Let’s assume that these people really believe this. I would argue they have a narrow conception of national security. The prerogatives of people like Dick Cheney do not keep the nation safe. 
 
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 This is not the first time Snowden has made fun of Cheney, whose appeal to the D.C. chat circuit has not dimmed even after he helped his daughter make a spectacular hash of a U.S. Senate primary. Last year, Cheney came up on a Guardian chat and Snowden called it an "honor" to be insulted by the guy. 
 
 So Snowden, who recently turned 30, is adept at the art of insult trading with political figures. Why does it matter? Well, some of the (embryonic) discussion of whether Snowden should leave Russia and give himself up to American justice comes out of the theory that Snowden should become an advocate for his cause. He has controlled his image like ... well, like a guy who doesn't give out his contact info and lives in a country that American journalists need a visa to visit. In the last few months, he's given interviews to Bart Gellman, SXSW, and TED, all of which 1) broke the news he wanted, 2) avoided the news he didn't (no one has asked him, in a public forum, anything about Russian politics or the Crimean incursion), and 3) allowed him to describe his whistleblowing in heroic terms. In the SXSW interview, he even appeared before a screen blow-up of the Constitution. 
 
 Snowden is winning, as shown by the polls and the fumbling responses of American politicians. He's even come up with a reason for his skeptics to distrust the NSA. "If we hack Chinese business and steal its secrets, or those in Berlin, that’s of less value to the American people than making sure that the Chinese can’t get access to our secrets," he said at TED. "In reducing the security of our own communications, they’re putting us at risk in a fundamental way."
– Edward Snowden made a surprise appearance—via a remote-controlled video chat robot—at the TED conference yesterday, and, as at his SXSW appearance, he got a warm welcome. The inventor of the Internet himself, Tim Berners-Lee, appeared onstage and called Snowden a hero, Wired reports, and a vocal segment of the crowd agreed, according to Fortune, with only about 10% deeming him a villain. Snowden's most headline-generating pronouncement was that "there are absolutely more revelations to come. Some of the most important reporting to be done is yet to come." But the appearance itself fascinated David Weigel at Slate. Snowden has essentially positioned himself as a "cyborg thought leader," Weigel writes. With these appearances, he's "controlled his image like … well, like a guy who doesn't give out his contact info and lives in a country that American journalists need a visa to visit." Snowden's TED and SXSW hosts asked exactly the questions he wanted and avoided uncomfortable ones he didn't—like, say, anything to do with Russian politics. "Snowden has outlived the DB Cooper mystery that defined his public debut, and is now situated for a long game in which he becomes more popular and harder to call a traitor." Click for Weigel's full column.