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"It seems Edward Snowden had an ulterior motive when he appeared on live TV to ask Russian President Vladimir Putin whether he spied on millions of Russians.\nSnowden's questions gave Putin a chance to claim that his country is not as evil as its historic enemy, the United States, but also forced Putin to go on the record in front of millions of Russians. And that's exactly what Snowden wanted, he wrote in a Guardian op-ed on Friday.\nSee also: This Is How the NSA Is Trying to Win Over the Media\n\"If we are to test the truth of officials' claims, we must first give them an opportunity to make those claims,\" Snowden wrote in the op-ed.\nSome critics slammed Snowden for taking part in a \"propaganda stunt\" during Putin's annual call-in show on Russian TV on Thursday and serving Putin with a \"softball\" question. Others, like former NSA general counsel Stewart Baker, went one step further and claimed Snowden's question was \"self-incriminating.\" \nBut Snowden defined his question as one that \"cannot credibly be answered in the negative by any leader who runs a modern, intrusive surveillance program.\" Though he stopped short of calling Putin a liar, Snowden wrote that the Russian leader \"denied the first part of the question and dodged on the latter.\" \nIn fact, Snowden says his question was inspired by the one Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) asked the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper during a congressional hearing last year, months before the first revelations of NSA top secret surveillance programs started coming out. \n\"Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?\" Wyden asked. \n\"No, sir ... not wittingly,\" Clapper answered.\nThat answer opened a debate on surveillance in the United States \u2014 and Snowden hopes Putin's answer does the same, prompting Russian and international journalists to look into Putin's spying systems, or the allegations that the Russian government asked the popular social network Vkontakte to turn over information on Ukrainian protesters.\nAndrei Soldatov, a Russian investigative journalist who has exposed the depth of his country's \"Orwellian\" surveillance programs, agreed that Snowden question might end up being a good thing.\n\nWhether Snowden was used or not by the Kremlin, the question was a good thing - it allows to start the debate over Russia's surveillance.\n\u2014 Andrei Soldatov (@AndreiSoldatov) April 17, 2014\n\nBut Snowden may not get his wish. Soldatov noted that he hasn't seen a lot of attention to Snowden's question within Russia so far. And he warned that won't be easy to change. \n\"Even the middle classes in Russia are ready to trade their privacy for the ghost of security, and it worked for many years. Mostly because of terrorist attacks.\" he told Mashable. \"We live in a post-totalitarian society, and for many to presume that you might be listened on is quite a natural thing.\"\nThen again, Wyden's question to Clapper didn't receive a lot of attention either \u2014 not until Snowden himself revealed the depths of the NSA's scrutiny. \nHave something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.\n      window._msla=window.loadScriptAsync||function(src,id){if(document.getElementById(id))return;var js=document.createElement('script');js.id=id;js.src=src;document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);};\n_msla(\"//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js\",\"twitter_jssdk\");"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2014/04/18/snowden-putin-questions/>