14 DAY TRIAL // Next month, the board of the Freedom of the Press Foundation will have a new member in the person of Edward Snowden.
The Freedom of the Press Foundation has announced that the whistleblower will be joining its board of directors in February 2014.
“I am proud and honored to welcome Edward Snowden to Freedom of the Press Foundation’s board of directors. He is the quintessential American whistleblower, and a personal hero of mine,” said Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, co-founder of the nonprofit organization.
“Leaks are the lifeblood of the republic and, for the first time, the American public has been given the chance to debate democratically the NSA’s mass surveillance programs. Accountability journalism can’t be done without the courageous acts exemplified by Snowden, and we need more like him,” Ellsberg added.
The FPF board includes Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, John Cusack, Xeni Jardin and John Perry Barlow, as well as Ellsberg.
The organization was created to protect and support those who are being punished for bringing transparency “to the world’s most powerful factions,” as Greenwald said.
Snowden has also made a statement regarding his joining the Freedom of the Press Foundation board:
“It is tremendously humbling to be called to serve the cause of our free press, and it is the honor of a lifetime to do so alongside extraordinary Americans like Daniel Ellsberg on FPF’s Board of Directors. The unconstitutional gathering of the communications records of everyone in America threatens our most basic rights, and the public should have a say in whether or not that continues. Thanks to the work of our free press, today we do, and if the NSA won't answer to Congress, they'll have to answer to the newspapers, and ultimately, the people.”
He has added that journalism isn’t possible unless reporters and their sources can safely communicate. “Where laws can’t protect that, technology can.”