Snowden asked: "Does Russia intercept or store or analyse the communication of millions of individuals?" He went on to ask whether increasing the effectiveness of internal security systems could ever justify such actions.
To applause from the studio audience, Putin responded: "Mr Snowden you are a former agent, a spy, I used to work for a intelligence service, we are going to talk the same language."
He said Russia did not have a comparable programme, stating: "Our agents are controlled by law. You have to get court permission to put an individual under surveillance. We don't have mass permission, and our law makes it impossible for that kind of mass permission to exist."
He said he was aware that "criminals and terrorists" relied on this kind of interception, and that their actions demanded a response from the security services. "We have to use technical means to respond to their crimes, including those of a terrorist nature, we do have some efforts like that. We don't have a mass control. I hope we don't do that," he said.
He did not add, nor did he need to, that he was absolutely delighted that Edward-freaking-Snowden happened to ask him that question, or that comparing the extent of what he wanted to admit about Russia's surveillance capacity to the impression of the US capacity that Snowden has made known is nothing but a joy, and also that, spy to a person he considers a fellow spy, he looks forward to this kind of conversation again, probably in public, albeit not as a condition of anything, oh, no...
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