Web Summit 2019 today announced that Edward Snowden, American NSA whistleblower, is set to address over 70,000 attendees at this year's Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal
This November, Snowden will speak live to the Web Summit audience in Lisbon down the line from Russia, where he has been granted temporary asylum. Snowden made news around the world after releasing classified information from the National Security Agency in 2013.
According to the Web Summit organisers, Snowden is set to reveal the story behind his work for the NSA, how he helped build the mass surveillance system which collected millions of phone calls, text messages, and emails of US citizens and why he chose to expose it the way he did rather than following the standard protocol.
In the past, Web Summit has welcomed privacy and security activists such as European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager who will be returning again this year; the late Stephen Hawking; Werner Vogels, CTO at Amazon; Garry Kasparov, Chess Grandmaster and Security Ambassador at Avast; Hicham Oudghiri, Co-Founder & CEO at Enigma Technologies; Natalia Oropeza, Chief Cyber Security Officer at Siemens AG, and more.
Alongside Vestager, other speakers recently announced to speak at this year’s event include the former UK Prime Minister, Tony Blair; former professional boxer, Wladimir Klitschko; son of Will Smith and founder of JUST Water, Jaden Smith; Guo Ping, Rotating Chairman of Huawei, and Katherine Maher, the CEO of Wikipedia.