Edward Snowden Masks Donned By Brazilian Protesters And Senators

Move over, Guy Fawkes. The new face of resistance to government authority is NSA leaker Edward Snowden, and we have the creepy masks to prove it. In Brazil, activists opposed to the NSA’s spying programs made masks of Snowden’s face, and like-minded senators borrowed them to wear to a hearing.

Student protesters wore the masks of Snowden’s face yesterday in front of a committee hearing in Brasilia on the NSA’s monitoring of personal information. Glenn Greenwald, the The Guardian reporter who helped break Snowden’s story to the world, testified before the Brazilian Senate and tweeted that senators asked for the masks to wear at the hearing.

This is actually a pretty good idea. Guy Fawkes was a bomber trying to blow up Britain’s Parliament and install a Catholic monarchy, so no matter how cool Alan Moore made the image of the mask, he’s a terrible model for a movement that has any principles beyond opposing a government — especially when his image is being used to protest the government nonviolently as opposed to blowing things up. Snowden masks seem like the right way to go with this, even though we’re tired of seeing the same stock photo of him on every news article.

(via Techdirt, image via Lynn Friedman)

Meanwhile in related links

• Everyone knows about what the NSA is up to now… except Congressional and Deparment of Defense employees
• NSA Flix, for all your private information streaming needs
• Try this Guardian tool to know whether the NSA is watching you

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Jonah Feldman