HALIFAX—Hundreds of students, alumni and community members sat with rapt attention to listen to a live-streamed address from former American intelligence officer and whistleblower Edward Snowden at a Dalhousie University event Thursday night.

Video-chatting with the crowd from Moscow, where he has been living under asylum since 2013, Snowden spent nearly two hours laying out the global state of digital security and privacy, including how he came to be exiled in Russia.

“Everyone in the room probably thinks Facebook is spying on them, and you’re right,” Snowden told the crowd. But the problem, he explained, goes beyond individuals and private companies to encompass a much larger issue of government policy.

“In fact, we’re in the greatest crisis of computer security I think that we’ve ever seen,” Snowden said. “Governments and corporations are doing this to everyone all the time.”

Snowden’s own story began in 2013 when he left his home in Hawaii and his job as a contractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), and travelled to Hong Kong to leak documents outlining a mass surveillance program orchestrated by the United States and several of its allies, including Canada.

“By their own count, (the NSA) was breaking their own laws thousands of times a year,” said Snowden.

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Snowden passed the damning documents on to journalists and quickly became a fugitive from the U.S. government. He sought asylum in over 25 countries, including Canada, before being granted it in Russia.

Snowden now faces three federal charges, including two that fall under the 1917 Espionage Act. He could face up to 30 years in prison.

Still, he was hopeful in his address to the Halifax audience.

“The way that you show strength is not through fear ... but by showing resilience,” Snowden said. “By showing even when there are bad people ... you have built a society that can survive them, that can respond to them.”

Snowden took questions from students after the address, and expressed his confidence in the level of awareness about security and privacy issues that he has seen from younger generations.

“It’s not enough to believe in something, you have to stand for something,” he told the crowd. “What is legal is not necessarily moral ... sometimes the most moral decision is to break the law.”

Robert Tibbo, Snowden’s legal counsel, attended Thursday’s event in Halifax. Tibbo, a Canadian-born barrister based in Hong Kong, has been doing pro bono work for asylum seekers and refugee claimants since 2010.

When he got a call about an American whistleblower in 2013, he spent two frenzied weeks sheltering Snowden with his other clients — many of whom were refugees themselves — and applying for asylum in dozens of countries.

“The largest manhunt in human history was launched against Mr. Snowden, and the world descended on Hong Kong like a storm,” said Tibbo, introducing Snowden.

One of Tibbo’s main focuses in recent years has been working to support the families that hid Snowden in Hong Kong. Two of the seven refugees who supported Snowden in 2013 have been granted asylum in Canada and are currently living in Montreal. Tibbo is hoping the remaining five will be able to follow soon.

“It’s not just the whistleblowers who are being attacked, it’s also those who step forward and help the whistleblowers,” said Tibbo. “It has created a chilling effect ... on anybody daring to expose any government on their egregious or criminal conduct.”

Admission for Thursday’s event was via donation to For the Refugees, the Montreal-based non-profit working to bring the remaining five refugees to Canada.

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Ultimately, Snowden’s message to the Halifax audience was one of resistance and resilience.

“If you can’t have faith in your system that is stronger than fear of someone that doesn’t look like you, I don’t see that as strength, I see that as weakness.”

Snowden’s lecture marked the kickoff of Dalhousie’s first ever Alumni Days event and Open Dialogue lecture series. The series continues Friday with two panel discussions featuring faculty, researchers and alumni who will discuss healthcare and immigration.

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