In the New York offices of Ben Wizner, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney who represents Edward Snowden, sits a telepresence robot constantly representing the exiled whistleblower. As the German newspaper Tagespiegel reported Wednesday, the robot is “a screen on stilts, with electrical rollers for legs,” and Snowden has the ability to control the robot from Moscow.

The robot is likely the same $16,000 Beam robot that he used to speak at the TED conference in March 2014.

Tagespiegel’s Julia Prosinger was at the ACLU for a week spending time with the digital avatar of the former National Security Agency contractor.

“Sometimes when Wizner has to answer the phone quickly to get rid of another journalist, Snowden moves around the offices of his new friends as a robot and discusses constitutional law with them,” the paper noted.

The New York ACLU offices are located at the southern tip of Manhattan, at 125 Broad Street. Wizner usually positions the Snowdenbot from its 19th floor location, to face southward, towards the Statue of Liberty.

When Ars asked Wizner on Twitter for more detail about the Snowdenbot, or whether Snowden was on all the time, controlling it, Wizner briefly responded “only occasionally.” Wizner did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for a more in-depth interview.

“It would be great if we had more of these robots,” Wizner told the Tagespiegel, envisioning Snowdenbots in multiple locations worldwide.

During the course of the week Prosinger spent at 125 Broad Street, she experienced an epileptic fainting episode while chatting with Snowden. “The first fits are always the worst,” Snowden told her, explaining that he has epilepsy himself. He seemingly talked Wizner through what he should do.

As Prosinger described it:

Ben Wizner brings a glass of juice. He is moved. He has been travelling for a year, because Snowden is stuck in Russia. He speaks where Snowden doesn’t have a voice. For a year now he has literally been Snowden’s right-hand man. He just followed Snowden’s advice via Skype and stopped me from falling against the metal filing cabinets in his office. “That’s Ed how I know him. The empathy, the clear voice, the care,” says Wizner. For a moment, Edward Snowden became three-dimensional.

On Wednesday, via Twitter, Wizner characterized this moment as "truly remarkable."

Scope the Snowdenbot in action at its TED talk below.