*Edward Snowden has defended his decision to appear on live Russian television, insisting his question to Vladimir Putin on mass surveillance was designed to hold the Russian president accountable and not, as critics have suggested, an act of compliant propaganda. Writing for the Guardian, the whistleblower behind the National Security Agency leaks suggests he carefully framed the question to Putin, which he asked via video link in an annual televised call-in with the president on Thursday. Putin, Snowden writes, “denied the first part of the question and dodged on the latter”. In the phone-in, Snowden asked Putin: “Does Russia intercept, store or analyse, in any way, the communications of millions of individuals?” Putin replied: “Our intelligence efforts are strictly regulated by our law… We don’t have a mass system of such interception and — according with our law –it cannot exist.”* John Iadarola (TYT University, and Common Room), Dave Rubin (TYT 140, and The Rubin Report), Cenk Uygur, and Jimmy Dore (The Jimmy Dore Show) break it down on The Young Turks.

*Read more here from Ed Pilkington at The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/18/edward-snowden-defends-decision-question-vladimir-putin-on-surveillance