We had to keep this bombshell quiet til the last minute since some of the most powerful people in the world would prefer that it never take place. (Even at this stage, we wouldn’t be surprised at mysterious service outages, but we believe the hacker spirit will trump the unprecedented might of the world’s surveillance powers. Fingers crossed.) Daniel Ellsberg has been an inspiration to Edward Snowden and Ellsberg himself has expressed his admiration of Snowden’s actions in releasing information revealing the extent of NSA’s spying on civilians around the globe, including within the United States. Ellsberg changed the conversation in the height of the Vietnam War through the Pentagon Papers – by revealing deceptive practices by the government. Snowden has also dramatically changed the conversation on surveillance and intelligence-gathering with his revelations. We’re honored and proud to have HOPE be the forum via which these two American heroes converse. Snowden is, of course, still unable to leave Russia because of the threat he faces from the authorities in the United States. So he will be joining us and speaking on a video link right after Daniel Ellsberg’s keynote.