On Saturday, NSA whistleblower spoke to the Free Software Foundation's LibrePlanet2016 conference regarding free software, cybersecurity, and privacy. He joined the event through video conference from Russia. During the event, Snowden explained that he was able to release the secrets of America's mass surveillance projects more securely by using free software.

The whistleblower praised Debian, Tails, and Tor observing that what he did in 2013 never could have happened without the help of free software. He also advocates that activists and journalists switch to free and open source software to secure their privacy against the omnipresent US surveillance state.

"I didn't use Microsoft machines when I was in my operational phase, because I couldn't trust them," explained Snowden. He went on to say that he couldn't be sure that there wasn't a backdoor coded into the Microsoft products that would enable government surveillance.

Read more: http://sputniknews.com/science/20160321/1036696585/snowden-warns-world-against-trusting-privacy-to-microsoft.html#ixzz43hQgYVjZ