Edward Snowden recognized and awarded for his bravery in Germany

From RTNews:
Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has been awarded   the biennial “whistleblower prize” in Germany, worth some $3,900, in recognition of his “bold efforts” to expose the monitoring of communications data by his former employer......

......The organizers of the prize commended Snowden’s work, stating that he had uncovered “massive and unsuspecting monitoring and storage of communication data, which cannot be accepted in democratic societies.” 

The audience also heard a statement by Edward Snowden from Russia read out at the ceremony. “We should never forget the lessons of history when surveillance took the upper hand,” he said. 

“Not only did [German Chancellor Angela Merkel], it seems, allow the US to spy on Germany, but it seems she also helped the US to spy on Germany. So this is one of the reasons why Edward Snowden has received this award,” RT correspondent Peter Oliver said from the ceremony in Berlin. “He is being honored with this by a number of groups for his work in revealing what turns out to be the wide ranging spying activities of the NSA and the US.” 

The whistleblower award was first awarded in 1999 under the auspices of the Association of German Scientists and the German chapter of the International Association of Lawyers Against Nuclear Arms (IALANA). ....