Exchange going on right now live where the editor of the Guardian Newspaper in the UK, Alan Rusbridger is getting grilled by Parliament regarding the reporting of the Snowden NSA revelations. Great exchange here:

Keith Vaz: “Some of the criticisms against you and the Guardian have been very very personal. You and I were both born outside this country, but I love this country. Do you love this country?”

Alan Rusbridger: “We live in a democracy and most of the people working on this story are British people who have families in this country, who love this country. I’m slightly surprised to be asked the question but yes, we are patriots and one of the things we are patriotic about is the nature of democracy, the nature of a free press and the fact that one can in this country discuss and report these things.”

Keith Vaz: “So the reason why you’ve done this has not been to damage the country, it is to help the country understand what is going on as far as surveillance is concerned?”

Alan Rusbridger: “I think there are countries, and they’re not generally democracies, where the press are not free to write about these things and where the security services do tell editors what to write, and where politicians do censor newspapers. That’s not the country that we live in, in Britain, that’s not the country that America is and it’s one of the things I love about this country- is that we have that freedom to write, and report, and to think and we have some privacy, and those are the concerns which need to be balanced against national security which no one is underestimating, and I can speak for the entire Guardian staff who live in this country that they want to be secure too.”

Keith Vaz: “Thank you so much, that’s very clear.”

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