Edward Snowden Auctions Off Pentagon Papers As NFT To Highlight Press Freedom
If you’ve been keeping up with the news over the last decade, you might be familiar with the name Edward Snowden, the infamous whistleblower who leaked classified information from the National Security Agency (NSA) in 2013.
In the years since the chronicles, Snowden and political activist and fellow whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg have since created a foundation called the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), which is dedicated to free speech and independence from the press.
Snowden and Ellsberg have now come together to spread the word of their cause and foundation through a joint non-fungible token. The artwork is in tribute to Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, where he was famously seen on the steps of the Boston courthouse proclaiming: “Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?”
Introducing PleasrHouse, Episode 01
— ✨ PleasrDAO (@PleasrDAO) January 10, 2023
Going LIVE with @DanielEllsberg @snowden @FreedomofPress
Thursday 3pm EST
Grab ur whistles and sign up for notifs:https://t.co/BuN3ETlibB ✨ pic.twitter.com/bNMPKFH2r0
And with that, the name for the new NFT project was born. Wouldn’t You Go to Prison to Help End This War? is a successor to Snowden’s first NFT piece, Stay Free, which was bought by block-chained aligned group PleasrDAO.
The digital art piece will accompany a series of episodes hosted on PleasrDAO’s live-streaming site PleasrHouse that will center around archival footage of Ellsberg’s interview and both whistleblowers talking about their journey and their stance on free speech.
All proceeds from the Wouldn’t You Go to Prison to Help End This War? project will go to the Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Daniel Ellsberg Initiative for Peace and Democracy.
[via Artnet News and Decrypt, screenshot via PleasrDAO]
