The AnStifter Stuttgart Peace Prize in 2014 goes to the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Laudation for “Edward Snowden” by Ines Pohl, editor-in-chief of the taz Ladies and Gentlemen “ We only have the rights that we protect”. This sentence comes from an interview in The Nation newspaper with... Edward Snowden. Dear instigators, dear instigators! Thank you for your invitation to honor a man here in Stuttgart who has given us all a new perspective on the machinations of the secret services that threaten our freedom and privacy. At the moment I can hardly imagine a better place in Germany to honor the currently best-known instigator of resistance against the productions of power - no more fitting place than your city, dear instigators: Stuttgart. Stuttgart, the city that still takes its protest to the streets today - against a swanky train station that many people don't want. Here, peaceful demonstrations have repeatedly been met with completely disproportionate police violence. Unfortunately. The price of freedom is high. Everywhere, in every country in the world. In dictatorships, of course, it is incomparably higher than in democracies. But now we also know that in the United States, the country that was so close to us Germans for many historical reasons as the promised land of the free, home of the brave - that there is an insidious surveillance state in the USA with the help of its secret services who exploited the fear of its citizens after 9/11 in order to establish control mechanisms that one would sometimes prefer to think of as science fiction... It's about tangible economic interests, for example from telephone companies, but not only. And these are imperialist strategies of great consequence. We only know all this because Edward Snowden was willing to walk the rocky path of the whistleblower . Who is this man that the United States wants to try as a traitor? “ I go by Ed,” is how he introduces himself in conversations. And he says about himself: “I am an indoor cat, a computer guy. I don't go out and play football and stuff – that's not me. I want to think, I want to build, I want to talk, I want to create.” “I have a bed for Ed,” read posters that many in Germany hung in their windows when it was discussed whether Germany could grant Edward Snowden asylum. Many citizens would have been happy to give him asylum. And he seems so honest too! A secret service man you can trust...since he got out. Because of his exit. “ There's definitely a deep state. “Trust me, I’ve been there,” says Snowden. So in the USA there is a state within the state in which the secret services and the military rule and not the elected representatives of democracy. Snowden published the evidence. As an IT security technician and system administrator, Our Ed had access to all documents of the inner circle, the core area of ​​the National Secret Agency , which obviously aims for comprehensive, seamless surveillance of all citizens - and is already practicing it to a frightening extent. Dear instigators, dear people of Stuttgart – I personally have a lot in common with the United States. I studied there, my wife is American - and I have always loved this country for its amazing opportunities and its courage to stand up for the rights and freedoms of the individual. Also against the state. Also against state interests. And now: the end of the North American flagpole should be the end of freedom? The end of privacy? That will depend on us. From us as global citizens. Perhaps the resistance to the surveillance strategies of the US empire has just begun - beginning to draw circles that go far beyond the small group of Internet freaks and nerds who are at home in the world of the Internet with all its technical sophistications and possibilities . When we celebrate Edward Snowden today as a fighter for freedom, we are also honoring four other people without whom his publications about the surveillance world in which we have long been living would not have been possible. Resistance and rebellion against injustice and oppression ultimately always requires both: the courage of the individual to stand up, refuse the dictates of the powerful and then - teamwork. Another achievement of democratic ideals that hardly any other country has promoted and advanced as much as the USA. The team behind Ed Snowden will also go down in history: Bradley Chelsea Manning , the US soldier turned woman who, while still a man, exposed some of the US Army's war crimes against Iraqi civilians and was only able to do so because she had access to secret film footage and documents. Manning, in turn, could not have done this without the technical and strategic help of Julian Assange , the founder of Wikileaks. Laura Poitras , the journalist and documentary filmmaker, was the first person to understand how explosive these e-mails were from Citizenfour (Ed Snowden's code name), to whom she is now making her third film about the machinations of the American military and secret services dedicated. She documented his path, their path together, on film and thus created a very loving and fair memorial to him - as a political activist and as a personality who impresses with his confident honesty and straightforwardness. And finally there was and is Glenn Greenwald , the Guardian journalist, who determined the timing and choreography of the journalistic processing of Snowden's secret documents with the utmost precision and professionalism. These four, these four citizens, with their preparatory work, their support and their know-how, made the enormous journalistic impact of Edward Snowden's revelations possible in the first place. Ladies and Gentlemen – Chelsea Manning is in prison; Julian Assange has been living locked up in the Ecuadorian embassy for two years; Edward Snowden is stuck in Russia; Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald will probably never be able to take unsupervised steps again in their lives . Peter Maas wrote a wonderful portrait of Laura Poitras for the New York Times magazine, the final sentence of which I would like to read to you here: “The greatest paradox, of course,” writes Peter Maas, “is that all of her efforts and efforts “Understanding and uncovering state surveillance have now probably condemned them to this same surveillance for the rest of their lives.” Laura Poitras herself said in an interview with Peter Maas: “Our lives will never be the same again. I don't know if I'll ever be able to live somewhere again and feel like I have any kind of privacy. This could just be irreversible and completely over.” This, ladies and gentlemen, of course applies even more to Edward Snowden, the secret service embezzler himself. But I would like to raise awareness of these four other musketeers of the investigation, together with the honor for Snowden, because of their incredibly successful choreography of the journalistic disclosure scandals deserves the highest respect and honor. And I believe this is very much in the spirit of our hero of the day: “ It’s not about me, it’s not about my personality ,” says Edward Snowden in Poitra’s documentary “Citizenfour .” “It's about the thing, about what is about to be taken away from us - intellectual freedom. The freedom to think what we want. Uncensored and in a protected privacy.” In order to truly protect this freedom, we need teamwork at the highest level. The new media and the global Internet with its Janus head of grandiose freedom and the infamous control by the state, military and business corporations have massively changed our perception of the world in recent years. Uncovering the dark sides of this new world - for this we all deserve thanks to Edward Snowden and his colleagues. Whistleblowers are more than just classic informants. Edward Snowden went public fully aware of the planned criminal prosecution for his betrayal of secrets. He's risking his life. His freedom of movement. His private life. And why? For reasons of conscience, for love of freedom. But Edward Snowden also confronts us all with a fundamental question that is as old as the world, but which today shows itself under different circumstances, in a different form, in the dangers of highly modern technology: How far do we go ourselves – for the truth? What price are we willing to pay for spoken, demonstrated truths that might land us on the list of so-called traitors? Personally, I also ask myself: What new responsibility lies ahead for me, for us as journalists - in times of surveillance and the transparency demanded by everyone? In London, the Guardian office was turned upside down - in antiquated old school intelligence logic, they insisted on smashing the hard drives... as if copy media didn't exist! But precisely because we as journalists enjoy greater protection in the name of press freedom than many others, we also have a great duty and responsibility to support courageous people like Edward Snowden with our journalistic knowledge and the entire strength of our media. Dear instigators, I would like to address another paradox: You are giving Edward Snowden a peace prize today. You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the word " freedom" yet, yes, but not once the word " peace" in my nod to Snowden's undoubted contributions to public enlightenment. As a journalist, I have to say: Even if Snowden caused a disaster for the NSA... the scandalous revelations were ultimately, like all other attacks by "enemies", very quickly integrated into the system. Shit happens . For a secret service there can be – by definition – no taboos and no moral barriers. A secret service operates in and with the logic of war. Even in peacetime. Yes! Edward Snowden deserves every peace prize in the world because he made it clear to us that we have not lived in peace for a long time. Yes! We in Germany are still protected from the war in our own country. But our peace and the peace in the USA is a false peace - bought with many wars in other countries, on other continents. The freedom that we still enjoy in Europe today is always protected by the willingness of a few to put their own freedom and even their lives at risk. Let me close with a quote from another rebel for a free America. Do you still remember Janis Joplin? “ Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…” Ladies and gentlemen, we are all indebted to Edward Snowden and his four citizens - indebted to keep kicking ourselves in the ass and taking our responsibility for a real peace and freedom that again deserves the name . In our thinking and in our actions. Further revelations are in preparation. The film Citizenfour ends with this announcement . So there are even more whistleblowers - people who have taken an example from the courageous uprising against inhumane practices that Edward Snowden led. Dear instigators, you too repeatedly remind us of human rights and the indivisible value of our freedom. It's nice that you, of all people, are now handing over the Stuttgart Peace Prize to Edward Snowden, who has inspired so many people around the world - and incited rebellion. Edward – thank you so much for this reminder of that actually Something that is self-evident and unfortunately no longer self-evident in our times. But does it ever? Our times may just present different dangers. Knowing these dangers as precisely as possible is the prerequisite for resistant action. It’s true: “We only have the rights that we protect”. Thank you, Mr Snowden! And may you live in peace again… one day.