17 Apr 2014 15:31

Putin: We do not take liberty of mass wiretapping, do not have such hardware as U.S.

MOSCOW. April 17 (Interfax) - Russian security services are not conducting mass wiretapping of its citizens; this is illegal, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a Q&A session.

"Certainly, we do not take liberty of such a vast scale, an uncontrolled scale. Hopefully, we will never take this liberty. Besides, we do not have the hardware and funds the United States currently possesses," he said.

Putin was answering a video question from former CIA officer Edward Snowden. The whistleblower asked the president if Russian security services were using the massive data collection method similar to the one that caused an international scandal after Snowden's leaks about the CIA's practices.