World Bulletin / News Desk

Former US National Security Agency contractor and US citizen Edward Snowden, addressed Britons in Channel 4's annual "Alternative Chritsmas Message" on Wednesday afternoon.

A short film recorded by American documentary maker, Laura Poitras was broadcasted on British TV channel, "Channel 4" on Chritsmas Day. In a direct message, 30-year-old US whistleblower touched on "privacy" and "mass survelliance" topics.

Snowden who shook the world with revealing the mass surveillance programmes organised by the US and UK's spying agencies said, "We learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do."

Supporting his message with an example, he referred to English novelist George Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four" novel and said, "The Great Britain's George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book -- microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us -- are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go."

Underscoring privacy, Snowden said, "Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves -- an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that's a problem, because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be."

"The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it," Snowden said and added that together, we can all find a better balance.

"End mass surveillance. And remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying," Snowden concluded his Christmas message.

Channel 4's annual "Alternative Chritsmas Message" was first aired in 1993. Every year, Queen Elizabeth II delivers "Christmas Message" for Britons however, Channel 4 gives a platform to various names as an alternative to the Queen's Christmas Day broadcast. Former President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of the names, delivering a message in channel's programme back in 2008.