Edward Snowden Identified A Reporter Having A Seizure Over Video Chat

Edward Snowden wasn't legally allowed to be there in person, but that didn't stop him from coming to a seizing journalist's aid during a recent video chat conference with the ACLU.

The exiled former national security contractor and whistle-blower -- who video-chats via an advanced computer on wheels called "The Snowdenbot" out of Russia -- had had epilepsy since he was 23, and subsequently knew just what to do when he saw someone across his screen faint.

German journalist Julia Prosinger described Snowden's heroism for Der Tagesspiegel:

I wake up, my head lies bedded on a sand bag, my body is in the recovery position. A calm voice is coming from the screen. ‘The first fits are always the worst,’ Snowden says... He tells me that he was only diagnosed when he was 23 years old. When he fled the US a little more than a year ago, he told his employer that he had to go away for a few weeks for treatment for his epilepsy. Then Snowden apologises for making me look at the flickering screen, it had triggered the fit, he says.

Snowden then instructed ACLU lawyer Ben Wizner to bring her "a glass of juice."

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article referred incorrectly to Snowden as a journalist, and stated that the ACLU's Snowdenbot communicates via Skype.