Edward Snowden releases song with Jean-Michel Jarre

Fugitive US intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who in 2013 revealed widespread US foreign surveillance, has released a song with French electronic artist Jean-Michel Jarre, the Columbia record company announced Friday.

The track, titled "Exit", features Snowden discussing digital surveillance to the backdrop of a lively electronic soundscape created by Jarre.

The song is available to stream online and will appear on Jarre's forthcoming album "Electronica Vol. 2: The Heart of Noise" which will be released on May 6.   

The pair were brought together by Britain's Guardian newspaper after Jarre gave an interview and asked to be put in touch with the former National Security Agency contractor, according to the title.  

“Edward is an absolute hero of our times. When I first read about him, it made me think of my mother," Jarre told the Guardian.

"She joined the French resistance in 1941, when people in France still thought they were just troublemakers, and she always told me that when society is generating things you can’t stand, you have to stand up against it.”

After being put in touch, Jarre, 67, travelled to Moscow to meet Snowden, 32, who live in Russia in exile, and record the samples that feature on the track.

Other guest contributors on the album will include Gary Numan and the Pet Shop Boys.

In 2013 Edward Snowden revealed to the Guardian the existence of a secret US court order forcing US telephone company Verizon to provide the NSA with daily information on its customers' calls over a four-month period.

The Washington Post and The Guardian later reported that the NSA and FBI had access to the servers of major Internet companies including Microsoft, Yahoo!, Google and Facebook to monitor the web traffic of people outside the United States.

US authorities subsequently charged Snowden with espionage and the theft of state secrets.