NSA leaker
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Not SyncedMy name’s Ed Snowden. I am 29 years old.
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Not SyncedI work for Booz Allen Hamilton as an infrastructure analyst for NSA in Hawaii.
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Not SyncedWhat are some of the positions that you held previously within the intelligence community?
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Not SyncedI have been a systems engineer, a systems administrator,
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Not Synceda senior advisor for the Central Intelligence Agency,
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Not Synceda solutions consultant and a telecommunications information systems officer.
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Not SyncedOne of the things people are going to be most interested in,
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Not Syncedin trying to understand what—who you are and what you’re thinking,
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Not Syncedis there came some point in time when you crossed this line of thinking about being a whistleblower
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Not Syncedto making the choice to actually become a whistleblower.
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Not SyncedWalk people through that decision-making process.
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Not SyncedWhen you're positions of privileged access, like a systems administrator for this sort of intelligence community agencies,
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Not Syncedyou're exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale than the average employee
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Not Syncedand because of that you see things that may be disturbing.
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Not SyncedBut over the course of a normal person's career, you'd only see one or two of these instances.
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Not SyncedWhen you see everything, you see them on a more frequent basis
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Not Syncedand you recognise that some of these things are actually abuses.
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Not SyncedAnd when you talk to people about them, in a place like this, where this is the normal state of business,
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Not Syncedpeople tend not to take them very seriously and, you know, move on from them.
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Not SyncedBut over time that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up, and you feel compelled to talk about it.
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Not SyncedAnd the more you talk about it, the more you're ignored, the more you're told it's not a problem,
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Not Synceduntil eventually you realise that these things need to be determined by the public,
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Not Syncednot by somebody who was simply hired by the government.
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Not SyncedTalk a little bit about how the American surveillance state actually functions. Does it target the actions of Americans?
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Not SyncedNSA, and the intelligence community in general, is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can, by any means possible,
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Not Syncedthat it believes, on the grounds of a sort of self-certification, that they serve the national interest.
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Not SyncedOriginally, we saw that focus very narrowly tailored as foreign intelligence gathered overseas.
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Not SyncedNow, increasingly, we see that it's happening domestically.
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Not SyncedAnd to do that, they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone.
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Not SyncedIt ingests them by default. It collects them in its system, and it filters them, and it analyses them, and it measures them, and it stores them for periods of time,
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Not Syncedsimply because that's the easiest, most efficient and most valuable way to achieve these ends.
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Not SyncedSo while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government
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Not Syncedor someone that they suspect of terrorism,
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Not Syncedthey're collecting your communications to do so.
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Not SyncedAny analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector anywhere.
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Not SyncedWhere those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks
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Not Syncedand the authorities that that analyist is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything.
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Not SyncedBut I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone,
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Not Syncedfrom you or your accountant to a federal judge,
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Not Syncedto even the president, if I had a personal email.
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Not SyncedOne of the extraordinary parts about this episode is that usually whistleblowers do what they do anonymously
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Not Syncedand take steps to remain anonymous for as long as they can, which they hope, often, is forever.
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Not SyncedYou, on the other hand, have this attitude of the opposite, which is to declare yourself openly as the person behind these disclosures.
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Not SyncedWhy did you choose to do that?
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Not SyncedI think that the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who make these disclosures that are outside of the democratic model.
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Not SyncedWhen you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
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Not SyncedAnd if you do that in secret, consistenty, you know, as the government does when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it took,
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Not Syncedit will kind of give its officials a mandate to go, "Hey, you know, tell the press about this thing and that thing so the public is on our side".
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Not SyncedBut they rarely, if ever, do that when an abuse occurs.
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Not SyncedThat falls to individual citizens. But they're typically maligned.
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Not SyncedYou know, it becomes a thing of, these people are against the country, they're against the government.
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Not SyncedBut I'm not. I'm no different from anybody else. I don't have special skills.
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Not SyncedI'm just another guy who sits there, day-to-day, in the office, and watches what's happening,
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Not Syncedand goes, "This is something that's not our place to decide.
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Not SyncedThe public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong".
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Not SyncedAnd I'm willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them
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Not Syncedand say, "I didn't change these. I didn't modify the story. This is the truth. This is what's happening.
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Not SyncedYou should decide whether we need to be doing this."
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Not SyncedHave you given thought to what it is that the U.S. government’s response to your conduct is,
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Not Syncedin terms of what they might say about you, how they might try to depict you, what they might try to do to you?
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Not SyncedYeah, I could be, you know, rendered by the CIA.
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Not SyncedI could have people come after me or any of their third-party partners.
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Not SyncedYou know, they work closely with a number of other nations.
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Not SyncedOr, you know, they could pay off the triads. Or any of their agents or assets.
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Not SyncedWe've got a CIA station just up the road, and the consulate here in Hong Kong, and I am sure they are going to be very busy for the next week.
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Not SyncedAnd that's a fear I'll live under for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be.
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Not SyncedYou can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies
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Not Syncedand be completely free from risk, because they're such powerful adversaries, that no one can meaningfully oppose them.
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Not SyncedIf they want to get you, they'll get you, in time.
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Not SyncedBut, at the same time, you have to make a determination about what it is that's important to you.
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Not SyncedAnd if living, living unfreely but comfortably is something you're willing to accept –
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Not Syncedand I think many of us are, it's the human nature –
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Not Syncedyou can get up every day, you can go to work, you can collect your large paycheck
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Not Syncedfor relatively little work, against the public interest,
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Not Syncedand go to sleep at night after watching your shows.
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Not SyncedBut if you realise that that's the world that you helped create
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Not Syncedand it's going to get worse with the next generation and the next generation,
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Not Syncedwho extend the capabilities of this sort of architecture of oppression,
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Not Syncedyou realise that you might be willing to accept any risk
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Not Syncedand it doesn't matter what the outcome is
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Not Syncedso long as the public gets to make their own decisions about how that's applied.
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Not SyncedWhy should people care about surveillance?
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Not SyncedBecause, even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded.
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Not SyncedAnd the storage capability of the systems increases every year, consistently, by orders of magnitude
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Not Syncedto where it's getting to the point you don't have to have done anything wrong.
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Not SyncedYou simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call
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Not Syncedand then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinise every decision you've ever made
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Not Syncedevery friend you've ever discussed something with
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Not Syncedand attack you on that basis, just to sort of derive suspicion
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Not Syncedfrom an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.
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Not SyncedWe are currently sitting in a room in Hong Kong
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Not Syncedwhich is where we are because you travelled here.
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Not SyncedTalk a little bit about why it is that you came here.
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Not SyncedAnd specifically, there are going to be people who will speculate
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Not Syncedthat what you really intend to do is to defect to the country that many see as the number one rival of the United States
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Not Syncedwhich is China, and that what you're really doing is essentially seeking to aid an enemy of the United States
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Not Syncedwith which you intend to seek asylum. Can you talk a little bit about that?
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Not SyncedSure. So there's a couple assertions in those arguments
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Not Syncedthat are sort of embedded in the questioning of the choice of Hong Kong.
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Not SyncedThe first is that China is an enemy of the United States. It's not.
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Not SyncedI mean, there are conflicts between the United States government and the Chinese PRC government.
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Not SyncedBut the peoples, inherently, we don't care. We trade with each other freely.
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Not SyncedWe're not at war. We're not in armed conflict and we're not trying to be.
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Not SyncedWe're the largest trading partners out there for each other.
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Not SyncedAdditionally, Hong Kong has a strong tradition of free speech.
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Not SyncedPeople think, "Oh, China, great firewall". Mainland China does have significant restrictions on free speech
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Not Syncedbut the Hong Kong—the people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting in the streets, of making their views known.
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Not SyncedThe Internet is not filtered here, no more so than any other Western government.
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Not SyncedAnd I believe that the Hong Kong government is actually independent in relation to a lot of other leading Western governments.
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Not SyncedIf your motive had been to harm the United States and help its enemies,
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Not Syncedor if your motive had been personal material gain,
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Not Syncedwere there things that you could have done with these documents to advance those goals that you didn’t end up doing?
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Not SyncedOh, absolutely. I mean, anybody in the positions of access with the technical capabilities that I had
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Not Syncedcould, you know, suck out secrets, pass them on the open market to Russia. You know, they always have an open door, as we do.
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Not SyncedI had access to, you know, the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community,
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Not Syncedand undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we have, what their missions are and so forth.
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Not SyncedIf I had just wanted to harm the U.S., you know, that—you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon.
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Not SyncedBut that’s not my intention.
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Not SyncedAnd I think, for anyone making that argument, they need to think, if they were in my position,
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Not Syncedand, you know, you live a privileged life—you’re living in Hawaii, in Paradise, and making a ton of money—
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Not Syncedwhat would it take to make you leave everything behind?
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Not SyncedThe greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change.
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Not SyncedPeople will see in the media all of these disclosures.
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Not Syncedhey’ll know the length that the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally,
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Not Syncedto create greater control over American society and global society,
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Not Syncedbut they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things,
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Not Syncedto force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.
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Not SyncedAnd the months ahead, the years ahead, it’s only going to get worse,
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Not Synceduntil eventually there will be a time where policies will change,
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Not Syncedbecause the only thing that restricts the activities of the surveillance state are policy.
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Not SyncedEven our agreements with other sovereign governments,
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Not Syncedwe consider that to be a stipulation of policy rather than a stipulation of law.
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Not SyncedAnd because of that, a new leader will be elected, they’ll flip the switch,
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Not Syncedsay that because of the crisis, because of the dangers that we face in the world, you know, some new and unpredicted threat,
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Not Syncedwe need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it, and it’ll be turnkey tyranny.
- Title:
- NSA leaker
- Description:
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Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old former undercover CIA employee, unmasked himself Sunday as the principal source of recent Washington Post and Guardian disclosures about top-secret National Security Agency programs.
Snowden, who has contracted for the NSA and works for the consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, denounced what he described as systematic surveillance of innocent citizens and said in an interview that "it's important to send a message to government that people will not be intimidated."
Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said Saturday that the NSA had initiated a Justice Department investigation into who leaked the information — an investigation supported by intelligence officials in Congress.
Snowden, whose full name is Edward Joseph Snowden, said he understands the risks of disclosing the information but felt it was important to do.
"I'm not going to hide," Snowden told The Post from Hong Kong, where he has been staying. The Guardian was the first to publicly identify Snowden, at his request. "Allowing the U.S. government to intimidate its people with threats of retaliation for revealing wrongdoing is contrary to the public interest."
Asked whether he believed his disclosures would change anything, he said: "I think they already have. Everyone everywhere now understands how bad things have gotten — and they're talking about it. They have the power to decide for themselves whether they are willing to sacrifice their privacy to the surveillance state."
Snowden said nobody was aware of his actions, including those closest to him. He said there wasn't a single event that spurred his decision to leak the information.
"It was more of a slow realization that presidents could openly lie to secure the office and then break public promises without consequence," he said.
Snowden said President Obama hasn't lived up to his pledges of transparency. He blamed a lack of accountability in the Bush administration for continued abuses. "It set an example that when powerful figures are suspected of wrongdoing, releasing them from the accountability of law is 'for our own good,' " Snowden said. "That's corrosive to the basic fairness of society."
The White House did not respond to multiple e-mails seeking comment and spokesman Josh Earnest, who was traveling with the president, said the White House would have no comment Sunday.
A brief statement from a spokesperson for Clapper's office referred media to the Justice Department for comment and said the intelligence community was "reviewing the damage" that had been done by the leaks. "Any person who has a security clearance knows that he or she has an obligation to protect classified information and abide by the law," the statement said.
Snowden also expressed hope that the NSA surveillance programs would now be open to legal challenge for the first time. Earlier this year, in Amnesty International v. Clapper, the Supreme Court dismissed a lawsuit against the mass collection of phone records because the plaintiffs could not prove exactly what the program did or that they were personally subject to surveillance.
Article
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/intelligence-leaders-push-back-on-leakers-media/2013/06/09/fff80160-d122-11e2-a73e-826d299ff459_story.html - Video Language:
- English
- Team:
- Volunteer
- Duration:
- 12:35
Liam edited English subtitles for NSA leaker | ||
Liam edited English subtitles for NSA leaker | ||
Monica Cainarca edited English subtitles for NSA leaker | ||
Monica Cainarca edited English subtitles for NSA leaker | ||
Monica Cainarca edited English subtitles for NSA leaker | ||
Monica Cainarca edited English subtitles for NSA leaker | ||
Monica Cainarca edited English subtitles for NSA leaker | ||
Monica Cainarca edited English subtitles for NSA leaker |