NSA leaker
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0:10 - 0:14My name’s Ed Snowden. I am 29 years old.
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0:14 - 0:20I work for Booz Allen Hamilton as an infrastructure analyst for NSA in Hawaii.
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0:22 - 0:26What are some of the positions that you held previously within the intelligence community?
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0:26 - 0:31I have been a systems engineer, a systems administrator,
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0:32 - 0:37a senior advisor for the Central Intelligence Agency,
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0:37 - 0:42a solutions consultant and a telecommunications information systems officer.
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0:42 - 0:45One of the things people are going to be most interested in,
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0:45 - 0:50in trying to understand who you are and what you’re thinking,
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0:50 - 0:57is there came some point in time when you crossed this line of thinking about being a whistleblower
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0:57 - 1:01to making the choice to actually become a whistleblower.
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1:01 - 1:06Walk people through that decision-making process.
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1:06 - 1:14When you're positions of privileged access, like a systems administrator for this sort of intelligence community agencies,
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1:14 - 1:20you're exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale than the average employee
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1:20 - 1:24and because of that you see things that may be disturbing.
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1:24 - 1:29But over the course of a normal person's career, you'd only see one or two of these instances.
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1:29 - 1:33When you see everything, you see them on a more frequent basis
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1:33 - 1:37and you recognise that some of these things are actually abuses.
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1:37 - 1:44And when you talk to people about them, in a place like this, where this is the normal state of business,
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1:44 - 1:48people tend not to take them very seriously and, you know, move on from them.
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1:48 - 1:55But over time that awareness of wrongdoing sort of builds up, and you feel compelled to talk about it.
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1:55 - 1:59And 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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1:59 - 2:04until eventually you realise that these things need to be determined by the public,
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2:04 - 2:06not by somebody who was simply hired by the government.
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2:06 - 2:14Talk a little bit about how the American surveillance state actually functions. Does it target the actions of Americans?
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2:15 - 2:23NSA, and the intelligence community in general, is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can, by any means possible,
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2:23 - 2:29and it believes, on the grounds of a sort of self-certification, that they serve the national interest.
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2:29 - 2:36Originally, we saw that focus very narrowly tailored as foreign intelligence gathered overseas.
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2:36 - 2:41Now, increasingly, we see that it's happening domestically.
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2:41 - 2:47And to do that, they, the NSA specifically, targets the communications of everyone.
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2:47 - 2:50It ingests them by default.
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2:50 - 2:56It 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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2:56 - 3:03simply because that's the easiest, most efficient and most valuable way to achieve these ends.
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3:03 - 3:10So while they may be intending to target someone associated with a foreign government
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3:10 - 3:15or someone that they suspect of terrorism, they're collecting your communications to do so.
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3:15 - 3:19Any analyst at any time can target anyone, any selector anywhere.
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3:19 - 3:25Where those communications will be picked up depends on the range of the sensor networks
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3:25 - 3:31and the authorities that that analyist is empowered with. Not all analysts have the ability to target everything.
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3:31 - 3:36But I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone,
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3:36 - 3:39from you or your accountant to a federal judge,
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3:39 - 3:42to even the president, if I had a personal email.
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3:42 - 3:49One of the extraordinary parts about this episode is that usually whistleblowers do what they do anonymously
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3:49 - 3:55and take steps to remain anonymous for as long as they can, which they hope, often, is forever.
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3:55 - 4:01You, 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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4:01 - 4:04Why did you choose to do that?
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4:04 - 4:12I 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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4:12 - 4:19When you are subverting the power of government, that's a fundamentally dangerous thing to democracy.
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4:19 - 4:28And if you do that in secret, consistently, you know, as the government does when it wants to benefit from a secret action that it took,
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4:28 - 4:35it 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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4:35 - 4:42But they rarely, if ever, do that when an abuse occurs. That falls to individual citizens.
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4:42 - 4:45But they're typically maligned. You know, it becomes a thing of,
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4:45 - 4:49these people are against the country, they're against the government. But I'm not.
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4:49 - 4:54I'm no different from anybody else. I don't have special skills.
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4:54 - 5:01I'm just another guy who sits there, day-to-day, in the office, and watches what's happening, and goes,
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5:01 - 5:09"This is something that's not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong".
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5:09 - 5:15And I'm willing to go on the record to defend the authenticity of them and say, "I didn't change these. I didn't modify the story.
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5:15 - 5:21This is the truth. This is what's happening. You should decide whether we need to be doing this."
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5:21 - 5:27Have you given thought to what it is that the U.S. government’s response to your conduct is,
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5:27 - 5:33in 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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5:34 - 5:37Yeah, I could be, you know, rendered by the CIA.
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5:37 - 5:41I could have people come after me or any of their third-party partners.
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5:41 - 5:44You know, they work closely with a number of other nations.
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5:45 - 5:50Or, you know, they could pay off the triads. Or any of their agents or assets.
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5:50 - 5:55We've got a CIA station just up the road, and the consulate here in Hong Kong
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5:55 - 5:58and I am sure they are going to be very busy for the next week.
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5:59 - 6:04And that's a fear I'll live under for the rest of my life, however long that happens to be.
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6:04 - 6:12You can't come forward against the world's most powerful intelligence agencies and be completely free from risk,
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6:12 - 6:17because they're such powerful adversaries, that no one can meaningfully oppose them.
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6:17 - 6:20If they want to get you, they'll get you, in time.
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6:21 - 6:26But, at the same time, you have to make a determination about what it is that's important to you.
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6:26 - 6:32And if living, living unfreely but comfortably is something you're willing to accept –
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6:32 - 6:36and I think many of us are, it's the human nature –
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6:37 - 6:42you can get up every day, you can go to work, you can collect your large paycheck
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6:42 - 6:46for relatively little work, against the public interest,
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6:46 - 6:50and go to sleep at night after watching your shows. But…
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6:50 - 6:54if you realise that that's the world that you helped create,
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6:54 - 6:57and it's going to get worse with the next generation and the next generation,
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6:57 - 7:01who extend the capabilities of this sort of architecture of oppression,
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7:02 - 7:06you realise that you might be willing to accept any risk and it doesn't matter what the outcome is
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7:06 - 7:10so long as the public gets to make their own decisions about how that's applied.
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7:10 - 7:12Why should people care about surveillance?
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7:13 - 7:16Because, even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded.
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7:16 - 7:25And the storage capability of the systems increases every year, consistently, by orders of magnitude
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7:25 - 7:29to where it's getting to the point you don't have to have done anything wrong.
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7:29 - 7:34You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call
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7:34 - 7:40and then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinise every decision you've ever made
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7:40 - 7:43every friend you've ever discussed something with
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7:43 - 7:48and attack you on that basis, to sort of derive suspicion
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7:48 - 7:53from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.
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7:53 - 7:57We are currently sitting in a room in Hong Kong
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7:57 - 8:01which is where we are because you travelled here.
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8:01 - 8:05Talk a little bit about why it is that you came here.
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8:05 - 8:09And specifically, there are going to be people who will speculate
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8:09 - 8:16that 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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8:16 - 8:23which is China, and that what you're really doing is essentially seeking to aid an enemy of the United States
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8:23 - 8:28with which you intend to seek asylum. Can you talk a little bit about that?
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8:28 - 8:29Sure.
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8:29 - 8:33So there's a couple assertions in those arguments
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8:33 - 8:39that are sort of embedded in the questioning of the choice of Hong Kong.
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8:39 - 8:43The first is that China is an enemy of the United States. It's not.
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8:43 - 8:49I mean, there are conflicts between the United States government and the Chinese PRC government.
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8:49 - 8:56But the peoples, inherently, we don't care. We trade with each other freely. We're not at war.
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8:56 - 9:01We're not in armed conflict and we're not trying to be. We're the largest trading partners out there for each other.
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9:02 - 9:07Additionally, Hong Kong has a strong tradition of free speech.
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9:07 - 9:15People think, "Oh, China, great firewall". Mainland China does have significant restrictions on free speech but
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9:15 - 9:21the people of Hong Kong have a long tradition of protesting in the streets, of making their views known.
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9:21 - 9:25The Internet is not filtered here
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9:25 - 9:28no more so than any other Western government.
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9:28 - 9:37And I believe that the Hong Kong government is actually independent in relation to a lot of other leading Western governments.
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9:37 - 9:44If your motive had been to harm the United States and help its enemies, or if your motive had been personal material gain,
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9:44 - 9:50were 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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9:50 - 9:57Oh, absolutely. I mean, anybody in the positions of access with the technical capabilities that I had
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9:57 - 10:04could, 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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10:05 - 10:12I had access to, you know, the full rosters of everyone working at the NSA, the entire intelligence community,
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10:12 - 10:19and undercover assets all around the world, the locations of every station we have, what their missions are and so forth.
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10:19 - 10:27If I had just wanted to harm the U.S., you know… you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon.
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10:28 - 10:33But that’s not my intention. And I think, for anyone making that argument,
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10:33 - 10:36they need to think, if they were in my position,
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10:36 - 10:42and, you know, you live a privileged life—you’re living in Hawaii, in Paradise, and making a ton of money—
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10:42 - 10:46what would it take to make you leave everything behind?
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10:47 - 10:57The greatest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures is that nothing will change.
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10:57 - 11:02People will see in the media all of these disclosures.
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11:02 - 11:10They’ll know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers, unilaterally,
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11:11 - 11:17to create greater control over American society and global society,
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11:17 - 11:25but they won’t be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things,
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11:25 - 11:32to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.
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11:33 - 11:38And the months ahead, the years ahead, it’s only going to get worse,
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11:38 - 11:43until eventually there will be a time where policies will change,
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11:43 - 11:49because the only thing that restricts the activities of the surveillance state are policy.
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11:49 - 11:52Even our agreements with other sovereign governments,
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11:52 - 11:58we consider that to be a stipulation of policy rather than a stipulation of law.
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11:58 - 12:03And because of that, a new leader will be elected, they’ll flip the switch, say that…
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12:06 - 12:13…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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12:13 - 12:19we need more authority, we need more power, and there will be nothing the people can do at that point to oppose it
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12:19 - 12:24and 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 |