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A Different [ronald] Reagan-era Authority: Eo 12333, An Executive Order For Foreign-intelligence Collection, As Opposed To The Ones We Now Use Domestically. So This One Isn't Even Authorized By Law. It's Just An Old-ass Piece Of Paper With Reagan's Signature On It, Which Has Been Updated A Couple Times Since Then. So What Happened Was That All Of A Sudden These Massive, Behemoth Companies Realized Their Data Centers - Sending Hundreds Of Millions Of People's Communications Back And Forth Every Day - Were Completely Unprotected, Electronically Naked.

-Edward Snowden

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A Different [ronald] Reagan-era

Edward Snowden

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A Different [ronald] Reagan-era Authority: Eo 12333, An Executive Order For Foreign-intelligence Collection, As Opposed To The Ones We Now Use Domestically. So This One Isn't Even Authorized By Law. It's Just An Old-ass Piece Of Paper With Reagan's Signature On It, Which Has Been Updated A Couple Times Since Then. So What Happened Was That All Of A Sudden These Massive, Behemoth Companies Realized Their Data Centers - Sending Hundreds Of Millions Of People's Communications Back And Forth Every Day - Were Completely Unprotected, Electronically Naked.

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More From Edward Snowden

Cyber Command Is Supposed To Be Defending Our Critical Infrastructure At Home, But They Are Spending So Much Time Looking At How To Attack Networks, How To Break Systems, And How To Turn Things Off. I Don't Think It Adds Up As Representing A Defensive Team.

There Is A Technical Solution To Every Political Problem...

You Have Ceded The Concept Of Your Own Rights. You've Converted Them Into Something You Get As A Revocable Privilege From The Government, Something That Can Be Abrogated At Its Convenience. And That Has Diminished The Measure Of Liberty Within A Society.

[brazil] Went To The Un And Said, "we Need New Standards For This." We Need To Take A Look At What They're Calling "data Sovereignty."

My Government Revoked My Passport Intentionally To Leave Me Exiled. If They Really Wanted To Capture Me, They Would've Allowed Me To Travel To Latin America, Because The Cia Can Operate With Impunity Down There. They Did Not Want That; They Chose To Keep Me In Russia.

I Talk To People In The Aclu Office In New York All The Time. I'm Able To Participate In The Debate And To Campaign For Reform. I'm Just The First To Come Forward In The Manner That I Did And Succeed.

By Leaning On Companies, By Leaning On Infrastructure Providers, By Leaning On Researchers, Graduate Students, Post-docs, Even Undergrads, To Look At The Challenges Having An Untrusted Internet, Where We Have To Put Our Communications On Wires That Are Owned By A Phone Company That We Can't Trust, That's Working In Collaboration With A Government That We Can't Trust, In Areas Around The World, We Can Restructure That Communications Fabric In A Way That It's Encrypted.

When We Talk About Computer Network Exploitation, Computer Network Attack, We're Not Just Talking About Your Home Pc. We're Talking About Your Cell Phone, And We're Also Talking About Internet Routers Themselves. The Nsa Is Attacking The Critical Infrastructure Of The Internet To Try To Take Ownership Of It. They Hack The Routers That Connect Nations To The Internet Itself.

All I Was Was A Mechanism.

In The United States And Some Of The Other Countries Involved It's Sort Of A "five Eyes" Global Spying Alliance. That's The Us, Uk, Canada, New Zealand, And Australia. They've Had A Little Bit Of A More Muscular Public Response. Now, They Haven't Been Satisfying Or Really Meaningful In Any Country Yet. But They Have Been Engaging.

I'm Not A Politician, And I Do Not Think I Am As Effective In This Way As People Who Actually Prepare For It - Is To Focus On Technical Reform, Because I Speak The Language Of Technology. I Spoke With Tim Berners-lee, The Guy Who Invented The World Wide Web. We Agree On The Necessity For This Generation To Create What He Calls The Magna Carta For The Internet. We Want To Say What "digital Rights" Should Be. What Values Should We Be Protecting, And How Do We Assert Them.

I Don't Think I Have Committed A Crime Outside The Domain Of The Us.

When Governments Go Too Far To Punish People For Actions That Are Dissent Rather Than A Real Threat To The Nation, They Risk Delegitimizing Not Just Their Systems Of Justice, But The Legitimacy Of The Government Itself. Because When They Bring Political Charges Against People For Acts That Were Clearly At Least Intended To Work In The Public Interest, They Deny Them The Opportunity To Mount A Public-interest Defense.

Ultimately, If People Lose Their Willingness To Recognize That There Are Times In Our History When Legality Becomes Distinct From Morality, We Aren't Just Ceding Control Of Our Rights To The Government, But Our Futures.

You're Not Patriotic Just Because You Back Whoever's In Power Today Or Their Policies. You're Patriotic When You Work To Improve The Lives Of The People Of Your Country, Your Community And Your Family. Sometimes That Means Making Hard Choices, Choices That Go Against Your Personal Interest.

Russia Recently Passed A Law - I Think A Terrible Law - Which Says You Have To Store All Of The Data From Russian Citizens On Russian Soil Just To Prevent Other Countries From Playing The Same Kind Of Legal Games We're Playing In This Microsoft Case.

Because, Remember, I Didn't Want To Change Society. I Wanted To Give Society A Chance To Determine If It Should Change Itself.

Until We Reform Our Laws And Until We Fix The Excesses Of These Old Policies That We Inherited In The Post-9/11 Era, We're Not Going To Be Able To Put The Security Back In The Nsa.

You Can Show A Guy Sort Of Peeking Over The Wall, You Can See A Guy Tunneling Underneath, You Can See A Guy Going Through The Front Door. All Of Those, In Cyber Terms, Are Vulnerabilities, Because It's Not That You Have To Look For One Hole Of A Specific Type. It's The Whole Paradigm.

The Internet Exchange Is Sort Of The Core Points Where All Of The International Cables Come Together, Where All Of The Internet Service Providers Come Together, And They Trade Lines With Each Other. These Are Priority One Targets For Any Sort Of Espionage Agency, Because They Provide Access To So Many People's Communications.

The Charges [government] Brought Against Me, For Example, Explicitly Denied My Ability To Make A Public-interest Defense.

I'm Still Working For The Government.

There Are Programs Such As The Nsa Paying Rsa $10 Million To Use An Insecure Encryption Standard By Default In Their Products. That's Making Us More Vulnerable Not Just To The Snooping Of Our Domestic Agencies, But Also Foreign Agencies.

We Have To Confront The Reality Of Our World, And Make The Hard Decisions About Which Way We Want To Move Forward.

The People At The Nsa Aren't Trying To Ruin Your Life. They're Not Trying To Put You In Authoritarian Dystopia. These Are Normal People Trying To Do Good Work In Hard Circumstances.

Imagine, If You Will, You're Sitting At My Desk In Hawaii. You Have Access To The Entire World, As Far As You Can See It. Last Several Days, Content Of Internet Communications. Every Email That's Sent. Every Website That's Visited By Every Individual. Every Text Message That Somebody Sends On Their Phone. Every Phone Call They Make.

I Wonder If It's Conservative Or Liberal [ Inalienable Rights Idea], Because When We Think Of Liberal Thought, When We Think About The Relation To Liberty, We're Talking About Traditional Conservatism - As Opposed To Today's Conservatism, Which No Longer Represents Those Views.

I Considered Bringing Forward Information About These Surveillance Programs Prior To The Election, But I Held Off Because I Believed That [barack] Obama Was Genuine When He Said He Was Going To Change Things. I Wanted To Give The Democratic Process Time To Work.

I Have Used Mass Surveillance To Target People, So I Do Know How It Works.

Any Analyst At Any Time Can Target Anyone. Any Selector, Anywhere I, Sitting At My Desk, Certainly Had The Authorities To Wiretap Anyone, From You Or Your Accountant, To A Federal Judge, To Even The President

Even If It Were, You Run Into The Same Problem With International Commerce: If You Create A Device That Is Famous For Compromised Security And It Has An American Back Door, Nobody Is Gonna Buy It.

The Community Of Technical Experts Who Really Manage The Internet, Who Built The Internet And Maintain It, Are Becoming Increasingly Concerned About The Activities Of Agencies Like The Nsa Or Cyber Command, Because What We See Is That Defense Is Becoming Less Of A Priority Than Offense.

It's Much Easier, I Think, To Protect Communications While They're In Transit At Least, Than It Is To Enforce Legislation In Every Country In The World To Say That You Can't Do This.

I’m Neither Traitor Nor Hero. I’m An American.

I Have A Somewhat Sneaky Way Of Effecting Political Change.

Political Change

The Question For Us Is Not What New Story Will Come Out Next. The Question Is, What Are We Going To Do About It?

When It Comes To Cyber Conflicts Between, Say, America And China Or Even A Middle Eastern Nation, An African Nation, A Latin American Nation, A European Nation, We Have More To Lose.

What I Wanted To Do Was Give Society The Information It Needed To Decide If It Wanted To Change The System.

America Is A Fundamentally Good Country. We Have Good People With Good Values Who Want To Do The Right Thing. But The Structures Of Power That Exist Are Working To Their Own Ends To Extend Their Capability At The Expense Of The Freedom Of All Publics.

If I And Other Whistleblowers Are Sentenced To Long Years In Prison Without So Much As A Chance To Explain Our Motivations To A Jury, It Will Have A Deeply Chilling Effect On Future Whistleblowers Working As I Did To Expose Government Abuse And Overreach. It Will Chill Speech. It Will Corrode The Quality Of Our Democracy.

I Read These Polls Because Civil-liberties Organizations Tell Me I Need To Be Aware Of Public Opinion.

As A General Rule, Us-based Multinationals Should Not Be Trusted Until They Prove Otherwise. This Is Sad, Because They Have The Capability To Provide The Best And Most Trusted Services In The World If They Actually Desire To Do So.

Your Rights Matter, Because You Never Know When You're Going To Need Them.

Increasingly We're Seeing These Ultra-partisan Sites Getting Larger And Larger Readerships Because People Are Self-selecting Themselves Into Communities.

We Hack Everyone Everywhere. We Like To Make A Distinction Between Us And The Others. But We Are In Almost Every Country In The World. We Are Not At War With These Countries.

Our Rights Are Not Granted By Governments. They Are Inherent To Our Nature. But It's Entirely The Opposite For Governments: Their Privileges Are Precisely Equal To Only Those Which We Suffer Them To Enjoy.

If We Don't Do Anything, If We Go Along With The Status Quo, We Are Going To Have A Mass Surveillance World.

There's No Saving Me.

It's Much More Important For U.s. To Be Able To Defend Against Foreign Attacks Than It Is To Be Able To Launch Successful Attacks Against Foreign Adversaries.

I'm Not A Spy, Which Is The Real Question

People Sometimes Say I Broke An Oath Of Secrecy - One Of The Early Charges Leveled Against Me. But It's A Fundamental Misunderstanding, Because There Is No Oath Of Secrecy For People Who Work In The Intelligence Community. You Are Asked To Sign A Civil Agreement, Called A Standard Form 312, Which Basically Says If You Disclose Classified Information, They Can Sue You; They Can Do This, That And The Other. And You Risk Going To Jail.

When People Say, "i Have Nothing To Hide," What They're Saying Is, "my Rights Don't Matter."

You Will Never Be Completely Free From Risk If You're Free. The Only Time You Can Be Free From Risk Is When You're In Prison.

I Don't Want To Live In A World Where There's No Privacy, And Therefore No Room For Intellectual Exploration And Creativity.

I Describe It As Tribalism Because They're Very Tightly Woven Communities. Lack Of Civility Is Part Of It, Because That's How Internet Tribes Behave. We See This More And More In Electoral Politics, Which Have Become Increasingly Poisonous.

I'm Just Another Guy Who Sits There Day To Day In The Office, Watching What's Happening, And Goes, 'this Is Something That's Not Our Place To Decide.' The Public Needs To Decide Whether These Programs Or Policies Are Right Or Wrong.

When Clapper Raised His Hand And Lied To The American Public, Was Anyone Tried? Were Any Charges Brought? Within 24 Hours Of Going Public, I Had Three Charges Against Me.

They [the Authorities] Will Act Aggressively Against Anyone Who Has Known Me. That Keeps Me Up At Night.

On The Other Hand, The Internet Is There To Fill Needs That People Have For Information And Socialization. We Get This Sort Of Identification Thing Going On Nowadays Because It's A Very Fractious Time. We Live In A Time Of Troubles.

We Watch Our Own People More Closely Than Anyone Else In The World.

Are Our Competitors - For Example, China, Which Is A Deeply Authoritarian Nation - Becoming More Authoritarian Or More Liberal Over Time?

Hong Kong Has A Reputation For Freedom In Spite Of The People's Republic Of China. It Has A Strong Tradition Of Free Speech.

There Have Been So Many Individuals Who Have Really Put A Lot On The Line. That They've Sacrificed So Much To Try To Protect The Principle Of Source Protection In The Journalism World. And I Think Julian Assange, And Wikileaks, And Sarah Harrison Have Really Been Extraordinary In Standing Up For That.

All This Is A Blessing And A Curse. It's A Blessing Because It Helps People Establish What They Value; They Understand The Sort Of Ideas They Identify With. The Curse Is That They Aren't Challenged In Their Views. The Internet Becomes An Echo Chamber. Users Don't See The Counterarguments.

The Question Of Whether I, As A Whistleblower, Should Be Pardoned, Is Not For Me To Answer.

We Have A Media That Goes Along With The Government By Parroting Phrases Intended To Provoke A Certain Emotional Response - For Example, "national Security." Everyone Says "national Security" To The Point That We Now Must Use The Term "national Security." But It Is Not National Security That They're Concerned With; It Is State Security. And That's A Key Distinction.

People At Civil-liberties Organizations Say It's A Sea Change, And That It's Very Clear Judges Have Begun To Question More Critically Assertions Made By The Executive. Even Though It Seems So Obvious Now, It Is Extraordinary In The Context Of The Last Decade, Because Courts Had Simply Said They Were Not The Best Branch To Adjudicate These Claims - Which Is Completely Wrong, Because They Are The Only Nonpolitical Branch. They Are The Branch That Is Specifically Charged With Deciding Issues That Cannot Be Impartially Decided By Politicians.

We Can't Simply Scare People Into Giving Up Their Rights, On The Basis, Oh, This Protects Us From Terrorism.

[our System Of Education ]not Designed To Create Critical Thinkers.

I Don't Care If I End Up In Jail Or Guantánamo Or Whatever, Kicked Out Of A Plane With Two Gunshots In The Face. I Did What I Did Because I Believe It Is The Right Thing To Do, And I Will Continue To Do That.

Privacy Matters; Privacy Is What Allows Us To Determine Who We Are And Who We Want To Be.

This Whole Pre-criminal Investigation, Where We Watch Everybody, All The Time, Just In Case, Is Really An Extraordinary Departure From The Western Liberal Tradition.

When People Conceptualize A Cyber-attack, They Do Tend To Think About Parts Of The Critical Infrastructure Like Power Plants, Water Supplies, And Similar Sort Of Heavy Infrastructure, Critical Infrastructure Areas. And They Could Be Hit, As Long As They're Network Connected, As Long As They Have Some Kind Of Systems That Interact With Them That Could Be Manipulated From Internet Connection.

There's A Real Danger In The Way Our Representative Government Functions Today. It Functions Properly Only When Paired With Accountability.

We've Learned That We've Allowed Technological Capabilities To Dictate Policies And Practices, Rather Than Ensuring That Our Laws And Values Guide Our Technological Capabilities.

I Carefully Evaluated Every Single Document I Disclosed To Ensure That Each Was Legitimately In The Public Interest. There Are All Sorts Of Documents That Would Have Made A Big Impact That I Didn't Turn Over, Because Harming People Isn't My Goal. Transparency Is.

We Have These Traditional Political Parties That Are Less And Less Responsive To The Needs Of Ordinary People, So People Are In Search Of Their Own Values.

If The United States Is Promoting The Development Of Exploits, Of Vulnerabilities, Of Insecurity In This Critical Infrastructure, And We're Not Fixing It When We Find It, Instead We Put It On The Shelf So We Can Use It The Next Time We Want To Launch An Attack Against Some Foreign Country. We're Leaving Ourselves At Risk.

When I Talk About The Polling, I'm Talking About The Principles. It Shows These Officials Are Knowingly Attempting To Shift Public Opinion, Even Though They Know What They Say Is Not Factual.

Anyway, It's Not True That The Authorities Cannot Access The Content Of The Phone Even If There Is No Back Door. When I Was At The Nsa, We Did This Every Single Day, Even On Sundays. I Believe That Encryption Is A Civic Responsibility, A Civic Duty.

The Majority Of Terrorist Attacks That Have Been Disrupted In The United States Have Been Disrupted Due To Things Like The Time Square Bomber, Who Was Caught By A Hotdog Vendor, Not A Mass Surveillance Program, Not A Cyber-espionage Campaign.

We Don't Have A Great Clash Of Civilizations, A Clash Of Ideologies, A Clash Of Alternative Models, Where Governments Thought To Themselves, If We Go Too Far, If We Sort Of Trample Unreasonably On Rights, We'll Give Birth To A Political Movement Which Will Cost Us Our Credibility, And Will Possibly Cost Us Our Offices, Because People Will Vote For The Other Team, The Other Guys.

You Would Be Surprised How Effective, At Least For Influencing Low-information Voters, Negative Propaganda About Me Is.

I Don't Want The Stage. I'm Terrified Of Giving These Talking Heads Some Distraction, Some Excuse To Jeopardize, Smear, And Delegitimize A Very Important Movement.

We Need To Put The Security Back In The National Security Agency. We Can't Have The National Surveillance Agency.

We Decentralise The Ability To Decide The Level Of Publicity That's Attached To Any Of Our Communications.

You Can't Come Up Against The World's Most Powerful Intelligence Agencies And Not Accept The Risk.

I'm Ultimately Satisfied That We Know A Little Bit More About How The World Really Works.

I've Been Watching The Wire Recently.

The New Iphone Has Encryption That Protects The Contents Of The Phone. This Means If Someone Steals Your Phone - If A Hacker Or Something Images Your Phone - They Can't Read What's On The Phone Itself, They Can't Look At Your Pictures, They Can't See The Text Messages You Send, And So Forth. But It Does Not Stop Law Enforcement From Tracking Your Movements Via Geolocation On The Phone If They Think You Are Involved In A Kidnapping Case, For Example.

One Journalist Said That Everybody In Russia Is Miserable. Russia Is A Terrible Place. And I'm Going To End Up Miserable And I'm Going To Be A Drunk And I'm Never Going To Do Anything. I Don't Drink. I've Never Been Drunk In My Life. And They Talk About Russia Like It's The Worst Place On Earth. Russia's Great.

The Definition Of A Security State Is One That Prioritizes Security Over All Other Considerations.

The True Measurement Of A Person's Worth Isn't What They Say They Believe In, But What They Do In Defense Of Those Beliefs. If You're Not Acting On Your Beliefs, Then They Probably Aren't Real.

As For My Personal Politics, Some People Seem To Think I'm Some Kind Of Archlibertarian, A Hyper-conservative.

If I Wanted To See Your Emails Or Your Wife's Phone, All I Have To Do Is Use Intercepts. I Can Get Your Emails, Passwords, Phone Records, Credit Cards.

If An Nsa, Fbi, Cia, Dia, Etc Analyst Has Access To Query Raw Sigint Databases, They Can Enter And Get Results For Anything They Want. Phone Number, Email, User Id, Cell Phone Handset Id (imei), And So On - It's All The Same.

The Bare Bones Tools For A Cyber-attack Are To Identify A Vulnerability In The System You Want To Gain Access To Or You Want To Subvert Or You Want To Deny, Destroy, Or Degrade, And Then To Exploit It, Which Means To Send Codes, Deliver Code To That System Somehow And Get That Code To That Vulnerability, To That Crack In Their Wall, Jam It In There, And Then Have It Execute.

When We Have Some Horrible Terrorist Attacks Happen In Some Country We See In The Recording That Follows, That The Intelligence Community Already Knew About These People In Advance. We Know That These Countries Were Involved In Intelligence Sharing Premiums, That They Benefited From Mass Surveillance, And Yet They Didn't Stop The Attacks. Yet At The Same Time We Immediately See Intelligence Officials Running To The Newspapers And Claiming That We Need More Surveillance, That We Need More Intrusion, That We Need More Expense Of Powers Because It Could Have Stopped An Attack.

If I Target For Example An Email Address, For Example Under Faa 702, And That Email Address Sent Something To You, Joe America, The Analyst Gets It. All Of It. Ips, Raw Data, Content, Headers, Attachments, Everything. And It Gets Saved For A Very Long Time - And Can Be Extended Further With Waivers Rather Than Warrants.

By Putting These Sort Of Lines Around What Ideas Are Proper Or Improper, We Lose Things.

Every Time You Pick Up The Phone, Dial A Number, Write An E-mail, Make A Purchase, Travel On The Bus Carrying A Cell Phone, Swipe A Card Somewhere, You Leave A Trace, And The Government Has Decided That It's Good Idea To Collect It All, Everything, Even If You've Never Been Suspected Of Doing A Crime.

One Concern I Had While I Was Working Actively In The Intelligence Community - Being Someone Who Had Broad Access, Who Was Exposed To More Reports Than Average Individuals, Who Had A Better Understanding Of The Bigger Picture - Was That The Post - World War Ii, Post - Cold War Directions Of Societies Were Either Broadly Authoritarian Or [broadly] Liberal Or Libertarian.

You Simply Have To Eventually Fall Under Suspicion From Somebody Even By A Wrong Call. And Then They Can Use This System To Go Back In Time And Scrutinize Every Decision You've Ever Made, Every Friend You've Ever Discussed Something With. And Attack You On That Basis To Sort To Derive Suspicion From An Innocent Life And Paint Anyone In The Context Of A Wrongdoer.

Government Spying

By Creating A Self-policing, Self-reporting, Sort Of Self-monitoring Culture Through Law, Through Statute, And Imposing That On The Academic World, I Think Not Only Are We Losing A Significant Measure Of Freedom In Academic Traditions And In Our Civil Society, But We're Actually Making Ourselves Less Competitive With Every Other Country Around The World That Does Not Do That. Because That's Where Researchers Are Going To Go And That's Where Academics Are Going To Go. And Ultimately, That's Where Breakthroughs Are Going To Occur.

It Is Interesting That So Many People Who Become Disenchanted, Who Protest Against Their Own Organizations, Are People Who Contributed Something To Them And Then Saw How It Was Misused.

We Need The Security Standards To Apply To The Internet. We Need To Be Able To Trust That When We Send Our Emails Through Verizon, That Verizon Isn't Sharing With The Nsa, That Verizon Isn't Sharing Them With The Fbi Or German Intelligence Or French Intelligence Or Russian Intelligence Or Chinese Intelligence.

When We Look At How, Constitutionally, Only Congress Can Declare War, And That Is Routinely Ignored. Not Nato Or The Un, But Congress Has To Authorize These Endless Wars, And It Isn't.

If The Government Or The Parties Won't Address Our Needs, We Will. It's About Direct Action, Even Civil Disobedience.

Look At The Reactions Of Liberal Governments To The Surveillance Revelations During The Last Years. In The United States, We've Got This Big Debate, But We've Got Official Paralysis - Because They're The Ones Who Had Their Hand Caught Most Deeply In The Cookie Jar.

They Still Have Negligent Auditing, They Still Have Things Going For A Walk, And They Have No Idea Where They're Coming From And They Have No Idea Where They're Going. And If That's The Case, How Can We As The Public Trust The Nsa With All Of Our Information, With All Of Our Private Records, The Permanent Record Of Our Lives?

The Question That We, As A Society, Have To Ask Is, Are Our Collective Rights Worth A Small Relative Advantage In Our Ability To Spy On Other Countries And Foreign Citizens? I Have My Opinion About That, But We All Collectively Have To Come To Our Opinion About It.

Using The Language Of Heroism, Calling Daniel Ellsberg A Hero, And Calling The Other People Who Made Great Sacrifices Heroes - Even Though What They Have Done Is Heroic - Is To Distinguish Them From The Civic Duty They Performed, And Excuses The Rest Of Us From The Same Civic Duty To Speak Out When We See Something Wrong, When We Witness Our Government Engaging In Serious Crimes, Abusing Power, Engaging In Massive Historic Violations Of The Constitution Of The United States. We Have To Speak Out Or We Are Party To That Bad Action.

There's Not Much Value To Us Attacking Chinese Systems. We Might Take A Few Computers Offline. We Might Take A Factory Offline. We Might Steal Secrets From A University Research Programs, And Even Something High-tech. But How Much More Does The United States Spend On Research And Development Than China Does?

Research And Development

I Hate These Questions - I Don't Like Talking About This Stuff [popular Culture], Because It's So... To Me, It's So Ordinary.

While The Us Constitution Marks These Programs As Illegal, My Government Argues That Secret Court Rulings, Which The World Is Not Permitted To See, Somehow Legitimize An Illegal Affair. These Rulings Simply Corrupt The Most Basic Notion Of Justice - That It Must Be Seen To Be Done. The Immoral Cannot Be Made Moral Through The Use Of Secret Law.

When It Is Made To Appear As Though Not Knowing Everything About Everyone Is An Existential Crisis, Then You Feel That Bending The Rules Is Okay. Once People Hate You For Bending Those Rules, Breaking Them Becomes A Matter Of Survival.

Knowing Everything

I Have No Relationship With The Russian Government At All.

Russian Government

We Do Not Live In A Revolutionary Time. People Are Not Prepared To Contest Power.

I Wasn't Trying To Change The Laws Or Slow Down The Machine. Maybe I Should Have. My Critics Say That I Was Not Revolutionary Enough. But They Forget That I Am A Product Of The System. I Worked Those Desks, I Know Those People And I Still Have Some Faith In Them, That The Services Can Be Reformed.

When You're Attacking A Router On The Internet, And You're Doing It Remotely, It's Like Trying To Shoot The Moon With A Rifle. Everything Has To Happen Exactly Right. Every Single Variable Has To Be Controlled And Precisely Accounted For. And That's Not Possible To Do When You Have Limited Knowledge Of The Target You're Attacking.

The Nsa Was Actually Concerned Back In The Time Of The Crypto-wars With Improving American Security. Nowadays, We See That Their Priority Is Weakening Our Security, Just So They Have A Better Chance Of Keeping An Eye On Us.

Our Founders Did Not Write That 'we Hold These Truths To Be Self-evident, That All Us Persons Are Created Equal.'

I Don't Want To Live In A Society That Does These Sort Of Things.

Most Of The Secrets The Cia Has Are About People, Not Machines And Systems, So I Didn't Feel Comfortable With Disclosures That I Thought Could Endanger Anyone.

People Do Not Like Being Lied To, And They Do Not Like Having Their Rights Violated. So As Soon As [officials] Stop Making Arguments, You See Support For Me Starts To Rise.

What The Nsa Really Wants Is The Capability Of Retrospective Investigation. They Want To Have A Perfect Record Of The Last Five Years Of Your Life, So When You Come To Their Attention, They Can Know Everything About You. I'm Not Down With That, But [bill] Binney Was Trying To Create Something Like That.

If I Am Traitor, Who Did I Betray? I Gave All My Information To The American Public, To American Journalists Who Are Reporting On American Issues. If They See That As Treason, I Think People Really Need To Consider Who They Think They're Working For. The Public Is Supposed To Be Their Boss, Not Their Enemy.

Suspicionless Surveillance Has No Place In A Democracy. The Next 60 Days Are A Historic Opportunity To Rein In The Nsa, But The Only One Who Can End The Worst Of Its Abuses Is You. Call Your Representatives And Tell Them That The Unconstitutional 'bulk Collection' Of Americans' Private Records Under Section 215 Of The Patriot Act Must End.

The United States Need To Be Focusing More On Creating A More Secure, More Reliable, More Robust, And More Trusted Internet, Not One That's Weaker, Not One That Relies On This Systemic Model Of Exploiting Every Vulnerability, Every Threat Out There.

The 'music' Is Not An Open Court And A Fair Trial.

The United States Has Faced Threats From Criminal Groups, From Terrorists, From Spies Throughout Our History, And We Have Limited Our Responses. We Haven't Resorted To Total War Every Time We Have A Conflict Around The World, Because That Restraint Is What Defines Us. That Restraint Is What Gives Us The Moral Standing To Lead The World.

Some Months After [keith Alexander] Made That Statement [edward Snowden Cause Grave And Irrevocable Harm To The Nation], The New Director Of The Nsa, Michael Rogers, Said That, In Fact, He Doesn't See The Sky Falling. It's Not So Serious After All.

We Should Never Allow Computers To Make Inherently Governmental Decisions In Terms Of The Application Of Military Force, Even If That's Happening On The Internet.

In The End, The Obama Administration Is Not Afraid Of Whistleblowers Like Me, Bradley Manning Or Thomas Drake. We Are Stateless, Imprisoned Or Powerless. No, The Obama Administration Is Afraid Of You. It Is Afraid Of An Informed, Angry Public Demanding The Constitutional Government It Was Promised - And It Should Be.

There Are Even A Few [people] Who Still Honestly Believe I Sold Information To [vladimir] Putin - Like Personally, In Exchange For Asylum. And This Is After The Senate Intelligence Committee Chair, Who Gets To Read The Nsa's Reporting On My Activities Every Morning, Said All Of These Conspiracies Are Delusional.

I Think We're Going To See A Move Away From That, Because Young People - Digital Natives Who Spend Their Life On The Internet - Get Saturated. It's Like A Fashion Trend, And Becomes A Sign Of A Lack Of Sophistication.

The Nsa Has Built An Infrastructure That Allows It To Intercept Almost Everything. With This Capability, The Vast Majority Of Human Communications Are Automatically Ingested Without Targeting. If I Wanted To See Your Emails Or Your Wife's Phone, All I Have To Do Is Use Intercepts. I Can Get Your Emails, Passwords, Phone Records, Credit Cards.

Us Spend More On Research And Development Than The Other Countries, So We Shouldn't Be Making The Internet A More Hostile, A More Aggressive Territory.

Research And Development

I Think The Public Still Isn't Aware Of The Frequency With Which The Cyber-attacks, As They're Being Called In The Press, Are Being Used By Governments Around The World, Not Just The Us.

The Only Reason I Do These Interviews - I Hate Talking About Myself, I Hate Doing This Stuff - Is Because Incredibly Well-meaning People, Whom I Respect And Trust, Tell Me That This Will Help Bring About Positive Changes. It's Not Going To Cause A Sea Change, But It Will Benefit The Public.

I Saw Things That Reached A Point That I Could No Longer Conscientiously Participate With Them. And I Simply Do What I Could To Allow The Public To Make A Better Decision About Whether Or Not These Things Should Continue.

We Can Still Publicly Post A Message To Facebook That's Globally Readable. But We Could Also Adjust Things So That They Can Only Be Shared With Those Closest To Us, And The Confident That This Is Enforced Through Both Legal And A Systemic Standards-based Protection.

The Government Doesn't Want Us To Know What They're Doing, How They're Interpreting The Law, How They're Interpreting And Redefining Their Powers, And Increasingly, How They're Redefining The Boundaries Of Our Rights And Our Liberties, Broadly, Socially, And Categorically Without Our Involvement.

We Have Got A Cia Station Just Up The Road – The Consulate Here In Hong Kong – And I Am Sure They Are Going To Be Busy For The Next Week. And That Is A Concern I Will Live With For The Rest Of My Life, However Long That Happens To Be.

Government Spying

Allowing The U.s. Government To Intimidate Its People With Threats Of Retaliation For Revealing Wrongdoing Is Contrary To The Public Interest.

When People Are Talking About Cyber Weapons, Digital Weapons, What They Really Mean Is A Malicious Program That's Used For A Military Purpose. A Cyber Weapon Could Be Something As Simple As An Old Virus From 1995 That Just Happens To Still Be Effective If You Use It For That Purpose.

The Courts Were Afraid To Challenge Executive Declarations Of What Would Happen. Now, Over The Last Year, We Have Seen - In Almost Every Single Court That Has Had This Sort Of National-security Case - That They Have Become Markedly More Skeptical.

If Even One Country, An Iceland For Example, Defects From This Global Legislative Bargain And Says No, We're Not Going To Enforcement Mass Surveillance Here. We're Not Going To Do That. That's Where All Of The Data Centres, All The Service Providers In The World Will Relocate To. And I Think That Gives Us A Real Chance To See A More Liberal Than Authoritarian Future.

When It Comes To Political Engagement, I'm Not A Politician - I'm An Engineer.

Something We Have To Remember Is That Everything About The Internet Is Interconnected. All Of Our Systems Are Not Just Common To Us Because Of The Network Links Between Them, But Because Of The Software Packages, Because Of The Hardware Devices That Comprise It. The Same Router That's Deployed In The United States Is Deployed In China.

When It Comes To The Internet, When It Comes To The United States' Technical Economy, We Have More To Lose Than Any Other Nation On Earth.

I Would Say The First Key Concept Is That, In Terms Of Technological And Communication Progress In Human History, The Internet Is Basically The Equivalent Of Electronic Telepathy. We Can Now Communicate All The Time Through Our Little Magic Smartphones With People Who Are Anywhere, All The Time, Constantly Learning What They're Thinking, Talking About, Exchanging Messages. And This Is A New Capability Even Within The Context Of The Internet.

Someone Recently Talked About Mass Surveillance And The Nsa Revelations As Being The Atomic Moment For Computer Scientists. The Atomic Bomb Was The Moral Moment For Physicists. Mass Surveillance Is The Same Moment For Computer Scientists, When They Realize That The Things They Produce Can Be Used To Harm A Tremendous Number Of People.

The New Iphone Encryption Does Not Stop Them From Accessing Copies Of Your Pictures Or Whatever That Are Uploaded To, For Example, Apple's Cloud Service, Which Are Still Legally Accessible Because Those Are Not Encrypted. It Only Protects What's Physically On The Phone.

People In Both Parties From The Congressional Intelligence Committees - All These Co-opted Officials Who Play Cheerleader For Spy Agencies - Go On These Sunday Shows And They Say: "snowden Was A Traitor. He Works Against Americans. He Works For The Chinese. Oh, Wait, He Left Hong Kong - He Works For The Russians."

Nobody's Going To Vote For Terrorism. So Our Governments Don't Have That Sort Of Political Pressure To Act In A Responsible Manner When It Comes To Stewardship Of Our Rights.

Do We Want To Emulate China In The Way That China Emulates The West? I Think, For Most Americans, The Answer To That Question Would Be No.

Sometimes That Irrational Commitment To Principle Is What Society Needs To Survive. Whenever You Talk About Radicalism, Whenever You Talk About Activism, Whenever You Talk About Progressive Activity, That Sort Of Moves The Measure Of Liberty In Human Society Forward, Makes Us All Enjoy A Better Standard Of Liberty, It Typically Starts Out Criminal. It Typically Starts Out A Little Bit Shaky, And Rather Radical. And That's Irrational To Put Yourself Up To Do That.

Ending Mass Surveillance Of Private Phone Calls Under The Patriot Act Is A Historic Victory For The Rights Of Every Citizen. Yet While We Have Reformed This One Program, Many Others Remain.

The Sad Truth Is That Societies That Demand Whistleblowers Be Martyrs Often Find Themselves Without Either, And Always When It Matters The Most.

Extremists Are Not Going To Disappear.

We Need To Make Sure That Whenever We're Engaging In A Cyber-warfare Campaign, A Cyber-espionage Campaign In The United States, That We Understand The Word Cyber Is Used As A Euphemism For The Internet, Because The American Public Would Not Be Excited To Hear That We're Doing Internet Warfare Campaigns, Internet Espionage Campaigns, Because We Realize That We Ourselves Are Impacted By It.

Radicals Are Not Going To Disappear. They're Going To Go Underground. They're Going To Be Hardened. And They're Not Going To Be Exposed To Contrary Ideas Made By Educated People Who Can Make Real, Convincing, And Persuasive Arguments To Deradicalise These People.

When You Are Subverting The Power Of Government, That's A Fundamentally Dangerous Thing To Democracy.

Being A Patriot Doesn’t Mean Prioritizing Service To Government Above All Else. Being A Patriot Means Knowing When To Protect Your Country, Knowing When To Protect Your Constitution, Knowing When To Protect Your Countrymen, From The Violations Of And Encroachments Of Adversaries. And Those Adversaries Don’t Have To Be Foreign Countries.

How Do We Preserve Our Civil Rights, Our Traditions As A Liberal Democracy, In A Time When Government Power Is Expanding And Is More And More Difficult To Check?

We're Now More Than A Year Since My Nsa Revelations, And Despite Numerous Hours Of Testimony Before Congress, Despite Tons Of Off-the-record Quotes From Anonymous Officials Who Have An Ax To Grind, Not A Single Us Official, Not A Single Representative Of The United States Government, Has Ever Pointed To A Single Case Of Individualized Harm Caused By These Revelations. This, Despite The Fact That Former Nsa Director Keith Alexander Said This Would Cause Grave And Irrevocable Harm To The Nation.

Initially I Was Very Encouraged. Unfortunately, The Mainstream Media Now Seems Far More Interested In What I Said When I Was 17 Or What My Girlfriend Looks Like Rather Than, Say, The Largest Program Of Suspicionless Surveillance In Human History.

Ever Since I've Been Here [in Russia], My Life Has Been Consumed With Work That's Actually Fulfilling And Satisfying.

There Was A Real Choice When [barack Obama] Became President. It Was A Very Difficult Choice - To Say, "we're Not Going To Hold Senior Officials To Account With The Same Laws That Every Other Citizen In The Country Is Held To," Or "this Is A Nation That Believes In The Rule Of Law."

We Are All Today Being Monitored In Advance And In Criminal Suspicion. And I Think That's Terrifying, And Deeply Illiberal As Concept. And That's Something That We Should Reject.

A Child Born Today Will Grow Up With No Conception Of Privacy At All.

The Immoral Cannot Be Made Moral Through The Use Of Secret Law.

All The Governments Just Want To Have More Power When It Comes To Economic Espionage, Diplomatic Manipulation And Political Influence.

There Is A Policy Response That Needs To Occur. There Is Also A Technical Response That Needs To Occur. It Is The Development Community That Can Really Craft The Solutions And Make Sure We Are Safe.

Every Time Somebody On The Internet Sort Of Glances At Us Sideways, We Launch An Attack At Them. That's Not Going To Work Out For Us Long Term, And The U.s. Have To Get Ahead Of The Problem If We're Going To Succeed.

Internet Exchanges And Internet Service Providers - International Fiber Optic Landing Points - These Are The Key Tools That Governments Go After In Order To Enable Their Programs Of Mass Surveillance. If They Want To Be Able To Watch The Entire Population Of A Country Instead Of A Single Individual, You Have To Go After Those Bulk Interchanges.

People Would Publish Their Websites; Other People Would Read Them. But There Was No Real Back And Forth Other Than Through E-mail. Web 2.0 Was What They Called The Collaborative Web - Facebook, Twitter, The Social Media.

My Case Clearly Demonstrates The Need For Comprehensive Whistleblower Protection Act Reform. If We Had Had A Real Process In Place, And Reports Of Wrongdoing Could Be Taken To Real, Independent Arbiters Rather Than Captured Officials, I Might Not Have Had To Sacrifice So Much To Do What At This Point Even The President Seems To Agree Needed To Be Done.

Getting Inequality Out There Into The Consciousness Was Important. All These Political Pundits Now Talking About The 2014 And 2016 Elections Are Talking About Inequality.

I Have No Intention Of Hiding Who I Am Because I Know I Have Done Nothing Wrong.

Government Spying

Microsoft Is In A Court Battle With The Department Of Justice. The Doj Is Saying, "we Want Information From Your Data Center In Ireland. It's Not About A Us Citizen, But We Want It." Microsoft Said, "ok, Fine. Go To A Judge In Ireland. Ask Them For A Warrant. We Have A Mutual Legal-assistance Treaty. They'll Do It. Give That To Us, And We'll Provide The Information To You In Accordance With Irish Laws."

The Internet Is Shared Critical Infrastructure For Everyone On Earth. It's Not Supposed To Be A Domain Of Warfare. We're Not Supposed To Be Putting The Unied States' Economy On The Frontlines In The Battleground.

Since The Revelations, We Have Seen A Massive Sea Change In The Technological Basis And Makeup Of The Internet.

The Nsa Has Built An Infrastructure That Allows It To Intercept Almost Everything.

Government Spying

I Grew Up With The Understanding That The World I Lived In Was One Where People Enjoyed A Sort Of Freedom To Communicate With Each Other In Privacy, Without It Being Monitored, Without It Being Measured Or Analyzed Or Sort Of Judged By These Shadowy Figures Or Systems, Any Time They Mention Anything That Travels Across Public Lines.

[bill] Binney Will Argue With You All Day About Thinthread, But His Idea Was That It Would Collect Everything About Everybody But Be Immediately Encrypted So No One Could Read It. Only A Court Could Give Intelligence Officials The Key To Decrypt It. The Idea Was To Find A Kind Of A Compromise Between [privacy Rights And] The Assertion That If You Don't Collect Things As They Happen, You Won't Have Them Later - Because What The Nsa Really Wants Is The Capability Of Retrospective Investigation.

I Do Everything On The Computer. Tv Is Obsolete Technology For Me.

There Were No Whistleblower Protections That Would've Protected Me - And That's Known To Everybody In The Intelligence Community. There Are No Proper Channels For Making This Information Available When The System Fails Comprehensively.

The Issue I Brought Forward Most Clearly Was That Of Mass Surveillance, Not Of Surveillance In General.

These Activities Can Be Misconstrued, Misinterpreted, And Used To Harm You As An Individual Even Without The Government Having Any Intent To Do You Wrong.

I Went To A Website The Other Day And Right At The Top Of The Page It Showed Me My Ip Address. It Was The Most Disturbing Moment I Have Ever Experienced. This Website Even Told Me What Internet Browser I Was Using, And What Day It Was. Computers Can Do Anything.

People Have To Be Free To Investigate Computer Security. People Have To Be Free To Look For The Vulnerabilities And Create Proof Of Concept Code To Show That They Are True Vulnerabilities In Order For Us To Secure Our Systems.

We Don't Have To Ask For Our Privacy, We Can Take It Back.

The Internet Has To Be Protected From Intrusive Monitoring Or Else The Medium Upon Which We All Rely For The Basis Of Our Economy And Our Normal Life, We'll Lose That, And It's Going To Have Broad Effects As A Consequence That We Cannot Predict.

It's Important To Remember When You Start Doing Things Like Attacking Hospitals Through The Internet, When You Start Attacking Things Like Internet Exchange Points, When Something Goes Wrong, People Can Die. If A Hospital's Infrastructure Is Affected, Lifesaving Equipment Turns Off.

As A General Rule, So Long As You Have Any Choice At All, You Should Never Route Through Or Peer With The Uk Under Any Circumstances. Their Fibers Are Radioactive, And Even The Queen's Selfies To The Pool Boy Get Logged.

[i Watch] All That Stuff - Game Of Thrones And All The Other Series. How About House Of Cards? As For Boardwalk Empire - That's Another Period Of Government Overreach, But At Least They Use The Amendment Process! In Real Life, The Executive Branch, By Violating The Constitution, Is Using Statutes In Place Of Constitutional Amendments To Diminish Our Liberty.

Lawyers From The Nsa, As Well As The Uk's Gchq, Work Very Hard To Search For Loopholes In Laws And Constitutional Protections That They Can Use To Justify Indiscriminate, Dragnet Surveillance Operations That Were At Best Unwittingly Authorized By Lawmakers.

I Told The Government I'd Volunteer For Prison, As Long As It Served The Right Purpose.

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