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I Don't Want To Directly Confront Great Powers, Which We Cannot Defeat On Their Terms. They Have More Money, More Clout, More Airtime. We Cannot Be Effective Without A Mass Movement, And The American People Today Are Too Comfortable To Adapt To A Mass Movement.

-Edward Snowden

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I Don't Want To

Edward Snowden

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I Don't Want To Directly Confront Great Powers, Which We Cannot Defeat On Their Terms. They Have More Money, More Clout, More Airtime. We Cannot Be Effective Without A Mass Movement, And The American People Today Are Too Comfortable To Adapt To A Mass Movement.

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All I Was Was A Mechanism.

When The Lights Go Out At A Power Plant Sometime In The Future, We're Going To Know That That's A Consequence Of Deprioritizing Defense For The Sake Of An Advantage In Terms Of Offense.

Society Really Seems To Have Developed An Unquestioning Obedience Towards Spooky Types… Did We Get To Where We Are Today Via A Slippery Slope That Was Entirely Within Our Control To Stop? Or Was It A Relatively Instantaneous Sea Change That Sneaked In Undetected Because Of Pervasive Government Secrecy?

My Perspective Is If You're Not Willing To Be Called A Few Names To Help Out Your Country, You Don't Care Enough.

I'm Still Working For The Government.

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.

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.

The State Says: "well, In Order For It To Be Legitimate Civil Disobedience, You Have To Follow These Rules." They Put Us In "free-speech Zones"; They Say You Can Only Do It At This Time, And In This Way, And You Can't Interrupt The Functioning Of The Government. They Limit The Impact That Civil Disobedience Can Achieve. We Have To Remember That Civil Disobedience Must Be Disobedience If It's To Be Effective.

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."

The Greatest Fear That I Have Regarding The Outcome For America Of These Disclosures Is That Nothing Will Change.

My Whole Model, From The Beginning, Was Not To Personally Publish A Single Document. I Provided These Documents To Journalists Because I Didn't Want My Biases To Decide What's In The Public Interest And What Is Not.

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.

I Was Hoping To Catch [vladimir] Putin In A Lie - Like What Happened To Director Of National Intelligence James Clapper [in His Congressional Testimony]. So I Asked Putin Basically The Same Questions About Russian Mass Surveillance. I Knew He's Doing The Same Thing, But He Denied It.

The [barack] Obama Administration Almost Appears As Though It Is Afraid Of The Intelligence Community. They're Afraid Of Death By A Thousand Cuts - You Know, Leaks And Things Like That.

I Don't Think It Is The Most Important Thing. I Think It Is The Fact That The Director Of National Intelligence Gave A False Statement To Congress Under Oath, Which Is A Felony. If We Allow Our Officials To Knowingly Break The Law Publicly And Face No Consequences, We're Instituting A Culture Of Immunity, And This Is What I Think Historically Will Actually Be Considered The Biggest Disappointment Of The [barack] Obama Administration.

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.

An Investigation Found The Specific People Who Authorized The Warrantless Wiretapping Of Millions And Millions Of Communications, Which Per Count Would Have Resulted In The Longest Sentences In World History, And Our Highest Official Simply Demanded The Investigation Be Halted. Who "can" Be Brought Up On Charges Is Immaterial When The Rule Of Law Is Not Respected. Laws Are Meant For You, Not For Them.

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.

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 United States Need To Put Internet Processes, Policies, And Procedures In Place With Real Laws That Forbid Going Beyond The Borders Of What's Reasonable To Ensure That The Only Time That We And Other Countries Around The World Exercise These Authorities Are When It Is Absolutely Necessary.

Terrorism Kills Far Fewer People Than Cigarettes, Or Alcohol, Or Car Accidents. But We Don't See Ourselves Restructuring Society And Lives In Order To Make Those Threats Go Away.

I Love My Country. I Love My Family. And I Have Dedicated My Life To Both Of Them.

I Love My Family

I Hope You Have Read The Election Programme Of The Labour Party...this Is Not Socialism. It Is Bolshevism Run Mad.

It Is Afraid Of An Informed, Angry Public Demanding The Constitutional Government It Was Promised - And It Should Be.

If Congress Is Going To Investigate Baseball Players About Whether Or Not They Told The Truth, How Can We Justify Giving The Most Powerful Intelligence Official, [james] Clapper, A Pass? This Is How J. Edgar Hoover Ended Up In Charge Of The Fbi Forever.

The Way The United States Intelligence Community Operates Is It Doesn't Limit Itself To The Protection Of The Homeland. It Doesn't Limit Itself To Countering Terrorist Threats, Countering Nuclear Proliferation. It's Also Used For Economic Espionage, For Political Spying To Gain Some Knowledge Of What Other Countries Are Doing.

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

We Have To Argue Forcefully And Demand That The Government Recognise That These Programmes Do Not Prevent - Mass Surveillance Does Not Prevent Acts Of Terrorism.

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.

One Of The Kind Of Unexpectedly Liberating Things Of Becoming This Global Fugitive Is The Fact That You Don't Worry So Much About Tomorrow. You Think More About Today. And Unexpectedly, I Like That Very Much.

The Us Government Is Not Going To Be Able To Cover This Up By Jailing Or Murdering Me. Truth Is Coming, And It Cannot Be Stopped.

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.

These [nsa] Programs Were Never About Terrorism: They're About Economic Spying, Social Control, And Diplomatic Manipulation. They're About Power.

We Have To Recognise That Rights Are Being Violated. The United Nations Actually Filed A Report That Found That That Was The Case, That Mass Surveillance Is A Violation Of Rights.

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.

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.

Encryption Works. Properly Implemented Strong Crypto Systems Are One Of The Few Things That You Can Rely On. Unfortunately, Endpoint Security Is So Terrifically Weak That Nsa Can Frequently Find Ways Around It.

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.

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.

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.

Citizens With A Conscience Are Not Going To Ignore Wrong-doing Simply Because They'll Be Destroyed For It: The Conscience Forbids It.

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.

What We Need To Do Is We Need To Create New International Standards Of Behavior - Not Just National Laws, Because This Is A Global Problem. We Can't Just Fix It In The United States, Because There Are Other Countries That Don't Follow U.s. Laws. We Have To Create International Standards That Say That Cyber Attacks Should Only Ever Occur When It Is Absolutely Necessary.

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.

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.

Defending Ourselves From Internet-based Attacks, Internet-originated Attacks, Is Much, Much More Important Than Our Ability To Launch Attacks Against Similar Targets In Foreign Countries.

Bathtub Falls And Police Officers Kill More Americans Than Terrorism, Yet We've Been Asked To Sacrifice Our Most Sacred Rights For Fear Of Falling Victim To It.

Let's Put It This Way. The United States Government Has Assembled A Massive Investigation Team Into Me Personally, Into My Work With The Journalists, And They Still Have No Idea What Documents Were Provided To The Journalist, What They Have, What They Don't Have, Because Encryption Works.

You Don't Need To Justify Your Rights As A Citizen - That Inverts The Model Of Responsibility. The Government Must Justify Its Intrusion Into Your Rights. If You Stop Defending Your Rights By Saying, "i Don't Need Them In This Context" Or "i Can't Understand This," They Are No Longer Rights.

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.

Radicalism And Extremism, While They Are Dangers, They Exist In Every Society On Some Level.

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

If You Seek To Help, Join The Open Source Community And Fight To Keep The Spirit Of The Press Alive And The Internet Free. I Have Been To The Darkest Corners Of Government, And What They Fear Is Light.

Before 2013, If You Said The Nsa Was Making Records Of Everybody's Phone Calls And The [government Communications Headquarters] Was Monitoring Lawyers And Journalists, People Raised Eyebrows And Called You A Conspiracy Theorist. Those Days Are Over.

The Authoritarian One Believed That An Individual's Rights Were Basically Provided By Governments And Were Determined By States. The Other Society - Ours - Tended To Believe That A Large Portion Of Our Rights Were Inherent And Couldn't Be Abrogated By Governments, Even If This Seemed Necessary.

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

What Has A Great Value To Us As A Nation Is The Internet Itself. The Internet Is Critical Infrastructure To The United States. We Use The Internet For Every Communication That Businesses Rely On Every Day.

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

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 Internet Is The Most Complex System That Humans Have Ever Invented. And With Every Internet Enabled Operation That We've Seen So Far, All Of These Offensive Operations, We See Knock On Effects. We See Unintended Consequences.

Unintended Consequences

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.

The Majority Of People In Developed Countries Spend At Least Some Time Interacting With The Internet, And Governments Are Abusing That Necessity In Secret To Extend Their Powers Beyond What Is Necessary And Appropriate.

The Public Don't Want To Authorize The Internet To Become A Battleground. We Need To Do Everything We Can As A Society To Keep That A Neutral Zone, To Keep That An Economic Zone That Can Reflect Our Values, Both Politically, Socially, And Economically.

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.

I Will Be Satisfied If The Federation Of Secret Law, Unequal Pardon And Irresistible Executive Powers That Rule The World That I Love Are Revealed Even For An Instant.

Government Spying

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.

There's No Question That The Us Is Engaged In Economic Spying. If There's Information At Siemens That They Think Would Be Beneficial To The National Interests, Not The National Security Of The United States, They'll Go After That Information And They'll Take It.

The Only Way I Could Be Extradited Is Through The Principle Of What My Lawyers Call "politics Trumps Law."

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.

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.

Surveillance State

I Built My Own Studio. I Don't Have The Professional Language To Describe It Because I'm Not A Videographer - But I'm A Technician. So I Get The Camera, I Get All The Things That Translate The Camera To The Computer, I Set Up A Live Session, I Do The Security On It, I Set Up A Background So I Can Key It Out, Like Newscasters Do, And Replace It With Whatever I Want - And I Can Be Anywhere I Need To Be.

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.

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.

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.

When The United States Cannibalize Dollars From The Defensive Business Of The Nsa, Securing Our Communications, Protecting Our Systems, Patching Zero-day Vulnerabilities, And Instead We're Giving Those Dollars To Be Used For Creating New Vulnerabilities In Our Systems So That They Can Surveil Us And Other People Abroad Who Use The Same Systems.

All I Wanted Was For The Public To Be Able To Have A Say In How They Are Governed. That Is A Milestone We Left A Long Time Ago.

The Surveillance Revelations Are Critically Important Because They Revealed That Our Rights Are Being Redefined In Secret, By Secret Courts That Were Never Intended To Have That Role - Without The Consent Of The Public, Without Even The Awareness Of The Majority Of Our Political Representatives.

I Don't Go Out And Play Football And Stuff - That's Not Me. I Want To Think, I Want To Build, I Want To Talk, I Want To Create.

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.

Now Terrorism Is Not The Greatest Threat Facing Our Societies.

[sovereignty] Would Break The American Monopoly, But It Would Also Break Internet Business, Because You'd Have To Have A Data Center In Every Country. And Data Centers Are Tremendously Expensive, A Big Capital Investment.

Internet Business

Under Observation, We Act Less Free, Which Means We Effectively Are Less Free.

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

There Are Unquestionable Violations Of Our Constitution.

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.

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

I Went To St. Petersburg - St. Petersburg Is Awesome.

One Of The Foremost Activities Of The Nsa's Fad, Or Foreign Affairs Division, Is To Pressure Or Incentivize Eu Member States To Change Their Laws To Enable Mass Surveillance.

When You Think About The Abolition Of Slavery For Example, For The Ruling Class With The Rich White People Owning Plantations And States, And Things Like That, Slavery Was To Their Benefit. To Oppose It Didn't Make Any Sense At All On A Rational Basis. But On A Rights Basis, On A Principle Basis, It Made Obvious, Overwhelming Sense.

When We Talk About The Assertion Of Basically New Government Privileges With Weak Or No Justification, We Don't Even Have To Look At International Law To See The Failings In Them.

It Doesn't Need To Be Consistently Concentrated In These Venture-capital Funds And Things Like That.

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.

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.

The United States Is More Reliant On The Technical Systems. We're More Reliant On The Critical Infrastructure Of The Internet Than Any Other Nation Out There. And When There's Such A Low Barrier To Entering The Domain Of Cyber-attacks We're Starting A Fight That We Can't Win.

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 Needs To Justify Why They "need" A Right: The Burden Of Justification Falls On The One Seeking To Infringe Upon The Right. But Even If They Did, You Can't Give Away The Rights Of Others Because They're Not Useful To You. More Simply, The Majority Cannot Vote Away The Natural Rights Of The Minority. Arguing That You Don't Care About The Right To Privacy Because You Have Nothing To Hide Is No Different Than Saying You Don't Care About Free Speech Because You Have Nothing To Say.

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

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

The Consent Of The Governed Is Not Consent If It Is Not Informed.

Consent Of The Governed

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.

I Do Not Expect To See Home Again.

Government Spying

I Think It's Reasonable That The Government, When It Has A Warrant From A Court, When It's Exposed To Scrutiny By A Legal Process That Would Be Upheld, Not Just Nationally, But Internationally As A Reliable And Robust Standard Rights Protection, They Can Enjoy Certain Powers. This Is No Different From Having The Police Able To Get A Warrant To Go And Search Your House, To Kick At Your Door Because They Think You're An Arms Dealer Or Something Like That. There Needs To Be A Process Involved, It Needs To Be Public, And It Needs To Be Challengeable In Court At All Times.

You Can't Come Up Against The World's Most Powerful Intelligence Agencies And Not Accept The Risk. If They Want To Get You, Over Time They Will.

If We Allow The United States To Set The Precedent That National Borders Don't Matter When It Comes To The Protection Of People's Information, Other Countries Are Watching. They're Paying Attention To Our Examples And What Is Normative Behavior In Terms Of Dealing With Digital Information.

Acting Government Officials, They Said They Wanted - They Would Be Happy, They Would Love To Put A Bullet In My Head, To Poison Me As I Was Returning From The Grocery Store, And Have Me Die In The Shower.

I'm Familiar With Andrei Sakharov Reputation, But I Don't Know His Personal History At All.

Personal History

I've Got More Than Enough For My Needs [for Social Life In Moscow], Let's Put It That Way.

You Shouldn't Send An Email From A Computer That's Associated With You If You Don't Want It To Be Tracked Back To You. You Don't Want To Hack The Power Plant From Your House If You Don't Want Them To Follow The Trail Back And See Your Ip Address.

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.

The Iraq War That I Signed Up For Was Launched On False Premises. The American People Were Misled. Now, Whether That Was Due To Bad Faith Or Simply Mistakes In Intelligence, I Can't Say For Sure. But I Can Say It Shows The Problem Of Putting Too Much Faith In Intelligence Systems Without Debating Them In Public.

Has The Center Of Gravity Shifted Such That All Governments Have Greater Powers And Fewer Restrictions Than They Ever Had, And Are Empowered By Technology In A Way That No Government Ever Was In The Past?

And That's Not Something I'm Willing To Support, It's Not Something I'm Willing To Build And It's Not Something I'm Willing To Live Under.

It's Fascinating To See How Things Have Changed. Basically, Every Time The Us Government Gets Off The Soapbox Of The Sunday-morning Talk Shows, The Average American's Support For The Surveillance Revelations Grows.

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.

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.

A Lot Of People In 2008 Voted For Obama. I Did Not Vote For Him. I Voted For A Third Party. But I Believed In Obama's Promises. He Continued With The Policies Of His Predecessor.

There Is More Action In Some Other Countries. In Germany, They've Called For A Very Serious Inquiry That's Discovering More And More. They've Just Discovered A Significant Violation Of The German Constitution That Had Been Concealed From The Parliament.

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.

Richard Nixon Got Kicked Out Of Washington For Tapping One Hotel Suite. Today We're Tapping Every American Citizen In The Country, And No One Has Been Put On Trial For It Or Even Investigated. We Don't Even Have An Inquiry Into It.

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

My Intention Is To Ask The Courts And People Of Hong Kong To Decide My Fate.

I Don't Spend All Day Running Hand-on-hat From Shadowy Figures - I'm In Exile.

[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'm Saying We Need To Be Aware Of It, And We Need To Be Able To Distinguish When Political Developments Are Occurring That Are Contrary To The Public Interest.

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.

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.

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.

I Care More About The Country Than What Happens To Me. But We Can't Allow The Law To Become A Political Weapon Or Agree To Scare People Away From Standing Up For Their Rights, No Matter How Good The Deal. I'm Not Going To Be Part Of That.

I Would Argue That Security And Liberty, Security And Privacy Are Not Actually Opposing. The Only Place Those Can Be Oppositional Is In The Realm Of Rhetoric But Not Fact.

The Most Important Thing To The United States Is Not Being Able To Attack Our Adversaries, The Most Important Thing Is To Be Able To Defend Ourselves. And We Can't Do That As Long As We're Subverting Our Own Security Standards For The Sake Of Surveillance.

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.

I Don't Want To Live In A World Where Everything That I Say, Everything I Do, Everyone I Talk To, Every Expression Of Creativity Or Love Or Friendship Is Recorded.

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.

I Must Say I'm Surprised By How Skeptical Of The [barack] Obama Administration The Nation Has Been.

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

When People Talk About Web 2.0, They Mean That When The Internet, The World Wide Web, First Became Popular, It Was One Way Only.

I Believe Strongly That Occupy Wall Street Had Such Limits Because The Local Authorities Were Able To Enforce, Basically In Our Imaginations, An Image Of What Proper Civil Disobedience Is - One That Is Simply Ineffective.

When It Comes To Social Policies, I Believe Women Have The Right To Make Their Own Choices, And Inequality Is A Really Important Issue.

A Zero-day Exploit Is A Method Of Hacking A System. It's Sort Of A Vulnerability That Has An Exploit Written For It, Sort Of A Key And A Lock That Go Together To A Given Software Package. It Could Be An Internet Web Server. It Could Be Microsoft Office. It Could Be Adobe Reader Or It Could Be Facebook.

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.

It's Interesting That You Mention [andrei] Sakharov's Creative Axis - He Had Produced Something For The Government That He Then Realized Was Something Other Than He Intended. That's Something [nsa Whistleblower] Bill Binney And I Share.

A Political Decision Has Been Made Not To Irritate The Intelligence Community. The Spy Agencies Are Really Embarrassed, They're Really Sore - The Revelations Really Hurt Their Mystique. The Last Ten Years, They Were Getting The Zero Dark Thirty Treatment - They're The Heroes. The Surveillance Revelations Bring Them Back To Big Brother Kind Of Narratives, And They Don't Like That At All.

My Sole Motive Is To Inform The Public As To That Which Is Done In Their Name And That Which Is Done Against Them.

The Big Tech Companies Understood That The Government Had Not Only Damaged American Principles, It Had Hurt Their Businesses.

I've Been Watching The Wire Recently.

After 9/11, Many Of The Most Important News Outlets In America Abdicated Their Role As A Check To Power - The Journalistic Responsibility To Challenge The Excesses Of Government - For Fear Of Being Seen As Unpatriotic And Punished In The Market During A Period Of Heightened Nationalism.

When The Police Officers Knock On Your Door With A Warrant, They Don't Expect You To Give Them A Tour. It's Supposed To Be An Adversarial Process So That It's Used In These Extraordinary Powers Are Applied Only When There's No Alternative. Only When They're Absolutely Necessary, And Only When They're Proportionate To The Threat Faced By These Individuals.

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.

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

There Have Been Times Throughout American History Where What Is Right Is Not The Same As What Is Legal. Sometimes To Do The Right Thing You Have To Break The Law.

American History

Many Of Our Ally States Don't Have These Constitutional Protections - In The Uk, In New Zealand, In Australia. They've Lost The Right To Be Free From Unreasonable Search And Seizure Without Probable Cause. All Of Those Countries, In The Wake Of These Surveillance Revelations, Rushed Through Laws That Were Basically Ghostwritten By The National Security Agency To Enable Mass Surveillance Without Court Oversight, Without All Of The Standard Checks And Balances That One Would Expect.

I Have No Relationship With The Russian Government At All.

Russian Government

America Should Be Cooling Down The Tensions In The Internet, Making It A More Trusted Environment, Making It A More Secure Environment, Making It A More Reliable Environment, Because That's The Foundation Of Our Economy And Our Future.

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.

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

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

We Are No Longer Citizens, We No Longer Have Leaders. We're Subjects, And We Have Rulers.

We Should Know At Least The Broad Strokes Of The Powers That The Government's Claiming In Our Name, And Using Allegedly, On Our Behalf. And Also Against Us As Well.

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.

In America, We Collect More Digital Communications From America Than We Do From The Russians.

When It Comes To Cyber Warfare, We Have More To Lose Than Any Other Nation On Earth. The Technical Sector Is The Backbone Of The American Economy, And If We Start Engaging In These Kind Of Behaviors, In These Kind Of Attacks, We're Setting A Standard, We're Creating A New International Norm Of Behavior That Says This Is What Nations Do. This Is What Developed Nations Do.

No One Would Argue That It's In The United States' Interest To Have Independent Knowledge Of The Plans And Intentions Of Foreign Countries. But We Need To Think About Where To Draw The Line On These Kind Of Operations So We're Not Always Attacking Our Allies, The People We Trust, The People We Need To Rely On, And To Have Them In Turn Rely On Us.

I Believe That When [senator Ron] Wyden And [senator Mark] Udall Asked About The Scale Of This, They [the Nsa] Said It Did Not Have The Tools To Provide An Answer. We Do Have The Tools And I Have Maps Showing Where People Have Been Scrutinised Most. We Collect More Digital Communications From America Than We Do From The Russians.

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.

So Many Of The Things We're Told By The Government Simply Aren't True.

You Shouldn't Change Your Behavior Because A Government Agency Somewhere Is Doing The Wrong Thing. If You Sacrifice Your Values Because You're Afraid, You Don't Care About Those Values Very Much.

I Talk To Cryptographers, Some Of The Leading Technologists In The World, All The Time About How We Can Deal With These Issues. It Is Not Possible To Create A Back Door That Is Only Accessible, For Example, To The Fbi.

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.

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.

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

I Believe That At This Point In History, The Greatest Danger To Our Freedom And Way Of Life Comes From The Reasonable Fear Of Omniscient State Powers Kept In Check By Nothing More Than Policy Documents.

Government Spying

I Have Been A Systems Engineer, Systems Administrator, A Senior Adviser For The Central Intelligence Agency, A Solutions Consultant And A Telecommunications Information Systems Officer.

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.

If A Single Russian Source Would Come Forward, He Would Be In Hot Water. And In The United States, What I Did Appearing At That [vladimir] Putin Press Conference Was Not Worth The Price.

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.

So When They Say I'm A Low-level Systems Administrator, That I Don't Know What I'm Talking About, I'd Say It's Somewhat Misleading.

The Fbi Was Creating A World Where Citizens Rely On Apple To Defend Their Rights, Rather Than The Other Way Around.

I'm Still Alive, And I Don't Lose Sleep Because I Have Done What I Feel I Needed To Do, It Was The Right Thing To Do And I Am Not Going To Be Afraid.

The Rule Of Law Doesn't Mean The Police Are In Charge, But That We All Answer To The Same Laws.

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 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.

The Power Of The Presidency Is Important, But It Is Not Determinative.

We've Already Seen, In Practically Every Country Around The World Where These Issues Have Been Covered, That The General Public Has Recoiled At The Ideology Behind These Programs.

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

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

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