"Laura,
at this stage, I can offer nothing more than my word.
I'm a senior government employee in the intelligence community
I hope you understand that contacting you is extremely high risk
and you are willing to agree to the following precautions
before I share more.
This will not be a waste of your time.
The following sounds complex,
but should only take minutes to complete for someone technical.
I would like to confirm out of email that the keys we exchanged were not intercepted
and replaced by your surveillants.
Please confirm that no one has ever had a copy of your private key
and that it uses a strong passphrase.
Assume your adversary is capable of one trillion guesses per second.
If the device you store the private key and enter your passphrase on
has been hacked,
it is trivial to decrypt our communications.
Understand that the above steps are not bullet proof,
and are intended only to give us breathing room.
In the end if you publish the source material,
I will likely be immediately implicated.
This must not deter you from releasing the information I will provide.
Thank you, and be careful.
Citizen Four"
Radio: ... surveillance means that there are facts
under the law to apply to
if we should take away the surveillance
there are no facts the government could manufacture
- Oh, that's right and it's all about creating an independent record
- To me this goes to the question
of independently verifying
what the government is doing.
That's why I keep going back to that question.
- So, that was David Suruda. After CBS News traffic and weather...
Hey, can you hear me?
I am here David, how are you?
Well, I would just point...
start by pointing to (what) Barack Obama himself said about those questions
when he was running for the office that he now occupies.
On December 2007 he said "The president does not have
the power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack
in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation".
So by Obama's own words, the president doesn't have the power that he is now exercising
under the Constitution.
And as far of why it matters, in... on August 1st 2007
when he laid out his reasons why he was running for office
and why he thought it was so important to change the way we were doing things
he said
"No more ignoring the law when it's inconvenient,
that is not who we are.
We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject
to the whims of stubborn rulers."
- So to allow presidents to simply start wars on their own without any...
For now, know that every border you cross, every purchase you make,
every call you dial, every cell phone tower you pass,
friend you keep, article you write,
site you visit, subject line you type,
and packet you route,
is in the hands of a system whose reach is unlimited
but whose safeguards are not.
Your victimisation by the NSA system means that you are well aware
of the threat that unrestricted secret police pose
for democracies.
This is a story few, but you, can tell.
Thank you for inviting me here,
to give me the opportunity to express my story.
But let me give you some of my background.
I spent about 4 years in the military and then I went to NSA directly, so...
so I ended up with about 37 years of service combined.
Most of it was a lot of fun! I tell you, it was really a lot of fun,
breaking these puzzles.
You know, solving problems and things like that.
So, and that's really what I did.
Fundamentally started working with data, looking at data and datasystems
and how you do that.
I was developing this concept of analysis where you could lay it out in such a way
that it could be coded and executed electronically. Meaning you could automate analysis.
And it has to do with metadata and using metadata relationships.
So that was the whole, that was my whole theme there at NSA
that was eventually what I ended up to, I was the only one there doing that, by the way.
So any rate, you know, 9/11 happened.
And it must have been right after.
A few days, no more than a week after 9/11
that they decided to begin actively spying on everyone in this country.
And they wanted that back part of our program to run all the spying.
So that's that's exactly what they did.
And then they started taking the telecom data,
and expanded after that.
So, I mean, the one I knew was AT&T,
and that one provided 320 million records every day.
That program was reauthorized every 45 days by the,
what I call the "Yes Committee"
which way Hayden, and Tenet, and the DOJ,
that program was called STELLARWIND.
So first I went to the House Intelligence Committee,
and the staff member I personally knew there
and she then went to the Chairman of that Committee, Nancy Pelosi,
who was the Minority Rep.
They were all briefed in to the program at the time, by the way,
and all the other programs that were going on,
including all those CIA programs.
I wasn't alone in this, there were four others out of NSA,
we were all trying to work interally in the government over these years
trying to get them to come around, to being constitutionally acceptable,
and take it in to the courts and have the courts' oversight of it too.
So we naïvely kept thinking that that could, that could happen,
and it never did.
But any rate after that and all the stuff we were doing
they decided to raid us to keep us quiet,
threaten us, you know.
So we were raided simultaneously, four of us.
In my case they came in with guns drawn,
I don't know why they did that, but they did. So....
"Laura,
I will answer what I remember
of your questions as best I can.
Forgive the lack of structure, I am not a writer,
and I have to draft this in a great hurry.
What you know as STELLARWIND has grown,
SSO,
the expanded Special Source Operations that took over STELLARWIND's share
of the pie
has spread all over the world
to practically include
comprehensive coverage of the United States.
Disturbingly, the amount of US communication
ingested by NSA is still increasing.
Publicly,
we complain that things are going dark,
but in fact our accesses are improving.
The truth is that the NSA has never
in its history
collected more than it does now.
I know the location of most domestic interception points,
and that the largest telecommunication companies in the US
are betraying the trust of their customers,
which I can prove.
We are building the greatest weapon for oppression in the history of Man.
Yet its directors exempt themselves from accountability.
NSA director Keith Alexander lied to Congress,
which I can prove.
Billions of US communications are being intercepted.
In gathering evidence of wrongdoing
I focused on the wronging of the American people,
but believe me when I say that the surveillance we live under
is the highest privilege compared to how we treat
the rest of the world,
this I can also prove.
On cyberoperations the government's public position
is that we still lack a policy framework.
This too is a lie.
There is a detailed policy framework,
a kind of martial law for Cyber Operations
created by the White House.
It's called "Presidential Policy Directive 20"
and was finalized at the end of last year.
This I can also prove.
I appreciate your concern for my safety,
but I already know how this will end for me,
and I accept the risk.
If I have luck, and you are careful,
you will have everything you need.
I ask only that you ensure
this information makes it home to the American public.
Does the NSA routinely intercept American citizen's emails?
No.
Does the NSA intercept Americans' cell phone conversations.
No.
Google searches?
No.
Text messages?
No.
Amazon.com orders?
Nope
Bank records?
No.
What judicial consent is required for NSA
to intercept communications
and information involving American citizens?
Within the United States that would be the FBI lead.
If it was a foreign actor in the United states
the FBI would still have the lead and could work that with NSA
or other intelligence agencies as authorized.
But to conduct that kind
of collection within the United states
it would have to go through a court order.
And the court would have to authorize it.
We are not authorized to do it,
nor do we do it.
All rise.
The United States Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit is now in session.
Please be seated.
Good morning and welcome to the Ninth Circuit.
The first case for argument is Jewell vs. National Security Agency.
You may proceed.
May it please the Court, Kevin Bankston for Carolyn Jewell
and her fellow plaintiff appellants in Jewell vs. NSA.
- Your Honors,
plaintiffs have specifically alleged that their own communications
and communications records have been acquired by the government.
But the District Court found that we failed to allege facts
that differentiated the injury of our plaintiffs sufferred
from the injury suffered by every other AT&T user
whose communications and records have been acquired by the government.
Basically concluding that so long as every one is being surveilled,
no one has standing to sue.
However to deny standing to persons who are injured simply because
many others are also injured would mean that the most injurious
and widespread government actions could be questioned by nobody.
- Do they have anything concrete that in fact a specific communication
of your client was intercepted?
- We have evidence that all the communications passing
between AT&T's network and other networks in their Northern California facility
have been intercepted, so that would necessarily include
the Internet communications of our Northern California plaintiffs.
- Okay, thank you.
- Thank you, your honor
- May it please the Court,
I'm Thomas Byron from the Department of Justice
here on behalf of the Government defendants.
We think this litigation need not be resolved in Federal Court.
In light of the oversight of the political branches
both Legislative and Executive,
which provides a better opportunity for oversight and resolution
of the concerns raised concerning nationwide policies
of alleged surveillance in these complaints.
- Even if it's revealed that one or more of the plaintiffs
had email or telephone conversations intercepted that had nothing to do
with the national security?
- Your honor, I don't know that anyone necessarily
would have standing to raise the particular claims that issue
in these 2 cases.
We think instead that the kinds of claims that issue here against these defendants
are those that are better suited to resolution
before the representative branches of our government...
- What role... would the Judiciary have if your.. approach is adopted...
- Judge Peterson, I think the...
- I mean, we just get out of the way, is that it?
- Well, Judge Peterson, what I think is that there is a narrow category,
subset of cases in which it may be appropriate
to step aside for that narrow category of cases.
- But mmm... the Judiciary plays a role...
- To be sure, Judge Peterson....
- ...in our system.
- Yes Your Honor and we don't mean to diminish that.
- You're asking us to abdicate that role
- No, Your Honor,
but it is a question of this court's discretion whether to reach that issue.
We do think that there is simply no way for the litigation to proceed
without risk of divulging those very questions of privileged information
that would cause, as Director of National Intelligence
has explained,
exceptionally great damage to National Security's disclose.
Thanks for having me.
Hum, if anybody has any questions, like I said just..
Basically just raise your hand and I'll try to call on you
as soon as I possibly can.
So, who here actually feels like they are under surveillance,
pretty regularly?
Everyone inside of Occupy.
How many people here have been arrested
and at their Court date had their phone taken into the back room?
How many people here had their retina scanned?
Wow.
So you guys are actually, in a sense, the canaries in the coal mine,
right,
because the incentives are all lined up against you.
Anybody see how the subway link your metro card to your debit card,
right? And, like, auto refill.
This is a concept which is key to everything we'll talk about today.
And it's called linkability.
Take one piece of data and link it to another piece of data.
So for example,
if you have your metro card and you have your debit card,
you have those things and you can draw a line between them right?
So that's, like, not a scary thing.
Except your bank card is tied to everything else that you do during the day.
So now they know where you're going, when you make purchases.
So when they decide to target you, they can actually recreate your exact steps.
With a metro card and with a credit card alone.
Like literally where you go and what you buy
and potentially by linking that data with other people
on similar travel plans,
they can figure out who you talk to and who you met with.
When you then take cellphone data, which logs your location
and you link up purchasing data, metro card data and your debit card.
You start to get what you could call metadata,
an aggregate over a person's life.
And metadata, an aggregate, is content.
It tells a story about you,
which is made up of facts, but is not necessarily true.
So for example, just because you were on the corner,
and all these data points point to it, it doesn't mean you committed the crime.
So it's important to note
that if someone has a perception of you having done a thing,
it will now follow you for the rest of your life.
So just keep in mind that what happens to you guys for example
with fingerprints, and retinal scans, and photographs.
That is what is going to happen to people in the future
when they resist policy changes and when they try to protest
in a totally constitutionally protected way.
This is for you, Director Clapper, again on the surveillance front.
And I hope we can do this in just a yes or no answer,
because I know Senator Feinstein wants to move on.
- So, does the NSA collect any type of data at all,
on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans ?
- No sir.
- It does not?
- Not wittingly.
There are cases where they could inadvertently,
perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.
Email from April 2013
The encrypted archive
should be available to you within seven days.
The key will follow when everything else is done.
The material provided,
and investigative effort required will be too much for any one person.
I recommend at a very minimum you involve Glen Greenwald.
I believe you know him.
The plaintext of the payload
will include my true name details for the record.
Though it will be your decision
as to whether or how to declare my involvement.
My personal desire is that you paint the target directly on my back.
No one, not even my most trusted confidant, is aware of my intentions
and it would not be fair for them to fall under suspicion for my actions.
You may be the only one who can prevent that,
and that is by immediately nailing me to the cross
rather than trying to protect me as a source.
On timing, regarding meeting up in Hong Kong,
the first rendezvous attempt will be at 10 A.M. local time
on Monday.
We will meet in the hallway outside of the restaurant
in the Mira Hotel.
I will be working on a Rubik's cube
so that you can identify me.
Approach me and ask if I know the hours of the restaurant.
I'll respond by stating that I'm not sure
and suggest you try the lounge instead.
I'll offer to show you where it is, and at that point we're good.
You simply need to follow naturally.
As far as positioning I mean
if you want us to sit in any particular way or whatever.
You know, I'm gonna go there just like we get better light.
There is, you know, so many different
enormous stories
just that are kind of standalone stories
that, even like you know certain things on my individual document
that can just be their own story
and I just want to start turning those stories out.
I basically woke up this morning and I already started writing stories
hum so I'm hoping to, you know,
start publishing within like a day or two days.
- OK
it's as long as you're good with that
- Yeah
and so as far as I...
the stuff we have to talk about,
I mean I'm kind of like
dichotomizing it between,
you know, stuff that I'd like to talk you about,
in terms of like the documents and the content.
Laura has a bunch of questions about that as well.
So while we're working through the documents getting your take-on,
a lot of the stuff that, you know,
help me understand it better, but then also the sort of You story, right...
like the who you are</>?
- Yeah
what you've done, why you've done what you've done
- Yeah
and I'd love to do that first
- OK
in part because, you are the only one who can do that
- Yeah
so I'd like to just get it done so let it's done,
and also because, you know, it might be that you wanna do that early
- Yeah
because, it might be necessary, we might choose to have that done early.
What are you... tell me your thoughts, just where you are with that?
- So primary one on that, I think I've expressed it
a couple times online,
is I feel the modern media has a big focus on personalities.
- Totally
- And I'm a little concerned (that) the more we focus on that
the more they're going to use that as a distraction.
I don't necessarily want that to happen, which is why I've consistently said, you know,
I'm not the story here, hum haha, nervous uh?
- No it's a very very cheap pen, I just, the slider is broke, go ahead.
- Hum, but hum, yeah, anything I can do to help you guys get this out,
I will do,
I don't have any experience with media, with how this works
so I'm kind of learning as I go.
Right, so, I just want to get a sense of why did you decide to do what you've done.
So for me it all comes down to State Power against the people's ability
to meaningfully oppose that power.
And I'm sitting there everyday,
getting payed to design methods to amplify that State Power.
And I'm realizing that if, you know, the policy switches,
that there are the only things that restrains these states, were changed,
there, you couldn't meaningfully oppose these.
I mean, you have to be the most incredibly sophisticated ta* col* actor in existence.
I'm not sure there's anybody, no matter how gifted you are,
who could oppose all of the offices and all the bright people
even all the mediocre people out there with all of their tools and all of their capabilities.
And as I saw the promise of the Obama administration
be betrayed and walk away from it. In fact, actually advance
the things that had been promised to be sort of curtailed and rained in
and dialed back.
It actually gets worse, particularly drone strikes.
Which I also learned in NSA,
we could watch drone videos from our desktops,
as I saw that, that really hardened me to action.
- In real time?
- In real time, yeah,
it'll stream a lower quality of the video to your desktop,
typically you'd be watching surveillance drones as opposed to actually letting you know,
murder drones really going out there and bomb somebody.
But you'll have a drone that's just following somebody's house
for hours and hours.
And you won't know who it is because, you know,
you don't have the context for that but it's just a page
where it's lists and lists of drone feeds
and all these different countries with all these different code names
and you can just click on which one you want to see.
- Right, so if your self interest is to live in a world in which
there's maximum privacy,
doing something that could put you into prison,
in which your privacy is completely destroyed is sort of the antithesis of that,
how did you reach the point where that was a worthwhile calculation for you?
- I remember what the Internet was like before it was being watched.
And there has never been anything in the history of man like it.
I mean you could have children from one part of the world
having an equal discussion,
where you know they were sort of granted
the same respect for their ideas and conversation,
with experts in the field from another part of the world
on any topic, anywhere, anytime, all the time.
And it was free and unrestrained.
And we've seen the chilling of that, the cooling of that and the changing
of that model towards something which people self police their own views.
And they literally make their own jokes on ending up on the list
if they donate to a political cause or if they say something in a discussion.
And it has become an expectation that we're being watched.
Many people I've talked to have mentioned that they're careful about what they type
into search engines.
Because they know that it's being recorded.
And that limits the boundaries of their intellectual exploration.
And I'm more willing to risk
imprisonment
or any other negative outcome personally
than I am willing to risk
the curtailment of my intellectual freedom
and that of those around me,
whom I care for equally as I do for myself.
And again that's not to say that I'm self sacrificing
because it gives me, I feel good,
in my human experience
to know that I can contribute to the good of others.
- Could you elaborate on that?
- So, I don't know how much the programs and the actual technical capacities
everybody's talked to you about but there is an infrastructure in place
in the United States and world wide that NSA has built
in cooperation with other governments as well,
that intercepts
basically every
digital communication,
every radio communication,
every analog communication
that it has sensors in place to detect.
And with these capabilities,
basically the vast majority
of human
and computer to computer communications,
device-based communication,
which that sort of then forms the relationships between humans,
are automatically ingested without targeting.
And that allows individuals to retroactively
search your communications based on self certifications.
So for example, if I wanted to see the content
of your email or,
you know, your wife's phone calls
or anything like that.
All I have to do is use what's called a selector.
Any kind of thing
in the communication's chain
that might uniquely or almost uniquely
identify you as an individual.
And I'm talking about things like email addresses,
IP addresses, phone numbers,
credit cards,
even passwords
that are unique to you, that aren't used by anyone else.
I can input those into the system
and it will not only go back through the database
and go "have I seen this anywhere in the past?",
it will basically put an additional level of scrutiny on it
moving into the future that says
"if this is detected now or at anytime in the future,
I want this to go to me immediately" and alert me in real time
that you're communicating with someone,
things like that.
- So I don't know who you are or anything about you.
- Ok. I work for Booz Allen Hamilton, defense contractor.
I am sort of on loan to NSA, I don't talk to Booz Allen boss,
I don't get tasking from Booz Allen, it's all from NSA.
- So, I don't know your name.
- Oh, sorry, my name is Edward Snowden,
I go by Ed.
Edward Joseph Snowden is the full name.
(spelling) S. N. O. W. D. E. N..
- And where are you from ?
- I'm originally... I was born in North Carolina,
small town, Elizabeth City.
There is a Coast Guard station there,
I'm from a military family.
But I spent most of my time growing up around Fort Meade in Maryland.
- And your family, what's the consequences for them?
- This is actually what has made this hardest.
My family doesn't know what's happening, they're unaware.
I don't think I'll be able to keep the family ties
that I've had for all my life
because of the risk of associating them with this.
And I'll leave what to publish and what not to publish to you guys,
I trust you'll be responsible on this. But basically, the closer I stay to my family,
the more likely they are to be leaned on.
- So you don't want me to report this?
- We dont have ... I mean, we definitely want to do
whatever we can not to include them or bring them into the mix
- Oh I'm sorry that's fine, I won't...
- I'm sorry I'm going to interrupt you.
Can we just stop for a second, do the document and then go back to that?
- What do I need? Do I need an email address that we're using or...
- Well you can send... Once you've encrypted it, you can send it from whatever you think is appropriate.
The main thing is you've got to encapsulate all of this
in a way that it can't be decrypted and read
once it's in transit across the network or on either of the end points.
- Ok I mean just so you know these documents are basically all going
to be uploaded within like 48 hours.
- This is simply..
You want to get in the process of doing this for everything because
it seems hard but it's not hard, this is super easy.
- Ok so just walk me through it.
- Ok. Show me the actual folder structure where these files are first.
- How many documents did you say there were?
- Seven
- Ok well, while you're working...
- Ok go ahead
- How many documents are we talking about?
Because in The Guardian,
that Wikileaks, technical people
set up a system
so that they were available for anybody to see
and I just wonder if it's possible to do the same thing.
- That would be the ideal end game.
But because some of these documents are legitimately classified
in ways that could cause harm to people and methods.
I'm comfortable in my technical ability to protect them.
I mean you could literally shoot me or torture me
and I could not disclose the password, if I wanted to.
I have the sophistication to do that.
There are some journalists that I think could do that,
but there are a number of them that couldn't.
But the question becomes,
can an organization
actually control that information
in that manner
without risking basically an uncontrolled disclosure?
But I do agree with that, honestly
I don't want to be the person making the decisions
on what should be public and what shouldn't.
Which is why rather than publishing these on my own,
or putting them out openly, I'm running them through journalists.
So that my bias, and my things,
because clearly I have some strongly held views,
are removed from that equation
and the public interest is being represented in the most responsible manner.
- Yeah.
- Actually given your sort of... Geographic familiarity
with the U.K and whatnot.
I'd like to point out that GCHQ has probably the most invasive...
- I know - network intercept program anywhere in the world.
It's called TEMPORA, (spelling) T. E. M. P. O. R. A.
and it's the world's first "full take", they call it, and that means
content in addition to metadata
on everything.
- So this is what I'd like to do just in term of scheduling
if it's good with everybody else. Are you feeling you're done?
- Yeah yeah I'm done.
- So, I'm anxious to go back,
get those articles done
and then there is a bunch of documents
that aren't about those first two or three stories that I'd like to spend time with you...
- Sure yeah
- ...kinda going over.
- I'm not going anywhere.
- You're available? You want to check your book first?
- Let me check my schedule.
- Is that good for you Laura? You want to...
- It's great. - OK
- Hello
- Yes
- My meal was great thank you very much
- No I still have some left and I think I'm gonna be eating it later
so you can just leave me alone for now.
- Ok great thank you so much, have a good one bye.
Let's fix that real quick.
So another fun thing I was telling Laura about this:
all these new VOIP phones
they have little computers in them
and you can hot mike these over the network,
all the time even when the receiver's down so...
as long as it's plugged in
it can be listening on.
And I haven't even considered that earlier. But yeah...
- OK.
- There are so many ways... This could be...
Everything that's in here is pretty much gonna be
on the public record at some point.
We should operate on that.
- Yeah. Yeah, I think... I think we are...
- So, do you have your air gapped machine with you?
- I do, I do.
- Let me pop that out.
- Do you have an understanding or commitment on
when you guys are gonna to press for the first stories?
- It's very seven or eight in the morning in London.
- Uh uh, OK.
Oh, let's see here.
Ok, hey look there's another one.
Pro tip, let's not leave the same SD cards in our laptops forever in the future.
- Did you know this was still kicking around in your laptop?
- Yeah, I mean that was the... mmh...
- OK, just to make it sure.
- OK, yeah. This is it?
- Yeah.
- OK.
- Right there.
- Thanks. You will have a new one who will look exactly identical
but it's a different archive. So you might want to take a sharpie to it or something.
Could you pass me my magic mantle of power?
- Uh uh...
Is that about possibility of overhead?
- Visual. yes, Visual collection.
I don't think at this point there is anything in this regards
that would shock us.
We become pretty... Ewen you once said before,
he's like, he's like: I'm never leaving my room,
I'm never leaving anything in my room again.
And the single machine... I was like
you've been infected by the paranoia bug, happens to all of us.
He was like... I would never leave a single of these device,
and I would never leave my and again alone.
- My bag's getting heavier and heavier
- Exactly
Alright, I'm gonna need you to enter
your root password 'cause I don't know what it is.
If you wanna use this you're more than welcome, so uh ..
- OK, looks like your root password's not 4 caracters long anyway.
- it's usually a lot longer but that's just like a one time only thing, right?
- So, it is uh...
- It had been a lot longer but ever since I knew is that it was a one time only session,
I've been making it shorter. Is that not good?
- It's actually not. I was expressing this with Laura either.
The issue is because of the fact it's got a hardware MAC address
and things like that,
and if people are able to identify your machine and they're able to...
- This is the fact you're about to break the most upsetting story?
- Yeah, that's true.
- So they might kinda prioritize
- It's ten letters I type very quickly. Actually it's ten letters but...
- So ten letters would be good if they had to bruteforce the entire key space.
That would still probably only take a couple of days for NSA. Uh...
That's a fire alarm, OK...
- hopefully this just sounds like a 3 seconds test or is this...
Do you wanna to call the desk and ask? It's fine.
- Yeah, I don't think it's an issue, but it's interesting that I just.
- did that happen before?
- Maybe they got mad cause they couldn't listen into us through the phone anymore.
- Has the fire alarm gone off before?
- No that's the first time that has happened. Let me... so just in case they have like an alert that goes to... That's unusual...
- We probably...
- We might have to evacuate.
- Should we ignore that, I don't know?
- It's not continuous.
No, I'm just saying if it continues...
- And then we come and meet the guys down in the lobby.
- Yeah, alright.
- Yeah.
- Yeah let's, let's leave for now when we'll have finished this up.
Not that they're gonna answer 'cause they probably have seven thousands calls.
- Yeah.
- Hi, we hear a loud buzzing on the tenth flour.
Can you tell us what that is?
Ah, OK.
OK, great.
Thank you, bye.
Fire alarm testing, maintenance.
- Yes. that's good, that's what I wanted to hear.
- Nice of them to... Nice of them to let us know about it in advance.
Uhm, I just wanna give you kind of a quick tour, uh..
when Laura was looking at this she was kind of salivating...
and couldn't stop like actually reading these documents
- Right, right. So we'll try and restrain ourselves
although I don't promise that it will succeed.
- I just wanna kinda explain a brief overview
of what these are and how they're organized.
On the beginning of document of interest,
the primary purposes of the second archive is to bring the focus over to
SSO as opposed to PRISM.
This is in general. SSO are the Special Source Operations.
This is the world wide passive collection on networks
they're both domestic to the US and international.
There's a lot of different ways they do it
but, uh corporate partnerships are one of the primary things,
they do domestically they also do this for multinationals
that might be headquarted in the US so they can kinda coerce
or just pay into giving them access.
And they also do bilaterally with the assistance of certain governments.
And that's based on the premise that they go
"All right, we'll help you set the system up if you give us all the data from it".
Hum, there's... there's a lot more here
than any one person or probably one team could do.
- Right
Hum, XKEYSCORE Deep Dive.
XKEYSCORE in general, and there's a huge folder of documentation
on XKEYSCORE and how it works,
is the front-end system that analysts use
for querying that sort of ocean of raw singing that I was telling you about.
All that stuff where you can sort of do the retroactive searches,
live searches, get flagging, what not.
XKEYSCORE is the front-end for that.
I'm just gonna show you one slide here, 'cause Laura thought it was valuable
on this talk on kinda how these capabilities ramp up
in sophistication over time.
This is kinda nice.
As of fiscal year 2011, they could monitor
1 billion telephones and internet sessions simultanously,
per one of these devices,
and they can collect at a rate of 125 Gigabytes a second,
which is a Terabit per second.
- That's for each one of these?
- That's for each one of these, yeah.
- How many TUMULT missions would that be then?
- Part of this, back then there were 20 sites,
there's ten at DOD installations.
But these are all outdated, we've expanded pretty rapidly.
But still 20 sites, that's at least 20 billion.
- This all need to get out. You know what I mean, it's like...
Just in terms of understanding, the capabilities, it's so opaque.
- It's not science fiction. This stuff is happening right now.
- No, that's what I mean, it's like... The magnitude of it,
and like this a pretty inaccessible technical document.
But, even this it's really chilling, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I mean, we should be having debates
about whether we want Government
I mean this is massive and extraordinary. It's amazing...
Even though you know it... Even though you know that...
to see it like the physical blueprints of it
and sort of the technical expressions of it,
brutally hits home like... in a super visceral way that is so needed.
This is CNN Breaking news
An explosive new report is re-igniting the concerns
that your privacy is being violated to protect America's "security".
It reveals a court order giving the National Security Agency
blanket access to millions of Verizon customer's records
on a daily basis.
Earlier I had the chance to conduct the first TV interview
with the reporter who broke this story wide open,
Glenn Greenwald, of The Guardian.
Congratulations on the scoop!
Explain for our viewers why this is important?
It's important because people have understood
that the law that this was done under, which is the Patriot Act
enacted in the wake of 9/11.
Was a law that allowed the government very broad powers to get records
about people with a lower level of suspicion and probable cause to traditional standards.
So it has always been assumed that under the Patriot Act,
if the government had even any suspicion that you where involved
in a crime or terrorism, they could get a lot of information about you.
What this court order does that makes it so striking
is that it's not directed at any individuals who they believe or have suspicion of
committing crime or a part of a terrorist organization.
It's collecting the phone records of every single customer of Verizon business
and finding out every single call that they've made internationally and locally.
So it's indiscriminant and it's sweeping. It's a Government program designed
to collect information about all Americans
not just people where they believe there is reason to think
they've done anything wrong.
It's a tough situation
You know hearing that
the person that you love that you've spent the decade with
may not be coming back.
- What did they ask her?
- Hum... When was the last time she saw me?
Where am I?
What am I doing?
Hum.. you know.
What does she know about my illness?
Things like that.
So yeah they're pretty solidly aware.
Cause she's...
I'm clearly not at home ill.
- Hello, hello
- Hello, let me disconnect from the Internet.
- So there is some news?
- Yes there was indeed some news.
- I have config today, I think, maybe just a few hours ago.
- What kind of people does it...?
- An HR lady I'm assuming from NSA as opposed to Booz Allen.
Because she has was accompanied by a police officer
which mean the NSA police and they're planning to break into my house
which regular police don't do.
- Does she lives there?
- Yeah she lives there so I told her to cooperate fully
I can't find my phone just one second.
and don't worry about herself
You know what I gonna do, I'll just take out the stuff I want to use.
- OK
- OK well look I mean this is not a surprise at all.
- Not yeah I know I planned for it but it's just you know when it's impacting
and when they're talking to you it's a little bit different.
- Absolutely
- But it's possible that they just noticed that you're missing
I guess it's not really possible.
- It is but yeah they're I mean
Hum... let me just get rid of this.
So I obviously was focused on other things than appearance this morning.
- How was she? How does she reacted? Was she relatively calm about it?
- She's relatively calm.
- Does she know anything about what you're doing?
- She has, she has no idea
and that's I mean I feel badly about that
but that's the only way I could think of where
like she can't be in trouble.
- Did you just basically do a "I have to go somewhere for reasons
that I can't tell you about" kind of thing?
- I just disappeared when she was on vacation
and I left a note saying
"Hey I'm gonna be away for a while for work"
which isn't unusual for me in my business
- Right
you know so
- OK so let me ask a couple things just quickly.
Are they gonna be able to go into your stuff and figure out what you took?
- Hum in some kind of some sort of like peripheral sense but not necessarily
- Yes because I cast such a wide net
I they do that the only thing they're gonna do is they're gonna have a heart attack
because they're gonna go "He had access to everything"
- Yeah
and they not gonna know what specifically has been done.
I think they're gonna start to actually feel a little better
although they're not gonna be wild about this in any case.
When they see that the stories are kind of cleaving to a trend
you know it's not like
"Here is the list of everybody who works everywhere"
- Right
- I also think you know there're gonna be paranoid in the extreme
and assuming all kind of worst case scenarios
which is gonna you know I think
make them react in ways that probably aren't like gonna be particularly
rational on their part
but at the same time there's... I do think they're limited
for the moment.
- I agree and I mean, I had kind of time to set a stage where
we all enjoy at least a minimum level of protection you know
no matter who we are who's involved in this you know you're either a journalist
- Right
or you're either out of jurisdiction
so we have some time to play this before they can really get nasty.
I think it's over you know the weeks when they have times to get lawyers,
really sort of go
"This is a special situation how can we interpret this to our advantage?"
like we seen them do this all the time you know
whether it's drones or wiretapping or whatever they'll go.
Well according to this law from the 1840's you know
- Yeah yeah of course
we can apply x, y to the Authority.
But that takes time and that takes agreement.
Yeah and also you know I mean I think
the more public we are out there to like as journalists
and the more protection it's gonna give as well.
- Have you started to give thoughts to when you're ready to come forward?
- I'm ready whenever huh honestly I think there is sort of an agreement
that it's not going to bias the reporting process.
That's my primary concern at this point.
I don't want to get myself into the issue before it's gonna happen anyway
and where it takes away for the stories that are getting out.
We're talking about tens of millions of Americans
who weren't suspected of doing anything
who were surveilled in this way.
...thoughts for a moment, I want to continue this conversation,
these are really important sensitive issues
and the public out there has the right to know what's going on... Stand by...
This is CNN breaking news
Another explosive article has just appeared this time in the Washington Post
it's breaking news and it reveals another broad and secret US government surveillance program.
The Washington Post and The Guardian in London reporting that the NSA and the FBI
are tapping directly into the central servers of nine leading Internet companies
including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple.
Reports says they're extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents
and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person's movements and context over time.
Let's discuss this latest revelation that coming out fast,
Bill Binney, the formal official of the NSA
who quit back in 2001, you were angry about what was going on
you've been known as a whistleblower right now.
- Bill, what do you think about this Washington Post story?
- Well, I assume it's just the continuation of what they've been doing all along.
- So you're not surprised?
- No
- Do you have any idea who's leaking this information?
- I don't know who leaked this,
I have no doubt that the administration will launch an investigation
not into who approved these programs but into who leaked the information.
I'm not shocked they come to denying it, I don't assume that...
- Do you believe it?
- There're maybe some technical basis on which they can say that we are not
actively collaborating or they don't have what we consider in our definition
to be direct access to our servers but what I do know is that I've talked to
more that one person
who has sat at a desk at a web portal and typed out commands
and reached into those servers from a distance.
So, whatever they want to call that, that's what's happening.
Hold on, what are we calling the single biggest infringement on American civil liberties
probably of all time, isn't it?
- ...we already have the New York Times now today saying that the Administration has lost all credibility.
- The New York Times slammed President Obama for this
and frankly I was used to that
the New York Times used to slam George Bush for protecting the country for the steps he took.
I don't want us to drop our guard.
I don't want us to be struck again as we saw in Boston,
I understand,
people are willing to sacrifice their civil liberties, people are sheltered inside which is enough...
- How can you believe in freedom, do you see?
I mean try and play the devil's advocate for me, when you have secret courts,
secret operations like PRISM, secret investigations which go into
every spit and cough of every American's lives without any Member of the American public
knowing about it. That's not freedom is it?
- In 2008, they eliminated the warrant requirement for all conversations
except ones that takes place by and among Americans
exclusively on America's soil.
So they don't need warrants now for people who are foreigners
outside of the US but they also don't need warrants for Americans
who are in the United States communicating with people
reasonably believed to be outside of the US.
So again, the fact that there are no checks, no oversight about who's looking over the NSA's shoulder,
means that they can take whatever they want and the fact that it's all behind a wall
of secrecy and they threaten people who want to expose it
means that whatever they're doing even violating the law
is something we're unlikely to know until we start having real investigations
and real transparency into what it is the government is doing.
Glenn Greenwald, congratulations again on exposing what is a true scandal,
I appreciate you joining me.
Hey I just heard from Lindsay and huh... she's still alive, which is good and free.
My rent checks apparently are no longer getting through to my landlord
so they said if we don't pay them in five days we will be evicted,
which is strange because I got a system set up that automatically pays them.
So there is that apparently there is construction trucks all over the street
of my house, so that's, I wonder what they're looking for.
It is... It is an unusual feeling that's kind of hard to...
hard to like, describe or convey in words but not knowing what's gonna happen
in the next days, the next hour or the next week
it's scary but at the same time it's liberating, you know,
the planning comes a lot easier because you don't have
that many variables to take into plate, you can only act, and then act again.
Now all these phone calls are being recorded digitally
not for content but for origin and destination
now word the government is going right into the servers of these large Internet companies.
- How does the government politically speaking make the argument that this is essential
to National Security and not a dramatic overreach
in terms of personal privacy?
- It's difficult Matt, because as Peter was pointing out, overnight
we had an extraordinary late night close to midnight announcement
and a declassification from the Director of National Intelligence.
They are scrambling, the Administration is already supported strongly by leaders
in both parties from the Intelligence Committees.
GCHQ has an internal Wikipedia at the top secret you know, super classified level
where anybody working intelligence can work on anything they want.
That's what this is, I'm giving it to you, you can make the decision on that what's appropriate what's not.
Hum it's gonna be documents of, you know, different types,
pictures and Power Points and Word documents. Stuff like that ...
- Sorry can I take that seat?
- Yeah
- Sorry, I'm sorry I've got used to repeat, so in these documents, they will show...
- Yeah there will be a couple more documents on that,
that's only one part though, like it talks about Tempora
and a little more thing that's the wiki article itself.
It was also talking about a self-developed tool called UDAQ U.D.A.Q. it's their search tool
for all the stuff they collect was what it looked like.
- Yeah
- Hum it's gonna be projects, it's gonna be troubleshooting pages
for a particular tool.
- Thanks
- And, the next step, when do you think you'll go public?
- Arh... I think it's pretty soon, I mean, with the reaction, this escalated more quickly,
I think pretty much as soon as they start trying to make this about me
which should be any day now.
- Yeah
- Hum I'll come out just to go hey, you know, this is not a question of
somebody skulking around in the shadows. These are public issues,
these are not my issues you know these are everybody's issues,
I'm not afraid of you, you know, you're not gonna bully me in the silence
like you've done to everybody else
and if no body else is gonna do it I will
and hopefully when I'm gone whatever you do to me,
there will be somebody else who will do the same thing.
It will be the sort of Internet principle you know, of the Hydra:
you can stop one person but there is gonna be seven more of us.
- Yeah
Are you getting more nervous?
- I mean... no. I think the way I look at stress... particularly because
I sort of knew this was coming... because I sort of volunteered to walk into it.
I'm already sort of familiar with the idea.
I'm not worried about it.
When somebody like busts in the door suddenly
I'll get nervous and it'll affect me but until they do, you know...
- Yeah, yeah.
But until they do umm... you know.
I'm eating a little less that's the only difference I think.
- Let's talk about the issue with when we're gonna say who you are.
- Yeah
- This is, you know, you have to talk me through this because I have a big worry about this.
- OK tell me
- Which is that... if we come out and
I know that you believe that your detection is inevitable
and that it's inevitable imminently.
There is, you know, in the New York Times today Charlie Savage the fascinating
Sherlock Holmes of political reporting deduced that
the fact that there has been these leaks in succession
probably means that there's some one person that decided to leak...
- Somebody else quoted you saying it was one of your readers
- Yeah
- And somebody else is putting on things
- Yeah so you know, I mean it's fine I want people to, I wanted to be like
- Yeah
- You know like this is a person, I want to start introducing the concept of
this is a person who has a particular set of political objectives
about informing the world about what's taking place.
Like you know, I'm keeping it all anonymous totally
but I want to start introducing you in that kind of incremental way.
But here's the thing.
What I'm concerned about it that if come out and say
here's who this is, here's what he did the whole thing
that we talked about.
Then we're gonna basically be doing the government's work for them
and we're gonna basically be handing them you know a confession
and helping them identify who find it.
I mean maybe you're right, maybe they'll find out quickly
and maybe they'll know but is there any possible idea that they won't?
Are we kind of giving them stuff that we don't...? Or...
- It's possible that they already know but they don't want to reveal
it because they don't know...
- Or that they don't know and we're gonna be telling them like
is it a possibility that they're gonna need like 2 3 months or uncertainty
and we're gonna be solving their problem for them?
or let me just say the or part maybe it doesn't matter to you,
maybe you want it, maybe, I mean,
you're not coming out because
you think inevitably they're gonna catch you
and you want to do it first,
you're coming out because you want to fucking come out and...
- Oh there is that, I mean that's the thing,
I don't want to hide on this and skulk around,
I don't think I should have to
obviously there is circumstances that are saying that.
I think it is powerful to come out and be like
look I'm not afraid and I don't think other people should either,
you know, I was sitting in the office right next to you last week,
we all have a stake in this, this is our country
and the balance of power between the citizenry and the government
is becoming that of the ruling and the ruled
as opposed to actually, you know, the elected and the electorate.
- OK so that's what I need to hear, that this is not about...
- But I do want to say, I don't think there is a case
that I'm not gonna be discovered, in the fullness of time.
It's just a question of time for me.
You're right, it could take them a long time, I don't think it will
but I didn't try to hide the footprint because again I intended to come forward.
- OK I'm gonna post this morning just a general defense of whistleblowers
and you in particular without saying anything about you.
I'm gonna go post that right when I get back
and I'm also doing like a big fuck you to all the people who keep like talking
about investigations like that. I want that to be like...
the fearlessness and the fuck you to like the bullying tactics,
has go to be completely preventing every thing we do.
- I think that's brilliant. I mean your principles on this I love,
I can't support them enough because it is, it's inverting the model
of the government has laid out where people where trying to,
you know, say the truth, skulk around, and then hide in the dark,
and then quote anonymously. I say yes, fuck that, let's just...
- OK, so here is the plan then, I mean, and this is a thing, it's like
once, I think we all just felt the fact that this is the right way to do it.
You feel the power of your choice, you know what I mean,
it's like I want that power to be felt in the world.
- OK
- and it is the... it's the ultimate standing up to them
right like I'm not gonna fucking hide even for one second,
I'm gonna get right in your face,
you don't have to investigate, there's nothing to investigate,
here I am!
You know, and I think that is just incredibly powerful,
and then the question just becomes
how do we do this in the right, you know the perfect way,
that's my burden and that's what I'm gonna spend...
So today it's gonna be this story in the morning,
assuming that it doesn't change in The Guardian,
it's gonna be this story in the morning,
just to keep the mental going, just to keep like the disclosures coming.
A big one at night, now it's becoming like
"OK, this is a major leak"
and after today when we post the two stuff things that we're gonna post.
It's gonna be "what the fuck is this leak and who did it?"
I guarantee you.
I just want to make sure, move over slightly...
- Do you want me to move a little move over...
- I just wanna move... all right
- OK
- We are ready
- So let's us begin with some basic
background information like
just state your name,
what position you held in intelligence community
and how long you worked within that community
- OK, uh... just some... how are we going, like,
in depth or are we going like in general,
like I'm currently an infrastructure analyst, you know,
Booz Allen Hamilton, not going through my whole back story
- Yes
- OK,
- Just like summary kind of
- OK
- My Name is Ed Snowden, I'm 29 years old,
I work for Booz Allen Hamilton as an infrastructure analyst
for NSA in Hawaii.
- And what are some of the positions that you held previously
within the intelligence community?
- I've been a system engineer, system administrator, uh...
senior advisor, uh... for the, Central Intelligence Agency,
solutions consultant and a telecommunications information
systems officer.
- And what kind of clearances have... have you held,
what kinda classification?
- Uh... Top secret,
So, people in my levels of access for systems administration
or as a infrastructure analyst typically have higher accesses
than an NSA employee would normally have.
Normal NSA employees have a combination of clearances called
TS SI TK and Gamma.
Uh, that's a Top Secret Signals Intelligence Talent Keyhole
and Gamma.
And they all relate to certain things that are sort of core to the NSA mission.
As a systems administrator you get a special clearance
called PrivAcc for Privileged Access,
which allows you to be exposed to informations of any classification
regardless of what your position actually needs.
Monday
June 10, 2013
Just before we go, a remind of our top story,
and that's the full map, CIA typically worked at Edward Snowden
says he's responsible for leaking information that US authorities have been monitoring
phone and Internet data.
The US justice deparment confirmed it is the first stages
of a criminal investigation.
- Leave it long or got it shorter, what do you think?
As far as the video the people saw. Am I less identifiable now?
- lose it?
- lose it? Cause I can't go all the way down, it's still gonna be stubble.
I don't have the blade for closer.
- Will you be talking to any other media about this story today?
- I am.
- Uh, will you be coming to our office
- ... about where is Snowden now, what his plans are?
- No, I won't talk about that, so unless you have any other questions...
- OK
- What are you plans please? Are you staying in Hong Kong
for a the time being?
- For a little while.
- And do you have any hopes to write more about this story
or are you stopping new writing about this story?
- No, I'm gonna continue to write about it.
- Have you had any pressure from the US Authorities
about continuing to report on this?
- No.
- And have you heard anything about what could be...
asked you the Hong Kong Authorities towards this case,
whether they contacted you or asked you anything about the whereabouts of Snowden
and whether that's just another...
- I haven't heard about the Authorities of any Government.
- And do, where do you think this story is going then?
For you and of course for Snowden and of course for the US media
and the US Administration in general?
- Uh, for me, I'm gonna continue to report.
Reporting on what the Government has been doing and what I think people should know about.
As for him I don't think anyone knows
... people come after me or any of their third partners you know they work closely with a number of other nations
or you know they could pay off the trial you know any of their agents are assets ...
A criminal investigation the whistleblower... monitoring phone calls and Internet data goes public...
Security forces in Afghanistan say a number of...
Now it's time for our news paper review and looking at what's making headlines
around the world.
Let's start with The Guardian our top story which is revealing the identity of the former CIA employee.
The paper says he leaks information exposing the scale of American's surveillance of the Internet.
Edward Snowden, what a great story...
Well I think it's a fantastic story this could be straight out from a John Le Carré novel
I mean when you read what he did, yes he got the material,
he then decided to go to a place he identified to be very difficult for America to get at him
- God dammit
which is Hong Kong because of course technically inside China, the one country two systems policy
there meaning he would get potentially some protection,
he thought, all very well planned, could be just out of a spy novel.
But what about the details.
- That could make it worse. But just the lower half of my face.
Snowden says he'd become increasingly dismay by what he saw as the growing power
of the NSA.
And it's his decision to pass on documents which is said to reveal
the organisation monitored millions of phone calls
but that it had direct access to some of the...
- How do you feel?
...Internet companies in the world.
- uuh what happens, happens. We've uh we've talked about this
I knew what the risks and if I get arrested, I get arrested,
we were able to get the information that needed to get out, out.
And you and Glenn are able to keep reporting regardless what happens to me.
Now 29 year old Edward Snowden says that US intelligence agencies gathered millions of phone records
and monitored Internet data...
- Yes. I'm sorry who's asking?
- I'm afraid you have the wrong room thank you. Wall Street Journal.
- Yes. I'm sorry say again?
Uh, no thank you. No calls.
I think they have the wrong number.
Yeah, no calls. Thank you.
Uh wait I'm sorry if it's two men from the front desk they can call but no outside calls.
Wait actually just... let them through. Wait, wait m'am?
Fuck
- Yes. Wait is it a lawyer? Yeah, no no no I mean,
the people who are asking. Ask them if they are lawyers.
No tell her that she has the wrong number and there is no Mr. Snowden here.
Would you mind to talk in speakerphone?
- Sorry
- Hi. I'm the client
- Pretty good. I'm doing well
- Ok
- Ok, that's great. Is it OK if i bring equipment? Because i'm just kind of going, so i can leave in any direction,
at any time, and not come back. If necessary.
- Ok, that sounds good.
- Thank you, thank you so much for helping us.
- Yeah... And so, is there a precedent for this where Hong Kong would extradite someone
for political speech ?
"The President surely does not welcome the way that this debate
has earned a greater attention the last week,
the leaked classified information about sensitive programs that are
important in our fight against terrorists
who would do harm to Americans is a problem,
but the debate itself is legitimate and should be engaged.
- Right, so which one do we want here then.
This is operational stuff, so we mustn't say any of this.
- So redact that.
- Go near the top
- What about the Alexander's quote, is that something ...
- Yeah. That's in TARMAC. "Why can't we collect all the signals all the times?
Sounds like a good summer homework project for Menwith"
Keith Alexander the head of the NSA on a visit to the UK. This one.
- Yeah.
- Yeah. It's a secret document in that secret document.
We've got a stick here that should just have three single slides on it.
If it's got more than three single slides, we have to be extremely careful.
- Yeah?
- Yeah, that's it.
This is really dangerous stuff for us, Guardian
If we make mistakes, ...very angry.
We kept it all under lock and key and no one knows. No, I'm not saying that.
- OK
- They will come in and snap the front door down if we elaborate on that...
And he said...
The Prime Minister is extremely concerned about this.
And they kept saying, "this is from the very top."
As you can see on this map the flight that probably has Snowden aboard,
has almost reached its destination here in Moscow's scheduled plan,
in the Russian capital within minutes...
As you may have heard, there is a CIA agent who has revealed a lot of information
and he is now trapped in the
airport in Moscow
We managed to get him out of Hong Kong,
but when he landed in the Moscow airport,
the American government had canceled his passport.
So formally he hasn't entered into Russian territory,
he is in the transit area of the airport
And one of our people is accompanying him
We are trying to arrange a private jet
to take him from Moscow
to Ecuador or perhaps maybe Venezuela
or maybe Iceland,
countries where he would be safe.
May I collect all the phones please?
I have everything in here
Put them in the refrigerator
- So, as you know, in June,
Snowden was in charge with 3
legal violations felonies
Principaly under a World War I era
criminal law called the Espionage Act
The Espionage Act is an extremely broad
criminal prohibition against
the sharing or dissemination
of what's called "National Defense information"
it was only used to
prosecute people who had been accused of
acting with a foreign power, spies not whistleblowers
and it's a very unusual legal representation I think
not just for all of you, but for me as well.
The Espionage Act has not distinguished between
leaks to the press and the public interest,
and selling secrets to foreign enemies
for personal profit.
So, under the Espionage Act
it's not a defense if the information that was disclosed
should not have been withheld in the first place,
that it was improperly classified.
It's not a defense if the dissemination was in the public interest
that it led to reforms.
Even if the court determines that the programs that were revealed
were illegal or unconstitutional.
that's still not a defense under the Espionage Act,
the Government doesn't have to defend the classification,
it doesn't have to demonstrate harm from the release,
All this is irrelevant.
So when we say that the trial wouldn't be fair,
we are not talking about what human rights lawyers think
of this fair trial practices
We are saying the law, the statute itself,
eliminates any kind of defense
that Snowden might be able to make
and essentially will equate him with a spy.
And of course those three counts could be increased to a hundreed or two hundreed
or three hundreed, they could charge him separately
for each document that has been published by a journalist.
And I think that we all recognize, even though we sit here as lawyers
in a lawyer's meeting
that it's propably 95% politics and 5% law.
How this would be resolved.
"Mr. Snowden has been charged with very serious crimes
and he should be returned to the United States where he would be granted full due process
and every right available to him as a United States citizen.
Facing our justice system under the Constitution."
No, I don't think Mr. Snowden was a Patriot.
I called for a federal review
of our surveillance operations
before Mr. Snowden made these leaks.
My preference,
and I think the American people's preference,
would have been for a lawful, orderly
examination of these laws.
A thoughtful, fact based debate,
that would then lead us to a better place.
- Oh my God. David. Hello my baby.
- I'm OK.
- You're OK?
- I just wanna go home.
- OK, OK OK. You just have to walk...
- How are you?
- Good, good. I'm totally fine, I didn't sleep at all, I couldn't sleep.
- I know.
"Brazil Demands Explanation from UK Government"
Recent reports have revealed that the NSA have access to encryption keys
and they paid tech companies to introduce backdoors in encryption protocols
So we are going to talk about ways in which we can defend ourselves against
governments spying on us.
So Mr. Jacob Appelbaum, as an encryption and security software developper,
and journalist.
Ladar Levison, the founder of the encrypted email service
Lavabit
used by Edward Snowden.
You have the floor.
Thank you
Lavabit is an email service that hopefully one day
will be able to stand on its own without any references to Snowden.
My service was designed to remove me
from the possibility of being forced
to violate a person's privacy.
Quite simply
Lavabit was designed to remove the service provider
from the equation,
by not having logs on my server
and not having access to a person's emails on disk,
I wasn't elimitating
the possibility of surveillance,
I was simply removing myself from that equation.
And that surveillance would have to be conducted
on the target
either the sender
or the receiver of the messages.
But I was approached by the FBI quite recently,
and told
that because I couldn't turn over the information
from that one particular user,
I would be forced to give up those SSL keys
and let the FBI collect every communication
on my network without any kind of transparency.
And of course,
I wasn't comfortable with that,
to say the least!
More disturbing was the fact that I couldn't even tell anybody that it was going on.
So I decided:
"If I didn't win the fight to unseal my case,
if I didn't win the battle
to be able to tell people what was going on,
then my only ethical choice left was to shutdown".
Think about that.
I believe in the rule of law, I believe in the need to conduct investigations,
but those investigations are supposed to be difficult for a reason.
It's supposed to be difficult to invade somebody's privacy.
Because of how intrusive it is,
because of how disruptive it is.
If we can't, if we don't have a right to privacy,
how do we have a free and open discussion?
What good is the right to free speech,
if it's not protected,
in a sense that you can't have a private discussion
with somebody else about something you disagree with.
Think about the chilling effect that that has.
Think about the chilling effect it does have
on countries that don't have a right to privacy.
I've noticed a really interesting discussion point
which is that what people used to call liberty and freedom
we now call privacy.
And we say in the same breath
that privacy is dead.
This is something that really concerns me
about my generation
especially when we talk about how we're not surprised by anything.
I think that we should consider that
when we lose privacy we lose agency,
we lose liberty itself
because we no longer feel free to express what we think.
There is this myth of the passive surveillance machine
but actually what is surveillance except control?
This notion that the NSA are passive
this is nonsense
what we see is that they actively attack
European citizens, American citizens and,
in fact, anyone that they can
if they perceive an advantage.
- OK. Right.
- I have to give that in testimony.
- What are you going to tell?
- Everything I can truthfully.
- What will you talk about?
- Uh, whatever the questions they ask me.
- Yeah I think it's over there.
- Ok, it's alright. Thank you.
- Hey, how are you?
- Good.
- How are you?
- Good to see you again.
- Nice to meet you again, yes.
- Yeah
- What do you think they're doing to reporters, those of us that are working directly with...
Snowden documents?
How do you think they would approach dealing with people like us?
- You're.. You're on a cast iron cover list.
Which means any electronic device you use
that they can attach to you they all record and capture all that data.
- And what do they do with that data? They're just trying to figure out what we're doing?
- Uh, well the primary...
That's part of it. But the other part, primarily part,
is for them. I think it's to find the sources of information you're getting.
- So if I have a confidential source who's giving me information as a whistleblower,
and he works within the US Government, and he's concerned about
what he perceives as violation of the Constitution,
uhm... and he gets in touch with me, they...
- Yeah...
- Go ahead. Yeah.
- Yeah. From there on, they would nail him and start watching everything he did.
and if you start passing data, I'm sure they'd take him off the street.
I mean, the way you have to do it is like Deep Throat did, right?
In the Nixon years, meet in a basement of a parking garage...
physically.
Let's disassociate our metadata one last time.
So we don't have a clear record of your true name in our final communication chain.
This is obviously not to say you can't claim your involvement,
but as every trick in the book is likely to be used and looking into this,
I believe it's better, that that particular disclosure
come on your own terms.
Thank you again for all you've done.
So sorry again for the multiple delays.
But we've been entering a territory
with no model to benefit from.
If all ends well,
perhaps the demonstration that our mess has worked
would embolden more to come forward
Citizen.
- So the update that I want to give you is about the new,
uh.. the new source that, that we...
- OK.
- that... uh, this is what... this is the...
you know this is the person who is doing the... the most of the...
- Right, right, right.
- ...the work on it, uh... And now... and now,
what basically, what happens is...
- and...
- That's actually... That's really dangerous...
uh, on the source's side.
Do they know how to take care of themselves...
- Well he knows...
- ...or do you know anything about...
- ...he means it's, uh...
It's all being done.. through this...
- OK.
- and they're all talking this way...
- OK.
- and, uh...
- I was gonna say one of the big questions there is:
can they handle it? You know with...
- Yeah, they're very careful...
even they're through that.
- OK
- Yeah.
- And...
- That's what that is.
- Wow, that's really something.
- Oh, oh...
- Did you know that?
One key thing: ALL drone strikes are done through Ramstein Air Base in Germany - German govt has always denied this. Will be a huge controversy.
- It's not the actual plan.
- Right, right right. You mean the control.
- It's the process, who's sending the...
- Yeah.
- There's a... There's a chart. You know, it goes like a whole layout in it
for everyone and it's...
- Yeah. It's really bold, but it's really risky.
But you know that... that's the thing if...
- There's more...
- ... if they understand what they're doing.
- There's this chart, it goes like this... It shows the decision making chart.
It's a chart... It's, it's... it's shaped like this.
- Hum hum... - So up here it says "POTUS" (President of the Uniteed States)
- That's the decision making chart for each... one.
- And...
- And it's so political...
- This is... This part's amazing.
- That's...
- That's fucking ridiculous.
- This... This is... it's so shocking.
- (laugh) That's...
- No, I know...
- That's...
- ... I know...
There are 1.2 m people on various stages of their watch list.
- ... the population of an entire country.
- I know.
- That's... what we're working on.
- That person is incredibly bold, but, uh...
- But also very well aware.
- Right. I... You know, I just hope. I mean...
- No, I mean...
the boldness of it is shocking, but I mean it was obviously..
- But the other thing is just...
- ...motivated by what you did, I mean, it...
- This is going to... This is going to...
That could raise a profile
of this whole political situation
with whistleblowing to a whole new level, because...
- exactly...
- It's gonna...
- Yeah, I mean...
I actually think that's a great thing.
And I think people are gonna see what's being hidden...
again, again.. by a totally different part of the government.
POTUS