my name is ed Snowden I'm 29 years old I
work for Booz Allen Hamilton as an
infrastructure analyst for NSA in Hawaii
what are some of the visions that you
held previously within the intelligence
community I've been a systems engineer
Systems Administrator senior advisor for
the Central Intelligence Agency
solutions consultant and a
telecommunications information systems
officer one of the things people are
going to be most interested in in trying
to understand what who you are and what
you're thinking is there came some point
in time when you cross this line of
thinking about being a whistleblower to
making the choice to actually become a
whistleblower walk people through that
decision-making process when you're in
positions of privileged access like a
Systems Administrator for these sort of
intelligence community agencies you're
exposed to a lot more information on a
broader scale than the average employee
and because of that you see things that
may be disturbing but over the course of
a normal person's career you'd only see
one or two of these instances when you
see everything you see them on a more
frequent basis and you recognize that
some of these things are actually abuses
and when you talk to people about them
in a place like this where this is the
the normal state of business people tend
not to take them very seriously and you
know move on from them but over time
that awareness of wrongdoing sort of
builds up and you feel compelled to talk
about it and the more you talk about it
the more you're ignored the more you're
told it's not a problem until eventually
you realize that these things need to be
determined by the public not by somebody
who is simply hired by the government
talk a little bit about how the American
surveillance state actually functions it
does it target the actions of Americans
a NSA in the intelligence community in
general is focused on getting
intelligence wherever it can by any
means possible that it believes on the
grounds of sort of a self-certification
that they serve the national interest
originally we saw that focus very
narrowly tailored as foreign
intelligence gathered overseas now
increasingly we see that it's happening
domestically and to do that they the NSA
specifically targets the communications
of everyone it ingests them by default
it collects them in its system and it
filters them and it analyzes them and it
measures them and it stores them for
periods of time simply because that's
the easiest most efficient and most
valuable way to achieve these ends so
while they may be intending to target
someone associated with a foreign
government or someone that they suspect
of terrorism they're collecting your
communications to do so any analyst at
any time can target anyone any selector
anywhere where those communications will
be picked up depends on the range of the
sensor networks and the authorities that
that analyst is empowered with not all
analysts have the ability to target
everything but I sitting my desk
certainly had the authorities to to
wiretap anyone from you or your
accountant to a federal judge to even
the president if I had a personal email
one of the extraordinary parts about
this episode is that usually
whistleblowers do what they do
anonymously and take steps to remain
anonymous for as long as they can which
they hope often is forever you on the
other hand have this how to do the
opposite which is to declare yourself
openly as the person behind these
disclosures why did you choose to do
that rule I think that the public is
owed an explanation of the motivations
behind the people who make these
disclosures that are outside of the
democratic model when you are subverting
the power of government that that's a
fundamentally dangerous thing to
democracy and if you do that in secret
consistently you know as the government
does when it wants to benefit from a
secret action that it took it'll kind of
give its its officials a mandate to go
a you know tell the press about this
thing and that thing so the public is on
our side but they rarely if ever do that
when an abuse occurs that falls to
individual citizens but they're
typically maligned you know it becomes a
thing of these people are against the
country they're against the government
but I'm not I'm no different from
anybody else I don't have special skills
I'm just another guy who sits there day
to day in the office watches what
happening what's happening and goes this
is something that's not our place to
decide the public needs to decide
whether these programs and policies are
right or wrong and I'm willing to go on
the record to defend the authenticity of
them and say I didn't change these I
didn't modify the story this is the
truth this is what's happening you
should decide whether we need to be
doing this
have you given thought to what it is
that the US government's response to
your conduct is in terms of what they
might say about you how they might try
to depict you what they might try to do
you uh yeah I could be you know rendered
by the CIA I could have people come
after me or any of their their
third-party partners you know they would
they work closely with a number of other
nations or you know they could pay off
the Triads or you know any any if
they're agents or assets uh we've we've
got a CIA station just up the road and
the consulate here in Hong Kong I'm sure
they're going to be a very busy for the
next week and that's that's a fear I
live under for the rest of my life
however long that happens to be you
can't come forward against the world's
most powerful intelligence agencies and
be completely free from risk because
there's such powerful adversaries that
no one can meaningfully oppose them if
they want to get you they'll get you in
time but at the same time you have to
make a determination about what it is
that's important to you and if living
living on freely but comfortably is
something you're willing to accept and I
think many of us are it's it's the human
nature you can get up every day you can
go to work you can collect your your
large paycheck for relatively little
work
against the public interest and go to
sleep at night after watching your shows
but if you realize that that's the world
that you helped create and it's going to
get worse with the next generation of
the next generation who extend the
capabilities of this sort of
architecture of oppression you realize
that you might be willing to accept any
risk that it doesn't matter what the
outcome is so long as the public gets to
make their own decisions about how
that's applied why should people care
about surveillance because even if
you're not doing anything wrong you're
being watched and recorded and the the
storage capability of these systems
increases every year consistently by
orders of magnitude to where it's
getting to the point you don't have to
have done anything wrong you simply have
to eventually fall under suspicion from
somebody even by a wrong call and then
they can use the system to go back in
time and scrutinize every decision
you've ever made every friend you've
ever discussed something with and attack
you on that basis to sort of derive
suspicion from an innocent life and
paint anyone in the context of a
wrongdoer we are currently sitting in a
room in Hong Kong which is where we are
because you travel here talk a little
bit about why it is that you came here
and specifically they're going to be
people who will speculate that what you
really intend to do is to defect to the
country that many see as the number one
rival of the United States which is
China and that way you're really doing
is essentially seeking to aid an enemy
of the United States with which you
intend to seek asylum can you talk a
little bit about that sure so there's a
couple assertions in in those arguments
that are they're sort of embedded in the
the questioning of the choice of Hong
Kong the first is that China is an enemy
of the United States it's not I mean
there there are conflicts between the
United States government and the Chinese
PRC government but the the people's
inherently you know we we don't care we
trade with each other freely you know
we're not at war
or not in armed conflict and we're not
trying to be were the largest trading
partners out there for each other
additionally Hong Kong has a strong
tradition of free speech people think of
China Great Firewall mainland China does
have significant restrictions on free
speech but the Hong Kong the people of
Hong Kong have a long tradition of
protesting in the streets of making
their views known the internet is not
filtered here then no more so than any
other Western government and I believe
that the Hong Kong government is
actually independent in relation to a
lot of other leading Western governments
if your motive had been to harm United
States and help its enemies or if your
motive had been personal material gain
were there are things that you could
have done with these documents to
advance those goals that you didn't end
up doing absolutely I mean anybody in
the positions of access with the tape
technical capabilities that I had could
you know suck out secrets pass them on
the open market to Russia you know they
always have an open door as we do I had
access to you know the full rosters of
everyone working at the NSA the entire
intelligence community and undercover
assets all around the world the
locations of every station we have what
their missions are and so forth if I had
just wanted to harm the US you know that
you could shut down the the surveillance
system in an afternoon but that's not my
intention and I I think for anyone
making that argument they need to think
if they were in my position and you know
you live a privileged life you you're
living in Hawaii in paradise and making
a ton of money what would it take to
make you leave everything behind the the
greatest fear that I have regarding the
outcome for America of these disclosures
is that nothing will change people will
see in the media all of these
disclosures they'll know the lengths
that the the government is going to
grant themselves power
unilaterally to create greater control
over American society and global society
but they they won't be willing to take
the risks necessary to stand up and
fight to change things to force their
representatives to actually take a stand
in their interests and the months ahead
the years ahead it's only going to get
worse until eventually there will be a
time where policies will change because
the only thing that restricts the
activities of the surveillance state are
policy even our agreements with with
other sovereign governments we consider
that to be a stipulation of policy
rather than a stipulation of law and
because of that a new leader will be
elected they'll flip the switch say that
because of the crisis because of the
dangers that we face in the world you
know some some new and unpredicted
threat we need more authority we need
more power and there will be nothing
that people can do at that point to
oppose it and it will be turnkey tyranny
you