Conférence avec Edward Snowden

[Applause] [Applause] mr. Edward Snowden I am very honored to welcome you in my university Bahia Ponte on sailboat in front of these 500 students very willing to see you to listen to you and to talk with you five and a half years ago in June 2013 you were meeting three journalists in Hong Kong at this very moment you revealed to the world the illegal methods of the US intelligence services in particular those of the National Security Agency the NSA you inform the public of the NSA's uncontrolled an unending appetite for surveying and intercepting almost every single personal data including those of heads of state through the program prism the NSA then pretended its programs were meant to prevent and fight against terrorism but in 2015 the NSA admitted that none of its action avoided or none of its actions permitted to avoid terrorism since then your actions have been famous worldwide they have already had consequences in lo for example on the 6th of October 2015 the European Court of Justice gave a very famous judgement in the so called safe harbor case an agreement between the European Commission and the United States of America authorizing some companies to use the personal data of their customers the ECJ quoted the High Court of Ireland stating the revelations made by Edward Snowden have demonstrated significant over reach on the part of the NSA and other federal agencies revelation DiMaggio Snowden demo trakula NSA a daughter's organ video on comedic se considera since June 2013 the name Edward Snowden has become a universal password it opens every single door let me give you some examples related to this conference sitting behind this desk there are three very dear friends of mine two of them you already know but we've a historian my colleague in this university a specialist of lacy T of equality of citizenship and many other matters he is the founder of the Association library Without Borders bbo takes some frontier that dispatches books and culture all over the world and William Bordeaux a barrister he came here with all his staff two years ago they published a book against the state of emergency but William Bordeaux is much more than a barrister he is a man of conviction he's the founder of the non-governmental organisation sector that fights against corruption all over the world he is a soldier of civil liberties two months ago when my two friends here called me saying that they were planning to make a conference with you asking if I would be interested in participating I answered yes at once it was like a reflex something natural the third friend of mine is my other colleague Judi Josh felt a low teacher an expert in new technologies she believes that the Internet is a common good and supports the principle of net neutrality considering that the Internet must be free and open technology when I asked her if she could be there tonight with us she immediately answered positively because it was you she was enthusiastic we needed support for such an event I asked to student associations day back on Sorbonne and a young Sorbonne if they could help us one of its representatives is sitting at this desk Victoria priest and she's also one of my students this year she will be asking you a question in a few minutes I thank them for taking this conference so seriously I am sure that it will remain as one of the best souvenirs in the students life I asked the technical staff of my University to help us make the connection with Russia and they instantly have been very excited by this prospect they did an incredible job in a very short period of time they have been spending hours in this auditorium giving everything they had for the success of the special moment thank you so much Philip curve Alex and Lacroix oh man a big burn Rock Julian Rada and you go Mattie thousands of people were willing to attend this conference when three days ago the reservations were opened the 500 seats of this auditorium were booked in three minutes such such a unanimity is unique and let me come now to something more personal preparing this conference I've been watching with my family many documentaries films or reports about your action in one of these reports there is an interview of a general a former director of the NSA in which he considers that you mr. Snowden are a coward a traitor that you betrayed your country just after this interview we heard mr. John Kerry Obama's former Secretary of State confirming that from the point of view of the American administration you were a traitor and then you appeared on the screen explaining why you did what you had to do because it was your duty as a citizen and all of a sudden while you were talking one of my 14 years old daughter said I love Edward Snowden nobody in France knows the existence of this general and soon his name will be forgotten and so will John Kerry's but yours will remain as a symbol of liberty and resistance against oppression which is a constitutional right under French law five years after it is possible to say that you have won the fight for human values you are the exact opposite of George Orwell's big brother you are big bro the first hyper citizen as William bodo called you once but you are paying a heavy personal price for this the week following the revelations you made while you were in Russia you have been seeking asylum in 21 countries one of them was Franz I was in a lawyer's Association then together with William budeau and on behalf of this association we published on an open French media width apart an open letter to President Francois along the title of which of which was a cocktail as ill as Snowden pocono had you requests being accepted you could have been there in person among us in this sort of horny Casa sitting in this auditorium but on July the 4th 2013 the French Minister of the Interior published a communique regarding your arrival in France it said la France a virtue Kombucha dr.p parlante a mediados Synovus Adamu screw in de Nantes yield of a sure Edward Snowden continuities le monde analyst you Riddick a deciduous yonder literacy in Nice Abedini sweet the French Constitution contains an article in its preamble that says any man persecuted in virtue of his actions in favor of Liberty may claim the right of asylum upon the territories of the Republic France officially denied that you committed an action in favor of Liberty as a lawyer as an academic but much more than this as a French citizen I firmly believe that this decision was obviously wrong not to say illegal it is a disgrace for the land of the Declaration the water on a deceit well you have to know that the minister who wrote these words cannot be trusted everybody knows it in this auditorium moreover he doesn't live in France anymore he is trying to be elected in Spain but you mr. Snowden you are still in Russia five years laters the questions to be asked are these are our civil liberties strengthened or weakened since June 2013 can we avoid a society of surveillance when it seems today that there are no more frontiers between parks public space and privacy when it is impossible to walk down the streets or drive without being seen or recorded by cameras when it is impossible to use a phone without the insurance of not being seen or geo localized or tabs when using social media platforms implies being tracked and being predictable and when the parliaments themselves decide to legalize massive interception systems when just like in always 1984 we are not watching TV but the TV is watching us the fundamental question is this one how do we people want to live as products the cookies of the websites we visit as subjects of the state constantly scanned by some secret administrations for the sake of security or as citizens willing to have a fair balance between on the one hand the respect of public order and on the other the fundamental right of privacy and the exercise of civil liberties mr. Snowden do we still have an option took that ball as you mix qz de parler Anglais so our more force a new path dribble the more Fupa okay now see you know you you asked a lot of questions they're good questions they're important questions and I'll try to get through as many many as I can the first question that that's brought up is the one that I think we all struggle with which is whenever a great institution a great power great government he's embarrassed or their policies are called into question in a way that challenges their power on a fundamental level right not not at the edges not a way they can easily change but but something that goes right to the heart of what they claim an authority is that belongs to them and them alone they say these people are our traitors they're enemies of the people as you hear from the current American President or they're enemies of the state as you've heard from all the other ones but this is why we have to look at the actions of a person the things they've said the things they've revealed if I am a traitor as these generals and presidents and all these figures say the john kerry's of the world who is it that i betrayed the information that I revealed didn't go to the Chinese it didn't go to the Russians it didn't go to the Brazilians it didn't go to the French it went to American journalists right that all made an independent editorial determination not just this is what some crazy guy at the NSA thought the world needed to know not just Americans but everyone needed to know but what the newspapers thought the world needed to know this is what I call a democracy's safeguard of last resort this is why we have free press and open societies the whole reason they exist is to challenge the monopoly on information held by the most powerful and influential members of our society whether these are high officials whether these are corporations the only things we know about the worst things they've done is because someone took a risk to tell us and if telling the public about things of vital democratic importance right the boundaries of your rights the kind of world that you live in is now treason it's the act of a traitor that means the government considers the public the enemy and if that's the case that's the side that I want to be on and let me let me back out a little bit and talk more more generally about everything that's happened you mentioned five years five years at five years feels like a long time five years ago I was in a hotel room with journalists in Hong Kong you know you were sweating wondering how the world would respond to this if they would take it seriously if everyone forget within two weeks which is what I believed I thought this was gonna be a small story but surely even even the most optimistic of us thought that five years would be long enough to forget well here we are five years later the collection and abuse of our data is not only still being talked about it's being talked about more but it's not enough you know look around at the world what's happening in it and you see that the challenges that we are facing they're larger than ending a program or reforming a law or or or the prerogatives of a politician right this isn't about names this isn't about programs this isn't about law the problem is deeper it is structural we our generation is witnessing the greatest redistribution of power in civil society since the Industrial Revolution what does that mean exciting words right how did it happen and I would argue it's surveillance technologies technology in general has outpaced our ability to control it democratically a generation ago surveillance was extremely expensive every government had to spend extraordinary sums amounts of money to track individuals now to know somebody's location just their location required teams of officers both in buildings and out on the streets that we're working across many different shifts today that dynamic is reversed one guy sitting in front of a desk in front of a monitor you know in the in the air-conditioning I can now track with precision unimaginably large numbers of people and this is for the first time in human history this is really possible both technically and financially for both governments and corporations start to not just see what an individual is doing but for the mass of the public and from the things they see without even using human eyes but electronic ones to start to collate to collect index and and save nearly complete records of all of our lives all of our daily activities doesn't matter whether you're criminal doesn't matter whether you're an innocent because under these regimes of bulk collection as they call them or mass surveillance as the public calls them things are cool that in advance of suspicion just in case they think it's interesting later on and they say well if we don't read these things if we simply collect them it's not a violation of your rights because a human can look at it a machine did this is changing the world some could say the change has already happened and the idea of an unconsidered thought the youthful indiscretion a forgotten mistake you know the picture of us drinking when we were younger at a party that our parents didn't know about just being among friends you know those are starting to sound quaint for a forgotten time these are things that no longer exist mistakes that don't follow us everything follows us and think about what that means for just that the human psyche who remembers precisely what they were doing on this evening just a few weeks ago about a few months ago about a few years ago none of you probably I don't but the spies at your intelligence services they do they've got lists about everybody they've got lists more lists than Santa Claus and you're on all of them but they say it's for our safety they say it's to save our lives and some of you in the room many that aren't in the room would say okay we want the government to have these powers we're worried about terrorism even though there are fewer terrorism deaths in this decade or the decade before than there were in the 60s and 70s in Western Europe but let's say let's say you're okay with the government having that power you move it to the side entirely what about the corporate side of this what about the unelected anonymous men and machines in faraway rooms that are making these same lists whose names you'll never know whose laws you cannot control think about Facebook think about Mark Zuckerberg now recently he's almost intentionally insulted parliaments in Europe by going I don't have to answer your questions I'm too busy I'll send some you know person at the bottom of the corporate structure to go sit in the chair but my chair will be empty and think about what that means about how he views the world and your place in it not just as a citizen of France but a citizen of the world the realities Facebook doesn't care about you it doesn't care about your country doesn't care about your politics it doesn't care about your future or what happens to you Facebook cares about your data and only your data they are a surveillance company and their product is you the story of your life the lives of your neighbors it's your most private preferences it is the record of every article that you've ever read that you've ever bothered to click but it's more than that it goes deeper it's the people that you care about and who among them means the most to you it is the ideas that attract you and the things that repel you it is a system that is designed to observe your life to calculate the value of it to crystallize it to save it and then to do something with it it is a system designed to put your mind on a shelf with a price tag that is available to anyone with the money and it works now some of you might say well you know these are just the thing is that I put out there online voluntarily you'd be wrong but for the sake of argument let's pretend it's true and move on again away from government away from just social media that kind of corporate surveillance is something more personal what about the things that you don't choose to share I'm gonna give you in the audience of a smartphone with you right now you know an iPhone or an Android phone it's it's everyone right I want you to imagine that right now there's a Russian company those entire business is based around the idea of developing a kind of digital burglary tool and they'll go by the name the NSO group the product used to work like this they'd send you a time-sensitive text message with a link in it something that they think you're likely to click like a package delivery notification or an alert that one of your family members has died and these are the funeral arrangements and are you going to be there and if you click this link and and because they can try a hundred different times in a hundred different ways eventually everyone does your phone now belongs to whoever sent you that message you have been hacked by this product now the scary thing is because of refinements in this practically criminal product and it has a real name because this is a real-life example it's called Pegasus it's now being reported that they no longer need you to click anything no user interaction is necessary all they need is your phone number and they can hack your phone now from that point on everything in the entire history vet phone they can instantly and immediately copy and everything that happens on your phone from that day forward every place you go everyone you call everything you read every photograph or because they can turn on your camera and they can turn on your microphone whenever they want not just when you want it everything that simply passes by that device everything your phone is a part of they are now a part of I want you to reflect on that capability and the nature of it being created and provided by this you know rush enterprise and think about this from legal angle in their defense they say they only sell this under contract the legitimate customers only two law enforcement agencies only two police only two governments and only for the purpose under the contract of targeting terrorists and criminals is that sound better nobody likes Harrah's nobody likes criminals maybe it won't affect you maybe it won't affect people like you ordinary people right let me let me add a little bit more detail in a so group and again this is a real company in a real example is not Russian they're israeli which is something closer to an ally does that make this better does it make it less scary when we start talking about great power politics the ability to break into people's phones is that something we want maybe you trust them a little bit more only natural right the Israeli government surely has Pegasus because it's an Israeli company but maybe that doesn't bother you think about who else has bought this think about who else can use it and how much you trust then and this is where I get to the central point of all of this introduction how much do you trust Saudi Arabia because we're talking about Jamal khashoggi it was just murdered in Saudi Arabia's diplomatic compound in Turkey now citizen lab a Canadian group of academic researchers discovered that they bought this tool Saudi Arabia bought this tool from this Israeli company and used it against the friends and contacts of jamal khashoggi this was confirmed recently by an israeli newspaper that found this tool had been negotiated for sale the licensing and everything we don't know much about that but there was at least an agreed-upon sale for fifty five million dollars and four in the lead up to the actual murder of this journalist his friends working in media working in exile and been coordinating with him on a plan to create what they described as an electronic army of opposition ordinary citizens who wanted to realize a more free and open liberal society in Saudi Arabia and because of the information that the Saudi Arabian government gained from this kind of surveillance from breaking into this person's phone and not just him although we don't know a hundred percent whether Jamal khashoggi phone was broken into personally we do know his friends who were in contact with him their phones were broken into with this software once they gathered enough information about his plans and intentions they made a decision have been murdered and this is what I want you to think about so many people today around the world in developed societies right we're not talking crazy authoritarian regimes we're not talking Saudi Arabia China Russia North Korea you know Iran whoever you don't like but we're talking about France we're talking about Germany we're talking about the United States we're talking about Israel they believed the rule of law and the legality of a thing is the beginning and the end of the conversation but I want to remind you that the legality of a thing is very different from the morality of it Jamal Khashoggi might still be alive today if the NSO group were not in business if that business model were not legal if the company sells a product with a single purpose breaking into the devices relied upon by private individuals from you to journalists to judges today and I'm not making this up the precedent of the Mexican Senate was in opposition at the time how can this be the kind of situation we want to find ourselves and their only product is access to other people's belongings their only product is access to the things sitting in your pocket right now and the most important thing to understand anything I'm gonna say tonight ladies and gentlemen is this under all these laws this is not a crime business model of commercializing public insecurity is the biggest threat to the future of cybersecurity that no one is talking about we know about Facebook we know about Google we know about all the telecommunications networks and their willful collaboration with governments even beyond what the law allows and we must resist these we must oppose these and must try to liberalize our societies but this is coming and it's coming quickly because even if you trust Israel even if you trust French companies to do the same thing these companies do not have a monopoly on this business model Russia is doing the same thing China is doing the same thing and we are creating a dynamic in which the insecurity of critical infrastructure is profitable now the final thought before I open this up is we wouldn't know about any of this if people weren't willing to take risks to tell us the public what is being hidden from us we learned about this case from brave researchers in Canada we're dedicating their lives to finding forensic examples of dissidents who have been targeting dissidents who are coming forward and providing access to their phones to researchers people who worked with this NSO group in Israel who went to the Haaretz newspaper in Israel and said I saw what happened I saw the deal being negotiated and you need to know about these are the things that nobody wants us to know but everybody needs to know and it is this principle that's all too easy to forget in our comfortable lives of a accepting risk on an individual level in order to improve things on a collective level it moves us toward a better world now this question that I asked you tonight you know is it better is it worse what's going on with surveillance are things improving is not the real question the question that I asked tonight should be very familiar because you heard it five years ago this wasn't about surveillance surveillance was the mechanism of discussion but the fundamental topic was democracy and the disempowerment of the public the fact that we are being transformed from citizens partners to government instead to subjects of it and this question should be very familiar not from five years ago but because you hear it every day on the streets in Paris right now the world that we live in is one that we did not design we did not approve and we do not control the question ladies and gentlemen is what are you going to do about it thank you [Applause] well it's a great pleasure for me to have a chance to dialogue shortly with you and of course I will leave the privilege to talk to you essentially to the audience today I want to tell you just few words my absolute pride to be one of your lawyer with German u.s. and Belgium lawyer and I want before this tremendous audience to rated-r a tonight my unless determinate full commitment with the help of my young legal team would listen to you simultaneously my full commitment to one day fine for you a new shelter we know that it will be not an easy or de say but I'm very happy to renew this commitment and I know that you have no doubt and full determination for helping you it were just a quick question you have already answer to one of the question I wanted to ask you but a very simple question and complex question too regarding the evolution of the world since your first revelation if we keep in mind the dissemination of this ugly populism in the main countries of the world if we keep in mind the exceptional capacity of the sacred services not only Elysees to sophisticate more more that techniques of serving us what kind of vices you could give to the expression of the French use to help you what could be tomorrow the tools and instruments for the citizens to try to mitigate the capacity of the secret services to avoid to be accountable for all the violation of the main public liberties the committed day by day and to conclude by a very silly question do you consider that it's absolutely unrealistic or realistic that one day to know a little buzzer of it was not on a new advanced Noddin could emerge somewhere in the world thank you for your answer ed well and see you soon in Moscow for a new brainstorming to find this new shelter thank you so much thank you so much first off I'd like to say I hope next time we meet it's in parents and I promise if we get asylum in Paris my French will be better for the next next public conversation when we talk about the actual when we talk about this issue of threat inflation right and they say terrorism is an existential threat to our societies it's going to bring down the United States it's going to bring down the government of France I'm first off we have to recognize that when the challenge is terrorism we're talking about a criminal activity not a military threat a criminal activity we are talking about murderers we are talking about arsonists we are not talking about people who are starting governments we are not talking about people who are tallying votes they cannot replace our system they cannot contest our values what they can do is harm what they can do is apply violence and these are serious threats and we want to mitigate them we want to respond to them but first we should look to history Europe has seen terrorism before both on a grand scale and on a small scale we've seen it not just for decades but before this century and we should be careful not to destroy the things that we are trying to protect in order to make life more difficult for our adversaries and this is the easiest trap to fall into the state of emergency that you know never really seems to end that continues that infringes on Rights that limits what ordinary people can do people who have done nothing wrong and they say it'll save lives they say it'll protect us but when we actually look at the results there never seems to be any evidence so there never seems to be any proof of that and when we see years later such as in the case of the stories we saw in 2013 in the wake of September 11th the greatest terrorist attack in in US history where something close to 3,000 Americans were killed the government broke all its own violated the rights of every citizen of the United States had created mass surveillance programs that were truly without limit every man woman and child both inside our country and without had their records collected and it happened in secret it wasn't a question what the public knew it wasn't a question what the press was publishing no one knew about this and it happened for more than ten years before the press just finally started to catch wind of it and of course it was ultimately revealed in 2013 and the President of the United States facing extraordinary criticism was asked to justify why this was going on and so he appointed two independent investigative commissions there were from all his friends his allies people who wanted to exonerate him from doing anything wrong and they had full access to secret information classified information they could talk to the NSA the FBI the CIA and they went through all the records and they said despite all the secrecy despite all the unlimited power in more than 10 years of operation it had never stopped a single terrorist attack in the United States these are not my words these are the government's words moreover they said it never made a concrete difference even in a single investigation and the only investigation where it had any value at all in this period of operation was a cab driver in California sending money to his family back in Somalia and they said even without these programs that were illegal they would have gotten the same information anyway just by going to a judge and using traditional law enforcement powers and this ladies and gentlemen is what I want you to think about what are these new powers providing it's not actually making people safer these programs are not about public security it's about state security it's about intelligence gathering diplomatic manipulation economic espionage social influence and the reason why I say this is because there's a very long and well-established documented history of where these programs have been used for gathering information here and they have found very interesting information here now these programs could still be justified on the faces some publics may be willing to authorize these but you must ask at every moment why is it that the public conversation the political conversation we're having about these grand powers is always about saving you from harm protecting your family saving your children when the programs have no record of being useful for that instead of the record of what they actually are useful for which is spying maybe we want the government to spy it gives them more power gives the more influence but that should be a public decision not one made for by public officials behind closed doors for us rather than with us see you soon thank you hello hello Edwin I am Patrick and I am very proud to have joined your legal team why did I join your legal team because in 1997 I wrote a report for the French government that proposed to include in the French law the implementation of the provision professor cassia mansion which is part of the preamble of the Constitution that says that any person who is persecuted because of its fight in favor of Liberty as the right of asylum on the territory of the Republic and I believe that when the French government and mr. Valles answered that you should not get the right to come to France they have violated the French Constitution so it's a shame that no European Union country has offered you a xylem for what already you have permit to achieve in European law in European jurisprudence in Europe and minds but it's even more shameful for France because we have the provision in our Constitution and we should implement it so why don't we implement it there are three there are three legal ground to which would permit you to get asylum in France the first is the free legal question can you apply from a foreign country there is a requirement when you apply for the Geneva Convention that here it's constitutional asylum and we with William and we believe that even the very recent jurisprudence of other French Court permit would permit to the office of I Salaam to the court of asylum to give you these statues and it would force the government to give you a visa of course for us you are a freedom fighter but there is one question that the court will ask you and I am asking that question to you and I think it's important that everybody understand what would happen to you if you would come back to the US the text of our Constitution require that to give you as a loan you rather risk of persecution can you tell us what would be for you the risk if you would decide tomorrow to good to go back to the United States of course so when you look at this it's always a question of I think from a legal perspective what is the difference between persecution and prosecution and the basic answer is always fairness persecution is on unjust action against which there is no meaningful defence and unfortunately under the laws in the United States the Espionage Act of 1917 or 18 which was originally passed as a kind of Sedition Act to prevent people from interfering in the u.s. involvement in Foreign Wars there was a war resistance movement that was unpopular with the government and so they created a series of speech laws that prohibited anything that they saw is interfering with the kind of war effort now when you hear a law called something like the Espionage Act you of course think about spies right and it is supposed to be the way you look at it applied to the kind of people who are selling secrets to foreign governments for their own private gain unfortunately the law does not distinguish between people who are working for the public's benefit to no personal gain and these kind of spies so what it does is it criminalizes involvement in journalism and this is a modern construct actually modern interpretation of this law in the United States which means that the sources of journalism people that newspapers talk to who tell them what's going on in these agencies who provide them documents of criminal evidence of moral wrongdoing of ethical violations of rights violations and be charged by the government as criminals and this is what we call in the United States a strict liability crime meaning you don't get to explain to the jury why it is that you did what you did motive doesn't enter the question the jury doesn't get to consider whether what you did was right or wrong the government only questions did you reveal information the government would have preferred is secret now it doesn't matter whether that information revealed criminal activity it doesn't matter whether it revealed rights violations it doesn't matter whether it was simply wrong morally or ethically the simple thing is the government says did you publish information and did it get to people who are not authorized to see it which is all of us right then if that is the case you go to jail for ten years per document per page per count whatever which in my case of course is enough that I would have one of the longest sentences in the history of criminal justice now back to that question of prosecution versus persecution if you cannot tell a jury why it is that you did what you did when the purpose of the activity was to benefit the public and we can show the laws were changed as a result rights were protected as a result even presidents who defended the programs initially after the publication of these materials changed their position and called for changes in policy changes in law should that be criminal and should that be literally legally indefensible I would ask if that is not persecution what is I hope I'm sure the French crowd would be if you choose to apply but now I give the spot to to Ginny thank you very much first of all following on from what my colleague Paul castle said earlier I would like to thank you very much too for being with us today it really is an exciting opportunity for all the students all the young people who are today thank you thank you then a short question on net neutrality principal president Trent appointed a very well known opponent to the head of Federal Communication Commission it reversed recognition established in 2015 the Internet of the public goods United States Senate Reserve net neutrality for the moment but in January there will be a vote very very important one we don't know if net neutrality will be preserved in United States so I would like to know what are your thoughts of this specific issues and specially for civil liberties a fighter thank you thank you it's a it's a great question really it's a difficult one the way I look at this is we are trying to use laws to compensate for weaknesses in the technical structure of the internet when you think about what net neutrality does or what its intention is it's to prevent the people who provide you access to the Internet who connect you to that larger human infrastructure the network of all of our lives our ideas our thinking our commerce our sharing our connectedness right and it's to try to prevent them from acting like a kind of bandit on the bridge who looks in your cart and and charges different prices depending on where you're going what you're carrying what you're interested in and to go Oh Google Facebook you know these guys pay us lots of money so we'll let you pass freely but these smaller groups or these newer companies these newer services these newer communities they haven't paid our sort of extorted fee our our private tax and so because of that we're gonna make life very difficult for you we're gonna make life very difficult for them until someone pays us but I want you to think about how on a technical basis this is even possible and of course the answer is as the Internet is structured today typically I you do not naturally move from your home across this bridge to your destination without everyone who can see that path across the internet being able to see where you're going to see the source and the destination of the communication and this is a fundamental weakness it's a fundamental weakness in the United States in France but more importantly in places like Russia and China that are more aggressive that are more quick to interfere with people's communications and their activities online because so long as any party any activity can see the source and destination of your communication easily at every step like this they can all make these kind of decisions a one where legally at least arguably permissible and to simply where they have the capability to even beyond the law these can be hackers these can be spies these can be anyone so there are two solutions to this one of course we need policies and laws that protect the interests of the public in the manner that these sort of net neutrality regulations are aimed but secondly we need bright people we need young people we need people in the room to think about two things one how do we create a new legislative or juridical structure that protects these rights in free and developed societies yes but also how do we translate this into technical systems that can enforce these rights that can guarantee these rights regardless of the juridical interpretation of the authorities not just in your country but around the world because the internet crosses every country right so when your communication when your package a packet sorry come crosses the bridges in France yes you're protected but what about when they cross outside of France and go into another country and another country and to another country law is important we need to defense defend law we need to advance law and we need to have the best laws achievable but we also need to recognize that there are people who will abuse systems of law and there are people who will ignore legal protections and this is where we need to use fundamental physical laws science and mathematics to start to enforce human rights through new means thank you very much mr. sir now it's a students time and our first student is Victoria Pierce member of debacles oh boy thank you I'm a law student has everybody in the night of the 5th of June 2013 you revealed the existence of a massive aliens programs so as we said for some you'll consider as a hero and at the same times you've one of the world most worlds wanted men those revolutions took an international dimension involving the USA the UK Australia and as you said it presses borders so it shows us that how our legal protection for whistleblowers wasn't sufficient so my question is in your opinion what international legal protection would be better thank you very good question yes thank you that that's that's that's a tough one but I think it gets into this honestly very European challenge I think most people in most countries don't understand this as well as people who are living in EU Member States understand it which is this idea that the collective body the public body can agree on something can agree that it's right that can agree we all need to do it and they take a joint decision to say we will do it but they're all afraid to commit themselves individually to act in this way and so the idea here is for example in my case the European Parliament and the Council of Europe have both called upon Member States to protect the asylum right in my individual to say I should not be extradited I should be protected from sort of the charges of my government however it then of course falls to each individual member state to go we should protect him and needless to say I'll be a very old man before they actually do something so how do we generalize a lesson from this individual case in the context of whistleblowing and it's this whenever you have a great power that is implicated in some kind of wrongdoing it could be criminal it could be ethical it could be financial one of their employees it could be a worker in the context of a CID it could be a citizen they reveal some information that the institution sees as harmful or even inconvenient or embarrassing or damaging or even dangerous they say it'll get people killed right my government said this in 2013 we're now in 2018 and they've never shown any evidence of this so so this brings up this idea that it is natural it is instinctive for those who have been revealed doing something they would rather no one know about to retaliate against this how do we structure a response and I think your question raises the idea here which is we need a platform that is more independent than it is domestic than it is internal right international rather than internal so this could be a whistleblower for Facebook this could be a whistleblower for a bank this could be a whistleblower in the security services of France or Russia or China the United States right the country in which they originate will always seek to put them in prison or to make them lose their job or to impose some cost upon these people what we need is a structure a process I dynamic through which neutral uninvolved third parties can objectively look at the evidence and basically make a public interest determination of was this whistleblower earnestly working in the public interest what were the regulations against their activities right and what were the results of their activities and on the basis of these things weigh the balance of benefits vs. costs and decide was this in the public interest and they should be free from liability from these disclosures or was it contrary to the public interest and you know this person should be thrown in a volcano you know we need something like that that is not simply going to a jury of you know American generals who say oh we don't like this person they should go to jail for the rest of their life hello mr. Snowden I'm a student in international affairs my name is Samuel I'm very glad to have the opportunity to ask you a question today so the question I want to ask you is about your contribution to the world changes and more specifically concerning the ball of the media in it as you are now actively engaged in the freedom of the press foundation and that you're developing new tools anti surveillance tools potentially useful for activists or journalists I was wondering what is your insight about the evolution of the relations between the media and with truth because as you said you you asked the question in your introduction about the whole story that the whole house issue behind the revelations and the issue is definitely concerning democracy and democracy definitely relies on a true journalism so what is your insight about this this yeah questions thank you thank you this is I think one of the questions everyone is struggling with nowadays which is we need the ability to speak we need the ability to write and journalists and newspapers need the ability to publish but when everyone is doing it at the same time how do we know what's true and what do we do when people intentionally wittingly begin to abuse their their powers their right to say whatever they want to try and miss inform people and many people it's becoming quite popular unfortunately to say oh we need we need the truth police right and we want them to work at Facebook and Facebook will say oh you know these things are true these things and not true these things are from good news sites these things are not from good news and so you can't publish them you can't share them but do we really want Facebook to have more power in the world than they already do do we really want public or private companies to decide the things that can and cannot be said and I think the answer is no but we still have this challenge we still have this conflict how do we resolve the tension part of it I think unfortunately has been the Forgotten individuals responsibility simply not to believe everything that you read but also to be willing to be persuaded when there are enough facts and this gets back to that question what is true what is true is what can be tested what is true is what can be proven what is true is what is established through this process of testing and it's a very I think sad thing and an indication of a kind of intellectual regression in our times that when we see these challenges when we see this abuse when we see these idiot presidents I'm thinking of a particular one and I think you might know who it is who say you know I don't believe the news fake news fake news whenever it's inconvenient is that we're looking to other people to solve these problems for us this gets back to the question in the introduction we only have one world we only have one lifetime everyone here in this room right now is here because they care they care about something to care about doing something they realize in the atmosphere and the times this time is not like all other times and they want to change the direction in which we are moving it will not be by asking Facebook for help if you want to move in a positive direction at the same time ladies and gentlemen it's not enough to believe in something it's not enough to believe in good things or wonderful things or the law or the right or to say you know I believe in human rights you know I believe in protecting refugees I pretended I believe in equality you have to not just believe in something you have to stand for something and to stand for something means to risk something it means to do something it means to get involved it means to raise your voice it means to persuade it means to participate it means to argue and to prove your point to share your point but most importantly to test your own beliefs before you share them thank you so hello mr. Snowden so first of all it's a great honor to be able to talk to you and to get inspired by you so thank you a lot so I'm a student in master two specialized in new technology law and in particular in data protection law and at the beginning of this conference she talks about the struggle and for us the struggle is the following is that on the one hand we get inspired by you by our great professor miss Judith haasvelt who is a great different defender of individual freedom sorry and on the other hand we are being offered great opportunities from companies like Google Facebook etc that are not exactly privacy friendly but there are great opportunities in terms of intellectual challenges and of course let's be honest in terms of salary so of course it seems like a very small internal fight compared to the preoccupation of yours but it would be a great honor to be inspired by you too second advice from you from how to take this individual risks that she talks about for the greater good so thank you this is um this is a very good honestly much deeper questioned and then a lot of people thinking it's this idea of collaboration am i morally culpable for going to work at Google for going to work at Facebook because I know what they do and this gets on a a larger or sort of older question rather that I struggled with in the CIA in the NSA throughout my career which is is it better to be on the outside of the organization without any power to change it or to be on the inside and to try to reform it from within and I was young you know I was very optimistic and I had strong beliefs right and I thought you know when I joined the Army for example when everyone else was protesting the Iraq war when our friends in France we're saying no no you know we're not gonna go with you you're making a mistake and we went oh we hate France they're the enemies they're either with us or against us we're not even gonna call them french fries anymore we're gonna call them freedom fries you know I volunteered for the US Army during this period why you see that the person I am today I'm this big critic I believed the government I saw the criticism in the media I saw the protests I thought these people didn't understand I thought they were being too dramatic I thought the government wouldn't lie to us to such a great degree of course the government would lie sometimes and about some things you know they're politicians but here they were risking long-term faith in government our ability to trust government for a generation for a short-term political benefit in selling a war that if the protesters were right we didn't really need and I was wrong and that was probably one of the first times it took many years for me to realize I was wrong took many years for me to admit I was wrong that you can be a part of an organization believing that you're going in as one of the good guys believing that you're going in to help make it better and actually just give them what they need to continue their work now once an organization gets to a certain scale at the same time when we're talking about armies or companies that are as big as armies it's also very difficult to starve them out it's very easy to say well look if I pass on this job opportunity someone else will take it they'll get paid they won't be as ethical as me and they'll you know they'll get all the reward nothing will get fixed and I'll go on and have trouble you know feeding my family or whatever or buying a yacht you know a big boat but this is what I want you to remember sometimes institutions particularly big institutions like this are better at reforming the people they hire than the people they hire are reforming them this was the case at CIA this was the case at NSA this was the case at Google this was the case at Facebook and this is why we do not learn about the unethical the immoral and the evil even illegal activities they're involved in for 10 years for 15 years for this long period of time but at least in the case of companies like Google we're beginning to see this change Google has set up a secret project and a secret team to create a censored pro-government Network to get back into China well they'll completely ball up their users human rights and throw them away give the Chinese government whatever they want as long as they get rich off of it but more than one in fact I hear three or more members of this team at Google went to the press one of them even gave their name went on the record said here's what I know here's how I know here's where I worked there or when I worked there here's the people I worked with and the public's knowledge was enriched by this and we have a chance now to criticize to try to influence to try to change the activities of this now this is a small scale and this is a single instance but it is an indication that we are not powerless these institutions want us to believe we are powerless and I gotta tell you from being in there a year after year and seeing everybody goes along with these things to think maybe I'm the crazy one but if you believe in something if you test your beliefs if you establish them if you prove them if you share them if you argue with people to begin or rather to continue sharpening these beliefs you can keep yourself whole even in the worst institution and when you are on the inside of the institution sometimes you can find that missing piece sometimes you can start an investigation for the public's benefit right that someone on the outside cannot so the answer here is not don't work for Google and it's not do work for Google it's it depends but more important than anything else is to understand you are taking a risk that it will become all too easy for this corporation to change you and if you do have values before you go in you should write them down you should hold to them you should protect them you should defend them and ultimately if you find at some moment you see that moment something that feels wrong something that smells wrong something that looks wrong and no one else is saying anything about it if you're looking around you're you're waiting for a hero you know somebody to do something about it I want you to remember that you are the person you're waiting for there are no heroes in this world there's only you and me and everybody else and we are never more than a single decision away from doing something heroic that doesn't make you a hero it makes you a person who did the right thing and all we can hope for the only thing that makes this world better the only thing that ever has is to make the right decision as frequently as we can as often as we can again and again and again even at the moments in life it is most difficult even when the risks are greater because if you believe in something you got to stand for something in the moment is yours [Applause] we have three more questions hello mister student so first of all as its already been sent thank you very much for being here with us tonight so I'm also a student of Professor Judy Joe shells in digital low and my question is about the gdpr so last May the European Union implemented the gdpr to protect or personal data which is a huge step forward for us as European and I think that all the people in this room tonight can agree with this especially regarding the recent Facebook data leaks for example so I think we can say that today regarding this particular subject the best answer is global it's a global answer so at a non national level so the question I have to ask you tonight is in your opinion what's the next step I mean like for example in 10 years but the next table dude the European legislator have to do and do you think that some day maybe we are doing able to maybe sale or own data for example three deeds as a fair price for example thank you so this is a again a tough one I would say the first thing in the next 10 years for Europe and data regulation in GDP are is actually not 10 years off it needs to have already happened and the fact that it hasn't is really dangerous thing for GDP are which is the maximum penalties need to be applied to a major company one which is aggressively violating people's rights such as in the case of a Google or Facebook because if the law does not have penalties the law doesn't matter and it's sad to say that but based on human behavior the way particularly businesses work we know it's true because with corporations particularly they don't put people in in jail they don't they don't see individual liability right so the only way that you can meaningfully shape the behavior influence these guys is through stricter effects through mechanics and leverage and right now they have the threat of a lever but we haven't actually seen it applied in the major cases and now the second thing to be concerned is in the context of all of these agreements with all of these major lobbies there are loopholes there are dodges that make them not as effective for regulating the people who most require a change in their behavior relative to the others and when I'm thinking about this I'm thinking about okay we had safe harbor they got struck down because the EU finally acknowledged that US privacy assurances didn't matter because the US had a secret loophole a national security exemption that allowed them ago yes we can promise Europe the protection of all these things in public but in private we don't really care then we get the privacy shield agreement which in reality was just a liability shield it was a stopgap and now we get gdpr which these companies see is the same thing they abide by the law in the strictest most lawyerly sense and they pay you know very talented lawyers because they're the richest companies in the world to come up with novel interpretations of these clauses and everybody in the room was studying law they they know how these things work they go if we're just clever enough if we're just careful enough we can justify a behavior that is clearly contrary to the spirit of the law to the spirit of the regulation in such a way that even if we are caught even if we are challenged in court and even if we lose we will be able to justify our behavior to such a degree that we believe we can survive the penalties or ideally the fine will be low enough so that the benefit of exploiting this antisocial behavior will be greater than the costs imposed on us so again this brings us back to the central idea which I want all of you to think about because it's something the lawyers typically don't like to think about which is what are the mechanisms beyond law that we have how do we strengthen our law how do we apply our law how do we make it the best possible right but what happens when the law fails there's a saying in the Richard Nixon administration of the white house in the United States he's the president there was an impeached one of his most powerful advisors a man named Henry Kissinger said this the illegal we do immediately the unconstitutional takes a little bit longer and it's important to understand particularly when you're trying to regulate not just the behavior of companies for the havior States that manner of thinking again the law without consequences is meaningless so do we have mechanisms particularly when we're talking about rights particularly we're talking about social infrastructure public infrastructure activities online a things that everyone believes we have a requirement to do to be able to read freely to be able to participate to communicate to write to trade these things have to be protected from companies against companies the same ones that are operating space the same ones that are profiting in this space but also from governments how do we protect individuals and I think this is what people need to remember to protect public you have to protect the individual because the only one to protect the only way to protect anyone is to protect everyone two more questions hi of course thank you for being here with us tonight we've talked about how to help asylum seekers who are whistleblowers coming to France speaking about whistleblowers who are French it is my understanding that the French latest legislation I'm sorry requires French whistleblowers to inform their employer before they go public with their allegations now this has the advantage of you know avoiding situations where people would use whistleblowing as a cover for defamation or other nefarious activities right but to which extent do you think that this has an impact on the number of people who would be you know interested in coming forward as a whistleblower in France this is probably the best question yeah this is probably the best question of the night when we look at this idea in the United States based on the criticism against me this is called the proper channels argument they say oh you know yes he revealed illegal activity yes it was the violations rights but he didn't go to the director of the NSA he didn't go to the NSA his lawyers also in fact it did because he didn't exhaust all of these internal processes he is not legitimate he created these extraordinary risks these extraordinary harms and people could have died as a result that's the argument let's presume it's true we know no one died as a result but maybe we just got lucky right maybe maybe just cosmic circumstance but no one died but it was so so dangerous it is a question and I think a fair question of how do we maximize the public benefits while mitigating the potential risks but when we see these kind of structures particularly in the national security sector where when someone reveals any story the government immediately goes these journalists have blood on their hands this person is risking lives and all of these things think about what they're doing rhetorically this is changing the topic of the conversation from the theoretical risks of journalism in an open society where you have a powerful press where they could go too far they could do extreme activities right and put people at risk and change the conversation to these theoretical risks and away from the concrete documented established harms that are laid out in these allegations these things that are being revealed by the press or to Parliament's or banking sectors or what and I think the way that we have to look at this is one why does the press have such latitude in a free and open society and the idea is we trust them we may not trust everything that they say is true we may not believe that they're acting exclusively in the public interest all the time we know they might shape a story to you know benefit their reputation or this that or the other but when we're talking about things that really matter when we're talking about things that have serious consequences who is the institution in society that is best positioned to judge where this line of public interest lies is it within the institution that is alleged to be doing something wrong or is it with the press who is reported on scandal after scandal after scandal throughout history who is reported on controversial issues ones that involve lives ones that involve reputations ones that involve fortunes I would argue that the press is actually the most experienced institution in society for resolving these judgments if we do not have courts that can actually show a track record that they have resolved this in a beneficial way now this gets back to that final point and this is calling back to that sort of Iraq war point where these institutions national security agencies you know major companies banking secrecy what-have-you um go well if anybody can just go out to the press and talk and say all they want it's a free-for-all and they want to change this one do we have an established track record that the press has caused harm in these circumstances I'm not convinced that's the case but to let's say for granted that is the case if these institutions want to change that dynamic and say they deserve a prior review and they can impose the kind of prior restraint on their employees on journalists who are looking to report on their activities how do they win that right and I think the only way they can win that and it's never a right action in this content it's always a privilege is to show that they can be trusted more and this is why this proper channels argument doesn't work in the United States the NSA the CIA the FBI they say oh if these people had just come to us if they had just told us oh you're spying on everybody you're breaking the law we would have resolved everything but of course that doesn't work that's that's their self-image that's what they consider to be their job when they're breaking the law they're like hey good job you get a raise and we know this is the case because we have a long history of operations of these offices they're called for example the inspectors general and people who go to these inspectors general have reported fraud waste and abuse and wrongdoing for decades but we don't have any public track record of policies that have been changed as a result of these reports of laws that have been changed as a result of dears reports of criminal charges that have been brought as a result of these reports and so I would say if you are a company or if you are an agency or a branch of government and you are trying to get employees to come to you internally to maximally mitigate the risks to handle this stuff in-house the first thing you have to do is give them a reason to trust you and I think the only way you can do that is to actually show these programs are effective and the only way to do that is to actually use them to make some changes but right now the public has no reason trust these institutions because their history is a history of abuse in our last question hello thank you for your talk mr. Snowden to hand with a brighter note I just like to ask a last question what are deep changes that you would like to see in the future and also what should we do concretely day-to-day to bring a better world the thing that I want to see is for people to take more chances when you think about the lives that we have that the time that we're born into you know you turn on the news and you see disaster everywhere it's easy to become to get a feeling of disenfranchisement of disempowerment because every atrocity every criminal activity every bad thing from every corner of the earth is lighting the inside of our living rooms by the end of the day right what people don't talk so much about the things that are getting better and they aren't getting better that might sound strange to hear from me you know I can't go home to my country but if I had the chance to go back in time I would do it again and I would do it again sooner because it helped I didn't save the world and you're not gonna save the world either but you don't need to all you need to do is make it better all you need to do is put down one brick one little thing upon which somebody else can lay their brick or put it aside and step by step with the accumulation of all of our efforts all of our little sacrifices all of our little bits of daring we can create a day that is better than yesterday and we do this we do this every day right the problem is this institutions have never been more powerful in human history than they are today there's a reason that we feel this the sentiment of distress right and it's because we realize there's a fundamental political effort and I don't mean parties I don't mean individuals I'm not talking about them I'm talking about institutions classes of individuals right look at the world look at the dynamics of power and they go we're doing really well you know corporate profits are higher than they've ever been meeting and quality of life for average people is you know increasing in some ways but people are suffering in many mores because we have an extractive economy and I'm not just talking about how much we get paid although that's a major component of it I'm talking about the fact that there is a class of people who are looking every day to every controversy to every problem to every tension into how do I get the most out of this and that's natural I understand it I hope you understand it even if you don't agree with it and they've become very successful at it because they formed a center of gravity that is self-sustaining like attracts like and once these people start to share their resources once they incorporate once they start a party they begin to put a leash on society on each one of us in a thousand small ways and I worry about that dynamic where we become so comfortable that while we see these things that are happening well bother us we are placated by our privileges by our homes by our televisions by our communities by the wonderful food that we have by a thousand little human elements that let us say you know I'm not gonna go out on the street today I'm not gonna go out on the street tomorrow I want to but I can't I got things to do and it's not that every solution is found on the street of course but if we don't do it other people who are willing to risk are the people who are willing to dare other people who are clever we're just as smart as us and work just as hard as us they will and that ladies and gentlemen is what all of this surveillance is about again when we talk about economic espionage diplomatic manipulation social influence not public safety but even if they want to argue as public safety and it's about the same thing surveillance is about protecting you surveillance is about building power and this is what we're seeing in our time the shift in power away from the six seven billion people on the planet to a few very strong very well structured very defensible institutions there are times throughout human history where the status quo left long enough ends in tragedy and the only tools that we have in response to this are reform and if they make reform impossible revolution ladies and gentlemen I would say look around at the world look at all these people who see you and where they go you know on a trip when they leave home at night they say [Applause] thank you so much let me let me say one last thing please please before I leave you tonight because so many people when I talk about this when I when I look at these things when I see my family and they come to visit me when we leave they always say one thing to me they say stay safe because they're worried about me because they know the risks that I've taken and they know the kind of consequences that can leave and it's I I I appreciate it I love it III I thank them so much for the care but I say something different I don't want to live in a world anymore where we have conversations like we had tonight and at the end of it people are worried for me and they say stay free or sorry they say stay safe what I want them to say what I want them to think is that the risks are worth it that the challenges and the consequences are worth it and when we say goodbye tonight we say instead of stay safe stay free so ladies and gentlemen stay free and thank you very much [Applause] [Applause] mr. Snowden you have been talking about revolution and here in France we are specialist of revolutions and maybe there will be one in the short period of time who knows what else listening to you listening to you during one hour and a half I know now what is extraordinary with you it's that you don't have a message you are the message and you have been talking a lot about the young generation but from the point of view of older generation my point of view Williams point of view Philip Cobbs point of view Patrick's voice point of view you are a true hero and I am sure that the young generation will follow your lead thank you so much mr. Snowden thank you very much thank you so much [Applause] [Applause] you [Applause]

Channel: Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne

Views: 276,877

Rating: 4.6376376 out of 5

Keywords: Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, Edward Snowden, surveillance, society

Id: lqj-n921PpA

Length: 103min 0sec (6180 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 13 2018