Edward Snowden interview: 'The US government will say I aided our enemies' - NSA whistleblower

[Music] have you given thought to what it is at 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 I think the government's going to to launch an investigation I think they're going to say I've committed grave crimes I've you know violated the Espionage Act they're gonna say you know I've aided our enemies in in making them aware of these systems but that that argument can be made against anybody who who reveals information that that points out mass surveillance systems because fundamentally they apply equally to ourselves as they do to our enemies when you decided to enter this world did you do so with the intention of weaseling your way in and becoming a mole so that you could one day undermine it with disclosures or or what was your perspective and mindset about it at the time that you first sort of got into this this whole this whole realm no I I joined the intelligence community when I was very young sort of the the government as a whole I enlisted in the army shortly after the invasion of Iraq and I believed in the goodness of what we were doing I believed in the nobility of our intentions to free oppressed people not overseas but over time over the length of my career as I watched the news and I increasingly was exposed to true information that had not been propagandized in the media that we were actually involved in misleading the public and misleading all publics not just the American public in order to create a certain mindset in the global consciousness and I was actually a victim of that America is a fundamentally good country we have good people with good values who want to do the right but the structures of power that exist are working to their own ends to extend their capability at the expense of the freedom of all publics the the premium disclosures are the fact that the NSA doesn't limit itself to foreign intelligence and it collects all communications that transit the United States there are literally no ingress or egress points anywhere in the continental United States where communication there enter or exit without being monitored and collected and they analyzed the Verizon document speaks highly to this because it it literally lays out there using an authority that was intended to be used to seek warrants against individuals and they're applying it to the whole of society by basically subverting a corporate partnership through major telecommunications providers and they're getting everyone's calls everyone's call records and everyone's internet traffic as well on top of that you've got boundless informant which is sort of a global global auditing system for the NSA's intercept and collection system that lets us track how much how much we're collecting where we're collecting by which authorities and so forth um the NSA lied about the existence of this tool to Congress and to specific congressmen in response to previous inquiries about their surveillance activities beyond that we've got prism which is a demonstration of how the US government co-opts US corporate power to its own ends companies like Google Facebook Apple Microsoft they all get together with the NSA and provide the NSA direct access to the back ends of all of the systems you use to communicate to store data to put things in the cloud and even just to send birthday wishes keep a record of your life and they give NSA direct access that that they don't need to oversee so they can't be held liable for it I I think that's a dangerous capability for anybody to have but particularly an organization that's demonstrated time and time again that they'll work to shield themselves from oversight was there a specific point in time that you can point to when you cross the line from contemplation to decision-making in commitment to do this I grew up with the understanding that the world I lived in was one where people enjoyed a sort of freedom to communicate with each other in privacy without it being monitored without it being measured or analyzed or or sort of judged by these these shadowy figures or systems any time they mention anything that travels across public lines I think a lot of people of my generation anybody who grew up with the internet that was their understanding as we've seen the Internet and governments relation to the Internet evolved over time we've seen that sort of open debate that free market of ideas sort of lose its domain and be shrunk but what is it about that set of developments that makes them sufficiently menacing or threatening to you that you are willing to risk what you've rest in order to fight them I don't want to live in a world where everything that I say everything I do everyone I talk to every expression of creativity or love or friendship is recorded and and that's not that's not something I'm willing to support it's not something I'm willing to build and it's not something I'm willing to live under so I I think anyone who opposes that sort of world has an obligation to act in the way they can now I've watched and waited and tried to do my job in the the most policy-driven way I could which is to wait and allow other people you know wait in our leadership our figures to sort of correct the excesses of government when we go too far but as I've watched I've seen that it's not occurring and in fact we're compounding the excesses of prior governments and making it worse and more invasive and and no one is really standing to stop it

Channel: The Guardian

Views: 221,108

Rating: 4.9237103 out of 5

Keywords: Edward Snowden, Snowden, Edward Snowden interview, Snowden interview, Edward Snowden Guardian, edward snowden girlfriend, nsa, nsa whistleblower, nsa files, whistleblower, news, Interview, government, us news, security, National Security Agency, spy, spying, data, wikileaks, journalism, surveillance, secret, leaked, leaks, leak, prism, china, russia, hong kong, clandestine, obama, bush, theguardian, the guardian, guardian

Id: Q_qdnyEqCPk

Length: 7min 7sec (427 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 09 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/T3P7R]

The CIA and NSA are at war with each other. CIA is the most corrupt agency in government. JFK wanted to "splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it in the wind." Through the Patriot Act, the NSA surveilled ALL internet and phone conversations of EVERYONE in the United States (and many abroad). NSA was building up a case against corrupt officials and accomplices, many of whom are tied to the CIA. CIA sent Snowden to leak NSA documents to get the public against the NSA. Hollywood helped. Why did Morgan Freeman's character in The Dark Knight make a monologue against Batman's sonar surveillance of all Gotham residents? Why did producers make an entire 'Snowden' movie with Joseph Gordon Levitt essentially painting Snowden as a hero? Why don't producers make an Assange movie? He's clearly the most successful whistleblower journalist ever, but THEY hate him for it

[u/Deadbeat1000]

Snowden is a traitor. Snowden is CIA and worked for the traitor John Brennen. Mike Rogers of the NSA is the true hero.

[u/SDmelvinG]

TRAITOR

Q

[u/CityBusDriverBitcoin]

You guess I'm wrong