Edward Snowden: The Virtual Interview - The New Yorker Festival

we've got the pleasure of being able to show a short trailer from an extraordinary new film that had its world debut last night at the New York Film Festival about Edward Snowden it's called citizen four it's directed by Laura Poitras and it will have a theatrical opening elsewhere on October 24th the New Yorkers wonderful writer George Packer has a piece about it in the upcoming issue and it's up online now the film is I saw it last night full of amazing real-time footage inside the hotel room in Hong Kong where Snowden Patris and two other reporters were holed up for days for his escape to Moscow one small piece of news is the revelation that isolated though mr. Snowden's existed has been in Moscow it just got a little less so starting in July he was joined by his girlfriend then who's been living with him and it may be the most-watched Russian romance in exile now since I was thinking since Julie Christie joined dr. Zhivago so so let's look at the trailer and then we'll plunge into the interview Laura at this stage I can offer nothing more than my word I am a senior government employee in the intelligence community I hope you understand that contacting you is extremely high-risk 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 site you visit and the subject line you type is in the hands of a system whose Reach is unlimited but whose safeguards are not in the end if you publish the source material I will likely be immediately implicated I ask only that you ensure this information makes it home to the American public thank you and be careful citizen for so I don't know anything about you okay uh I work for so I don't love you in no that's right I my name is Edward Snowden I go by ahead or Joseph Snowden's the full name so I think citizen four is no mazing and capturing in real-time what was going on in that Moscow hotel room and I think one thing it may put to bed are any concerns that some people have had critics have had that Edward Snowden might be a spy with some kind of nefarious master plan because you see this scramble in this this hotel room that that made me want to ask my first question which was um it seemed like the planning for distributing this information to the reporters was very careful that you did you had three backups of three reporters there'd be backups and you took precautions on on how to cover the security for that but it was almost as if there was no end plan beyond that for yourself and so it seemed when you first arrived you were talking about you know you were the one who was going to be nailed to the cross and that was you were ready to deal with it but eventually as the days went on it seemed like there was possibility that arrived for escape and and maybe a way out of that box you were in in that room so what I wanted to know was what was in your mind what was your original uh you know game plan in terms of where you thought it would end then and did new things open up while you were there that they'd offered you maybe a way out so I would say uh first off can you hear me yes I can't can you hear out there okay so what I would say is when I look back on that period and I look about at everything that happened and how complex it was and how everybody was working in our incredible lots of times the journalists to get this out to coordinate with the National Security Agency other intelligence community agencies to basically make sure that nobody was going to be inappropriately harmed no one was going to be put at risk by this um we were kind of overcome with a sense that there wasn't enough time to do anything and this was going to continue and continue and continue and this was a feeling that they were new to but had been consuming me for quite some time because going forward you know I had to recognize that this was something of which I was only a very small piece I was the mechanism of presenting information that had been concealed from the American people that we needed to know we had our most senior officials in government whether it was James clapper the Director of National Intelligence keith alexander former director of the NSA they were giving sworn statements in front of congress that were false and we have video that now can look back it's not really questioning dispute but when it gets to that level of severity not when the the consequences for our democracy are so great somebody has to step forward but as far as what happens to them that's an open question that they cannot answer so when I discuss this with the journalists I told them that my plan was not to decide for myself what should happen but to ask the world for justice and go look are these programs consistent not only with national laws but with international laws how does it fit into a larger system and what should happen and it turned out that there were human rights lawyers who were very concerned with all the things that had happened and they began to advise me and we moved forward from there so so when you first went there did you think you would be arrested probably and then and then it seemed possible that maybe you could get the some sort of asylum the most likely scenario was always that I would be arrested and that I would get sent to jail I don't think anybody on the team whether it was myself whether it was the lawyers whether it was the journalists had even imagined the situation would turn out like it eventually did I mean we were talking about some of the greatest and most sophisticated intelligence actors in the world the world's sole superpower and a number of officials very powerful officials who are personally embarrassed when it was revealed that you know they had oversight over things and they had sort of abdicated that role they had given up on controlling these programs and just said look don't tell us about it we don't want to know about it we don't care who it affects we don't care about what impact it has on our system just keep it out of the public domain so yeah I think the most real moment where the fact that we had patched the Rubicon become it became absolutely clear to me was when Laura Watrous sat down in front of me and she turned the camera on it was me and Glenn Greenwald ah he was doing the initial vetting which was actually a lot more like a cross-examination he's uh he's pretty aggressive when it comes to to interviewing somebody and we both immediately stiffened we froze up we looked at each other and you know it was it was very clear that you know there's there's no going back you know the only way we can move at this point is forward and simply do the best we can to make sure that all of our actions from this point forward serve the public interest I guess I mean the reason I ask is there have been people who've said to me sometimes well why didn't he decide to just you know do this active civil disobedience and then pay the consequences you know they'd have be arrested fight your fight in the courts be like you know Martin Luther King in the jail and in writing from from Montgomery did you did you ever contemplate possibly a scenario in which you might face American justice like that well absolutely but I mean the question there was would the American justice system be open to that and I looked at other cases previously from Thomas Drake you know Chelsea Manning all of the former whistleblowers even people who weren't brought in front of courts you know in the same manner bill Binney Kirk Wiebe ed Loomis but when we go back to Daniel Ellsberg you know many many years ago we saw that he had the opportunity to stay free while he was in trial you know he could go on the news he could go to an open court he could make the case in front of the jury you know that what he did was he took his actions to champion the public interest but in in my case and all of the cases of the last decade we've seen that the way the way the law is being used in whistleblowing cases has changed you're actually forbidden now from making a public interest defense if you're charged with under the Espionage Act which are the charges they brought against me every country in the world actually recognizes the Espionage Act as what's called a political crime which means it's not extraditable and that it's not considered a actually a legitimate charge and that's because the crime that they're saying they're the victim is not an individual like assassination is not actually considered a political crime because the victim is a person it's an individual it's someone who can be harmed a political crime is what they call an act that's taken against an actual state not individuals but the state itself not a nation but the institutions of state when you're challenging policies when you're challenging laws and normally whenever these cases happen you're allowed to address the jury you're allowed to say you know we may disagree and you may find me guilty you may say you know I am a criminal I deserve to go to prison but you'll allow me to make my case um it's critical to remember that there were no whistleblower protections that would cover me as a private contractor um there were no proper channels through which I could have reported these concerns to individual independent actors who could review it and change these all of the channels led to the officials who actually authorized these programs in secret without public consent and without public knowledge and that's a really serious concern because when we think about the way government works in America the way democracy works in America and more broadly liberal societies function around the world they function on the principle of the consent of the governed and you know consent is not meaningful if it's not informed if officials are making decisions for us behind closed doors they're authorizing operations on the decisions of secret courts where the judges on those courts are all appointed by a single individual at this time justice Roberts um and they all say you know this is okay this is okay this is okay but the minute these issues hit a newspaper yeah ah minute these issues hit the newspaper we see something completely different the president himself comes out on stage and says you know what these conversations have made us stronger all of the review boards that are instituted find that these programs are not only dangerous to our civil liberties to the rights that we've inherited into our Constitution as a document but that they're also not necessary that they've never stopped even a single terrorist attack but you basically felt the American system didn't really offer a possibility at this point for speaking out and having a fair trial and being able to put this argument across I guess and well the key there is that that decision wasn't actually made by me personally that was made by lawyers I've told the government again and again in negotiations you know that if they're off but they're prepared to offer an open trial a fair trial in the same way that Dan Ellsberg got and I'm allowed to make my case to the jury I would love to do so oh really would they decide that they won't assure you that you'd have an open trial it would be in some kind of um I know in the Drake drama special procedures basically they've closed court they want to use things called like classified information Protection Act right and then then they use like someone's mounted machines to cook silence the person so the jury couldn't nobody could the public couldn't hear what he was talking about at that point so is that what you were afraid that there would be some kind of screening out of what your arguments would be right we saw this in the Thomas Drake case this was a classic whistleblower you actually wrote an article about him I believe so she should be fairly familiar with the case and he exposed classic waste fraud and abuse you know these from a classic arm basically in arguable Public Interest issues but they tried to railroad him you know they limited the arguments he could make they limited the evidence that he could prevent present and they tried to put him in jail without anybody knowing it without it being able to be a public issue which reputations were on the line not just reputations of individuals but reputations of agencies and that's a real concern because what we begin to see it is what we saw last year when when James clapper raised his hand you know and swore to tell the truth and then he told a lie in front of Congress is that's a felony that's punishable by I believe between five to seven years in prison but he face no consequence he didn't face it even a slap on the wrist so how do you agree that when we when we when we hold basically our most senior elite officials to one standard of behavior but we hold the working-level people you know the whistleblowers to a completely different standard is it another another form of too big to jail too you know I I think there there is some level of truth to that and and the reality is that I wanted to rely on the people to make the decisions about what should happen now the silent claims were a great way to litigate that while the US government you know decided how it really felt about these issues um but I think one of the two big to jail thing is something that we see spreading throughout society as you mentioned it's not just in the national security sector received in the banking sector and I mean I part of the reason I wanted to go over this ancient history was that the film I think which I hope people see is is really fascinating but you can see it's this changing evolving situation that's sort of extraordinary and and and one of the things that came out of it which has caused I think you a lot of of you know tough questions from people was that you ended up first year in China and then you ended up in Moscow neither of which country is famous for its civil liberties and so setting that's putting it graciously okay and so because of that I think people have you know they've they've turned it's certainly made people wonder well what why why those choices and I think what I took away from watching the movie was that it was this just kind of crazy work in progress but I I wanted to know I assume from maybe it was from Greenwald's book that you chose Hong Kong because it has a tradition of asylum and that and that Moscow it seems was hopefully a Waystation is that is that fair to say well so I never plan to stay in Moscow I was actually just transiting I had a ticket on a plane that was actually headed to Latin America they were journalists on the plane they took pictures of my seat because that Aeroflot I guess leaked my seat number um a little bit of irony there ah but what happened was after I departed after I departed Hongkong the State Department froze my passport so when I landed in Russia I wasn't able to leave I didn't at the same time want to put in an asylum claim I wanted to continue and you know I wondered about that I wondered about the reason for the state for me why why they would want me to be in Russia particularly when on TV at the time they were saying you know if this guy knows all this information he's got millions of documents which was actually not true I had actually destroyed my documents that I held after I turned them over to the journalists um and I I was asking myself why was this happening and then you know the more I talked to people in the Civil Liberties community than the activist community about what was going on the clearer it became that this was actually a political strategy um I had told the government you know that I wasn't going to be trying to blackmail them to do anything like this um and they believed me and they realized that by putting me in Russia they actually diminished my voice and they they enabled a very powerful attack it would not be going away because so formally I worked for the Central Intelligence Agency undercover overseas so I know a little bit about how this works if I had been the director of CIA or the FBI or the NSA you know sitting at the National Security Council the round table White House in the Situation Room going you know how do we get this guy the very best thing they could have done was allowed me to transit in Latin America because the CIA has a very powerful presence there and the government's and the security services there are relatively much less capable than say Russia who you know nobody would be surprised to know has been in the spying game for quite some time so why did they stop me from going someplace they could have basically snatched me and then put me on a boat and and rendered me to whatever fate they thought was appropriate and instead kept me in the place where it would be the most difficult for them to get me and that's a question where I'm not sure we'll ever get a an official answer you know a written answer but I think it's important to look at that and question why why would that be in the government's interest what were they really trying to do there one thing that's also somewhat I think less well known about that period was when it was when it was leaked that I was considering going to Latin America trying to find some method of getting there to depart Russia and the Bolivian President Evo Morales had been at a diplomatic summit in Moscow to discuss a Gatsby or something like that he made publicly a claim where he said he'd be willing to consider granting me asylum and this was when it was the issue of the day in the news was covering it and amazingly when his plane departed and I was still stranded at the Sheremetyevo on a Moscow Airport uh his plane was grounded the airspace of I think three countries uh Italy France and Spain was closed to his plane specifically which is actually a violation of international law because it's a diplomatic flight carrying a head of state and he was forced to the ground uh and when he got on the ground in Austria the American ambassador was there and uh you know there's a lot of things in the turnout they wanted to search the plane to see if I was on board so it was really they were there were some unprecedented activities that happen to keep me from departing Russia there I get off the subject of Moscow and but I I just curious do you feel safe there huh my my thinking has really advanced anyone who sees the documentary will will realize that uh you know as you said there wasn't a plan my whole mission was to get this information back to the public once that was done I didn't really think about what was going to happen to me you know everybody hopes for a happy ending but I didn't plan it out I didn't have this you know great mastermind strategy I just hoped for the best and I hope that the public would understand why I did what I did and we could get a resolution that society as a whole would agree on that but to nowadays as I've done more and more and I've seen how people have responded to this and how important our rights are to promote their constantly coming under threat from new and new new new policies and Parag additional government and it's important for people to remember this is not just about the United States governments around the world engage in this kind of behavior we really have to push back is that if something happens to me personally in the pursuit of my work that's something that I have to be willing to accept or I'll never have the impact that that I want to have you know I have to be willing to take risks and accept the fact that you know I'm one small guy I'm an ordinary person in an incredibly unusual circumstance and there's no way I'm going to be safe but you know the work is worth it yeah well this is one of the questions that I had and when we asked for questions from the audience they had is about the work being worth it and I think you know people wonder how you feel about the incredible sacrifice you've made most people think that living in Hawaii with a high paying job and nice house and girlfriend it might have been sort of Nirvana and it's but you made an unusual choice and so the question is whether it has been worth it and whether the country has responded in the way that's made it worth it you've said it at various points that your greatest fear would be that people wouldn't care and that there might be apathy in the face of these revelations so are you feeling that you're getting the reaction that has made it worthwhile so far for me it was never about you know dictating outcomes it was never about saying what would happen it was about getting the information back to people so they could decide if it matters and decide if they care about it and on that on that account on that question I think I could not have been more wrong in thinking that people wouldn't care I mean we've seen an extraordinary debate all of the polling of opinions show that people care more about their civil liberties now than they ever have in the post 9/11 period and it's because we thought about you know these things and we realized they were possible but they were abstract they seemed a little bit like conspiracy theories we didn't honestly imagine that you know government's out there were collecting all of our emails collecting all of our phone calls and and actually analyzing them to understand what we were doing and when we found out that that was in fact the case I think that changed the game for a lot of people and since then we've seen all of these reform bills proposed in Congress we've seen bills are hard to pass in the house the judicial branch which has for years and years and years said that you know we can't decide these issues we've got to defer to the executive branch on account of the state secrets privilege and we can't actually discuss whether this is constitutional or not because it's simply too dangerous but after seeing you know the White House appointed review boards that had complete unrestricted access to classified information and they found that hey you know these programs have actually never stopped a terrorist attack they've never shown any concrete value at all you know all the branches of government pay attention to this kind of thing and society more broadly notice is this the very first open court to consider the constitutionality of these programs said it was likely unconstitutional and this is after years of secret courts saying you know we're not even going to consider the constitutionality of questions we're just going to approve the program and you know the President of the United States of America got up on stage and he said we need to make reforms we need to change the way this is done and although he hasn't gone as far as you know I necessarily think would be important that's not my decision to make and for him to say this is a debate that makes this country stronger I think is very important for everybody who believes that our rights matter with our Constitution matters and the intelligence agencies even if they have good intentions can go too far and like I violate the Constitution on a massive scale that matters and people need to be held to account for it I mean it's interesting that you you talk about how the president said this is a debate worth having but meanwhile we had the national security community saying that the that these disclosures had just done egregious harm at first and they seem to have backed off of that somewhat in more recent times AB you have you noticed a little bit of retrenchment there I have I've noticed it's extraordinary I think um some level of explanation to that is the people making those statements were the officials who were personally implicated in authorizing the programs when keith alexander who oversaw you know the this massive unrestricted dragnet of americans communications being monitored he said this will cause grave and irreversible harm to national security but then he was pushed out of the agency and replaced with the new director of the National Security Agency Michael Rogers and he said from his chair and again he's on top of the National Security Agency he doesn't see the sky falling you know this is not so serious we will continue to do necessary working we will continue to see and remember I was an analyst at the National Security Agency on top of an engineer I actually used these systems for monitoring targets so I was aware generally I think much more so than the average commentator about where the lines could be drawn and where would be going too far and exposing things that could actually cause real harm and I tried my best to do that at the same time I recognized that you know nobody sees the full picture I have my own biases I am fallible I could make mistakes and draw you know that that balance wrong and that's the reason I have never published a single document about the National Security Agency I haven't revealed in news not or new details Ivan instead trusted that entrusted that to American journalists and said look you eyes are the ultimate guardians of the public interest when the system breaks down you are the Fourth Estate that helps us write this you know you veer us back on track so what I want you to do is look at these think very hard about what in these documents would serve the public interest for us to know in what goes simply too far and then beyond that at an additional layer checks by consulting with the government to ensure that maybe there's some information in those documents that you can't recognize the importance of and give them an opportunity to say you know hey this will put someone risk don't print this and in every single case where the government's made presented some kind of compelling argument there we've seen that happen and in other cases where the government simply made an empty claim the press has gone you know we appreciate your input but the public really needs to know about that and I think that's the reason that the story's won the Pulitzer Prize for public service have you in in when you made this handover of the material to the three reporters that you chose to work with did you discuss where you would draw that line and and have you they at any point disappointed you of any of the disclosures from your standpoint gone too far I know that I asked this because I think there was one comment that I read about from bill Binney who is a national security analyst cryptographer I think you would know better than I they saw it's definitely in over my head on these issues but he did say that he felt that some of the disclosures about is going too far yeah I actually remembered that that quote and bill since then has said you know the the reporting that came out at that time was a little mischaracterize I heard it was not quite accurate because it was described as I think as he heard it as revealing penetrations the NSA had into Chinese military institutions and things like that and that was in fact not accurate it was about penetrations into public universities into hospitals into critical infrastructure that doesn't just put people overseas at risk it puts Americans at risk because we've seen a lot of stories where some people would say it's about forints fine for example there was one where it was found the National Security Agency used executive authorities those are authorities that are not authorized by law they're simply the president says let's do this and you do it to hack in to the private networks of American companies which in itself is legally questionable and provide themselves secret access to the networks of I believe it was Google and Yahoo it could have been done other companies but it's these kind of things where the NSA justified it is saying well these actions took place overseas but they're affecting American companies on which hundreds of millions of Americans communications transit every day and it's happening without the awareness of Congress because spying programs that happen that are authorized under executive authorities are not required to be presented to the congressional oversight committees and you know not everyone is aware about that but that creates real blind spots in our methods of governments when it comes to spying and if we don't know about that if we simply say because this happened outside the borders of the United States we should never know about it we're exposing ourselves to a lot of danger of intrusion and abrogation and erosion of our rights because we live in an interconnected world you know American communications do not stop at the border you hit web sites overseas you buy services and products overseas in your communications even if they're going from Utah to Maryland can actually travel all the way around the world before they make that trip so we have to be really careful about how we draw that and well the question that you asked more specifically was do I agree with all of the stories that the journalists have presented I don't you know I would draw those those lines a little differently and I think much more conservatively than some of the journalists have had but it's not my place to decide what should be published and what should that is the role of our press and our representatives in Congress so in drawing the line is your standard basically protecting lives sources methods those kinds of the those sorts of lines or how do you it you have such an incredible mass of information how how would you decide what what where to draw the line between security and secrecy on it well the ultimate question is the public interest does this make a difference is it something that the public needs to know to make an informed decision about the policies and perogative of our government if it's about secret programs that affect our rights that affect our economy and things like that that could cost American jobs that could cost American lives we need to be careful about how we handle that information but at the same time we have to know about some things if the trend is likely to cause more damage in the future than if we didn't know about it and allow these programs to fester in the dark without our knowledge and consent it seemed like one of the issues that came up that's mentioned in the film that troubled you was the information you began to get about the US drone program was there a particular tell me reason just I'm curious about what you saw that made you think that there were concerns people should have do you feel it's too secretive and the public needs to be have more buy-in to it or there should be more transparency about the casualties or what was it that you were looking at that worried you ultimately what concern me what really made me may cross the line between going this is a concern and this is something that actually moves people to action it provided me with a duty to act to stand up and say something about this was the deception of government officials I mean we can have secret programs you know the American people don't have to know the name of every individual that's under investigation we don't need to know the technical details of absolutely every program in the intelligence community but we do have to know the bear and broad outlines of the powers that our government is cloning broadly and how they affect us and how they affect our relationships overseas because if we don't you know we are no longer citizens you know we no longer have leaders we're subjects and we have rulers democracy is about participation and if we denied the information that we need in order to vote about the policies that we want in this country and the boundaries of our rights that we as a people think are appropriate we're no longer really free we're beginning sort of a descent into a less free less liberal and more authoritarian society and when that that descent begins it's very difficult to reverse you know when the government claims a new power when the government Institute's a new program it's very difficult to get them to give it up regardless of whether it was legal regardless of whether it was lawful for example not in the Bush administration we had a warrantless wiretapping program that was it was unlawful the DOJ agreed that there was no there was no statutory constitutional basis authorizing the program and that it should be shut down now when that happened however what we actually saw was despite the fact that the program was considered unconstitutional the DOJ said they wouldn't back in the President had his uh his cabinet go to the Director of National Security time Michael Hayden in secret and asked him would he authorized the program without a statutory basis if the president requested it and he thought about this and this is detailed in the classified document called the inspector general's report on stellar women publishing The Washington Post last year uh and he said yes regardless of whether had a statutory constitutional basis of the president requested that he would do it and that is that's that's really the challenge what happens when our government when our most senior officials use secrecy to unchain themselves from accountability to law and democracy and if we allow that to happen that's really a road we don't come back well I know that I or at least I've read that in 2008 you were very hopeful that some of those abuses of power that took place during those years in the Bush years would be corrected and we have a different administration with a different point of view that is at the very helm of which is a constitutional law professor and so I am I I know that I don't want to put you on the spot in a place that's uncomfortable to be given that you may have to negotiate with the same administration but how are you I suppose I wonder how are you feeling about the possibility that there really will be reform within the the spectrum as we know it from from Democrat to Republican in the in in the US government's you know regardless of negotiations regardless of the relationship between myself and the administration whether it's adversarial or cooperative ultimately I don't think it's my place you know I'm not going to put it upon myself to advise the president as to what he should or should not do that's a role for the public you know for our institutions of the press for us as a community us as a society to decide what kind of things we believe in and hold our representatives to account in demanding that they actually champion those policies as opposed to those which would be most convenient for them at the time whether that's politically or reputationally in terms of will we get reform I think this is the question that's actually not just on the public's mind but on historians minds because when we look at the changes to policy that happened in the Bush administration the authorization of torture warrantless wiretapping the unitary executive theory and basically the idea that more and more we as the sole superpower should begin accepting ourselves from the rules and standards of behavior that we set ourselves for the rest of the world um it's something that should change and if that's the case when we look at the surveillance revelations and all the things about mass surveillance that we learned in 2013 they provide a mandate for change and the question is whether or not that mandate will be used or whether history will record that as a point where we had an opportunity to change but our chose not to do so people have said that whistleblowers generally are moved to disclose crimes and one of the complicated situations that you're in is that what you revealed was not a crime but maybe a moral or ethical or political crime in some ways it in in the way you looked at it do you feel that that leaking was the only form of check and balance that could have corrected this well there is definitely a point in every institution in every process where the final check on the abuse of power is whistleblowing however I would dispute that there have been no crimes shown in fact we've seen serial violations of law in the wake of these revelations we had people testify to Congress that I believe more than 12 times NSA employees had used these surveillance powers to spy on exes to spy on lovers and that's felony however none of them were prosecuted because it was considered that the value of the programs was greater than the interest of Justice in basically punishing people who would violate the law the false claims of senior officials to Congress was probably one of the most serious crimes that a government official can commit and that was only revealed by the revelations that we saw in the investigations that following them up beyond that these programs themselves are unconstitutional again the very first judge who ruled on this found that they were likely unconstitutional will go to the Supreme Court and I am confident that the Supreme Court will agree that these programs went too far on the problem with this is and what critics what critics claim the people who are supporting mass surveillance claim is that if these things are authorized by statute in this way or that way or the other the Constitution doesn't really matter because the Constitution does not assign penalties for violations but our system of government is founded upon the principle that the Constitution is the supreme law of the land so when we say that yes a statute may have not been violated in this particular instance of this particular case when you look at the totality of circumstance it is very clear that several different amendments of the Constitution whether it's our right to freely associate under the First Amendment or the Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure has been violated on a massive and unprecedented scale a system of surveillance that is unauthorized by any kind of constitutional authority has never existed in this country in this manner and we've seen public intellectuals we've seen lawyers weeks mean specialists from all areas of society agree that this is in the this is the case and were this not the case where it found that these programs were indeed constitutional that the business was indeed authorized by statute and that you know the government could simply claim simply invest itself in secret with the power to watch all of us without limit soare five-year records of our behaviors and you know retro actively investigate us at will I would argue that it is still proper and still correct to reveal these programs because of the strength of the response ultimately governments exist for the benefit of the public and if they are no longer serving our needs if they're working contrary to the public interest as opposed to working to further the public interest that's something that we deserve to know that's something more than we deserve to know that we have a right to know and when officials in the American government are asked to swear an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign in the message I believe they're bound to stand up and act when they see this kind of behavior and do something about it and I could be wrong and I'm willing to be two-faced history's judgment for that but I stand by that decision and I think the reaction of the public the fact that the Internet of the structure the structure of the internet since that period has changed shows that there is a lot of agreement and I am I alone taking that position it seems Silicon Valley is to some extent also trying to make some changes correct in trying to close some of the backdoors that the government has used to spy on on us and you know the government is still arguing that this is going to cause egregious harm and that they won't be able to keep people safe from they've used you know examples of child predators and things like that are you worried at all about whether or not they need to be able to get into people some you know Google and Yahoo Apple whatever in order to keep the public safe so I have a somewhat unique perspective on this because I was specifically hired to basically hack hackers for the NSA so I've gone after hard targets I know how they operate I'm obviously quite familiar with encryption myself I give him the Faculty of the NSA publicly claims they still have no idea what happened but we'll we'll leave that there ah reality is that encryption is not something that prevents the investigation that properly authorized law enforcement investigation if you are a criminal and you encrypt your phone and I suspect you of a crime I can go to judge I can present a showing of probable cause get a judicial warrant that will allow me to use law enforcement tools to gain total access to your phone even if that phone is encrypted even if there are pictures even if there are messages on it that are protected by the strongest encryption that equipped that exists today the key has to exist somewhere on that phone when the user the criminal in this case is viewing those pictures viewing those documents or they themselves would not be able to read it encrypted data when it's not paired with the key is illegible it's it's garbage it's it's just junk data so when we're talking about investigating someone who's using this information for a crime they're storing evidence and things like that as soon as they access that data that data is available to law enforcement if they go through proper procedures and use proper tools to steal the key that is then able to decrypt that information so beyond that even if encryption were let's say this uh embraceable imprensa believed that law enforcement couldn't get round on the phone we live in the cloud era when you take a picture on your iphone it gets uploaded to their service called the iCloud that data is not encrypted that data is available but you know Apple can respond to a subpoena from the FBI and provide a copy of that when you make a phone call with an encrypted phone um the phone records their don't go to Apple they don't go to Samsung they don't go to these other phone manufacturers they go to 18t they go to Verizon they go to a Time Warner or whoever you use for your services for your television your internet your phone and again these are unencrypted they're available to law enforcement ah your phone is only a gateway into these these different networks the transmission of information is not controlled by you you know your phone can be encrypted all day long but it's just a gateway into a global network that's being comprehensively and sometimes unlawfully monitored in a way that we've never seen before in human history so for law enforcement agencies to complain and say you know we're concerned we're not going to be able to to gather information in our investigations he's not just ridiculous but it's actually offensive because it implies that they're not more powerful now than they have been before and when we look at their classified documents what they're saying in private as opposed to in secret which we now have a rare chance to do we see that they call today the Golden Age of signals intelligence they say we have access to more information more easily than we ever have before okay I have a few questions now that fall into a category that I know is not the favorite of anybody at the NSA where personal is described as or extroverts are described as the person when you when you're talking you look at the other person's shoes right that's the extrovert as opposed to your own and so it's not it's not a place known for chattiness but I just wanted to ask you a couple sort of mild questions about your life one is you know what you miss most about America at this point I mean the only question whenever I think about the question is you know what what don't lie miss whether it's my family whether it's my home whether it's my friends whether it's my work at the agency you know I was fulfilled and happy I think it's critical to remember that the the revelations of last year you know the actions that I took we're not specifically about surveillance that's that's a miss reading it's not a complaint about policy it's about the accountability of government it's about the relationship between the governing and those who are being governed and if we allow that to slip we lose what our country is so I was willing to make sacrifices because I wanted everybody else who I loved and that I have around me whether they were family whether they're friends whether they were simply people who lived in the same country I did I wanted them to enjoy the same things you know that we've always had going forward that we are beginning to see calm increasingly under threat so yeah I mean think things as simple as having a my old beat-up car you know there's there's a lot to miss you know it's a great country um I wondered after realizing from watching citizen four that you had to take off without telling your significant other Lindsey Mills that you would not be seeing her possibly for the rest of your life when you did get back together was she mad uh you know I'll leave that to the investigative journalist to see things talked about now Jessa yes she was a she was not entirely pleased but at the same time it was it was an incredible reunion because um she understood that that that meant a lot to me so many people from so many parts of society they go you know they may not agree with everything that I did they may not agree with the way I did it but they do agree with the principle they believe that in America government answers to the public and when that changes it's no longer America so although she had a very very challenging year and I'll leave it to her to to discuss that when and if she's at ready yeah it was meeting I'll never forget and can you imagine possibly staying in Russia forever I'll do what needs to be done to to continue my work at this point the issues have so vastly overshadowed what I do and I feel like I have a lot more flexibility there I have a lot of disagreements with the policies of Russian government I think they do some horrible atrocious things particularly when it comes to the right to privacy and the manner in which they go about surveillance the extent they do that and the way we see that affecting journalism in public opinion but ultimately I answer to my country you know and the way things go the policies of mine government maybe one day if I speak fluent Russian you know I know everything about Russian society and their politics I'll be able to engage more more fully but my first duty it is my own people okay they'd ask you one other question and then maybe go to the ones from the people in the audience I I wondered as just because of the choices you made were so unusual to stand up and take these risks what was there anything in your childhood or growing up that that you that inspired you to do this I mean do their models in mind or even your own family or what was it do you think that made you separate yourself from everyone else who just kind of keeps going ahead without doing these things you know I think I think nobody really knows you know none of us are masters of our own psychology we don't know what shaped us we don't know what drove us to make the decisions we made but my entire family worked for the federal government you know going back to grandparents and things like that particularly in the military I signed up for the Army in the wake of the wake of September 11th and volunteered to participate in the Iraq war because I believed the claims of our government and that was something that I think was uniform throughout my family so as I became more and more senior as I as I climbed up through the ranks as I joined the CIA as I later worked for the NSA and I gained access to the absolute highest levels of classification and I realized that anybody you know could use these these programs that they had extraordinary capabilities that nobody knew about them for the public that they had not been authorized by the public and the fact that really pushing over the edge was that the people the officials in government that did know about this were willing to directly lie to the public about it it showed to me that they were not acting in a manner consistent with the government that I the principles that I and my family and everyone else in this country swore their loyalty to if they're going to ask us to pledge allegiance to the flag every day in school they had better hold themselves to the principles that the flag represents because if they don't they're asking for trouble well I guess they got it okay I'm going to read you a couple questions from the audience some people left their names and some did not this is a question from someone named Ellen Corso and she says in true New Yorker festival I do not actually have a question I would like to tell you something I just wanted to say thank you for what you did and thank you for your sacrifice and I really appreciate it and I think that you are a hero and I hope that you were able to find refuge in a more pleasant spot soon but then she says but maybe I do have a question how are you supporting yourself so they're there I've been incredibly fortunate to have support from so many people from around the world whether their civil liberties organizations whether they're private individuals whether it's crowdsourcing donations for my disaster I'm actually working on a very significant grant to work for a foundation creating I don't know how much I should reveal at this point because I think they prefer to do it but to work for the benefit of the press and journalists who are working in threatened areas and by threatened areas I don't mean just you know the James Rosen's or getting their their phone records subpoenaed by the Department of Justice I mean people you know in sub-saharan Africa I mean people in regimes where journalists get shot they don't get dodgy how they can continue their work and it's been incredibly rewarding I'll leave it at that and if I could actually respond to the she called me a hero and I really appreciate that as a point I appreciate the support that everyone's giving me but I think it's important that we remember that I'm an ordinary guy you know I'm not a hero and I would argue that there are no heroes there are people who do heroic things but when we begin to label people as heroes what we're doing is we're otherwise and we're elevating and we're putting them on a pedestal and saying they're different I could never do that but the reality is you can't do that we can all do that we all have a line there's a measure of incivility and inhumanity that we all can tolerate and then there's one step beyond it that we can not and all we have to do is recognize where that line is recognize what we believe and commit ourselves not just to believing in it but to standing for it when it comes under threat thank you um okay from Arianna Marini she says a great deal of discussion has gone on about whether you did the right or wrong thing mr. Snowden at my college we had a three-hour panel discussing discussion regarding whether you were a hero or a traitor do you ever regret leaking the NSA documents no I have not regretted it at all I think in fact what has happened since has shown us that it was critical to do and that had I not done it personally someone else would have the question was not would this be revealed but when would it would be revealed the public had to know about this and there were I know for a fact from my internal discussions where I I told colleagues you know do you see what's going on do you know what's going on here you know how do you feel about this and they were appalled you know they thought the same thing when they saw the boundless informant heat map of the NSA's global collection of it shows how much we're collecting what areas how many communications were intercepting on Americans and Germans and Russians and so on and so forth which by the way the NSA told Congress it did not have that capability and could not do it even though the tool was available to anyone with the top secret clearance on the NSA's Network when they saw that and they looked at the statistics and they saw that we were collecting and intercepting and monitoring more American communications than we were rushing communications people where did we where did we misplace our priorities why is this happening so it's I don't think as controversial as some commentators in the media have made it out to be a lot of what we've seen in the last year has been opinion shaping you know we've had a lot of very senior officials going up on Sunday shows giving anonymous comments to the press trying to say hey this causes damage this causes damage this causes damage but we've had court cases we've had independent review boards which were appointed by the White House right they're not they're not appointing adversaries here they're appointed partners and people who have gone before Congress you know these officials been had been trotted out and despite full access to classified information not something you know not we're not talking about situations where they're gone we can't tell you about it because if we made it public it would cause harm and they've been asked has this caused any any individual instance of harm at all can you give us one example of where this hurt things and they've never been able to show that so the question is if this was so damaging and the government has every incentive to show us and to make the case to get the public instead to back these programs instead of condemned them and to get us to give up more of our rights to make these programs more capable more efficient why have they not done so and the reality is because it hasn't happened we have been incredibly key performed by we I mean myself and many journalists I mean all of the people involved in the review including the government itself because every story that's appeared in newspaper the government has had a chance to review provide comment on it say look this goes too far this is going to cause it harm and every store that you've read in the paper is there because the government said you know ultimately we're not going to like this but it's not going to hurt anything okay this is from Jennifer Chow and she says what are your suggestions for how people can protect themselves and their privacy so this is a this is an incredibly complex topic because I understand this on it I want a technical level you know I could talk for the next nine hours about this and everybody would fall asleep and hate me um but the the basic principles are first off we have the champion reform domestically and go when we say you know I don't worry about this I don't have anything to hide so I'm not afraid of them you know reading my emails and collecting all of the books I read at Amazon seeing all of my friends and what I call them where I go what I do because what you're saying with this is you're inverting the model of responsibility for how rights work when you say I have nothing to hide you're saying I don't care about this right you're saying I don't have this right because I've got to the point where I have to justify it waive rights work is the government has to justify its intrusion into your rights you don't have to justify why you need freedom of speech you don't have to justify why you need the right to be left alone without any kind of reasonable suspicion or probable cause so we have to establish that we have to say that we value our lines and the same rights that we inherited our children deserve to inherit the same way but ultimately we have to remember that political reform in the United States is not going to solve all the problem globally because governments around the world whether it's in Europe whether it's in Latin America whether it's in Asia um they're going to have their own national laws and that's you know these these can be terrible governments where they go we don't care about your rights we're going to intercept everything you can so because of that you have to use secure communications and that's a very complex technical topic but the real key is companies that are willing to collaborate with any government to compromise the security of their products and services do not deserve to be trusted with your data because if they'll do it for one government they'll do it for another government governments don't for many seniors they in fact have to because if a government makes an exception for the United States government they'll have to do the same thing for the Indian government the Chinese done with the Russian the French government otherwise they'll be sanctioned in that country you know they'll face some kind of response they won't be able to get licensed and we'll get regulatory approvals so when we see things that we've recently seen where senior officials in government you know the FBI director of the Attorney General come out and they say oh my goodness Apple is saying they're going to increase the security of their phones we can't allow that we want to basically mandate that they're going to have to compromise their security their devices that has incredible knock-on effects not just for Apple but for the country because the same way that nobody's going to put their money in a bank it's most famous for stealing from its clients nobody's going to buy phones from a company that puts in the compromises the security of them so they can be either opt on particularly when we talk about a global economy no German is going to buy in a mirror clone with a backrub with a backdoor in it that'll does anybody listen in when they can buy a Korean phone or a German phone that does the same exact thing but it's actually secure so that's going to cost us jobs if we don't do anything about it that's going to cost us economic competitiveness and that's really gonna have a knock-on effect so you've got to support secure products and services but you also have to have to recognize that some of the technologies that we need have not been developed they have not been popularized they have not been made easy to use and you need to support efforts and research into those I speak with cryptographers and Chris computer scientists every day to try to figure out how we can create solutions to the metadata problem which is the fact that ah signalling information who you called when you called then what websites you visit but not necessarily um you know what you said on the phone call that information is very difficult on a technological basis to protect without associating efficiency cost but we get kind of technical there um but there there are solutions there are ways forward and we need to be pursued we need to work toward them and we need to say that this is an effort worth doing what the last year represented was the atomic movement for computer scientists it was the loss of innocence for a generation of professionals who were creating new advancements who are researching new technologies for that they intended to be used to bring people closer together to create more liberal more interconnected more free societies and we realized that in secret they were being subverted to contrary purposes and just as what happened just as what happened with physicists I think we're going to see the political rattle radicalization of a class of professionals that will be able to I think better protect us as a society and and step-ups back from the brink of conflict that we had during the Cold War with nuclear weapons that we have today with electronic conflict well another a person who wrote in had a similar question but it was following up on that you what could what can an ordinary person who's not a computer genius do they want to know what can they do to help further this cause of more openness in in the country and and pushing back on sort of mass surveillance so do you have any thoughts about what people can do if you can do is search for encrypted communications programs because what encryption does on a basic level what secure communications programs do is they simply enforce your rights on the technical level as opposed to the statutory level they make sure that when you're when you're you know when your communications transit through Guatemala it doesn't matter what the laws of Guatemala are you will still have your rights protected to the measure that was designed so encryption what is the encryption we're talking about encryption we're talking about dropping programs that are hostile to privacy for example Dropbox ah get rid of Dropbox it doesn't support encryption it doesn't protect your your private files and use competitors like SpiderOak that do the same exact service but they protect the content of what you're sharing same thing with companies like Facebook with companies like Google they've made strides to increase the security of programs and they're they're getting better than they have been but they're still not safe you know these are dangerous services and you need to use alternatives that are better encrypted don't send your texts unencrypted on your iPhone use programs like a red phone like silent circle anything by Moxie Marlinspike and open whisper systems these are typically free programs that are better than what comes standard on your phone and they're safer I would say look into these and you know typically they're actually getting much better much easier to use than they used to be you just click on it in the App Store you download it and they use it finally from Kevin what do you believe your legacy will ultimately be and is it going to be different from what you thought it would be when you thought okay I have to tell the world that's a pretty big question I think to ask you know thirty some very very I haven't really given much consideration for that um you know I'm really to tell ya I think I'll have to leave that to historians and say that my intention is to to continue to work to change the game and to say that infringement sub to our rights are not inevitable with the progress of technology we're going to continue to face new challenges we're going to continue to face new threats we're always going to have government officials who want to go that extra step we want to grant themselves this extra power and secret but civil society is more powerful today than it ever has been and we see more and more people becoming skeptical of claims being made to us by corporations by foundations and by governments and I think that's not a sign of disco it's a sign of a renaissance of critical thinking that will allow us to have a better safer and more free society as long as we participate and continue to say hey you know that sounds reasonable but does it make sense and what can I do to make things better than than the way I found them well on an optimistic note we can bring this to close and let you go enjoy a vodka or whatever they do I actually don't drink alcohol I must got little on that I've never been drunk you've been so nice to spend this time with all of us thank you so very much for everything thank you very much

Channel: The New Yorker

Views: 435,014

Rating: 4.8733859 out of 5

Keywords: edward snowden 2014, edward snowden 2014 interview, edward snowden analyst, edward snowden cia, edward snowden computer intelligence, edward snowden explains, edward snowden interview, edward snowden nsa, edward snowden political crime, edward snowden video, festival, jane mayer, new yorker, new yorker video, nsa crime, nyer festival, remote snowden interview, snowden interview, snowden scandal, the new yorker, the new yorker snowden, who is snowden

Id: fidq3jow8bc

Length: 68min 4sec (4084 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 11 2014