1
"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
and you are willing to agree
to the following precautions
before I share more.
This will not be a waste of your time.
The following sounds complex
but should only take minutes
to complete for someone technical.
I would like to confirm out of email
that the keys we exchanged
were not intercepted
and replaced by your surveillance.
Please confirm that no one has
ever had a copy of your private key
and that it uses a strong passphrase.
Assume your adversary is capable
of one trillion guesses per second.
If the device you store the private key
and enter your passphrase on
has been hacked,
it is trivial to decrypt
our communications.
Understand that the above steps
are not bulletproof
and are intended only
to give us breathing room.
In the end, if you publish
the source material,
I will likely be immediately implicated.
This must not deter you from releasing
the information I will provide.
Thank you, and be careful.
Citizenfour."
Bottom line is... surveillance means
that there are facts
that we no longer abide to.
If you take away the surveillance,
there are no facts that
the government can manufacture.
Ah, that's right, and this is all
about creating an independent record.
To me, this goes to the question
of independently verifying
what the government is doing.
That's why I keep going
back to that question.
More with David Sirota after CBS news,
traffic, and weather
on KKZN Denver/Boulder, AM 7...
Hey, can you hear me?
I am here, David, how are you?
Well I would just point...
start by pointing to
what Barack Obama himself
said about those questions
when he was running for the office
that he now occupies.
In December of 2007, he said, quote,
"The president does not have
the power under the Constitution
to unilaterally
authorize a military attack
in a situation
that does not involve stopping
an actual or imminent threat
to the nation."
So by Obama's own words,
the president does not have the power
that he is now exercising
under the Constitution.
And as far as why it matters,
in... on August 1, 2007,
when he laid out his reasons
why he was running for office
and why he thought it was so important
to change the way we were doing things,
he said, quote, "No more ignoring
the law when it's inconvenient.
That is not who we are.
We will again
set an example for the world
that the law is not subject
to the whims of stubborn rulers..."
You asked why I picked you.
I didn't. You did.
The surveillance you've experienced
means you've been "selected,"
a term which will mean
more to you as you learn about
how the modern SIGINT system works.
For now, know that
every border you cross,
every purchase you make,
every call you dial,
every cell phone tower you pass,
friend you keep,
article you write, site you visit,
subject line you type,
and packet you route
is in the hands of a system
whose reach is unlimited,
but whose safeguards are not.
Your victimization by the NSA system means
that you are well aware of the threat
that unrestricted secret police
pose for democracies.
This is a story few but you can tell.
Thank you for inviting me here
to give me the opportunity
to express my story.
Let me give you some of my background.
I spent about four years in the military,
and then I went into NSA.
Directly, so...
So I ended up with about
37 years of service combined.
Most of it was a lot of fun, I tell you,
it was really a lot of fun,
breaking these puzzles you know,
solving problems and things like that.
And that's really what I did,
I fundamentally started working with data,
looking at data and data systems
and how you do that.
I was developing
this concept of analysis
that you could lay it out in such a way
that it could be coded
and executed electronically.
Meaning you could automate analysis.
And it has to do with metadata
and using metadata relationships.
So that was the whole,
that was my whole theme there at NSA.
That was eventually,
that's what I ended up to.
I was the only one there
doing that, by the way.
So any rate, 9/11 happened,
and it must have been
right after, a few days,
no more than a week after 9/11
that they decided to begin actively
spying on everyone in this country.
And they wanted the back part
of our program to run all of the spying.
All right?
So, that's exactly what they did.
And then they started
taking the telecom data
and expanded after that.
I mean the one I knew was AT&T,
and that one provided
320 million records every day.
That program was reauthorized
every 45 days
by what I call the "yes committee,"
which was Hayden and Tenet and the DOJ.
The program was called Stellar Wind.
So first I went to
the House Intelligence Committee
and the staff member
that I personally knew there,
and she then went to
the chairman of the committee,
Nancy Pelosi was the minority rep.
They were all briefed into the program
at the time, by the way,
and all the other programs
that were going on,
including all these CIA programs.
I wasn't alone in this.
There were four others out of NSA,
and we were all
trying to work internally
in the government over these years
trying to get them to come around
to being constitutionally acceptable
and take it into the courts
and have the courts'
oversight of it too.
So we, we naively kept thinking
that could, uh, that could happen.
And it never did.
But any rate, after that,
and all the stuff we were doing
they decided to raid us,
to keep us quiet, threaten us, you know.
So we were raided
simultaneously, four of us.
In my case,
they came in with guns drawn.
I don't know why they did that,
but they did, so...
Laura, I will answer
what I remember of your questions
as best I can.
Forgive the lack of structure.
I am not a writer, and I have
to draft this in a great hurry.
What you know as Stellar Wind has grown.
SSO, the expanded
Special Source Operations
that took over Stellar Wind's
share of the pie,
has spread all over the world
to practically include
comprehensive coverage
of the United States.
Disturbingly,
the amount of US communication
ingested by NSA is still increasing.
Publicly, we complain that
things are going dark,
but in fact, our accesses are improving.
The truth is that the NSA
has never in its history
collected more than it does now.
I know the location of most
domestic interception points
and that the largest
telecommunication companies in the US
are betraying
the trust of their customers,
which I can prove.
We are building the greatest
weapon for oppression
in the history of man,
yet its directors exempt themselves
from accountability.
NSA director Keith Alexander
lied to Congress,
which I can prove.
Billions of US communications
are being intercepted.
In gathering evidence of wrongdoing,
I focused on the wronging
of the American people,
but believe me when I say that
the surveillance we live under
is the highest privilege
compared to how we treat
the rest of the world.
This I can also prove.
On cyber operations,
the government's public position
is that we still lack
a policy framework.
This too is a lie.
There is a detailed policy framework,
a kind of Marshall Law
for cyber operations
created by the White House.
It's called Presidential
Policy Directive 20
and was finalized
at the end of last year.
This I can also prove.
I appreciate your concern for my safety,
but I already know
how this will end for me,
and I accept the risk.
If I have luck and you are careful,
you will have everything you need.
I ask only that
you ensure this information
makes it home to the American public.
Does the NSA routinely intercept
American citizens' emails?
No.
Does the NSA intercept Americans'
cell phone conversations?
No.
- Google searches?
- No.
- Text messages?
- No.
- Amazon.com orders?
- No.
- Bank records?
- No.
What judicial consent
is required for NSA
to intercept communications...
and information
involving American citizens?
Within the United States,
that would be the FBI lead.
If it was a foreign actor
in the United States,
the FBI would still have the lead
and could work that with...
with NSA or other intelligence
agencies as authorized.
But to conduct that kind of...
of collection in the United States,
it would have to go through a court order,
and the court
would have to authorize it.
We are not authorized to do it,
nor do we do it.
All rise.
The United States Court of Appeals
for the Ninth Circuit is now in session.
Please be seated.
Good morning, and welcome
to the Ninth Circuit.
The first case for argument is
Jewel versus National Security Agency.
You may proceed.
May it please the court, Kevin Bankston,
for Carolyn Jewel and her fellow plaintiff
appellants in Jewel v. NSA.
Your Honors, plaintiffs
have specifically alleged
that their own communications
and communications records
have been acquired by the government.
But the District Court found that
we had failed to allege facts
that differentiated the injury
that our plaintiffs suffered
from the injuries suffered
by every otherAT&T user
whose communications and records
have been acquired by the government,
basically concluding that
so long as everyone is being surveilled,
no one has standing to sue.
However, to deny standing to persons
who are injured simply because
many others are also injured
would mean that the most injurious
and widespread government actions
could be questioned by nobody.
Do you have anything
concrete that in fact
a specific communication
of your client was intercepted?
We have evidence
that all the communications
passing between AT&T's network
and other networks
in their Northern California
facility have been intercepted.
And so that would necessarily include
the Internet communications
of our Northern California plaintiffs.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you, Your Honors.
May it please the court, I am Thomas Byron
from the Department of Justice
here on behalf
of the government defendants.
We think this litigation
need not be resolved in federal court
in light of the oversight
of the political branches,
both legislative and executive,
which provides a better opportunity
for oversight and resolution
of the concerns raised
concerning nationwide policies
of alleged surveillance,
uh, in these complaints.
Even if it's revealed that
one or more of the plaintiffs
had email or telephone
conversations intercepted
that had nothing to do
with national security?
Your Honor, I don't know
that anyone necessarily
would have standing to raise
the particular claims at issue
in these two cases.
We think instead that the kinds
of claims at issue here
against these defendants
are those that are better suited
to resolution
before the... the representative
branches of our government.
So what role would the judiciary have
if your approach is adopted?
Judge Pregerson, I think that...
I mean, we just
get out of the way, is that it?
Well, Judge Pregerson, I think
that there is a narrow category,
a subset of cases, in which
it may be appropriate to step aside
for that narrow category of cases.
But the judiciary plays a role...
To be sure, Judge Pregerson...
- ...in our system.
- Yes, Your Honor.
And we don't mean to diminish that.
You know, you're asking us
to abdicate that role.
No, Your Honor, um, but it is
a question of this court's discretion
whether to reach that issue.
We do think that there is simply no way
for the litigation to proceed
without risk of divulging
those very questions of privileged
information that would cause,
as the Director of National
Intelligence has explained,
exceptionally grave damage
to national security if disclosed.
Um, thanks for having me.
If anybody has any questions, like I said,
basically just raise your hand
and I'll try to call on you
as soon as I possibly can.
So who here actually feels like
they are under surveillance
pretty regularly?
Everyone inside of Occupy.
How many people have been
arrested and had their,
at their court date, they had
their phone taken into the back room?
How many people in here
had their retina scanned?
Wow.
Um, so you guys are actually in a sense
the canaries in the coal mine.
Right, because the incentives
are all lined up against you.
Anybody see on the subway,
"Link your MetroCard
to your debit card," right?
Like, auto-refill?
This is a concept which is key
to everything we'll talk about today.
And it's called linkability:
Take one piece of data and link it
to another piece of data.
So, for example,
if you have your MetroCard
and you have your debit card,
you have those things
and you can draw a line
between them, right?
So that's, like, not a scary thing,
except your bank card is tied
to everything else that you do
during the day.
So now they know where you're going,
when you make purchases.
So when they decide to target you,
they can actually
recreate your exact steps.
With a MetroCard
and with a credit card, alone,
like literally where you go
and what you buy,
and potentially by linking
that data with other people
on similar travel plans,
they can figure out who you talk to
and who you met with.
When you then take cell phone data,
which logs your location,
and you link up purchasing data,
MetroCard data, and your debit card,
you start to get
what you could call "metadata"
in aggregate over a person's life.
And metadata, in aggregate, is content.
It tells a story about you
which is made up of facts,
but is not necessarily true.
So for example, just because
you were on the corner
and all those data points point to it,
it doesn't mean you committed the crime.
So it's important to note that
if someone has a perception
of you having done a thing,
it will now follow you
for the rest of your life.
So just keep in mind
that what happens to you guys,
for example, with fingerprints
and retinal scans and photographs,
that is what is going to
happen to people in the future
when they resist policy changes
and when they try to protest
in a totally constitutionally
protected way.
This is for you, Director Clapper,
again on the surveillance front,
and I hope we can do this
in just a yes or no answer
because I know Senator Feinstein
wants to move on.
So, does the NSA
collect any type of data at all
on millions or hundreds
of millions of Americans?
No, sir.
It does not?
Not wittingly.
There are cases
where they could inadvertently,
perhaps, collect, but not wittingly.
The encrypted archive should
be available to you within seven days.
The key will follow
when everything else is done.
The material I provide,
and investigative effort required
will be too much for any one person.
I recommend at a very minimum,
you involve Glenn Greenwald.
I believe you know him.
The plain text of the payload
will include my true name details
for the record...
though it will be your decision
as to whether
or how to declare my involvement.
My personal desire is that you paint
the target directly on my back.
No one, not even my most
trusted confidante,
is aware of my intentions,
and it would not be fair for them
to fall under suspicion for my actions.
You may be the only one
who can prevent that,
and that is by immediately
nailing me to the cross
rather than trying
to protect me as a source.
On timing, regarding
meeting up in Hong Kong.
The first rendezvous attempt
will be at 10:00 a.m. local time
on Monday.
We will meet in the hallway outside
of a restaurant in the Mira Hotel.
I will be working on a Rubik's Cube
so you can identify me.
Approach me, and ask if I know
the hours of the restaurant.
I'll respond by stating that
I'm not sure,
and suggest you try the lounge instead.
I'll offer to show you where it is,
and at that point we're good.
You simply need to follow naturally.
As far as positioning,
I mean, if you want us to sit
in any particular way or whatever.
You know, I'm gonna go there,
to try to get better light.
So, um, there's, you know,
so many different
enormous stories
just, that are kind of
stand alone stories,
that even, like, you know,
certain things
about an individual document
that can just be their own story.
And I just want to start
churning those stories out.
I basically woke up this morning
and already started writing stories.
So I'm hoping to, you know,
start publishing
like within a day or two days.
- Okay.
- As long as you're good with that.
- Yeah.
- Um, and...
So, as far as like the stuff
we have to talk about,
I'm kind of dichotomizing it,
between stuff that
I'd like to talk to you about
in terms of like the documents
and the content,
and Laura has a bunch of
questions about that as well,
sort of working through the documents,
getting your take on
a lot of this stuff that,
you know, will help me
understand it better.
But then also the sort of "you" story,
like the who you are, what you've done,
why you've done what you've done.
- Yeah.
- And I'd love to do that first.
Okay.
Um, in part because you're
the only one who can do that.
So I'd just like to get that done
so that it's done, um,
and also because, you know,
it might be that
you want to do that early.
- Because...
- Who knows what could happen...
It might be necessary, we might
choose to have that done early.
Tell me your thoughts on
where you are with that...
The primary one on that,
I think I've expressed that
a couple times online,
is I feel the modern media has
a big focus on personalities.
Totally.
And I'm a little concerned
the more we focus on that,
the more they're gonna use
that as a distraction.
And I don't necessarily
want that to happen,
which is why I've consistently
said, you know,
"I'm not the story here."
Nervous, huh?
No, it's a very, very cheap pen,
that just with the slightest
force broke, go ahead.
But uh, yeah,
anything I can do to help you guys
get this out I will do.
I don't have,
uh, any experience with media,
with how this works,
so I'm kind of learning as I go.
Right, so I just want to get a sense
of why did you decide to do
what you've done.
So, for me,
it all comes down to state power
against the peoples' ability to
meaningfully oppose that power.
And I'm sitting there, uh, every day
getting paid to design methods
to amplify that state power.
And I'm realizing that if, you know,
the policy switches
that are the only things
that restrain these states,
were changed, there...
you couldn't meaningfully oppose these.
I mean you would have to be
the most incredibly sophisticated,
technical actor in existence.
I mean, I'm not sure there's anybody,
no matter how gifted you are,
who could oppose all of the offices
and all the bright people,
even all the mediocre people
out there with all of their tools
and all their capabilities.
And as I saw the promise
of the Obama administration
be betrayed and walked away from
and in fact, actually advance...
Uh-huh, uh-huh.
...the things that had been promised
to be sort of curtailed
and reigned in and dialed back,
and actually get worse,
particularly drone strikes,
which I also learned at NSA,
we could watch drone videos
from our desktops.
As I saw that, that really
hardened me to action.
- In real time?
- In real time.
Yeah, you... it'll stream
a lower quality of the video
to your desktop.
Typically you'd be watching
surveillance drones
as opposed to actually
like you know murder drones
where they're going out there
and bomb somebody.
But you'll have a drone that's just
following somebody's house
for hours and hours.
And you won't know who it is,
because you don't have
the context for that.
But it's just a page,
where it's lists
and lists of drone feeds
in all these different countries,
under all these different code names,
and you can just click on
which one you want to see.
Right, but, so if your self-interest
is to live in a world in which
there's maximum privacy,
doing something
that could put you into prison,
in which your privacy
is completely destroyed,
is sort of the antithesis of that.
How did you reach the point where that
was a worthwhile calculation for you?
I remember what the Internet was like
before it was being watched,
and there's never been anything
in the history of man that's like it.
I mean, you could again have children
from one part of the world
having an equal discussion
where, you know,
they were sort of granted,
um, the same respect
for their ideas and conversation,
with experts in a field
from another part of the world,
on any topic, anywhere,
anytime, all the time.
And it was free and unrestrained.
And we've seen, uh, the chilling of that
and the cooling of that
and the changing of that model,
toward something in which people
self-police their own views,
and they literally make jokes
about ending up on "the list"
if they donate to a political cause
or if they say something
in a discussion.
Uh, and it's become an expectation
that we're being watched.
Um, many people I've talked to
have mentioned that
they're careful about what
they type into search engines
because they know that
it's being recorded.
And that limits the boundaries
of their intellectual exploration.
Uh... and I'm...
I am more willing to risk imprisonment,
or any other negative outcome,
personally,
than I am willing to risk
the curtailment
of my intellectual freedom
and that of those around me
whom I care for, uh,
equally, as I do for myself.
And again, that's not to say
that I'm self-sacrificing,
because it gives me...
I feel good in my human experience
to know that I can contribute
to the good of others.
Could you elaborate on that?
So, I don't know
how much of the programs
and the actual technical capacities
everybody's talked to you about,
but there's an infrastructure in place
in the United States and worldwide...
that NSA has built,
in cooperation with
other governments as well...
that intercepts basically
every digital communication,
every radio communication,
every analog communication
that it has sensors in place to detect.
And with these capabilities, basically,
the vast majority of human
and computer-to-computer communications,
device-based communications,
which sort of inform the relationships
between humans,
are automatically ingested
without targeting.
And that allows individuals
to retroactively
search your communications
based on self-certifications.
So, for example, if I wanted to see
the content of your email,
or, you know, your wife's phone calls,
or anything like that,
all I have to do is
use what's called a "selector,"
any kind of thing
in the communications chain
that might uniquely or almost uniquely
identify you as an individual.
And I'm talking about things
like email addresses,
IP addresses, phone numbers,
credit cards,
um, even passwords
that are unique to you
that aren't used by anyone else.
I can input those into the system,
and it will not only go back
through the database
and go, "Have I seen this
anywhere in the past?"
It will,
basically put an additional
level of scrutiny on it,
moving into the future, that says,
"If this is detected now
or at anytime in the future
I want this to go to me immediately,
and alert me in real time"
that you're communicating with someone.
Things like that.
So I don't know who you are
or anything about you.
Okay. Um...
I work for Booz Allen Hamilton,
a defense contractor,
I'm sort of on loan to NSA.
I don't talk to a Booz Allen boss,
I don't get tasking from Booz Allen,
it's all from NSA.
- Sorry, I don't know your name.
- Oh, sorry!
I, uh... my name is Edward Snowden.
I go by Ed. Um...
Edward Joseph Snowden is the full name.
- S-N...
- O-W-D-E-N
And where are you from?
I'm originally, I was born
in North Carolina,
uh, small town, Elizabeth City.
There's a Coast Guard station there.
I'm from a military family.
But I spent most of my time
growing up around Fort Meade
in Maryland.
And your family,
what's the consequences for them?
This is actually
what has made this hardest.
My family doesn't know what's happening.
They're unaware.
I don't think I'll be able
to keep the family ties
that I've had for my life, um,
because of the risk
of associating them with this.
And I'll leave, you know,
what to publish on this
and what not to publish to you guys.
I trust you to be responsible on this.
Um, but basically,
the closer I stay to my family,
the more likely they are to be
leaned on, you know.
So you don't want me to report this?
I mean, we definitely want
to do whatever we can
not to include them
or bring them into the mix.
Yeah, yeah, sure,
that's fine, I won't...
I'm sorry, let me interrupt you.
Can we just stop for a second and do
the documents and then go back to that?
- Does that makes sense?
- Sure.
What do I need?
Do I need an email address
that we're using, or...?
Well, so you can, you can send them...
once you've encrypted it, you can send it
from whatever you think is appropriate.
The main thing is you've got
to encapsulate all of this
in a way that it can't be
decrypted and read
when it's in transit
across the network...
Right.
...or on either of the end
points that it's received at.
Just so you know, these documents are
basically all gonna be uploaded
in like 48 hours, 72 hours, whatever...
This is simply... you want to get in
the process of doing this for everything,
because it seems hard, but it's not hard,
his is super easy.
So just walk me through it, and...
Okay. Show me... show me
the actual folder structure
where these files are first.
How many documents
did you say there were?
Seven.
Well, while you're working
did you want to...?
Okay, go ahead.
How many documents are we talking about?
Because when The Guardian did WikiLeaks,
technical people set up a system
so they were available
for anybody to see.
And I just wondered
if it's possible to do the same thing?
That would be the ideal end game,
um, but because some of these documents
are legitimately classified in ways
that could cause harm to people
and methods...
I'm comfortable in my technical
ability to protect them,
I mean you could literally
shoot me or torture me,
and I could not disclose
the password if I wanted to.
Um, you know, I have
the sophistication to do that.
There are some journalists
that I think could do that,
but there are a number of them
that couldn't.
But the question becomes,
can an organization actually
control that information
in that manner without risking
basically an uncontrolled disclosure?
But I do agree with that.
Honestly, I don't want to be the person
making the decisions on
what should be public
and what shouldn't.
Which is why, rather than
publishing these on my own,
or putting them out openly,
I'm running them through journalists.
So that my bias,
you know, and my things...
Because clearly
I have some strongly held views,
are removed from that equation,
and the public interest
is being represented
in the most responsible manner.
Yeah.
Actually, given your sort of, you know,
geographic familiarity
with the UK and whatnot,
I'd like to point out that GCHQ has, uh,
probably the most invasive...
I've heard about that.
...network intercept program
anywhere in the world.
Yeah, yeah.
It's called Tempora, T-E-M-P-O-R-A,
and it's the world's first "full take,"
they call it, and that means content
in addition to metadata, on everything.
Um, so this is what I'd like
to do in terms of scheduling,
if it's good with everybody else.
Um, are you... do you feel like
you're done with what you...?
I am done.
I'm anxious to go back,
get those articles done.
And then there's a bunch of
documents that aren't about
those first two or three stories that
I'd like to spend time with you...
- Sure, yeah...
- ...you know, kind of going over it.
- Um, and...
- I'm not going anywhere!
You're available?
You want to check your book first?
Yeah! Let me...
uh... let me check my schedule.
Is that good for you, Laura?
- It's great.
- Okay.
Hello?
Yes.
My meal was great, thank you very much.
No, I still have some left, and I think
I'm gonna be eating it later.
So, uh, you can just
leave me alone for now.
Okay, great. Thank you so much.
Have a good one. Bye.
Let's fix that real quick.
So uh, another fun thing,
I was telling Laura about this:
all these new VOIP phones,
they have little computers in them,
and you can hot mic these
over the network...
all the time,
even when the receiver's down.
So as long as it's plugged in,
it can be listening in on you.
And I hadn't even considered
that earlier, but yeah.
Okay.
There are so many ways this could be...
Everything in here is gonna be
on the public record at some point.
We, we should operate on that,
that basis, because...
Yeah, we are.
Do you have your air-gapped
machine with you?
I do, I do.
You can pop that out.
Do you have an understanding
or commitment
on when you guys are going to
press with the first stories?
I suppose seven or eight
in the morning in London.
Uh-huh, okay.
Now let's see here.
Oh, hey, look, there's the other one.
Pro tip, let's not leave
the same SD cards
in our laptops forever, in the future.
Did you know this was still
kicking around in your laptop?
Yeah, um, that was the...
- Okay, just making sure.
- Okay, yeah.
- This is that.
- Right there.
You will have a new one that looks exactly
identical that's a different archive,
so you might want to
take a Sharpie to it, or something.
Could you pass me
my magic mantle of power?
Mm-hmm. I'm gonna go pick up...
Is that about the possibility of...
Visual... yeah, visual collection.
I don't think at this point there's
anything that will shock us.
We've become pretty...
In fact, Ewen said before, he's like,
he's like "I'm never leaving my room...
I'm never leaving anything in my room
again, not a single machine."
I was like, "You've been
infected by the paranoia bug.
- Happens to all of us!"
- Yeah.
The way he said it, he was like,
"I would never leave a single device
in the room again alone."
My bag is getting heavier and heavier.
That's your evil influence, Ed.
All right, I'm going need you
to enter your root password
because I don't know what it is.
If you want to use this,
you're more than welcome to.
Looks like your root password's about
four characters long anyway, so...
It's usually a lot longer, but that's
just a one-time-only thing, right?
So it is... uh...
It had been a lot longer,
but ever since I knew that
it was just like a one time
only session one,
I've been making it shorter.
Is that not good?
It's actually not.
I was expressing this with Laura.
The issue is, because of the fact that
it's got a hardware mac address
and things like that, if people are able
to identify your machine,
and they're able to...
This is the fact you're about
to break the most upsetting story...
Right, that's true, that's true.
Yeah, so they might kind of
prioritize you...
It's ten letters. I type very quickly.
It actually is ten letters.
Okay, so ten letters would be good
if they had to brute force
the entire keyspace.
Right.
That would still probably
only take a couple days for NSA.
That's a fire alarm.
Okay.
Hopefully it just sounds like
a three second test.
Or is... do you want to call
the desk and ask?
I think it's fine.
Yeah, I don't think it's an issue,
but it's interesting that it just...
Did that happen before?
Maybe they got mad when they couldn't
listen in to us via the phone anymore.
Has the fire alarm gone off before?
No, that's the first time
that's happened.
Let me see, just in case,
they've got an alert that goes to...
That's unusual.
- You probably...
- We might have to evacuate.
...shouldn't ignore that.
I don't know.
- It's not continuous.
- It's not continuous.
No, I'm just saying, if it continues.
And then we go and we meet
the guys down in the lobby...
- Yeah, right?
- Yeah.
Yeah, let's uh, let's leave it for now.
Let me just finish this up.
All right.
Not that they're going to answer,
because they probably got
like 7,000 calls.
Hi, uh, we hear a loud buzzing
on the tenth floor,
can you tell us what that is?
Oh, okay.
Okay great. Thank you. Bye.
Fire alarm testing maintenance.
That's good. That's what
we wanted to hear.
Nice of them to uh...
nice of them to let us know
about that in advance.
Um...
I just wanted to
give you kind of a quick tour,
uh, when Laura was looking at this,
she was kind of salivating
and couldn't stop actually
reading the documents...
Right, right.
So we'll try and restrain ourselves
without promising that we'll succeed.
Yeah, I just wanted to kind of explain
a brief overview of what these are
and how they're organized.
Um, the beginning are
just some documents of interest.
The primary purpose
of the second archive
is to bring the focus over to SSO,
as opposed to uh, PRISM.
And this is in general.
SSO are the Special Source Operations,
those are the worldwide
passive collection on networks.
They're both domestic to the US
and international.
There's a lot of different ways
they do it,
but corporate partnerships
are one of the primary things,
uh, they do domestically,
they also do this with multinationals
that might be headquartered
in the US they can kind of coerce,
or just pay into giving them access.
And they also do it bilaterally, with
the assistance of certain governments.
And that's basically
on the premise that they go,
"All right, we'll help you
set this system up
if you give us all the data from it."
Um, so yeah...
There's, there's...
There's a lot more in here than any
one person or probably one team could do.
Right.
Um, XKeyscore DeepDive,
XKeyscore in general,
and there's a huge folder
of documentation
on XKeyscore and how it works,
is the front-end system
that analysts use
for querying that sort of ocean of
raw SIGINT that I was telling you about.
All of that stuff where you can
sort of do the retroactive searches
and live searches
and get flagging and whatnot,
XKeyscore is the front end for that.
I'm just gonna show you one slide here
'cause Laura thought it was valuable,
and I was talking about
kind of how these,
uh, capabilities ramp up
in sophistication over time.
This is kinda nice.
As of fiscal year 2011,
they could monitor one billion
telephone or Internet sessions
simultaneously per one of these devices.
And they could collect at the rate
of about 125 gigabytes a second,
which is a terabit.
That's just each one of these devices.
That's for each one of these, yeah.
And how many Tumult machines
would there be, then?
Uh... per this, back then,
there were 20 sites,
there's 10 at DOD installations,
but these are all outdated.
We've expanded pretty rapidly.
But still 20 sites,
that's at least 20 billion.
This all needs to get out,
you know I mean?
It's like...
just in terms of understanding
the capabilities. It's so opaque.
It's not science fiction.
This stuff is happening right now.
No, that's what I mean, it's like,
the, the magnitude of it, and...
and, like, this is a pretty
inaccessible technical document,
but even this, like, is really chilling.
- Do you know what I mean?
- Yeah.
Yeah, I mean we should have...
we should be having debates about
whether we want governments...
I mean, this is massive
and extraordinary.
It's amazing.
Even though you know it,
even though you know that...
to see it, like,
the physical blueprints of it,
and sort of
the technical expressions of it,
really hits home
in like a super visceral way
that is so needed.
This is CNN Breaking News.
An explosive new report
is reigniting the concerns
that your privacy is being violated
to protect America's security.
It reveals a court order giving
the National Security Agency
blanket access to millions of Verizon
customers' records on a daily basis.
Earlier I had the chance to
conduct the first TV interview
with the reporter who broke
this story wide open:
Glenn Greenwald of The Guardian.
Congratulations on the scoop.
Explain for our viewers
why this is important.
It's important
because people have understood
that the law that this was done under,
which is the Patriot Act,
enacted in the wake of 9/11,
was a law that allowed the government
very broad powers
to get records about people
with a lower level of suspicion than
probable cause, the traditional standard.
So it's always been assumed
that under the Patriot Act,
if the government had even any suspicion
that you were involved
in a crime or terrorism,
they could get a lot of
information about you.
What this court order does
that makes it so striking,
is that it's not directed
at any individuals
who they believe or have suspicion
of committing crimes
or are part of a terrorist organization,
it's collecting the phone records
of every single customer
of Verizon business
and finding out every single call that
they've made, internationally and locally,
so it's indiscriminate
and it's sweeping.
It's a government program
designed to collect information
about all Americans, not just people
where they believe there's reason
to think they've done anything wrong.
Ah, it's, it's a tough situation,
you know, hearing that
the person that you love,
that you've spent the decade with,
may not be coming back.
What did they ask her?
Um, when was the last time she saw me,
where am I, um, what am I doing,
you know, what does she know about
my illness, things like that.
Uh...
so.
Yeah, they're um...
they're pretty solidly aware.
'Cause, uh...
I'm clearly not at home ill.
- Hello?
- Hello?
Hello, let me disconnect
from the Internet.
So, there's some news?
Yes, there was indeed some news.
I have config.
Today, I think,
maybe just a few hours ago?
What... what kind of people visited?
Uh...
An H.R. lady, I'm assuming from NSA
as opposed to,
uh, as opposed to Booz Allen,
because she was accompanied
by a police officer,
which means NSA police.
And they were planning
to break into my house,
which regular police don't do.
Does she live there?
Yeah, she lives there.
So I told her to cooperate fully...
I can't find my phone,
just one second...
You know, don't worry about herself.
You know what, I'll just
take out the stuff I wanna use...
Okay.
Okay, well look, I mean,
this is not a surprising development.
Nah, I know, I planned for it,
but it's just, you know,
when it's impacting them
and they're talking to you,
it's a little bit different.
Absolutely.
But it's possible that they just
noticed that you're missing.
I guess it's not really a possibility.
It is, but they're, I mean...
Um... Let me just get rid of this.
Sorry, I obviously was focused on
other things than appearance this morning.
How was... How did she react?
Was she relatively calm about it?
She's relatively calm...
Does she know anything about
what you're doing and why?
She has no idea.
And that's, I mean, I...
I feel badly about that, but that's
the only way I could think of where,
like, she can't be in trouble.
Did you just basically do a,
"I have to go somewhere
for reasons that I can't tell you
about" kind of thing, or...?
I just disappeared
when she was on vacation.
Um, and I left a note saying, "Hey, I'm
going to be gone for a while for work,"
which isn't unusual for me
in my business.
- Right.
- You know, so...
Okay, so let me ask you
a couple things just quickly.
Are they gonna be able to go into
your stuff and figure out what you took?
Um, in some kind of...
some sort of, like, peripheral senses,
but not necessarily...
- Not with great specificity.
- Yes.
Because I cast such a wide net.
If they do that the only thing
they're gonna do is have a heart attack
because they're gonna go,
"He had access to everything."
Yeah.
And they're not gonna know
what specifically has been done.
I think they're gonna start to
actually feel a little better,
although they're not gonna be wild
about this in any case,
when they see that the stories
are kind of cleaving to a trend,
you know, it's not like,
"Here's the list of everybody
who works everywhere."
Right.
I also think, you know, they're gonna
be paranoid in the extreme,
and assuming all kinds of
worst case scenarios,
which is gonna,
you know, I think make them
react in ways that probably aren't,
like, gonna be particularly
rational on their part.
But, at the same time,
there's... I do think
they're limited for the moment.
I agree, and I mean,
I had kinda time to set a stage
where we all enjoy at least
a minimum level of protection,
you know, no matter who we are,
who's involved in this,
you know, you're either a journalist,
or you're either out of jurisdiction,
so we have some time to play this
before they can really get nasty.
I think it's over, you know, the weeks
when they have times,
to get lawyers really sort of go,
"This is a special situation.
How can we interpret this
to our advantage?"
We... we see them do this
all the time, you know,
whether it's drones
or wiretapping or whatever,
they'll go, "Well according
to this law from the 1840s,
you know, with X, Y, or Z authority..."
But that takes time.
And that takes agreement...
And also, you know, I mean,
I think the more public we are
out there too, like as journalists,
the more protection
that's gonna give as well.
Have you started to give thought to
when you're ready to come forward?
I'm ready whenever, um...
Honestly, I think
there's sort of an agreement
that it's not going to bias
the reporting process.
That's my primary concern at this point.
I don't want to get myself
into the issue
before it's gonna happen anyway,
and where it takes away
from the stories that are getting out.
We're talking about tens
of millions of Americans,
who weren't suspected of doing anything,
who were surveilled in this way.
Hold your thoughts for a moment.
I want to continue this conversation
because these are really important,
sensitive issues,
and the public out there
has a right to know what's going on.
This is CNN Breaking News.
Another explosive article
has just appeared,
this time in The Washington Post.
It's breaking news
and it reveals another broad
and secret US government
surveillance program.
The Washington Post
and The Guardian in London
reporting that the NSA and the FBI
are tapping directly
into the central servers
of nine leading Internet companies,
including Microsoft,
Yahoo, Google, Facebook,
AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple.
The Post says they're extracting audio,
video, photographs, emails, documents,
and connection logs that enable analysts
to track a person's movements
and contacts over time.
Let's discuss this latest revelation...
they're coming out fast. Bill Binney,
former official of the NSA
who quit back in 2001,
you were angry over what was going on,
you are known
as a whistleblower right now.
Bill, what do you think about
this Washington Post story?
Well, I assume it's just a continuation
of what they've been doing all along.
So you're not surprised.
Do you have any idea who is
leaking this information?
I don't know who leaked this.
I have no doubt that the administration
will launch an investigation,
not into who approved these programs
but into who leaked the information.
I'm not shocked
the companies are denying it,
- I don't assume...
- Do you believe them?
There may be some technical basis
on which they can say that
we are not actively collaborating
or they don't have what we consider
in our own definition
to be direct access to our servers
but what I do know is that I've talked
to more than one person
who has sat at a desk at a web portal
and typed out commands and reached
into those servers from a distance.
So whatever they want to call that,
that's what's happening.
Well, what I would call it
is the single biggest infringement
on American civil liberties
probably of all time, isn't it?
It's interesting, already
you have The New York Times
now today saying that the administration
has lost all credibility.
The New York Times
slammed President Obama for this,
and frankly I was used to that.
The New York Times
used to slam George Bush
for protecting the country
and for the steps he took.
I don't want us to drop our guard,
I don't want us to be struck again.
As we saw in Boston,
Anderson, people are willing
to sacrifice their civil liberties.
People sheltered inside...
How can you believe
in freedom, do you think...
I mean, try and play
Devil's Advocate for me,
when you have secret courts,
secret operations like PRISM,
secret investigations which go
into every spit and cough
of every American's lives,
without any member of the American
public knowing about it.
That's not freedom, is it?
In 2008, they eliminated
the warrant requirement
for all conversations
except ones that take place
by and among Americans
exclusively on American soil.
So they don't need warrants
now for people
who are foreigners outside of the US,
but they also don't need
warrants for Americans
who are in the United States
communicating with people
reasonably believed to be
outside of the US.
So again, the fact that there are
no checks, no oversight
about who is looking
over the NSA's shoulder,
means that they can take
whatever they want.
And the fact that it's all
behind a wall of secrecy
and they threaten people
who want to expose it,
means that whatever they're doing,
even violating the law,
is something that we're unlikely to know
until we start having real investigations
and real transparency into
what it is that the government is doing.
Glenn Greenwald, congratulations again
on exposing what is a true scandal.
I appreciate you joining me.
I just heard from Lindsay,
and uh, she's still alive,
which is good, and free.
My rent checks apparently are no longer
getting through to my landlord,
uh, so they said if we don't pay them
in five days we'll be evicted,
which is strange
because I've got a system set
up that automatically pays them.
Uh, so there's that,
and apparently
there's construction trucks
all over the street of my house,
so that's uh...
I wonder what they're looking for.
It is... uh, it is an unusual feeling
that's kind of hard to...
hard to like describe or...
or convey in words,
but not knowing what's going to
happen the next day,
the next hour, the next week,
it's scary,
but at the same time it's liberating.
You know, the, uh...
the planning comes a lot easier
because you don't have that many
variables to take into play.
You can only act and then act again.
Now all these phone calls
are being recorded digitally,
not for content
but for origin and destination,
now word the government is going
right into the servers
of these large Internet companies.
How does the government,
politically speaking,
make the argument that this is
essential to national security
and not a dramatic overreach
in terms of personal privacy?
It's difficult Matt, because,
as Peter was pointing out,
overnight we had an extraordinary,
late-night... close to midnight...
announcement and a declassification
from the Director
of National Intelligence.
They are scrambling.
The administration's already supported
strongly by leaders in both parties
from the intelligence committees.
GCHQ has an internal Wikipedia,
at the top secret,
you know, super classified level, uh,
where anybody working intelligence
can work on anything they want.
Yep.
That's what this is, I'm giving it to you,
you can make the decisions on that,
what's appropriate, what's not.
It's going to be
documents of different types,
pictures and PowerPoints,
Word documents, stuff like that.
- Um...
- Sorry, can I take a seat?
Yeah.
Sorry, I get you to repeat,
so in these documents they all show...
Yeah, there'll be a couple
more documents on that,
that's only one part though.
Like, it talks about Tempora
and a little more thing,
that's the Wiki article itself.
It was also talking about
a self-developed tool
called UDAQ, U-D-A-Q.
It's their search tool
for all the stuff they collect,
was what it looked like.
It's going to be projects,
it's going to be troubleshooting pages
for a particular tool...
Thanks.
Um... what's the next step?
When do you think you'll go public?
Ah, I think it's pretty soon,
I mean with the reaction,
this escalated more quickly.
I think pretty much as soon as they start
trying to make this about me,
which should be any day now.
Yep.
I'll come out just to go,
"Hey, this is not a question of somebody
skulking around in the shadows."
These are public issues,
these are not my issues,
you know, these are everybody's issues.
And I'm not afraid of you, you know.
You're not going to bully me into silence
like you've done to everybody else.
And if nobody else
is gonna do it, I will,
and hopefully when I'm gone,
whatever you do to me,
there will be somebody else
who'll do the same thing.
It'll be the sort of Internet
principle of the hydra.
You know, you can stomp one person,
but there's gonna be seven more of us.
Yeah.
Are you getting more nervous?
I mean, no.
I think, uh...
I think the way I look at stress,
particularly because I sort of
knew this was coming,
you know, because I sort of volunteered
to walk into it, um...
I'm already sort of familiar
with the idea.
I'm not worried about it.
When somebody, like, busts in the door?
Suddenly I'll get nervous,
and it'll affect me,
but until they do...
I don't know, you know.
I'm eating a little less,
that's the only difference, I think.
Let's talk about the issue with,
when we're gonna say who you are.
Yeah.
This is, you know, you have to
talk me through this.
Because I have a big worry about this.
Okay, tell me.
Which is that, if we come out and...
I know that you believe
that your detection
is inevitable and that
it's inevitable imminently.
There's, you know,
in the New York Times today,
Charlie Savage, the fascinating
Sherlock Holmes of political reporting,
deduced that the fact that there's
been these leaks in succession
probably means that there's some
one person who decided to leak...
Somebody else quoted you
as saying it was one of your readers,
and somebody else put another thing,
So, you know, it's fine.
I want people...
I want it to be like,
you know, like, this is a person...
I want to start introducing the concept
that this is a person
who has a particular set
of political objectives
about informing the world
about what's taking place.
So I'm keeping it all
anonymous, totally,
but I want to start introducing you
in that kind of incremental way.
But... here's the thing.
What I'm concerned is that
if we come out and say,
"Here's who this is,
here's what he did,"
the whole thing that we talked about,
that we're gonna basically be doing
the government's work for them.
And we're basically
going to be handing them,
you know, a confession,
and helping them identify who found it.
Maybe you're right,
maybe they'll find out quickly,
and maybe they'll know,
but is there any possibility
that they won't?
Are we kind of giving them
stuff that we don't... or, or...
The possibility that they know
but they don't want to reveal it
because they don't know.
Or that they don't know and we're
going to be telling them, like...
Is it a possibility that they're going
to need two, three months of uncertainty,
and we're going to be
solving that problem for them?
Or, let me just say, the or part,
maybe it doesn't matter to you,
maybe you wanted...
You're not coming out
because you think inevitably
they're going to catch you,
and you want to do it first,
you're coming out because
you want to fucking come out.
- And you wanna be heard.
- Well, there is that.
I mean that's the thing,
I don't want to hide on this
and skulk around,
I don't think I should have to.
Um, obviously there are circumstances
that are saying that,
and I think it is powerful
to come out and be like,
look, I'm not afraid, you know,
and I don't think
other people should either.
I was sitting in the office
right next to you last week.
You know, we all have a stake in this.
This is our country.
And the balance of power between
the citizenry and the government
is becoming that of the ruling
and the ruled
as opposed to actually, you know,
the elected and the electorate.
Okay, so that's what I needed
to hear, that this is not about...
But I do want to say:
I don't think there's a case
that I'm not going to be discovered
in the fullness of time,
it's a question of time frame.
You're right, it could take them
a long time. I don't think it will.
But I didn't try to hide
the footprint because again,
I intended to come forward
the whole time.
I'm going to post this morning just
a general defense of whistleblowers...
That's fine, yeah.
...and you in particular without
saying anything about you.
I'm gonna go post that
right when I get back.
And I'm also doing like
a big fuck-you to all the people
who keep, like,
talking about investigations.
I want that to be...
The fearlessness and the fuck-you to,
like, the bullying tactics has gotta be
completely pervading everything we do.
And I think that's brilliant.
Your principles on this I love,
I can't support them enough.
Because it's inverting the model
that the government has laid out,
where people who are trying to,
you know, say the truth
skulk around and they hide in the dark
and they quote anonymously
and whatnot...
I say yes, fuck that, let's just...
Okay, so here's the plan then.
And this is the thing.
I think we just all felt the fact
that this is the right way to do it.
You feel the power of your
choice, you know what I mean?
I want that power
to be felt in the world.
And it is...
it's the ultimate standing up to them.
Right, like,
"I'm not gonna fucking hide,
even for like one second,
I'm gonna get right in your face.
You don't have to investigate,
there's nothing to investigate,
here I am."
- Yeah.
- You know?
And I just think that is
just incredibly powerful.
And then the question just becomes
how do we do this in the right...
you know, the perfect way,
and that's my burden.
And that's what I'm gonna...
So today is gonna be
the story in the morning,
assuming that it doesn't change
with The Guardian,
it's gonna be the story in the morning,
just to keep the momentum going,
just to keep the disclosures coming,
a big one at night.
Now it's becoming, like, okay,
this is a major leak, and after today,
when we post the two things
that we're gonna post,
it's gonna be,
"What the fuck is this leak,
and who did it," I guarantee you.
I just want to make sure...
move over slightly.
Do you want me to move
a little more over, or, okay.
I just wanna... all right.
All right, we're rolling.
So let's just begin with some
basic background information,
like, just state your name,
what position you held
in the intelligence community,
and... and how long you
worked within that community.
Okay, um, just so I'm aware of
where we're going,
how in depth are we going,
just in general,
like 'I'm currently
an infrastructure analyst
you know, Booz Allen Hamilton,
not going through
my whole back story...'
- Yeah.
- Okay.
Just like, yeah, summary kind of...
Okay.
Uh, My name's Ed Snowden,
I'm, uh, 29 years old,
I work for Booz Allen Hamilton
as an infrastructure analyst
for NSA, uh, in Hawaii.
And what are some of the positions
that you held previously within
the intelligence community?
Uh, I've been, uh, a systems engineer,
systems administrator,
uh, senior advisor, uh, for the, uh,
Central Intelligence Agency,
solutions consultant and a, uh,
telecommunications informations
systems officer.
And what kind of clearances have...
have you held,
what kind of classification?
Uh, Top Secret, uh... Hm...
So people in my levels of access
for systems administration
or as a... a infrastructure analyst,
typically have, uh, higher accesses
than an NSA employee
would normally have.
Normal NSA employees have
a combination of clearances
called TS, SI, TK, and Gamma.
Um, that's Top Secret,
uh, Signals Intelligence,
Talent Keyhole, and Gamma.
And they all,
uh, relate to certain things
that are sort of core
to the NSA mission.
As a systems administrator,
you get a special clearance
called PRIVAC,
for Privileged Access,
which allows you to be exposed
to information of any classification,
regardless of what your position
actually needs.
Just before we go,
a reminder of our top story,
that's that
the former CIA technical worker
Edward Snowden says he's responsible
for leaking information
that US authorities had been
monitoring phone and Internet data.
The US Justice Department confirmed
it's in the first stages
of a criminal investigation.
Leave it longer or cut it shorter,
what do you think?
As far as the video that people saw?
- Am I less identifiable now?
- Lose it?
Cause I can't go all the way down.
It's still gonna be stubble.
I don't have the blade for closer.
Will you be talking to any
other media about this story today?
I am.
Will you be coming to our
office at Associated Press?
We'd be interested to ask about where
is Snowden now, what his plans are.
I'm not going to talk about that,
so unless you have other questions,
it's gonna be a fruitless interview.
What are your plans, please?
Are you staying in Hong Kong
for the time being?
For a little while.
And do you have any hopes
to write more about this story,
or are you stopping
new writing about this story?
No, I'm gonna continue
to write about it.
Have you had any pressure
from the US authorities
- about continuing to report on this?
- No.
And have you heard anything
about what could be the attitude
of Hong Kong authorities
towards this case,
whether they've contacted you
or asked you anything about
the whereabouts of Snowden
and whether that is another...
I haven't heard from the authorities
of any government.
And where do you think
the story is going, for you
and of course for Snowden,
and of course for the US media
and the US administration in general?
Well, for me I can tell, I'm
gonna continue to report on...
do my reporting on what
the government has been doing
and what I think my readers
should know about.
Um, as for him, I don't...
I don't think anyone knows.
They could have people come after me
or any of their third-party partners.
You know, they work closely
with a number of other nations.
Or, you know,
they could pay off the triads.
You know, any of their agents or assets,
uh... we have a CIA station
just up the road,
at the consulate here in Hong Kong.
Hello, I'm Daniela Ritorto.
The top story this hour:
facing a criminal investigation,
the whistleblower who revealed details
on how the US is monitoring phone
calls and Internet data goes public.
Security forces in Afghanistan
say a number of Taliban insurgents
have targeted Kabul's airport.
Now it's time for our newspaper review
and looking at what's making
headlines around the world.
Let's start with The Guardian,
our top story,
which is revealing the identity
of the former CIA employee
who the paper says leaked information
exposing the scale of American
surveillance of the Internet.
Edward Snowden.
What a great story.
Kira, Ewen, what do you think?
Well, I think it's a fantastic story...
first off, it could be straight
out of a John Le Carre novel.
I mean, when you read what he did,
yes, he got the material.
He then decided to go
to the place he identified
as being very difficult
for America to get at him...
God damn it.
...which is Hong Kong, because,
of course, technically inside China,
the one country,
two systems policy there,
meaning he would get potentially
some protection abroad.
All very well-planned. It could have
been just out of a spy novel.
But what about the details?
Well, that could make it worse, but...
I don't know, only shows
the lower half of my face.
Snowden says he'd become
increasingly dismayed
by what he saw as
the growing power of the NSA,
hence his decision to pass on documents
which are said to reveal
not only that the organization
monitored millions of phone calls,
but that it had direct access
to some of the biggest...
How do you feel?
Um...
what happens, happens.
We've, uh, we've talked about this.
I knew what the risks were.
If I get arrested, I get arrested.
Um...
We were able to get the information,
uh, that needed to get out, out.
And you and Glenn
are able to keep reporting,
regardless of what happens to me.
Now what 29-year-old
Edward Snowden said that US...
The Guardian newspaper
reveals his identity...
Yes?
...from Washington,
David Willis has this.
Uh, I'm sorry, who's asking?
Uh, I'm afraid you have the wrong room.
Thank you.
Wall Street Journal.
Yes?
Uh, I'm sorry, say again?
Uh, no. No thank you. No calls.
I think they have the wrong number.
Yeah, no calls. Thank you.
Uh, wait, I'm sorry.
If it's uh, if it's two men
from the front desk,
they can call, but no outside calls...
Wait, actually, just let them through.
Wait, wait, ma'am? Fuck!
Yes?
Uh, wait, is it... is it a lawyer?
Yeah, no, no, no, I mean
the people who are asking,
ask them if they are lawyers.
Uh, no. Tell her that, uh,
she has the wrong number
and there's no Mr. Snowden here.
Hi, Robert, can you talk right now?
I safely got into the room.
I'm now safely with the client, okay?
So, can we talk together about the plan?
Did this application start already
or what? Technically?
Yeah, but...
So technically it hasn't started yet.
Would you mind to talk in speakerphone?
Sorry.
Hey, Robert.
Yeah, hi.
Hi, I'm the client.
Hi, Edward, how are you holding up?
Uh, pretty good. I'm doing well.
Okay, I just met with the head
of the UNHCR here in Hong Kong,
and they are aware that you are raising
the protection you are entitled to
under the UNHCR and
and they would like you
to come in with us to the UN.
Okay.
If you come now, it's lunchtime,
but they're gonna let us in.
No one else can get in.
Okay.
At the UNHCR there are
separate exits from the building
so we have a good opportunity,
if any of the media
finds out you're there...
Yeah.
...you'll be able to exit
a different way from the building.
Okay, that's great.
Is it okay if I bring equipment?
'Cause I'm just kind of going
so I can leave in any direction
at any time
and not come back, if necessary.
Just walk out of there.
You don't have to go back.
Okay.
Take whatever you want with you,
and just go with Mr. Man.
I will pick you... he knows where
I'm gonna pick you guys up,
and then I'll bring you to the UNHCR.
Okay, that sounds good.
Thank you, uh, thank you
so much for helping me.
He's quite worried about the next step,
about accommodation,
where he is going to stay,
whether there is something private and
he would not be discovered by the police.
Don't worry about that now.
Let's just get him to the UN.
Okay, I see.
Okay, I will give you a call
before we start, okay?
- Okay, thank you.
- Okay, thank you.
- Bye-bye.
- Bye.
So...
We don't have a car.
Okay.
What I'm thinking...
we may ask the concierge
to arrange a car,
or we just go down and catch a taxi.
But it's quite...
The traffic here in Tsim Sha Tsui
is quite difficult to get a taxi.
Yeah...
And so is there a precedent for this,
where Hong Kong would extradite
someone for political speech?
No, I'm not aware of.
But if we have a torture claim
or asylum-seeking claim,
then they ought, under the law,
they ought to give you recognizance
for you to stay in Hong Kong
because they don't know
where to dump you back yet.
The president certainly
does not welcome the way
that this debate has earned
greater attention in the last week,
the leak of classified information
about sensitive programs
that are important in our fight
against terrorists
who would do harm to Americans,
is a problem.
But the debate itself is legitimate
and should be engaged.
"The US Spied on Millions of
Brazilian Emails and Phone Calls"
I'd like to show you
the new document now.
You'll see it much more clearly.
This map shows the cables they use
to collect the data for PRISM.
Here it shows how much
they are collecting.
The thicker the line,
the more they're collecting.
You can see these lines,
the cables, are quite thick
in the south of Brazil
and up north in the Sea of Brazil.
So they're collecting a lot
through the PRISM program,
which I think is very important
because PRISM is Facebook,
Skype, YouTube, Yahoo, Hotmail.
And it shows a lot
is being stolen from Brazil.
But we don't know how much
the Brazilian government knows,
or whether it's collaborating
with Brazilian companies.
But we're going to know, I believe.
One day we will know everything.
Or almost everything.
Yes.
All right, so which ones
do we want here, then?
This is operational stuff,
so we mustn't say any of this...
So redact that.
Go... go to top.
What about the Alexander quote?
Yeah, that's in TARMAC.
"Why can't we collect
all the signals all the time?
Sounds like a good summer
homework project for Menwith."
Keith Alexander, the head of the NSA,
on a visit to UK.
- This one.
- Yeah.
Secret document, isn't it?
Secret document.
We've got a stick here that should
just have three single slides on them.
If it's got more than three single slides,
we have to be extremely careful.
- Yeah?
- Yeah, that's it.
This is really dangerous
stuff for us, The Guardian, isn't it?
You make mistakes and at the very end
where we kept it all under lock and key...
And no one knows. I'm not saying that...
They will come in and smack
the front door down if we...
if we elaborate on that.
He said the Prime Minister's
extremely concerned about this.
And they kept saying,
"This is from the very top."
As you can see on this map,
the flight that reportedly
has Snowden aboard
has almost reached
its destination here in Moscow,
scheduled to land in the
Russian capital within minutes.
As you may have heard,
there is a CIA Agent
who has revealed a lot of information,
and he is now trapped in the,
um, the airport in Moscow.
We managed to get him out of Hong Kong,
but when he landed
in the Moscow airport,
the American government
had canceled his passport.
So, formally, he hasn't
entered into Russian territory.
He is in the transit area
of the airport,
and one of our people
is accompanying him.
We are trying to arrange
a private jet to, um
take him from Moscow to Ecuador
or perhaps maybe Venezuela
or maybe Iceland,
countries where he will be safe.
The floor is yours,
for the time that you deem necessary.
Thank you and hello.
First of all, Americans' justification
for everything
since the September 11 attacks
is terrorism.
Everything is in the name
of national security,
to protect our population.
In reality, it's the opposite.
A lot of the documents
have nothing to do with
terrorism or national security,
but with competition between countries,
and with companies' industrial,
financial, or economic issues.
Secondly, there's XKeyscore.
When we first started
publishing articles,
the US government's defense
was that it was not invading
the content of communications,
just taking the metadata.
That means the names
of the people talking,
who is calling whom, call durations.
But if I know all the people
you are communicating with,
and everyone
they are communicating with,
where you are
when you are communicating,
the call duration and the location,
then I can learn a lot
about your personality,
your activity, and your life.
This is a major invasion of privacy.
In reality, that defense
is totally false.
The US government has the ability
to get not only metadata,
but the actual content of your emails
or what you say on the phone,
the words you type into Google searches,
the websites you visit,
the documents you send to colleagues.
This system can track nearly everything
that every individual is doing online.
So if you're a journalist investigating
the American government,
if you work for a company
with American competitors,
or if you work in human rights
involving the American government,
or any other field,
they can very easily
intercept your communication.
If you're an American living in the US,
they have to seek permission
from a court,
but they always get it.
But if you're not American,
they don't need anything,
no special permission at all.
I think the consequences of eliminating
privacy are difficult to predict,
but we must understand that this
will have an enormous impact.
The population's ability
to have demonstrations
or to organize is greatly reduced
when people don't have privacy.
May I collect all phones, please?
Okay.
I have everything here, so...
Put them in the refrigerator.
So...
So as you know, in June,
Snowden was charged
with three legal violations,
felonies, principally under
a World War I-era criminal law
called the Espionage Act.
The Espionage Act
is an extremely broad criminal
prohibition against the sharing
or dissemination
of what's called
national defense information.
It was only used to,
uh, prosecute people
who had been accused of acting
with a foreign power.
Spies, not whistleblowers.
And it's a very unusual
legal representation, I think,
not just for all of you
but for me as well.
The Espionage Act does not
distinguish between leaks
to the press in the public interest
and selling secrets to foreign enemies
for personal profit.
So under the Espionage Act,
it's not a defense
if the information that was
disclosed should not have been
withheld in the first place,
that it was improperly classified,
it's not a defense if the dissemination
was in the public interest,
that it led to reforms,
um, even if a court determines
that the programs
that were revealed were illegal
or unconstitutional,
that's still not a defense
under the Espionage Act,
the government doesn't have
to defend the classification,
it doesn't have to demonstrate
harm from the release,
um, all of this is irrelevant.
So when we say
that the trial wouldn't be fair,
we're not talking about
what human rights lawyers
think of as fair trial practices.
We're saying the law,
the statute itself...
eliminates
any kind of defense that Snowden
might be able to make,
and essentially would equate him
with a spy.
And of course those
three counts could be increased
to a hundred or two hundred
or three hundred.
They could charge him separately
for each document
that has been published by a journalist.
And I think that...
that we all recognize,
even though we sit here
as lawyers in a lawyer's meeting,
that it's probably 95 percent politics
and five percent law
how this will be resolved.
Mr. Snowden has been charged
with very serious crimes,
and he should be returned
to the United States
where he will be granted
full due process
and every right available to him
as a United States citizen...
facing our justice system
under the Constitution.
No, I don't think
Mr. Snowden was a patriot.
I called for a thorough review
of our surveillance operations
before Mr. Snowden made these leaks.
My preference, and I think the
American peoples' preference,
would have been for a lawful,
orderly examination of these laws.
A thoughtful, fact-based debate,
uh, that would then lead us
to a better place.
Oh, my God. David.
Hello, my baby, how you doing?
- I'm okay.
- You okay?
Let's go.
I just want to go home.
Okay, okay, you just have to walk.
How are you?
Good, I'm totally fine,
I didn't sleep at all,
- I couldn't sleep.
- I know.
"Brazil Demands Explanation
from UK Government"
Recent reports have
revealed that the NSA
have access to encryption keys
and they paid tech companies
to introduce back doors
in encryption protocols.
So we're going to talk about
ways in which we can defend ourselves
against governments spying on us.
So Mr. Jacob Applebaum is an encryption
and security software developer
and journalist.
Ladar Levinson is the founder
of the encrypted email service
Lavabit, used by Edward Snowden.
You have the floor.
Thank you.
Lavabit is an email service
that hopefully one day will be able
to stand on its own without
any references to Snowden.
My service was designed to remove me
from the possibility of being
forced to violate a person's privacy.
Quite simply,
Lavabit was designed to remove
the service provider from the equation.
By not having logs on my server
and not having access
to a person's emails on disk,
I wasn't eliminating
the possibility of surveillance,
I was simply removing myself
from that equation.
In that surveillance would have
to be conducted on the target,
either the sender
or the receiver of the messages.
But I was approached by the FBI
quite recently
and told that because I couldn't
turn over the information
from that one particular user,
I would be forced to give up
those SSL keys
and let the FBI collect
every communication
on my network without
any kind of transparency.
And of course...
I wasn't comfortable with that,
to say the least.
More disturbing was the fact that
I couldn't even tell anybody
that it was going on.
So I decided if I didn't win
the fight to unseal my case,
if I didn't win the battle
to be able to tell people
what was going on,
then my only ethical choice left
was to shut down.
Think about that.
I believe in the rule of law,
I believe in the need
to conduct investigations.
But those investigations are
supposed to be difficult for a reason.
It's supposed to be difficult
to invade somebody's privacy.
Because of how intrusive it is.
Because of how disruptive it is.
If we can't... if we don't
have our right to privacy,
how do we have a free
and open discussion?
What good is the right to free speech...
if it's not protected...
in the sense that you can't have
a private discussion
with somebody else about
something you disagree with.
Think about the chilling effect
that that has.
Think about
the chilling effect it does have
on countries that don't have
a right to privacy.
I've noticed a really
interesting discussion point.
Which is that what people used
to call liberty and freedom,
we now call privacy.
And we say, in the same breath,
that privacy is dead.
This is something that really
concerns me about my generation.
Especially when we talk about
how we're not surprised by anything.
I think that we should consider that
when we lose privacy,
we lose agency, we lose liberty itself.
Because we no longer feel
free to express what we think.
There's this myth of the passive
surveillance machine.
But actually what is
surveillance, except control?
This notion that the NSA
are passive, this is nonsense.
What we see is that they actively
attack European citizens,
American citizens, and in fact,
anyone that they can
if they perceive an advantage.
And then there's the key
paragraph that says
it was the SCS that intercepted
Chancellor Merkel's mobile phone.
We have the number.
What will you tell the German people?
I'll have to give that in testimony.
- What are you going to tell?
- Everything I can, truthfully.
What will you talk about?
Whatever the questions they ask me.
- Yeah, I think it's over there.
- Okay, all right. Thank you.
Hello, Mr. Binney.
Hey, how are you? How are you?
Good to see you again.
Nice to meet you again, yes.
It is my pleasure to be here.
I feel that it's important to testify
about what's really going on
behind the scenes
in the intelligence communities
around the world.
Not just in NSA.
All those programs that
Edward Snowden has exposed
fundamentally are ways
of acquiring information.
Every dictatorship down through
history has always done that.
One of the first things they need to do
is try to acquire knowledge
of their population.
And that's exactly
what these programs do.
I see this as the most major threat
to our democracies all around the world.
What do you think
they're doing to reporters,
those of us that are working directly
with the Snowden documents?
How do you think they would approach
dealing with people like us?
You're on the cast iron cover list.
Which means any...
any electronic device you use
that they can attach to you they'll record
and capture all that data.
And what do they do with that data?
Trying to figure out what we're doing?
Uh, well, that's part of it,
but the other part for them I think
is to find the sources
of information you're getting.
So if I have a confidential source
who's giving me information
as a whistleblower,
and he works within the US government,
and he's concerned about
what he perceives as violations
of the Constitution,
and he gets in touch with me,
they... go ahead.
From there on, they would nail him
and start watching everything he did,
and if he started passing data,
I'm sure they'd take him off the street.
I mean, the way you'd have to do
it is like Deep Throat did, right?
In the Nixon years.
Meet in the basement
of a parking garage, physically.
"Let's disassociate
our metadata one last time...
so we don't have a record
of your true name
in our final communication chain.
This is obviously not to say
you can't claim your involvement,
but as every trick in the book
is likely to be used in looking into this,
I believe it's better that
that particular disclosure
come on your own terms.
Thank you again for all you've done.
So sorry again for the multiple delays,
but we've been in uncharted territory
with no model to benefit from.
If all ends well, perhaps
the demonstration that our methods worked
will embolden more to come forward.
Citizen."
So the update that I wanna give you
is about the new, um...
the new source that we...
Okay.
That... This is what...
This is the person
who's doing the most...
Mm-hmm, right.
...the work on it, um...
And now, basically what's happened is...
And...
That's actually...
that's really dangerous.
Um... on the source's side.
Do they know how to
take care of themselves?
I mean he... it's all being done...
through this.
Okay.
And they're all talking...
this way.
Okay.
I was gonna say,
one of the big questions there is,
can they handle it?
No, they're very careful.
- Even... through that. Yeah.
- Okay.
And...
That's where that is.
Wow, that's really something.
Did you know that?
It's not the actual planes.
Right, right, you mean the control.
It's the process,
who's sending the... yeah.
There's a chart.
There's like a whole layout
for every one...
That is really bold; it's really risky.
You know, that's the thing,
if they understand what they're doing...
There's this chart, it goes like this.
It shows the decision-making chart.
It's shaped like this:
- So up here it says...
- Mm-hmm.
That's the decision-making chart
for each... one.
- It's so political!
- This is this part's amazing.
- That's...
- That's fucking ridiculous.
This is... It's so shocking.
That's... that's the population
of entire countries.
That's what we're working on.
That person is incredibly bold.
But, um...
But also very well aware.
You know, I just hope... I mean...
No, I mean,
the boldness of it is shocking,
but it was obviously
motivated by what you did,
- I mean...
- This is going to.
This is going to
That could raise the profile...
of this whole political situation
with whistleblowing
to a whole new level.
- Exactly.
- It's gonna...
Yeah, I actually think
that's a great thing.
And I think people are gonna see
what's being hidden again,
again, by a totally different part
of the government.