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Monday, June 17, 2013
Edward Snowden Q&A - Questions and Answers
Edward Snowden sat down with The Guardian for an extended Question & Answer (Q&A) session that was opened up to an Internet Audience. Excerpts of his Q&A:
Let's begin with these: 1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking on their research facilities and universities? 2)
How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many
different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still
exist?
Answer:
1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other
whistleblowers, immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of
a fair trial at home, openly declaring me guilty of treason and that
the disclosure of secret, criminal, and even unconstitutional acts is an
unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it would be foolish to
volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of prison than
in it. Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against
legitimate military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked
civilian infrastructure such as universities, hospitals, and private
businesses because it is dangerous. These nakedly, aggressively criminal
acts are wrong no matter the target. Not only that, when NSA makes a
technical mistake during an exploitation operation, critical systems
crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the majority of
them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is
running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent
people. And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a
country we're not even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a
potential terrorist with the potential to kill fewer Americans than our
own Police? No, the public needs to know the kinds of things a
government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed" is
meaningless. 2) All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be
able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and
it cannot be stopped.
I should have asked you
this when I saw you but never got round to it........Why did you just
not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred country for asylum?
Answer:
Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare
their foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a
distinct possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel
with no advance booking to a country with the cultural and legal
framework to allow me to work without being immediately detained. Hong
Kong provided that. Iceland could be pushed harder, quicker, before the
public could have a chance to make their feelings known, and I would not
put that past the current US administration.
You have said HERE
that you admire both Ellsberg and Manning, but have argued that there
is one important distinction between yourself and the army private...
"I
carefully evaluated every single document I disclosed to ensure that
each was legitimately in the public interest," he said. "There are all
sorts of documents that would have made a big impact that I didn't turn
over, because harming people isn't my goal. Transparency is."
Are you suggesting that Manning indiscriminately dumped secrets into the hands of Wikileaks and that he intended to harm people?
Answer:
No, I'm not. Wikileaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they
carefully redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment
of public interest. The unredacted release of cables was due to the
failure of a partner journalist to control a passphrase. However, I
understand that many media outlets used the argument that "documents
were dumped" to smear Manning, and want to make it clear that it is not a
valid assertion here.
Did you lie about your
salary? What is the issue there? Why did you tell Glenn Greenwald that
your salary was $200,000 a year, when it was only $122,000 (according to
the firm that fired you.)
Answer:
I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not
all of those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about
earnings was that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take
pay cuts in the course of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most
I've been paid.
Why did you wait to
release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the world about the
NSA programs since before Obama became president?
Answer:
Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would
lead us toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes.
Many Americans felt similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming
power, he closed the door on investigating systemic violations of law,
deepened and expanded several abusive programs, and refused to spend the
political capital to end the kind of human rights violations like we
see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.
1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means. 2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?
Answer:
1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in
general, the reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has
access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for
anything they want. Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id
(IMEI), and so on - it's all the same. The restrictions against this
are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time.
Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake
justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is only
5% of those performed.
You can read the rest of the Edward Snowden Q & A Interview here.
Guardian staff
Guardian staff
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