t***h
发帖数: 5601 | 6 12.43pm ET
Final question from Glenn Greenwald:
Anything else you'd like to add?
Answer:
Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you
are not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US
Person / foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for
individualized suspicion, and is only applied to improve support for the
program. This is the precise reason that NSA provides Congress with a
special immunity to its surveillance.
12.41pm ET
Question:
So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public
debate? – tikkamasala
Answer:
Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now
seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my
girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless
surveillance in human history.
12.37pm ET
Follow-up from the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman:
Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the
Chinese government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give
a flat no?
Answer:
No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with
the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.
12.34pm ET
Question:
User avatar for AhBrightWings
AhBrightWings
17 June 2013 2:12pm
My question: given the enormity of what you are facing now in terms of
repercussions, can you describe the exact moment when you knew you
absolutely were going to do this, no matter the fallout, and what it now
feels like to be living in a post-revelation world? Or was it a series of
moments that culminated in action? I think it might help other people
contemplating becoming whistleblowers if they knew what the ah-ha moment was
like. Again, thanks for your courage and heroism.
Answer:
I imagine everyone's experience is different, but for me, there was no
single moment. It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior
officials to Congress - and therefore the American people - and the
realization that that Congress, specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly
supported the lies that compelled me to act. Seeing someone in the position
of James Clapper - the Director of National Intelligence - baldly lying to
the public without repercussion is the evidence of a subverted democracy.
The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not informed.
12.28pm ET
Question:
User avatar for Ryan Latvaitis
Ryan Latvaitis
17 June 2013 2:34pm
What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified
information that could improve public understanding of the intelligence
apparatus of the USA and its effect on civil liberties?
What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable
to listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined
court order from FISC?
Answer:
This country is worth dying for.
12.24pm ET
Question:
Do you believe that the treatment of Binney, Drake and others influenced
your path? Do you feel the "system works" so to speak? #AskSnowden
-- Jacob Appelbaum (@ioerror) June 17, 2013
Answer:
Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-
harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale,
scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience
are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for
it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply
build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an
even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they'll soon find
themselves facing an equally harsh public response.
This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to
sanity, constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still
has plenty of time to go down in history as the President who looked into
the abyss and stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would
advise he personally call for a special committee to review these
interception programs, repudiate the dangerous "State Secrets" privilege,
and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a tradition for all Presidents
forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by appointing a special
investigator to review the policies of their years in office for any
wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are
excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.
12.12pm ET
Question:
User avatar for Mathius1
Mathius1
17 June 2013 2:54pm
Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance? Id my
data protected by standard encryption?
Answer:
Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of
the few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so
terrifically weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.
12.10pm ET
Question:
US officials say terrorists already altering TTPs because of your leaks,
& calling you traitor. Respond? http://t.co/WlK2qpYJki #AskSnowden
-- Kimberly Dozier (@KimberlyDozier) June 17, 2013
Answer:
US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could
limit their authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly
false assertions about the value of these programs, as they did just
recently with the Zazi case, which court documents clearly show was not
unveiled by PRISM.
Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began
operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were
prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance
that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual
communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was
worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than
terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear
of falling victim to it.
Further, it's important to bear in mind I'm being called a traitor by
men like former Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a man who gave us the
warrantless wiretapping scheme as a kind of atrocity warm-up on the way to
deceitfully engineering a conflict that has killed over 4,400 and maimed
nearly 32,000 Americans, as well as leaving over 100,000 Iraqis dead. Being
called a traitor by Dick Cheney is the highest honor you can give an
American, and the more panicked talk we hear from people like him, Feinstein
, and King, the better off we all are. If they had taught a class on how to
be the kind of citizen Dick Cheney worries about, I would have finished high
school.
Updated at 12.11pm ET
12.04pm ET
Question:
User avatar for Spencer Ackerman Guardian staff
Spencer Ackerman
17 June 2013 4:16pm
Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will
provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in
exchange for asylum. Have/will you?
Answer:
This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as
the US media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK
or the PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government
misconduct. Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown
directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by
now.
11.55am ET
Question:
User avatar for MonaHol
MonaHol
17 June 2013 4:37pm
Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.
Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:
I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone,
from you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I
had a personal email.
Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?
Answer:
Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and
again, it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection
- policy is a one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical
protection - a near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The
filter is constantly out of date, is set at what is euphemistically referred
to as the "widest allowable aperture," and can be stripped out at any time.
Even with the filter, US comms get ingested, and even more so as soon as
they leave the border. Your protected communications shouldn't stop being
protected communications just because of the IP they're tagged with.
More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a
distraction from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless
surveillance does not become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95%
of the world instead of 100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these
Truths to be self-evident, that all US Persons are created equal."
11.41am ET
Question:
User avatar for HaraldK
HaraldK
17 June 2013 2:45pm
What are your thoughts on Google's and Facebook's denials? Do you think that
they're honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they're compelled
to lie?
Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you're
presented with a secret order that you're forbidding to reveal the
existence of, what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (
without revealing the order)?
Answer:
Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more
clear they were misleading and included identical, specific language across
companies. As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies
, we're finally beginning to see more transparency and better details about
these programs for the first time since their inception.
They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in
regard to specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from
ethical obligation. If for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple
refused to provide this cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do
you think the government would do? Shut them down?
11.40am ET
User avatar for Anthony De Rosa
Anthony De Rosa
17 June 2013 2:18pm
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?
2) NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of
reasons. The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section
702 authorities, Americans' communications are collected and viewed on a
daily basis on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They
excuse this as "incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone
at NSA still has the content of your communications. Even in the event of "
warranted" intercept, it's important to understand the intelligence
community doesn't always deal with what you would consider a "real" warrant
like a Police department would have to, the "warrant" is more of a templated
form they fill out and send to a reliable judge with a rubber stamp.
Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the
content of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a
record of it, or the actual content?
Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA
702, and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst
gets it. All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything
. And it gets saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with
waivers rather than warrants.
11.27am ET
Question:
User avatar for Anthony De Rosa
Anthony De Rosa
17 June 2013 2:18pm
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.
Updated at 11.41am ET
11.23am ET
Question:
User avatar for Gabrielaweb
Gabrielaweb
17 June 2013 2:17pm
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.
11.20am ET
Question:
User avatar for D. Aram Mushegian II
D. Aram Mushegian II
17 June 2013 2:16pm
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.
11.17am ET
Question:
User avatar for ActivistGal
ActivistGal
17 June 2013 2:15pm
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.
11.13am ET
Question:
User avatar for ewenmacaskill Guardian staff
ewenmacaskill
17 June 2013 3:07pm
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.
11.07am ET
Question:
User avatar for GlennGreenwald Guardian staff
GlennGreenwald
17 June 2013 2:11pm
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.
9.00am ET
Edward Snowden Q&A
It is the interview the world's media organisations have been chasing for
more than a week, but instead Edward Snowden is giving Guardian readers the
exclusive.
The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files
coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions
today on why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens,
the international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now
faces. Ask him anything.
Snowden, who has fled the US, told the Guardian he "does not expect to see
home again", but where he'll end up has yet to be determined.
He will be online today from 11am ET/4pm BST today. An important caveat: the
live chat is subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to
a secure internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and
disappear intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the
questions, please be patient.
To participate, post your question below and recommend your favorites. As he
makes his way through the thread, we'll embed his replies as posts in the
live blog. You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #
AskSnowden.
We expect the site to experience high demand so we'll re-publish the Q&A in
full after the live chat has finished.
Tweet #AskSnowden
Updated at 10.03am ET |
