Edward Snowden Question and Answers at Guardian June 2013
Was Fascinated at Edward Snowden Question and Answers at Guardian which kept me up to 3am this morning. Really interesting experience.
Below are the Questions and Answers and my really take
Question
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Edward Snowden
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Really Take
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Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US
hacking on their research facilities and universities?
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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.
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I think he gave information about Chinese breaches as present to them and get them onside in the future extradition case.
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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?
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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.
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Good answer as uncertainty of information he has gives him more power
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Why did you just not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred
country for asylum?
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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.
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As speculated went to Hong Kong as was easiest destination from Hawaii without going through transits were he could be stopped.
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You have said 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?
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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.
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Standard comment to keep wikileaks people onside.
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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.)
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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.
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He mentioned the $200,000 in the interview. But I give him more cred in trying to embellish his salary.
Helps argument in that he targeted Booz for the release of information
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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?
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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.
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Good Answer
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Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access"
means.
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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.
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Confusing and from me it means direct access means direct access to a database that has retrieved information from different sources.
Unless the SIGINT database has joins from all servers housed in different sources.
In end doesn't matter as power point presentation says direct access not him
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Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?
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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.
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This answer still needs to be fleshed out and we need to understand what new legal definition of warranted intercept means
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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?
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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.
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Sounds like meta data to me. Which is still bad in my books
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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)?
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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?
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Agree but there is to much anecdotal information about having separate servers in these large sources.
These companies need to have the legal shackles freed so that they can talk about that.
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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?
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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."
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Thats what a lot of people don't understand is the power of the system admin in that we are able to bypass the security filters setup by the program by accessing the information in different layers.
Not sure if this is possible by normal analysts though and am sure there are heaps of audit trails and flags
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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?
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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.
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US officials say terrorists already altering TTPs because of your
leaks, & calling you traitor. Respond?
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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.
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Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance?
[Is] my data protected by standard encryption?
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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.
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Do you believe that the treatment of Binney, Drake and others
influenced your path? Do you feel the "system works" so to speak?
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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.
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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?
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This country is worth dying for.
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Lucky for him he doesn't have any children or any major ties besides relationship he had with partner for more then 7 years.
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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.
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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.
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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?
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No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with
the Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.
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Key is who is supporting his safe house that he is staying in.
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So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a
public debate?
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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.
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Final Question: Anything else you’d like to add?
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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.
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Watching Questions and Answers live was a very good experience and give more evidence to me that he is not an agent of TPTB.
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