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Curated research library of TV news clips regarding the NSA, its oversight and privacy issues, 2009-2014

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Primary curation & research: Robin Chin, Internet Archive TV News Researcher; using Internet Archive TV News service.

Speakers

Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: Now, I do believe him (Bob Litt) when he asserts that, you know, some sources of intelligence have gone dark. Some caps that we had up are no longer producing. But this is ordinary to the process of signals intelligence collection. People change their route and methods of communication all the time. As anyone knows, correlation do not imply causation. We also know from the evidence on record that there is no reason to suspect causation in the first place. And that there is actually no evidence for a correlation at all. Al Qaeda’s encryption methods have changed at the same rate in the same manner, in the last year that they had in years prior. The only study that has ever shown anything contrary was actually done by a contractor that is funded by the central intelligence agency's investment arm And so we really need to be careful about these kinds of things and the representations they make.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: It is entirely in dispute that damage has been caused at all by these revelations but the benefits of the disclosure are not in dispute. In fact, the Director of National Intelligence himself argues that it is necessarily in the public interest to know about these policies about these processes and the fact that they should not have been classified in the first place in the justifications that are being to disclose these programs. So how can it be that we use sort of the language it’s indisputable -- we haven't reaped the benefits. The answer is politics. And their understanding, you know, this is an agency, a community that sort of feels itself under threat. But this is unnecessary. If they were more open we wouldn't have these problems in the first place.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: What happened last year was preventable. It was avoidable. In the same way that the torture program itself was avoidable. I mean one of the things that was not well understood in the torture program was that individuals throughout the CIA and other factions within the government knew these programs were wrong on both a moral basis and on a legal basis, and they raised concerns about it. You know the second bullet point there showed people were concerned about how long it could go on for. The third bullet point shows that individuals were actually brought to tears as result of being confronted with the reality of these programs. Others transferred away, and others said prepare for something that has been never previously, this is unprecedented. And what is the response to this? When these whistleblowers within the agency raised concerns, as this shows, it went into official traffic. Which is extraordinary at the CIA.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: Because having worked at the CIA, the only things that go into official cable traffic are things that have been coordinated and agreed upon by a number of individuals. Typically only the chief of station in a country has release authority. The analysts write the report, the officers write the report, then they send it to their superiors who sends to his superior who talks a round table about, he sends it to the chief of station and it finally goes out. And they were questioning not just the legality of the programs -- The questions were rejected, they were buried and the head of the counter terrorism program said that these things, these concerns need to stop being put in official cable traffic. They need to stop being put on the official record. They need to be buried because such language is not helpful.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: And I think these are things that we as a society need to think about, how do we correct, how do we restructure the incentives to ensure when individuals have these serious concerns, when we see clearly unlawful activities occurring, as is still the case today, regardless of the justification that are being put forth by this, that, or the other. When you look at them on their face and they are clearly at least in dispute as to legality, how can we ensure they are protected and these decisions can be made not behind closed doors, but in public?
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: But we have also seen that mass surveillance is not beneficial in the context of terrorism. Despite all the mass surveillance that happened (Stellar Wind?)—in the wake of 2001, they did not, you know all of this 215 collection, all of this internet collection, all of this stuff that’s happening with retrospective search where you can go through the Gmail boxes. Or you can go to Facebook, I want to see your contacts, I want to see what you wrote. I want to see all your pictures, I want to see every IP address you ever checked in at, every device ID you used, all these things. They did not stop the Boston marathon bombings. In fact they may have contributed to causing them because they gave us a false sense of security. They made us think these individuals were not associated with terrorism despite the fact that we had intelligence from human sources, including actually from the Russians, we saw this guy going into Chechnya and saw this guy associating with terrorists, know terrorists, and said, hey, you might want to look at this guy. We didn’t do a good job.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: Same thing with overseas. Mass surveillance did not stop the London bombings. It did not stop the Madrid bombings. Mass surveillance has no proven track record. It should not be part of the policy, it should not be pursued. It should not be funded, because it takes resources away from things, method and mechanisms of investigation that we know work and that we know are effective. This is a very timely analog to the torture case. We know that rapport building interrogations work. We know that we becoming friends with these people and saying the interrogator is your advocate against your captors works. And all the intelligence that we got from the program that was beneficial was gained before we applied torture techniques, and yet we did not end it anyway. We funded it to the tune of millions of dollars. All of these individuals and all of these officials have never been held to account for what are unambiguous war crimes.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: The first thing that I would say is Google actually needs to stand in solidarity with the competitor here. And they need to get on the same page as Apple and say were going to encrypt –Now I believe the reason they have not done this so far although they don’t want to talk about it so far is probably because the benchmarks that have been done on their phones that have --encryption enabled, shows there is a pretty significant performance impact because they have some kind of driver problem, or – hardware--, whatever.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Snowden: Someone said previously it was not going to be about compelled disclosure, it is to be about remote exploitation using actual of flaws in websites, in devices. For judges to say, I think, this is the is >> and we are going around this is welcome for the government to say in this particular case we will authorize you to commit the criminal act hacking into this device for the purposes of a limited investigation, which is analogous to the way they tell police we will grant you a warrant to do a sneak and peek on this house or to kick in the door and search it. I think that is the biggest thing.
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Edward Snowden
whistleblower
CSPAN 12/12/2014
➢ Snowden: Someone said previously was it’s not going to be about compelled disclosure, it’s going to be about using exploitation using actual, remote exploitation, basically flaws in services, flaws in websites, flaws in devices. For judges to say, I think, I suspect that this is the direction we are going, there will be debate around this as well. For the government to say in this particular case we will authorize you to commit the criminal act, hacking into this device for the purposes of a limited investigation, which is analogous to the way they tell police we will grant you a warrant to do a sneak and peek on this house or to kick in the door and search it. I think that is the biggest thing.
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Showing 1551 through 1560 of 1708