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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

Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman of Google
CSPAN 12/12/2014
And I can assure you that the safest place to not keep it is anywhere else because of the level of attacks, first the Chinese attack and then later the N.S.A., GCHQ, whatever you want to call it attack. So it has affected our relations and in particular conversations in Europe where people are very sensitive to this. It's also caused us to tighten every procedure within our systems. So we're just a lot safer.
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Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman of Google
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Schmidt: we clearly do not want to encourage bulk data leaking. Imagine, again, think of all the data bases that exist about us, health records, tax records, where you are, what you’re doing, all that kind of stuff. It is not good for society to encourage people to do that (encourage bulk data leaking). On the other hand his (Edward Snowden’s) disclosures were helpful in shining a light on these practices that certainly people like myself and maybe you didn't know existed. We knew they were possible but the extent of them was a shock. Especially when it starts to, monitoring data traffic between Google servers where they're clearly monitoring traffic for people who are in the U.S., which as I understand, and I'm not a lawyer, is not their mission.
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Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman of Google
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Schmidt: The problem with the government request is it would be great if you're the government, to have a trap door. How do we, Google, know that the other government has not taken over the trap door from you? And we can't prove, and we're not endorsing this notion of a U.S. trap door. Which is precisely what the public safety people would like. Our argument, which I think is very clear now, and it’s true throughout the industry, is that the government has so many ways and properly so by the way to go in what we call the front door. They're called warrants. Okay? They're called good police work. They're called sitting the perpetrator in the desk with the guy in the front. You know you see this in the movies. All that kind of stuff. Just because you could put a trap door in does not mean that you do for all of the unintended consequences.
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Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman of Google
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Schmidt: Encryption in the hands of individuals is very empowering. And encryption is an incredibly powerful tool for freedom fighters in repressive regimes. But it also does allow people who are evil or nasty to communicate bilaterally. Now the good news is that these are systems are not that easy to use. We argue in the book and I'll say again that you're probably winning when the evil person is using a cell phone. Because, trust me, those cell phones if you're trying to find them and you're a government and you're willing to look for them, you can find them. The cell phones emit where they are. And, indeed, this is how Osama bin Laden was tracked down ultimately is through cell phone tapping according to the reports. So I'm not as sensitive to this argument that this is the only way to solve this problem.
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Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman of Google
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Schmidt: I have my own issues with the Patriot Act cause it’s a secret court and I think one of the great strengths of America has been an independent court system, proper balance of rights in individuals and I'll give you an example. I'm not advocating this so please don't say this. We can end essentially all crime in this city in a very short period of time except for emotional crime, that is spur of the moment crime, by massive surveillance. Now we should not do this. Other countries may choose to do that. The fact that you can do it, the fact that you can, for example, put cameras in every street corner and do face detection which is indeed what is happening in Britain is not something we should do. But I can assure you it'll effect crime. You want to be careful about these tools. They can be very seriously misused and, again, so we're clear that kind of mass surveillance is completely counter to what America is and counter to the American constitution.
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Eric Schmidt
Executive Chairman of Google
CSPAN 12/12/2014
Schmidt: I am not a fan of the Patriot Act and the reason is the secret court part of it. I understand secrecy has its purpose and so forth but our country over secrefies, whatever you want to call it, a lot of things. A lot of things are classified etc. etc. We would be a stronger country in almost all matters if we were less obnoxious about some of the classifications and some of the ways in which we collect data. I am quite convinced of it. The greatness of America is the speed with which we address problems and the way to do that is you do that with knowledge. So the answer is I was referring to the patriot act. I was not referring to general privacy. I actually care a lot about privacy and Google has worked very hard to improve your privacy.
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