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Page added on December 8, 2016
Edward Snowden — A Brave Young Man and a Heroic American
Interview with Edward Snowden by Steven Erlanger
Q. There’s a campaign for President Obama to pardon you before he leaves office. For many people, you’re a whistle-blowing hero, and for many other people you’re a traitor who broke your oath and betrayed your country. Having knowingly broken the law and fled the jurisdiction of the American courts, why should you be granted asylum?
Snowden: Whether or not I should be granted a pardon is not for me to answer. By partnering with journalists, I sought to exercise our democratic system of checks and balances in a series of disclosures in 2013. The N.S.A.’s system of global mass surveillance was unlawful. And the courts agreed with me. Congress ultimately changed the law, putting new restrictions on the intelligence community’s powers.
I never published a single document on my own. I partnered with some of the most respected news outlets in the world: The Washington Post and The Guardian. These groups received the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for their reporting. This is why we have a free press in a democracy. The government has many great powers, particularly as they relate to the handling of state secrets, but it is the press that is charged with determining what information is truly within the public interest to know.
Daniel Ellsberg, a fellow whistle-blower who released the Pentagon Papers in 1971, put himself forward to the court, understanding that the history of civil disobedience is being willing to accept any punishment for the moral act of standing up against authority. Why would you not return to face a jury in America?
Snowden: Daniel Ellsberg himself has argued that I made the right decision not to present myself to the court. Things have changed since the 1970s, and today the law doesn’t allow you to make a defense against Espionage Act charges in front of the jury. I am legally prohibited from even speaking to the jury about my motivation.
Can there be a fair trial when you can’t put forward a defense? At the sentencing phase you can express to the judge why you did what you did, but that is not democratic. The jury system was created so you can discuss with your peers what you did, why you did it.
You’ve said that concrete improvements have transpired as a direct result of your revelations. Are you concerned that governments are still doing whatever they want to do by other means or that these results are transitory?
Snowden: Do I think things are fixed? No. Do I think that any whistle-blower, any single individual, can change the world? No, but I do believe that we have some oversight over our privacy rights now, and that things are improving in a material way. The United States has made some initial reforms, and European courts struck down the previous safe harbor agreement, where European companies handed over their citizens’ data to U.S. companies without any controls or guarantees of how that would be handled.
The U.S. has right now a two-tiered system of handling surveillance. If you’re a U.S. citizen, the government will go to a court to get a warrant before they spy on you. This is almost always a secret court called the FISA court, which in 33 years was asked roughly 34,000 times to authorize surveillance and only said no 11 times. They’re a rubber stamp. If you’re not a U.S. citizen, no warrant is required at all in most cases. That’s gotten a little bit better because some companies have actually begun resisting these demands. This is uncomfortable for some governments, but there is no question that this is very positive in terms of the protection of rights and the enforcement of due process around the world.
Stewart Baker, former general counsel for the National Security Agency, is against a pardon for you. He believes the benefits of the leaks could have been achieved with only three or four documents and that the flood of documents released harmed United States intelligence and national interests. Do you believe that if you’d leaked less you might have had the same effect?
Snowden: No. What he’s actually arguing here is not against me, it’s against journalism. He’s criticizing the journalists who continue to report on the archive and continue to break stories that are changing law and policy today.
What does it mean when we’re saying to journalists that it’s O.K. if they run the first three stories, but after they run the next three or the next 300, that’s too much? Who makes that decision? I believe that it should be the press. They’re the best placed to make those decisions, and that’s why we have the First Amendment.
I’m certainly with you there. You don’t speak a lot of Russian, and it’s not a place you particularly wanted to be. What do you do all day?
Snowden: I speak at conferences in Athens mostly.
It’s an income.
Snowden: No, but seriously, I’ve always been sort of an indoor cat. My life has been the internet. This is an explanation for why I was so moved by what I witnessed at the N.S.A. What we saw in 2013 wasn’t just about surveillance; it was about rights and democracy.
When many people think about privacy they think about their Facebook settings, but privacy is actually the fountainhead of all our rights. It is the right from which all others are derived and is what makes you an individual. It is the right to an independent mind and life.
Freedom of speech doesn’t have meaning without the protected space to speak freely. The same [goes] for freedom of religion: If you can’t decide for yourself what you want to worship, you’ll simply adopt whatever is popular or whatever the state religion is to avoid the judgment of others.
The less power you wield within society, the stronger your case for your personal privacy. If you’re an individual and you don’t really have any influence over anything, you are the target audience for which privacy was designed. If you’re a public official, if you enjoy an incredible amount of privilege and influence, transparency is intended for you. It’s the only way that we can hold you to the account of our standards and laws and be able to cast our votes in an informed way.
You’ve said that you think of yourself as still working for the United States. Could you explain what you mean by that?
Snowden: Being patriotic doesn’t simply mean agreeing with your government. Being willing to disagree, particularly in a risky manner, is actually what we need more of today. When we have this incredible, often fact-free environment where politicians can make claims and then they’re reported as truth, how do we actually steer democracy? If we have facts, we can help facilitate democracy, and this is my role.
23 Comments on "Edward Snowden — A Brave Young Man and a Heroic American"
Joe D on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 9:21 am
Edward Snowden — A Brave Young Man and a Heroic American
Absolutely!
GregT on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 10:53 am
“Being patriotic doesn’t simply mean agreeing with your government. Being willing to disagree, particularly in a risky manner, is actually what we need more of today.”
Spoken like a true patriot. Exercise the rights and freedoms allowed by the constitution, stand up for others who do the same, or lose them.
Cloggie on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 10:54 am
Edward Snowden is indeed a hero and should be given a free pass.
But on second thoughts, what Snowden revealed in 2013 wasn’t really that new for those who had been paying attention:
https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Factory-Ultra-Secret-Eavesdropping-America/dp/0385521324
(Bamford, 2008)
From a review:
After the 11 September 2001 attacks, the United States government launched a massive program to spy on millions of its own citizens. Through the top secret National Security Agency (NSA), it has pursued “access to billions of private hard-line, cell, and wireless telephone conversations;
Bamford casts light on this effort, including a detailed account of how spying on American citizens has been outsourced to several companies closely linked to Israel’s intelligence services.
It is well-known that the two largest American telecom companies AT&T and Verizon collaborated with the US government to allow illegal eavesdropping on their customers.
What is less well-known is that AT&T and Verizon handed “the bugging of their entire networks — carrying billions of American communications every day” to two companies founded in Israel. Verint and Narus, as they are called, are “superintrusive — conducting mass surveillance on both international and domestic communications 24/7,”
Virtually all US voice and data communications and much from the rest of the world can be remotely accessed by these companies in Israel, which Bamford describes as “the eavesdropping capital of the world.”
Israel’s spy agencies have long had a revolving-door relationship with Verint and Narus and other Israeli military-security firms.
Sissyfuss on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 1:13 pm
Cloggenstuffen, they have to destroy our freedoms in order to save them. Been our policy for centuries, ask the injuns.
Apneaman on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 1:54 pm
ClogO, I have read that James Bamford book and one of his earlier ones.
“They” have so much info they are tripping on it and it don’t matter anyway. Techno industrial civilization is doomed and so are the humans.
But, you go ahead and continue to spin your evil doer stories. Some things you even have right while some things are your, altright paranoia, German bitterness and pulled straight from your ass. None of that matters either – you need your stories to give your life meaning.
We are fast approaching the end of a big evolutionary experiment.
The humans are not in charge and never were.
Physics, chemistry and biologly are in charge.
Old dutch and the humans – “Couldn’t Get It Right”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwnC_8_ZeYE
Plantagenet on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 2:46 pm
It seems unlikely that Obama will pardon Snowden, since Snowden exposed the huge extent of Obama’s intrusive use of the NSA to spy on people in the USA and around the world.
Cheers!
rockman on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 3:23 pm
I certainly agree with the majority here. Govt overreach should always be scrutinized. But damn hard to do when it’s done covertly. As best as I can tell Snowden didn’t directly put any citizen in physical risk.
Snowden opponents probably also hold fast to the idea that every member of the military is obligated to follow any order. That’s not true: the UCMJ specifically states that no member of the military is required to commit any illegal act. I figure if the UCMJ is good for our military it should also apply to any govt employee or contractor. The “just following orders” defense didn’t work at Nuremberg so it shouldn’t work in the US today.
peakyeast on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 6:22 pm
We can conclude from many pieces of evidence – even recent evidence that there is not much that the US government hates more than real American Heroes trying to do real Justice and promote real Democracy.
What a shame!
Anonymous on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 8:01 pm
Yea, thats plantatard, ‘obama’ is da MAN. Here is a condensed timeline of ‘obama’s plot to spy on the entire world. Any by world we mean amerika, because amerika IS the world.
Hey Plantatard, I got a detailed timeline of ‘obama’s activities for you.
1942 – Barack Obama forms the OSS on the orders of then-president, whatshisname. In reality, it was barack obamas plan all along. Obama, cagey operator that he is, lets the ‘president’ to credit, knowing it throw plantatard of the trail.
1947 – Barack Obama forms the CIA
1952 – Barack Obama forms the NSA
1952 – 2000 – CIA and NSA are behind many evil and illegal acts. And Barack Obama was the mastermind behind it all. No really, all of it. (ask plantatard)
2001 – Obama passes the ‘patriot act’ – an act to be used against patriots because obama knows he’ll be president someday, and will need a law of questionable legality to go after Edward Snowden with.( In another 12 years).
2003 – Barack obama personally wires up the secret room at an AT+T facility in San Fran, and does pretty much all the other secret rooms at all the other telecom giants, because obama knows if you want a global system of mass-spying done right, you gotta wire it yourself.
2003 – 2012 Obama, now firmly in control of the universe, uses his new powers for evil.
2013 – Edward Snowden, reveals obamas plans for pan-universal domination(and spying on everyone from amoebas to amerikans) to Glenn Greenwald.
2016 – Plant is still a fucking retard.
Nony on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 8:28 pm
Snowden did the right thing.
TS SCI, myself, for several years. And not an NSA weenie, but in the field.
GregT on Thu, 8th Dec 2016 10:01 pm
“TS SCI, myself, for several years. And not an NSA weenie, but in the field.”
Let me guess, you worked at Sea-Tac for the TSA?
Theedrich on Fri, 9th Dec 2016 3:51 am
Thank God for Snowden and those like him. As has often been said, sunlight is the best deinfectant.
Cloud9 on Fri, 9th Dec 2016 6:19 am
Turn him loose.
Cloggie on Fri, 9th Dec 2016 7:37 am
The idea behind the original great American constitutionalist republic was that the executive was serving the public, not the other way around. That idea is currently demounced as “populism”.
Today the US deep state sees the American public as serfs that need to be totally controlled; enter NSA.
#ItsABigClubAndYouAintInIt
The only difference between the US and USSR is the constitution.
Once that has been abolished it is Gulag time again, this time on US soil and Anglosphere will morph into Oceania, exactly as Orwell predicted:
http://www.europaorientale.altervista.org/mappaindex.png
In that world Oceania (Judaic State), Euro-Siberia (Christian State), Islamic State and China (Confucian State) are in a state of perpetual war.
The counter vision, is the vision of Samuel Huntington and his multi-polar world, also based on centuries old identity:
https://s17.postimg.org/6wwnomfpb/worldmap.jpg
Huntington’s original map…
http://tinyurl.com/zpm2pdu
…has been slightly amended by me to take into account the realities of 2016 rather than 1993:
– rise of China towards eventually the largest power on earth
– Turkey no longer part of the West
– America disintegrating
If the Trumpeteers, formerly known as Reps, would be able to choose, they obviously would opt for the amended Huntington scenario rather than Orwell, but that requires a significant effort from them as well as from the continental Europeans. But it worked in 1776, so why not in the near future. In that scenario there is no Oceania, Dolfie would have loved it.lol
For the Orwell scenario to materialize, it only takes the old Soros guard to take back control again.
Cloggie on Fri, 9th Dec 2016 7:45 am
Should have added the point:
– Russia aspiring to become major member of Europe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gvbS09gN80
In 2014, even after EuroMaidan, Putin says at [16:39]
Francois Mitterrand spoke of a European confederation with Russia as a member. I think this opportunity still exists. We will have it in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39DSF93ab9c
6 weeks ago Putin received the German vice-chancellor with the greatest warmth, calls Germany a friend. His attitude hasn’t changed, sinced the geopolitical realities haven’t change (meteoric rise of China continues).
Hubert on Fri, 9th Dec 2016 12:42 pm
Oligarchs have taken over America.
Theedrich on Sat, 10th Dec 2016 4:13 am
Currently it does look like, instead of the new American century, we are going to have a Mongoloid millenium. Of course people like the nihilist alien Canuck ape in Burnaby, B.C., are terrified that somehow Whitey might suddenly decide to survive instead of going extinct. Given that his own extended family is turning yellow, no one can expect anything else from him or the Jew-led herd of which he is a part.
makati1 on Sat, 10th Dec 2016 4:27 am
Thee, there are NO pure Caucasians anymore. The trend is too ingrained to stop. If humans last long enough, everyone will have some degree of permanent tan. Get your genome read and see how much your genes are mixed. LOL
Cloggie on Sat, 10th Dec 2016 5:00 am
Thee, there are NO pure Caucasians anymore.
I beg to differ.
Here a whole stadium full, nationalist to the core:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ytNnG7G6JRc
More blacks dancing on the stage than in the public.
Boat on Sat, 10th Dec 2016 5:05 am
Clog,
When the German right asses got handed to them in WWII was the old Soros guard in charge?
One wonders how Putin is enjoying all his new immigrants and if each one is properly vetted.
Theedrich on Sat, 10th Dec 2016 5:26 am
The Germans lost WW II because the race-traitor Brits under Winston Ill-Church and the race-traitorous U.S. government under Sanhedrin control carpet-bombed their civilians.
Midnight Oil on Sat, 10th Dec 2016 5:55 am
Those Natzies lost WWII because of low octane fuel….get over it Adolf
Cloggie on Sat, 10th Dec 2016 11:34 am
When the German right asses got handed to them in WWII was the old Soros guard in charge?
Architect WW2: William Bullitt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Christian_Bullitt,_Jr.
Responsible for pushing Britain into the war guarantee for Poland. All the US had to do was to secretly encourage the Poles to do as they pleased in the Danzig matter and the more outrageous, the better, war was the goal after all. Don’t take it from me, take it from Chamberlain:
http://nationalvanguard.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/The-Forrestal-Diaries-excerpt.jpg
He was in the middle of it.
For a list of names of Jews who financially supported Churchill on the condition that he would agitate against Germany and lead Britain into war with Germany (for the second time), read:
https://www.amazon.de/Churchill-Hitler-Antisemitismus-politischen-Zeitgeschichtliche/dp/3428131347/ref=sr_1_6
Oh wait, you don’t read German, right?
No worries:
The main handler of Churchill was a Waley Cohen and CEO of Royal Dutch Shell in London. He wrote many important speeches for Churchill, agitating in Parliament.
Important in getting the war started was the slush fund consisting of mainly Jews, of which Cohen was the president:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-Sectarian_Anti-Nazi_League
…or Focus for short.
Before that it was named “American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights”, but they wanted not to stress too much the real character of the club.
Names: Brandeis, Wise, Untermeyer, Baruch and many others
Churchill, the best politician Jewish money can buy. It is the same everywhere in Anglosphere, all major politicians have their “handlers” who provide them with money… and an agenda.
In WW1 it was exactly the same story:
The meeting, where the ruin of Germany (via US war entry on the Lusitania pretext) was prepared and for which the Jews were 100% responsible, took place on February 1917 in the residence of Dr. Moses Gaster. Present were: sir Mark Sykes, Lord Rothschild, Herbert Bentwich, Joseph Cowen, James de Rothschild, Harry Sacher, Herbert Samuel, Chaim Weizmann and Nahum Sokolow.
Core of the deal was that International Jewry would get Palestine from Britain in return for the Jews bringing their American tin soldier serfs (that’s you, boat) in the war against Germany.
But dear boat, I know that this is pearls for the swines. Your brain is filled with media and Hollywood propaganda and their is zero interest on your side to hear anything else but self-serving propaganda.That’s OK, the truth will be handed over to you on a single page after the end of the American era.
Hope this helps.