This afternoon, the Free Snowden site, put
together by the Courage Foundation to do exactly what the site’s
name says, relayed questions sent via Twitter to National Security
Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden for responses. Then they hosted
Snowden’s answers.
Some notable points:
- Snowden thinks it’s possible for the United States to recover
from the damage caused by the surveillance scandal with new laws
and oversight. “We can correct the laws, restrain the overreach of
agencies, and hold the senior officials responsible for abusive
programs to account,” he writes. - America’s whistleblower protections are extremely weak in the
national security arena. Snowden had no “official channels” to
report this wrongdoing. “I still made tremendous efforts to report
these programs to co-workers, supervisors, and anyone with the
proper clearance who would listen,” he writes. “The reactions of
those I told about the scale of the constitutional violations
ranged from deeply concerned to appalled, but no one was willing to
risk their jobs, families, and possibly even freedom … .” - He thinks it’s “interesting” that President Barack Obama gave
his limp
NSA reform speech prior to the release of the report by the
Privacy and Civil Liberties Board declaring that the NSA’s mass
metadata collection system is
illegal and should be stopped. “When even the federal
government says the NSA violated the constitution at least 120
million times under a single program, but failed to discover even a
single ‘plot,’ it’s time to end ‘bulk collection,’ which is a
euphemism for mass surveillance,” he writes. “There is simply no
justification for continuing an unconstitutional policy with a 0%
success rate.” - He says he never stole anybody’s passwords or tricked coworkers
to get access he shouldn’t have, contrary to reports. - He says not all spying is bad. He is against the indiscriminate
mass surveillance of citizens who are not suspected of any
wrongdoing. “This is a global problem, and America needs to take
the lead in fixing it,” he writes. “If our government decides our
Constitution’s 4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable
seizures no longer applies simply because that’s a more efficient
means of snooping, we’re setting a precedent that immunizes the
government of every two-bit dictator to perform the same kind of
indiscriminate, dragnet surveillance of entire populations that the
NSA is doing.” - Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper under what conditions would he
return to the United States, Snowden responded that he wants to,
but the laws under which he’s charged forbid him from mounting a
fair defense for his actions. Over at Politico, Eric Holder says
the Department of Justice would offer Snowden a
plea deal to return home, which sounds like a typical tone deaf
response from our nation’s prosecutors. - When asked about the recent
BuzzFeed piece where anonymous government intelligence
officials said they wanted to kill Snowden, he responds he’s
concerned “that current, serving officials of our government are so
comfortable in their authorities that they’re willing to tell
reporters on the record that they think the due process protections
of the 5th Amendment of our Constitution are outdated concepts.
These are the same officials telling us to trust that they’ll honor
the 4th and 1st Amendments. This should bother all of us.” I would
add that it’s also a concern that even a relatively young media
outlet like BuzzFeed is already falling into the entrenched
Washington media habit of allowing government officials
anonymity — not for the purpose of providing valuable
information the public deserves to know, but to attack others
without having to risk any consequences.
Read the whole livechat here.
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