Edward Snowden surprised a lot of people, no less the National
Security Agency, by showing up at TED 2014 in Vancouver,
Canada. Well, he “showed up” by video link to answer questions
posed by Chris Anderson. Anderson then offered the NSA a chance to
respond if it so chose—which it did, also by video link. The
contrast between the two interviews is interesting, with the
whistleblower discussing surveillance and Richard Ledgett, deputy
director of the National Security Agency, complaining about
disclosures and trying to put a positive spin on the spooks’
roles.
In part,
Edward Snowden says:
The best way to understand PRISM, because there’s been a little
bit of controversy, is to first talk about what PRISM isn’t. Much
of the debate in the U.S. has been about metadata. They’ve said
it’s just metadata, it’s just metadata, and they’re talking about a
specific legal authority called Section 215 of the Patriot Act.
That allows sort of a warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance of
the entire country’s phone records, things like that — who you’re
talking to, when you’re talking to them, where you traveled. These
are all metadata events. PRISM is about content. It’s a program
through which the government could compel corporate America, it
could deputize corporate America to do its dirty work for the NSA.
And even though some of these companies did resist, even though
some of them — I believe Yahoo was one of them — challenged them
in court, they all lost, because it was never tried by an open
court. They were only tried by a secret court. And something that
we’ve seen, something about the PRISM program that’s very
concerning to me is, there’s been a talking point in the U.S.
government where they’ve said 15 federal judges have reviewed these
programs and found them to be lawful, but what they don’t tell you
is those are secret judges in a secret court based on secret
interpretations of law that’s considered 34,000 warrant requests
over 33 years, and in 33 years only rejected 11 government
requests. These aren’t the people that we want deciding what the
role of corporate America in a free and open Internet should
be.
A
full transcript of his presentation offers the details of his
exchange.
The National Security Agency took exception to Snowden’s
characterization of the surveillance agency as a bunch of
privacy-violating snoops who operate behind the scenes with the
blessing of secretive rubber-stamp courts.
Richard Ledgett took on the task of providing the NSA’s official
response.
“There were some kernels of truth in there but a lot of
extrapolations and half truths,” he said, before calling for a
“fact-based conversation.”
He then went on to praise the quality of NSA personnel and the
wide variety of outlets Snowden should have used, in the
NSA’s humble opinion, to address his concerns about domestic
spying.
In response, Chris Anderson pointed out that official channels
didn’t work out so well for other NSA whistleblowers.
In fact, Snowden’s predecessors on the path of disclosure faced
prosecution, and
praised his headline-grabbing alternative means of reaching the
public.
Ledgett concedes that many private businesses are in a tough
situation because the U.S. government compels them to secretly
reveal their users’ data—but he justifies it by claiming that other
governments do the same thing.
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