ALERT Edward Snowden Q&A: NSA whistleblower answers your questions 06/17/2013 11.23 EDT

The whistleblower behind the biggest intelligence leak in NSA history is answering
your questions about the NSA surveillance revelations – follow it live now

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower

• Edward Snowden is answering your questions about the NSA leaks live

• Post your questions in the comment section below and recommend your favorites

• We are posting Snowden's replies above the line

• You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSnowden

Edward Snowden Q&A

It is the interview the world's media organisations have been chasing for more
than a week, but instead Edward Snowden is giving Guardian readers the exclusive.

The 29-year-old former NSA contractor and source of the Guardian's NSA files
coverage will – with the help of Glenn Greenwald – take your questions today on
why he revealed the NSA's top-secret surveillance of US citizens, the
international storm that has ensued, and the uncertain future he now faces. Ask
him anything.

Snowden, who has fled the US, told the Guardian he "does not expect to see
home again", but where he'll end up has yet to be determined.

He will be online today from 11am ET/4pm BST today. An important caveat: the
live chat is subject to Snowden's security concerns and also his access to a secure
internet connection. It is possible that he will appear and disappear
intermittently, so if it takes him a while to get through the questions, please be
patient.

To participate, post your question below and recommend your favorites. As he
makes his way through the thread, we'll embed his replies as posts in the live
blog. You can also follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #AskSnowden.

We expect the site to experience high demand so we'll re-publish the Q&A in full
after the live chat has finished.

Guardian staff
GlennGreenwald
17 June 2013 2:11pm

Let's begin with these:

1) Why did you choose Hong Kong to go to and then tell them about US hacking
on their research facilities and universities?

2) How many sets of the documents you disclosed did you make, and how many
different people have them? If anything happens to you, do they still exist?

Answer:


1) First, the US Government, just as they did with other whistleblowers,
immediately and predictably destroyed any possibility of a fair trial at home,
openly declaring me guilty of treason and that the disclosure of secret, criminal,
and even unconstitutional acts is an unforgivable crime. That's not justice, and it
would be foolish to volunteer yourself to it if you can do more good outside of
prison than in it.

Second, let's be clear: I did not reveal any US operations against legitimate
military targets. I pointed out where the NSA has hacked civilian infrastructure
such as universities, hospitals, and private businesses because it is dangerous.
These nakedly, aggressively criminal acts are wrong no matter the target. Not
only that, when NSA makes a technical mistake during an exploitation operation,
critical systems crash. Congress hasn't declared war on the countries - the
majority of them are our allies - but without asking for public permission, NSA is
running network operations against them that affect millions of innocent people.
And for what? So we can have secret access to a computer in a country we're not
even fighting? So we can potentially reveal a potential terrorist with the potential
to kill fewer Americans than our own Police? No, the public needs to know the
kinds of things a government does in its name, or the "consent of the governed"
is meaningless.

2) All I can say right now is the US Government is not going to be able to
cover this up by jailing or murdering me. Truth is coming, and it cannot be
stopped.








Guardian staff
ewenmacaskill
17 June 2013 3:07pm

I should have asked you this when I saw you but never got round to it........Why
did you just not fly direct to Iceland if that is your preferred country for asylum?

Answer:

Leaving the US was an incredible risk, as NSA employees must declare their
foreign travel 30 days in advance and are monitored. There was a distinct
possibility I would be interdicted en route, so I had to travel with no advance
booking to a country with the cultural and legal framework to allow me to work
without being immediately detained. Hong Kong provided that. Iceland could be
pushed harder, quicker, before the public could have a chance to make their
feelings known, and I would not put that past the current US administration.

ActivistGal
17 June 2013 2:15pm

You have said HERE that you admire both Ellsberg and Manning, but have argued
that there is one important distinction between yourself and the army private...


Are you suggesting that Manning indiscriminately dumped secrets into the hands
of Wikileaks and that he intended to harm people?

Answer:

No, I'm not. Wikileaks is a legitimate journalistic outlet and they carefully
redacted all of their releases in accordance with a judgment of public interest.
The unredacted release of cables was due to the failure of a partner journalist to
control a passphrase. However, I understand that many media outlets used the
argument that "documents were dumped" to smear Manning, and want to make it
clear that it is not a valid assertion here.







D. Aram Mushegian II
17 June 2013 2:16pm

Did you lie about your salary? What is the issue there? Why did you tell Glenn
Greenwald that your salary was $200,000 a year, when it was only $122,000
(according to the firm that fired you.)

Answer:

I was debriefed by Glenn and his peers over a number of days, and not all of
those conversations were recorded. The statement I made about earnings was
that $200,000 was my "career high" salary. I had to take pay cuts in the course
of pursuing specific work. Booz was not the most I've been paid.






Gabrielaweb
17 June 2013 2:17pm

Why did you wait to release the documents if you said you wanted to tell the
world about the NSA programs since before Obama became president?

Answer:

Obama's campaign promises and election gave me faith that he would lead us
toward fixing the problems he outlined in his quest for votes. Many Americans felt
similarly. Unfortunately, shortly after assuming power, he closed the door on
investigating systemic violations of law, deepened and expanded several abusive
programs, and refused to spend the political capital to end the kind of human
rights violations like we see in Guantanamo, where men still sit without charge.








Anthony De Rosa
17 June 2013 2:18pm

1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?

Answer:

1) More detail on how direct NSA's accesses are is coming, but in general, the
reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw
SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want. Phone
number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same.
The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can
change at any time. Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily
fooled by fake justifications. For at least GCHQ, the number of audited queries is
only 5% of those performed.

Anthony De Rosa
17 June 2013 2:18pm

1) Define in as much detail as you can what "direct access" means.

2) Can analysts listen to content of domestic calls without a warrant?



2) NSA likes to use "domestic" as a weasel word here for a number of reasons.
The reality is that due to the FISA Amendments Act and its section 702
authorities, Americans’ communications are collected and viewed on a daily basis
on the certification of an analyst rather than a warrant. They excuse this as
"incidental" collection, but at the end of the day, someone at NSA still has the
content of your communications. Even in the event of "warranted" intercept, it's
important to understand the intelligence community doesn't always deal with
what you would consider a "real" warrant like a Police department would have to,
the "warrant" is more of a templated form they fill out and send to a reliable
judge with a rubber stamp.


Glenn Greenwald follow up: When you say "someone at NSA still has the content
of your communications" - what do you mean? Do you mean they have a record
of it, or the actual content?

Both. If I target for example an email address, for example under FAA 702,
and that email address sent something to you, Joe America, the analyst gets it.
All of it. IPs, raw data, content, headers, attachments, everything. And it gets
saved for a very long time - and can be extended further with waivers rather
than warrants.






HaraldK
17 June 2013 2:45pm

What are your thoughts on Google's and Facebook's denials? Do you think that
they're honestly in the dark about PRISM, or do you think they're compelled to lie?

Perhaps this is a better question to a lawyer like Greenwald, but: If you're
presented with a secret order that you're forbidding to reveal the existence of,
what will they actually do if you simply refuse to comply (without revealing the
order)?

Answer:

Their denials went through several revisions as it become more and more clear
they were misleading and included identical, specific language across companies.
As a result of these disclosures and the clout of these companies, we're finally
beginning to see more transparency and better details about these programs for
the first time since their inception.

They are legally compelled to comply and maintain their silence in regard to
specifics of the program, but that does not comply them from ethical obligation. If
for example Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple refused to provide this
cooperation with the Intelligence Community, what do you think the government
would do? Shut them down?

MonaHol
17 June 2013 4:37pm

Ed Snowden, I thank you for your brave service to our country.

Some skepticism exists about certain of your claims, including this:

I, sitting at my desk, certainly had the authorities to wiretap anyone, from
you, or your accountant, to a federal judge, to even the President if I had a
personal email.

Do you stand by that, and if so, could you elaborate?

Answer:

Yes, I stand by it. US Persons do enjoy limited policy protections (and again,
it's important to understand that policy protection is no protection - policy is a
one-way ratchet that only loosens) and one very weak technical protection - a
near-the-front-end filter at our ingestion points. The filter is constantly out of
date, is set at what is euphemistically referred to as the "widest allowable
aperture," and can be stripped out at any time. Even with the filter, US comms
get ingested, and even more so as soon as they leave the border. Your protected
communications shouldn't stop being protected communications just because of
the IP they're tagged with.

More fundamentally, the "US Persons" protection in general is a distraction
from the power and danger of this system. Suspicionless surveillance does not
become okay simply because it's only victimizing 95% of the world instead of
100%. Our founders did not write that "We hold these Truths to be self-evident,
that all US Persons are created equal."

Spencer Ackerman
17 June 2013 4:16pm

Edward, there is rampant speculation, outpacing facts, that you have or will
provide classified US information to the Chinese or other governments in
exchange for asylum. Have/will you?

Answer:

This is a predictable smear that I anticipated before going public, as the US
media has a knee-jerk "RED CHINA!" reaction to anything involving HK or the
PRC, and is intended to distract from the issue of US government misconduct. Ask
yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn't I have flown directly into Beijing?
I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

Kimberly Dozier @KimberlyDozier

US officials say terrorists already altering TTPs
because of your leaks,
& calling you traitor. Respond?
http://www.guardiannews.com #AskSnowden

9:34 AM - 17 Jun 2013



Answer:

US officials say this every time there's a public discussion that could limit their
authority. US officials also provide misleading or directly false assertions about
the value of these programs, as they did just recently with the Zazi case, which
court documents clearly show was not unveiled by PRISM.

Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began
operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were
prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance
that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual
communications were ingested to acheive that, and ask yourself if it was worth it.
Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've
been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.

Mathius1
17 June 2013 2:54pm

Is encrypting my email any good at defeating the NSA survelielance? Id my data
protected by standard encryption?

Answer:

Encryption works. Properly implemented strong crypto systems are one of the
few things that you can rely on. Unfortunately, endpoint security is so terrifically
weak that NSA can frequently find ways around it.

Jacob Appelbaum @ioerror

Do you believe that the treatment of Binney,
Drake and others influenced your path?
Do you feel the "system works"
so to speak? #AskSnowden
11:00 AM - 17 Jun 2013




Answer:

Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh
responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and
skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to
ignore wrong-doing simply because they'll be destroyed for it: the conscience
forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers.
If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me,
they can be assured that they'll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh
public response.

This disclosure provides Obama an opportunity to appeal for a return to sanity,
constitutional policy, and the rule of law rather than men. He still has plenty of
time to go down in history as the President who looked into the abyss and
stepped back, rather than leaping forward into it. I would advise he personally
call for a special committee to review these interception programs, repudiate the
dangerous "State Secrets" privilege, and, upon preparing to leave office, begin a
tradition for all Presidents forthwith to demonstrate their respect for the law by
appointing a special investigator to review the policies of their years in office for
any wrongdoing. There can be no faith in government if our highest offices are
excused from scrutiny - they should be setting the example of transparency.

Ryan Latvaitis
17 June 2013 2:34pm

What would you say to others who are in a position to leak classified information
that could improve public understanding of the intelligence apparatus of the USA
and its effect on civil liberties?

What evidence do you have that refutes the assertion that the NSA is unable to
listen to the content of telephone calls without an explicit and defined court order
from FISC?

Answer:

This country is worth dying for.

AhBrightWings
17 June 2013 2:12pm

My question: given the enormity of what you are facing now in terms of
repercussions, can you describe the exact moment when you knew you absolutely
were going to do this, no matter the fallout, and what it now feels like to be living
in a post-revelation world? Or was it a series of moments that culminated in
action? I think it might help other people contemplating becoming whistleblowers
if they knew what the ah-ha moment was like. Again, thanks for your courage
and heroism.

Answer:

I imagine everyone's experience is different, but for me, there was no single
moment. It was seeing a continuing litany of lies from senior officials to Congress
- and therefore the American people - and the realization that that Congress,
specifically the Gang of Eight, wholly supported the lies that compelled me to act.
Seeing someone in the position of James Clapper - the Director of National
Intelligence - baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a
subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not
informed.

Follow-up from the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman:

Regarding whether you have secretly given classified information to the Chinese
government, some are saying you didn't answer clearly - can you give a flat no?


Answer:

No. I have had no contact with the Chinese government. Just like with the
Guardian and the Washington Post, I only work with journalists.

Question:

So far are things going the way you thought they would regarding a public
debate? – tikkamasala

Answer:

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now
seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend
looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in
human history.

Final question from Glenn Greenwald:

Anything else you’d like to add?

Answer:

Thanks to everyone for their support, and remember that just because you are
not the target of a surveillance program does not make it okay. The US Person /
foreigner distinction is not a reasonable substitute for individualized suspicion,
and is only applied to improve support for the program. This is the precise reason
that NSA provides Congress with a special immunity to its surveillance.

OK
A few funny parts:


WeeLaura ‏@WeeLaura
If a phoenix falls in a bathtub
and the NSA doesn't see it,
does it make a noise? #AskSnowden

He's a hero. Period. Like prophets, whistle blowers are not respected in their own countries...

If his movements can be unwound sufficiently for the spooks to be reasonably sure they have found all the copies of his documents, he will be snuffed out like a tea light. I'm sure he has a deadman switch on releasing information, should he meet an "untimely" demise. I know I would.

I'm starting to like this guy

"baldly lying to the public without repercussion is the evidence of a
subverted democracy. The consent of the governed is not consent if it is not
informed."

PossibleImpact, thanks for posting this! Very enlightening.

Is Snowden old enough to run for POTUS? Oh wait, there's something about a felony, isn't there?

Just thought I'd stick these here, as I haven't been paying that much attention, and thought you'd want to see them.


@KellyO tweeted:

"What's next for Mr. Snowden?" asked at hearing. FBI Dep. Director responds with one word, "Justice."

3 mins ago from twitter.com by editor


NSA director on Snowden leaks: 'I think it was irreversible and significant damage to this nation' - Live video

4 mins ago by editor

NSA has 1,000 system administrators like leaker Snowden, NSA chief says - @TPM

42 mins ago from livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com by editor

@todayshow tweeted:

"We're curious, how did he get that capability? Was someone helping him?" -@RepMikeRogers re: Edward Snowden

5 hours ago from twitter.com by editor

Obama on NSA programs: Americans 'not getting the complete story' - @CBSNews

13 hours ago from www.cbsnews.com by editor

NSA leaker Snowden says he's had no contact with Chinese government, only working with journalists - @guardian

23 hours ago from www.guardian.co.uk by editor

NSA leaker Snowden: Denials by Facebook, Google, MSFT about PRISM program were 'misleading' - @guardian live chat

Jun 17, 2013, 11:49 a.m. from www.guardian.co.uk by editor

Edward Snowden: 'the US .. is not going to be able to cover this up by jailing or murdering me' - @guardian live chat

Jun 17, 2013, 11:16 a.m. from www.guardian.co.uk by editor

Chinese foreign ministry says suggestions NSA leaker Edward Snowden may have spied for China were 'completely groundless' - @CNN

Jun 17, 2013, 7:09 a.m. from www.cnn.com by editor

Former Vice President Dick Cheney: NSA leaker Snowden is a 'traitor,' possibly Chinese spy - @politico

Jun 16, 2013, 9:41 a.m. from www.politico.com by editor

@meetthepress tweeted:

Sen Saxby Chambliss on Edward Snowden, the #NSA leaker: If he's not a traitor, he's pretty darn close to it... #MTP

Jun 16, 2013, 9:24 a.m. from twitter.com by editor