Making his appearance through a telephoto robot, the Edward Snowden talks to TED2014 for monitoring and freedom of the Internet.
The right to privacy, he suggests, is not a partisan issue, but requires a radical overhaul of the role of the Internet in our lives - and the laws that protect it. "Your rights matter," he says, "because you never know when you will need them." Chris Anderson is interviewing Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee as a special guest.
The following is the text of the translation from the subtitles.
Chris Anderson: Citizens' Rights, the Future of the Internet. I would like to welcome TED to the man behind these revelations, Ed Sounten. (Applause) Ed is in a remote location somewhere in Russia and controls this robot from his laptop, so he can see what the robot does. Ed, welcome to the TED scene. Finally what do you see?
0:44 Edward Snowden: Ha, I can see them all. It's amazing. (Laughs)
0: 52 CA: Some questions for you. They have called you a lot in recent months. They have called you an informant, a traitor, a hero. What words would you describe to yourself?
1:08 Edward Snowden: You know, everyone involved in this conversation has difficulty with me and my personality and how to describe me. But when I think about it, it is not the question we have to deal with. It does not matter who I am. If I am the worst person in the world, you can hate me and move on. What really matters is the issues. What really matters is the type of government we want, the kind of Internet we want, the kind of relationship between people and societies. I hope there is a debate going on and we have seen it grow late. If I had to describe myself, I would not use words like "hero". I would not use the "patriot" nor the "traitor". I would say that I am an American and I am a citizen, like everyone else.
1:58 CA: To give context to those who don't know the whole story — (Applause) — this time last year, you were in Hawaii, working as a consultant for the National Security Agency (NSA). As a system administrator, you had access to their systems, and you began leaking some of the classified documents that led to the June revelations to a select few journalists. Now, what prompted you to do this? ES: You know, when I was in Hawaii, and in previous years, when I was working in the intelligence community I saw a lot of things that disturbed me. We do a lot of good things in the intelligence community, things that need to be done, and things that help everyone. But there are also things that take it too far. There are things that should not be done, and decisions that are made in secret without public awareness, without public consent, and without our representatives in government even knowing about these programs. When I really started to wrestle with these issues, I asked myself, how can I do this in the most responsible way that maximizes the public benefit while minimizing the risks? And of all the solutions I could think of, from going to Congress, when there were no laws, no legal protections for a private employee, a Secret Service contractor like myself, there was a risk of being buried with the information and the public would never know. But the First Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees us a free press for one reason, and that is the ability for counterspeech to challenge the government, but also to partner with the government to have dialogue and debate about how to inform the public about matters of utmost importance without jeopardizing national security. And working with reporters, giving all of my information back to the American people, rather than trusting myself to make decisions about publication, we had a strong conversation with deep investment from the government that I think has benefited everyone. And the risks we were threatened with, the risks exaggerated by the government, never materialized. We've never seen evidence of even one incident of specific damage, and because of that, I'm comfortable with the decisions I've made.
4: 45 CA: Show some examples of what you revealed to the public. If we can have the transparency, and Ed, I do not know if you can see, the slides are here. This is a slide from the PRISM program, and maybe you can tell the audience what it was that was revealed.
5:02 Edward Snowden: The best way to understand PRISM because there was some controversy, is to talk first about what PRISM is not. There has been a lot of discussion in the US about metadata. They said that they are just metadata, they are just metadata, and they are talking about a specific legal principle called Article 215 of the Patriotic Law. This allows for a type of spying without a warrant, massive monitoring of telephone records across the country, things like that - who you are talking to, when you are talking to them, where you have traveled. These are all metadata facts. PRISM is about content. It is a program through which the government could force business America, it could replace business America to do its dirty work for the NSA. Although some of these companies resisted, even though some of them - I think Yahoo was one of them - sued them, they all lost because they were never tried in open court. They were tried by a secret court. One thing we have seen, something about the PRISM program that concerns me a lot, is that it was a matter for discussion in the US government and they said that 15 federal judges have reviewed these programs and ruled that they are legal, but what they are not telling you is that they are secret judges in a secret court based on secret interpretations of the law and has considered 34.000 requests for warrants in 33 years, and in those years have rejected only 11 government requests. We do not want these people to decide what role America's business should play in a free and open Internet.
6: 47 CA: Now, this slide shows here the dates on which different technology companies, Internet companies are supposed to have taken part in the program, and where they started collecting data from them. They have refused to cooperate with the NSA. How did the NSA collect this data?
7:09 Edward Snowden: Correctly. The NSA's own slides refer to this as direct access. That, for an actual NSA analyst, for someone like myself who worked as an intelligence analyst targeting Chinese cyberhackers, and things like that, in Hawaii, means that the origin of this data is coming directly from their servers. This does not mean that there is a group of corporate representatives sitting like buddies in a secret room with the NSA making deals under the table about how to reveal these things. Every company handles it differently. Some are responsible. Others are less responsible. But the bottom line is that when we talk about how this information is given, it comes from the companies themselves. They don't steal it from the lines. But we have to remember one important thing here: Although the companies fought back, although the companies demanded that it be done through a warrant process, that it be done in a way that there is some kind of legal review, some basis on which to give the data of these users, we saw stories in the Washington Post last year that weren't as well reported as the PRISM story that said the NSA hacked into internal data center communications between Google itself, and Yahoo. So even the companies that cooperate in at least a coercive but hopefully legal way with the NSA, they're not happy with that, and so we want our companies to work very hard to make sure that they represent the interests of users. as well as they will advocate for their rights. I believe that in the past year, we have seen the companies named in the PRISM slides make great strides in this, and I encourage them to continue.
8: 59 Q: What else should they do?
9:01 Edward Snowden: The biggest thing an Internet company could do in America today, at this time, without consulting lawyers, to protect the rights of users around the world, is to enable SSL encryption on every page you visit. The reason this is important is that today, if you go to see a copy of "1984" at Amazon.com, NSA can see this, Russian intelligence can see it, Chinese services can see this, the French services, the German services, the services of Andorra. Everyone can see it because it's not encrypted. The world's library is Amazon.com, but it not only does not support encryption as a default, you can not even choose it when browsing the books. This is something that we need to change, not just for the Amazon, I do not want to distinguish them, but it is a very good example. All companies must go to default encrypted navigation for all users who have not done any action or have not selected specific methods for themselves. This will increase the protection of personal data and the rights that people have around the world.
10: 12 CA: Ed, come with me at this point of the scene. I want to show you the next slide. (Applause) This is a program called "Unlimited Information Provider". What is this;
10:22 Edward Snowden: Admittedly, the NSA uses the appropriate names. This is one of my favorite NSA cryptonyms. "Unlimited Whistleblower" is a program that the NSA hid from Congress. Congress had asked the NSA if there was any way they could give even a rough estimate of the size of American communications intercepted. They said no. They said, we don't record those stats, and we can't record them. We can't tell you how many communications we intercept around the world, because if we did we would be violating your privacy. I really appreciate their sensitivity but actually, if you look at this slide, not only do they have the ability, the ability is already there. It's already up and running. The NSA has its own internal data format that tracks and two end of a communication, and if that communication is reported to have come from America, they can tell Congress how many of those communications they have today, right now. What Whistleblower Unlimited tells us is that more communications are intercepted in America for Americans than in Russia for Russians. I'm not sure that should be the purpose of a secret service.
11:43 CA: Ed, a Washington Post story leaked, again from your data. The headline reads, "NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times a year." Tell us about it.
11: 54: We also heard from Congress last year, it was something amazing for someone like me who came from the NSA and has seen the actual internal documents, knows what they're saying, seeing officials oathly submitting that there were no abuses, there were no violations of the NSA's regulations when we knew this story was coming. But what is particularly interesting about the fact that the NSA has violated its own rules, its own laws thousands of times in a year, including a single event, an event of these 2.776 that affected over 3.000 individuals . In another case, they have all been summoned to Washington, by accident. The surprising thing about this is that it was not only 2.776 violations, but Senate Information Committee Chairman Diane Phoenix had not seen her until she contacted Washington Post asking for it. comments on this report. He then asked for a copy from the NSA and received it, but he had not seen it before. What does this say about the state of oversight of the US secret services when the chairman of the Senate Information Committee has no idea that rules are being violated thousands of times each year?
13:20 CA: Ed, one answer to all this controversy is this: Why should we care about all this tracking, honestly? I mean, if you haven't done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about. What is wrong with this view? ES: The first is that you waive your rights. You say, you know, I don't think I'll need them, I'll trust them, let's get rid of them, it doesn't really matter, they'll do the right thing. Your rights matter because you never know when you'll need them. Beyond that, it is part of our cultural identity, not just in America, but in Western societies and democratic societies around the world. People should be able to pick up the phone and call their family, people should be able to send a text message to their loved ones, people should be able to buy a book online, they should be able to travel by train, they should be able to buy a plane ticket without wondering how these events will look to a government agent, probably not even your own government years down the line, how they will misinterpret and what they will think your intentions were. We have the right to protect personal data. We require warrants based on reasonable suspicion or some kind of personalized suspicion because we recognize that by trusting everyone, any government authority, with all human communications in secret and without oversight the temptation is simply too great to ignore.
14: 55 CA: Some are exasperated with what you did. I recently heard Dick Cheney say that Julian Assange was a flea bite, Snowdon is the lion who cut the dog's head with his teeth. He thinks you have committed one of the worst acts of betrayal in American history. What would you say to the people who believe this?
15:21 Edward Snowden: Dick Cheney is really something else. (Laughter) (Applause) Thank you. (Laughter) I think it's amazing, because when Julian Asanz did his best job, Dick Cheney said he would ruin governments all over the world, the heavens would catch fire and the seas would boil, and now he says it's a flea bite. We ought to be suspicious of such inflated claims of harm to national security by such officials. But suppose that they really believe it. I would say they have a somewhat narrow perception of national security. The privileges of people like Dick Cheney do not keep the state safe. The public interest is not always the same as the national interest. Going into a war with people who are not enemies, in places that are not a threat, does not make us safe, and that is true whether it is in Iraq or the Internet. The Internet is not the enemy. Our economy is not the enemy. American businesses, Chinese businesses and any other company out there are part of our society. It's part of our interconnected world. There are brotherly ties that unite us and if we destroy these ties undermining standards, security, behavior, states and citizens around the world are waiting for us to keep them.
17: 13 CA: There is a claim that you have stolen 1,7 millions of files. It seems that only a few hundred have been reported to journalists so far. Will we have other revelations?
17:27 Edward Snowden: There will certainly be other revelations. I do not think there is any doubt that some of the most important references will be made in the future.
17:41 CA: Come here because I want to ask you about this particular revelation. Come and have a look at it. This is a story that I think for many of the IT folks here is the most shocking thing they've heard in months. It's about a program called 'Bullrun'. Can you explain what it is?
18:01 Edward Snowden: Bullrun, and here again we have to thank the NSA for its straightforwardness, is a program named after a civil war. The British equivalent is called 'Edgehill', which is a battle of the British Civil War. The reason why I believe they called it that is because they are targeting their own infrastructure. They are programs with which the NSA deliberately misleads corporate partners. They tell corporate partners that these are secure specifications. They say they want to work with you to secure your systems, but in reality, they're giving these companies bad advice that causes them to downgrade the security of their services. They build backdoors that not only the NSA can exploit, but anyone else with the time and money to research and find can use to break into the world's communications. This is really dangerous, because if we lose the one unique prodeletion, if we lose trust in something like SSL, which was specifically targeted by the Bullrun program, we will live in a less secure world in general. We won't be able to access our banks and we won't be able to access commerce without worrying about those monitoring these communications or subverting them for their own purposes.
19: 27 Q: Are these same decisions likely to leave America open to cyber attacks from other sources?
19:38 Edward Snowden: Of course. One of the problems, one of the dangerous legacies we have seen since 11's September era, is that the NSA has traditionally been wearing two hats. They are responsible for aggressive operations, ie hacking, but they are also responsible for defensive operations and have traditionally always given priority to defense instead of assault based on the principle that American secrets simply deserve more. If we hack a Chinese business and steal its secrets, if we hack a government office in Berlin and steal its secrets, it is less valuable for the American people than to make sure that the Chinese will not have access to our secrets. By reducing the security of our communications, they not only endanger the world but put America at substantial risk because intellectual property is the foundation, the foundation of our economy, and if we risk them because of weak security we will pay for years .
20: 40 CA: But they figured it was worthwhile as part of America's defense against terrorism. Surely this is a price that is worth paying.
20:50 Edward Snowden: If you look at the results of these counter-terrorism programs you will find that it is baseless, and you don't have to take my word for it, because we had the first open court, the first federal court that has reviewed it, outside of the privacy regulation, called these programs Orwellian and possibly unconstitutional. Congress, which has access to information about these things, and now wants to be informed, has passed reform bills, and two independent White House panels that reviewed all the classified evidence said these programs never stopped a single imminent terrorist attack on the United States. Is it terrorism after all that we want to stop? Are these programs of any value? I say no and all three branches of the US government also say no.
21:48 CA: Do you think there is a deeper motivation for them besides the war on terror?
21:53 Edward Snowden: Sorry, did not I hear you, the rehomes?
21:55 CA: Sorry. Do you think there is a deeper motivation for them besides the war on terror?
22:01 Edward Snowden: Yes. The bottom line is that terrorism has always been what we in the intelligence world would call cover operations. Terrorism is something that causes an emotional reaction in the world, which allows the rationalization of powers and programs that people would not otherwise give. Bullrun and Edgehill programs, the NSA requested these powers in the 90s. They asked the FBI to go to Congress and support it. The FBI went to Congress and supported it. But Congress and the American people said no. They said it's not worth the risk to our economy. They said the harm to society is too great to justify the benefits. But what we've seen, in the post-11/XNUMX era, is they've used secrecy and the excuse of terrorism to secretly launch these programs without asking Congress, without asking the American people, and we have to protect ourselves from such a government. behind closed doors because it makes us less safe, and provides no value.
23: 03 KA: Okay, come with me for a moment, because I have a more personal question for you. Speaking of terror, most would consider your situation now in Russia quite frightening. Obviously you heard what happened, how they handled Bradley Manning, Chelsea Manning, as it is now, and it was a story in Buzzfeed that some in the secret service community wanted you dead. How do you handle this? How do you deal with fear?
23:36 Edward Snowden: No wonder there are governments out there who want to see me dead. I've made it clear over and over again that I go to bed every morning thinking about what I can do for the American people. I don't want to hurt my government. I want to help my government, but the fact that they're willing to completely ignore the process, they're willing to find me guilty without even going to trial, those are the things we have to fight as a society, and say that's not right. We should not threaten dissidents. We shouldn't be criminalizing her journalism. And whatever I can do to make that happen, I'm happy to do it despite the risks.
24: 32 CA: I would like to have some comments from the audience here because I know there are very different reactions to Edward Snowdon. Suppose you had the following two options, okay? Could you see what he did as a virtually reckless act that has put America at risk or could you see it as a virtually heroic act that will work for the long-term good of America and the world? These are the two choices I will give you. I am curious to see who is willing to vote for the first one, that it was a reckless act. There are a few raised hands. Some hands get up. It's hard to raise your hand when he's right here, but I see them.
25:15 Edward Snowden: I see you. (Laughs)
25: 18 Q: And who goes with the second option, the essentially heroic act?
25: 22 (Applause) (Euphemisms)
25: 25 I think I have the right to say that there are many who have not raised their hands and I think they still think about it, because it seems to me that the debate around you does not separate into the traditional political lines. It is not left or right, it has nothing to do with supporting the government whether you are a liberal or not. Part of it is almost a generation issue. You are part of a generation that grew up with the Internet and you seem to have been deeply affected when you see something that you think will hurt the Internet. Does it contain some truth?
26:02 Edward Snowden: Yes. I think it's very real. It's not a matter of left or right. Our basic freedoms, and when I say "our," I don't just mean Americans, I mean people all over the world, it's not a partisan issue. These are things that all people believe, and it is up to us to protect them, and for those who have seen and enjoyed a free and open Internet, it is up to us to preserve that freedom for the next to enjoy. generation, and if we don't change things, if we don't stand up to make the changes that are needed to keep the internet safe, not just for us but for everyone, we're going to lose this, and it's going to be a huge loss, no just for us, but for the world.
26: 49 Q: I heard similar things recently from the founder of the web that I think is with us, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Tim, you'd like to climb up and talk. Do we have a microphone for Tim?
27: 02 (Applause)
27:04 Tim, good to see you. Come upstairs. Which side are you on, by the way, traitor, hero? I have a theory about that, but—
27: 17 Tim Berners-Lee: I have given much bigger answers to this question, but a hero if I had to choose one of the two.
27:26 KA: Ed, I think you have read the proposal that Sir Tim talked about a new Magna Card to take back the Internet. Does that make sense; ES: Absolutely. My generation,… I grew up not just thinking about the Internet, but I grew up on the Internet, and although I never expected to have the opportunity to defend it in such a straightforward and practical way and incorporate it into this Unusually almost personalized, I think it's poetic that one of the sons of the Internet has come close to the Internet as a result of their political expression. I believe that a Magna Card for the Internet is exactly what we need. We need to codify our values not only in writing but also in the structure of the Internet, and it is something I hope for, and I invite everyone in the public, not just here in Vancouver, but around the world to take part.
28: 34 Q: Do you want to ask Ed?
28:36 TML: Well, two questions, one general question -
28: 39 Q: Are you still hearing us?
28:41 Edward Snowden: Yes, I hear you. CA: Return.
28: 45 TML: The guy on your line has been interrupted for a moment. (Laughs)
28:50 Edward Snowden: It's a NSA problem.
28:52 TML: From the 25 years we've looked back and thought, what do you think would be the best thing we could achieve from all the conversations we're having about the network we want?
29:08 Edward Snowden: When we think in terms of how far we can go, I think it's a question that's only limited by what we're willing to give it. I think the Internet that we enjoyed in the past was exactly what we needed, not as a state, but as people around the world, and with the cooperation, with the participation, not only of the technical parts of society, but as you said, the users, people all over the world who contribute through the internet, through social media, who just check the weather, who rely on it every day as part of their lives, to defend it. We won't just have the Internet we had, but a better Internet, a better today, something we can use to build a future that will be better, not just better than we hoped for but better than anything we could have imagined.
30:06 CA: It's been 30 years since TED was founded in 1984. There's been a lot of discussion since then that pretty much says George Orwell was wrong. We are not being watched by Big Brother. We, through the power of the internet, and transparency, are watching Big Brother. Your revelations were a blow to the heart of the somewhat optimistic view, but you still believe there is a way to do something about it. And you do.
30:36 Edward Snowden: Right, there's a debate to be had as to whether Big Brother's powers were greatly increased. It was a recent law paper at Yale that established something called the Buxton-Soltani Principle, which is that our expectation of privacy is violated when government surveillance capabilities become an order of magnitude cheaper, and every time that happens, we must redefine and balance our rights to protect our privacy. Now, that hasn't happened since the surveillance powers of the government have increased by several orders of magnitude, and that's why we have this problem today, but there is still hope because the power of individuals has increased with technology. I'm living proof that one person can take on the most powerful adversaries and the most powerful intelligence agencies around the world and win, and I think that's something we should draw hope from, and we should build to make it accessible. not only to technology experts but to ordinary citizens around the world. Journalism is not a crime, communication is not a crime, and we should not be monitored in our daily activities.
31: 58 KA: I'm not quite sure how you shake hands with a robot, but I guess this is the hand. TML: It will come very soon. HS: Thank you for meeting you, and I hope my telepresence device looks as good as your own image to me.
32:12 CA: Thank you, Tim.
32: 15 (Applause)
32: 20 The New York Times recently called for an amnesty for you. Would you welcome the opportunity to come back to America?
32:29 Edward Snowden: Absolutely. There is no doubt that the founding principles of this project were the common benefit and principles behind journalism in the United States and around the world, and I think that if the guy says now, we support that, it is something to be done is a strong argument, but not the final argument, and I think it is something that the people have to decide. But at the same time, the government has implied that they want some kind of agreement, that they want to expose the journalists with whom I worked to come back, and I want to make it clear that I did not do this to be safe. I did it to do the right thing, and I will not stop my work for the common good just for my own sake. (Clap)
33: 35 CA: Meanwhile, with the courtesy of the Internet and this technology, you are here, back in North America, not exactly in the US, Canada, in this form. I'm curious, how do you feel?
33:51 Edward Snowden: Canada is much more different than I expected. They are much warmer. (Laughs)
34: 01 CA: At TED, our mission is "ideas that are worthy of distribution". If you could incorporate it into a single idea, what is your idea that is worthy of being spread right now? Q: I would say that last year was a reminder that democracy can die behind closed doors, but we as individuals were born behind the same closed doors and we do not have to abandon the protection of our personal data to have good government. We do not have to give up our freedom to have security. And I believe that if we work together we can have open government and personal lives, and I look forward to working with everyone around the world to become a reality.
34: 46 Thank you very much.
34:47 CA: Ed, thank you.
34: 49 (Applause)
