Latest / INSPIRE STORY / #088_ STORY INSPIRE: The Hidden Truth About Government Surveillance and Your Privacy

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#088_ STORY INSPIRE: The Hidden Truth About Government Surveillance and Your Privacy · INSPIRE STORY

• 0:11
  Speaker 1: And, okay, that'll just be rolling.
• 0:13
  Speaker 2: You're very professional.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Well, you know, people are like, how do you live
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: and things like that. They're like, are you taking money
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: from the Russians? And, of course, the answer is no.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: But I do this for a living. Like, I speak.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: I don't have a YouTube channel where it's, you know,
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: I'm Joe Rogan. But I give speeches at universities and
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: things like that. I do a lot of interviews.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: We're recording now, right?
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: I've got my own setup.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Is it possible that you could do a YouTube channel?
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: Would that work?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, like I mean, if you introduce me so like
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: I get followers, yeah, we could do that.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: Dude, I'm all in. That could absolutely happen. Do you
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: want to do that? Is that something you want to do?
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, this is a big question. So I
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: came on because I had just written a book called
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Permanent Record, which is the story of my life because
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: that's what publishers make you do when you're writing your
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: first book. But it's more than that because I didn't
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: just want to talk about me. It's actually about the
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: changing of technology and the changing of government in this
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: sort of post 9-11 era, which in our generation just
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: sort of happened to be growing up during. And I
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: was at the CIA and the NSA and all this stuff.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: But the day that the book came out, the government
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: hit me with a lawsuit. And they hit the publisher
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: of the books with a lawsuit. Because they don't want
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: to see books like this get written. They especially don't
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: want to see books like this get read. And so
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the big thing was, you know, we didn't know where
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: this was going. We didn't know what was going to happen.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: And my publisher, of course, wanted me very badly to
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: let people know this book existed in case the government
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: leaned harder and harder and harder. We didn't know where
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: that's going. The government is still pursuing that case quite strongly.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: They're more focused on the financial censorship side of it,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: basically taking any money that I made from it kind
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: of as a warning to the others and getting a
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: legal judgment against the publishers saying, you know, you can't
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: pay this guy, that kind of thing. More so than
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: taking the book off the shelves, but that's not because
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: they're okay with the book being on the shelves. It's because, thankfully,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: we've got the First Amendment, and so they can't. And
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: that's a very rare and good thing. But anyway, in
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: the context of that, they were like, well, what about
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: Joe Rogan? And, you know, I had heard about you
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: at this point, but, you know, the only thing that
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: I had really seen that I really understood, had familiarity
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: with was like you talking to Bernie Sanders, which, by
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: the way, I very much appreciated hearing that because a
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: lot of people don't give the guy time to talk.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah. To hear him in those sound bites, you don't
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: really get an understanding of who he actually is.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Right, and this is the other thing. They're like, well,
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: you can go on all these major network shows. And
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: I did a couple of them. I did a morning show.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: I did Brian Williams. But broadly, the media, the sort
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: of more corporatized media, as we might say, is exactly
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: what you just described, right? They want you to be
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: able to answer in like 8, 15 seconds or less.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: And when we're talking about big, massive shifts in society,
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: when we're talking about When we're talking about technology and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: how it controls and influences us in the future, you
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: can't have a meaningful conversation within those constraints. And so instead,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: these guys all want to say, repeat these long, discredited
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: sort of criticisms. And, you know, I'm sure you'll ask
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the same thing. And that's okay. They're fair questions. But
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: it's like we can't have the conversation if we can't
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: have the space to think and breathe and have this
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: sort of discussion. Right. So anyway, they mentioned you, and
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: I was like, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan, where
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: do I know this name from before Bernie Sanders? And
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: I looked back through my Twitter mentions, and the funny
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: thing is, your fans have been... harassing me to death for, like,
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: the last years. Wonderful people, wonderful people. But, like, go on,
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: Joe Rogan, go on, Joe Rogan. And I remember, like,
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: after I had just made a Twitter account, Neil deGrasse Tyson, actually,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: helped me get on Twitter, gave me that little initial boost.
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: And they said, Joe Rogan. And so they, like, linked you. And,
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: you know, I mouse over your name because I use
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: a desktop. I'm not mobile for this because of security reasons.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: and it pops up, and I get your avatar, man, and, like,
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: I have to say, your logo is the worst thing
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: in the world for people who are, like, trying to be, like,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: politically serious, and, you know, they're worried about the National
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Security Advisor condemning it, because, like, this bald guy with
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: this maniacal grin and, like.
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: The third eye on his forehead, and I'm like, oh, man,
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: that show, you know, that doesn't look good, but it's actually, like,
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: when you watch, you know, when you watch what you're doing,
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: it's great stuff, man, it's great, but that first impression, like, I,
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: this almost didn't happen, but everybody who has talked to you,
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: you know, everybody who watches your show, I think they
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: get a very different impression than how you're painting. And
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: for me, it's a wonderful thing because nobody understands that
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: better than I do, right? Like the government ran a
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: smear campaign against me endlessly for six months when I
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: came forward.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: In June of 2013. I know we got way off
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: topic here. I'll get back to it.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Fine. There's no such thing as off topic. We could do,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: talk about whatever.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: Okay. Great, great. Okay, so for those people, first off,
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: who have no idea who the hell I am, I'm
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: the guy who was behind the revelations of global mass
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: surveillance in 2013. I worked for the CIA. I worked
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: for the NSA as a contractor at the NSA, a
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: staff officer at the CIA. I was undercover working at embassies.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: And I talk about the difference between this and a
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: book and contractor and government official and how it's all
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: sort of lost its meaning. But I saw something wrong,
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: and I saw basically the government was violating the law
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: and what I believe to be the Constitution of the
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: United States and more broadly human rights for everyone in
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: the United States and around the world. There were domestic
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: surveillance programs, there were mass surveillance programs that worked internationally.
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: Basically everything that they could monitor, they were monitoring. And
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: this is actually like people go, well, isn't that obvious?
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Isn't that what they're supposed to do? And this is weird,
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: but the answer actually is no. Under the framework of
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: our Constitution, the government is only supposed to be monitoring
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: people that it has an individualized, particularized suspicion of wrongdoing for, right?
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: This is, we think about this in the investigative means, right?
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Like all those TV shows where they're like, go and
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: get a warrant. The reason they have to do that,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: like we fought a revolution over this, you know, a
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: couple hundred years back, right? is the idea that when
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: we had, you know, kings, when we had governments of
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: absolute power, they could simply go in your home and go,
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: you know, is this guy a pot smoker? Get his diary,
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: you know, whatever it is. And just like if you
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: find evidence of a crime, you march them off to
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: prison and it's all good. You found evidence, they're criminal.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Or you didn't find evidence, well, no harm, no foul.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: You're just doing what government does. We were trying to
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: build a better system where it went, yes, the government
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: has extraordinary capabilities. but it only uses them where they're necessary,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: where they're proportionate to the threat that is presented by
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: this person. We shouldn't be afraid of the person who's
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: got a baggie of weed in their dresser or something
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: like that. That is not a threat to national security.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: That is not a threat to public safety. But what
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: happened in the wake of 9-11 was a whole bunch
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: of government officials got together behind closed doors, and this
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: was actually led by interestingly enough, by the Vice President
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: of the United States, Cheney. Everybody remembers that name, or
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: hopefully can look that name up, Dick Cheney. And his
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: personal attorney, sort of the Giuliani of Dick Cheney, a
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: guy named David Addington. And this lawyer, David Addington, wrote
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: a secret legal interpretation that no one else was allowed
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: to see. It was kept in the Vice President's safe
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: at the White House. They weren't giving this, even when
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: they told people, and it was just a couple people
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: in Congress. Nancy Pelosi was one of them and a
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: couple of these other folks. When they talked to the
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: heads of the agency, the NSA and the CIA and
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the FBI and all this stuff, they told them the
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: White House and the Office of Legal Counsel and the
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: president's attorneys, all of these guys had decided this would
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: be legal to do. But we can't tell you why.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: We can't show you the legal authorization for it. You
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: just got to take our word for it. And so
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: they did this, and this became a mass surveillance program
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: called Stellar Wind, which they said was supposed to monitor
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: the phone calls and internet communications, emails, and things like
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: that of everybody in the United States and around the world,
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: who they could get access to, for links to al-Qaeda.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Because if you remember, in the wake of the September
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: 11th attacks, they were singing... We thought there could be
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: sleeper cells of Al-Qaeda that were just, you know, peppered
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: all throughout the country and they were going to spring
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: up at any moment. Of course, like weapons of mass destruction,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: it just didn't exist. It was all a power grab.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: But on that basis, they started doing this in secret.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: And it was completely unconstitutional. It was completely illegal, even
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: under the very loose requirements of the Patriot Act. But
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: they did it for so long. that they got comfortable with.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: And they thought, you know, this is a really powerful capability.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: What if we started using this for stuff that was
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: other than terror? Because it wasn't finding any terrorists because
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: there weren't any terrorists in this context that they were
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: looking for them. And the ones where there were terrorists,
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the program wasn't affected because these were guys in Pakistan
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: that weren't using email and phone calls. They were getting
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: on a moped with their cousin who was a courier.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: who was bringing a letter to his guy who runs
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: the food stand or whatever. But bit by bit over time,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: this grew and grew and grew, and there were scandals,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: and if you wanna drill down on these later, I'll
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: go into them, but what happened was step by step
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: by step, our constitutional rights were changed, and we weren't
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: allowed to know it. We were never granted a vote
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: on it, and even the many members of Congress, 535
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: in the United States, They were prohibited from knowing this.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: And instead, they told only a few select people. In
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the original case, there were only eight members of Congress,
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: called the Gang of Eight, who knew about this. Then
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: there were the people on the Intelligence Committees, both in
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the Senate and the House, who were told about this.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: But they were only told partially about it. They weren't
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: told the full scope of it. And now that they
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: had been told about it, because they had security clearances
• 11:16
  Speaker 1: and things like that, they weren't allowed to tell anybody else.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: even if they objected to it. And we had one senator,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Ron Wyden, and another one, I believe, Tom Udall was
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: the name of them, who did object to this and
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: who wanted something to happen, but because they couldn't tell
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: anybody that was happening, they were sort of doing these
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: weird lassie barks to the press, where they were like,
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: we have grave concerns about the way these programs are
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: being carried out. but nobody knew what they were talking about.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: And so journalists were like, you know, they've got concerns.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: What is that, Lassie? What are you trying to say?
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: It's hitting us in the well? But they were getting
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: it wrong. They couldn't tell what was happening. And so
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: what had happened was that we, the American people, had
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: sort of lost our seat at the table of government.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: We were no longer partner to government. We had simply
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: become subject to government. And I think everybody who's in
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: the world today, who is aware of what's going on,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: whether it's under this administration, the last administration, the one
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: before that, right? They have seen a constant kind of
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: shift where we have, we the public, have less say
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: and less influence over the policy of government with each
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: passing year. There's kind of a new class that's being created,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: a government class and then the public civil class that
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: are held to different standards of behavior. And when we
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: start talking about leaking and whistleblowing, this becomes even more clear.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: And so... What I did was I wanted to clarify
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: that kind of Lassie mark, right? I just wanted everybody
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: to know what was going on. I didn't want to
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: say the government can't do this. I didn't want to
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: say this is how you guys have to live, because
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: that's not for me to say. But I do believe
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: that everybody in the United States, and more broadly people
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: in the world who are having their rights violated by
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: a government, should have at least an understanding of how
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: that is happening. what the authorities, sort of the policies
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: and programs that are enabling that, are so that they
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: can protest them, so that they can cast a vote
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: about them, so that they can say, you know what?
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: You guys say this is okay, but I disagree. This
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: is not okay. I object, and I want things to change.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: And so I gathered evidence of what I believed to
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: be criminal or unconstitutional activity on the part of the government,
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: and I gave this to journalists, right? Now, I gave
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: this to journalists, right? under a very strict condition here,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: which was that they publish no story in this archive
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: of information simply because it was interesting, right? No clickbait,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: not anything just because they thought it would make news,
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: it would get them awards. They would only publish stories
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: that they were willing to make an institutional judgment and
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: stand behind. And this was three different newspapers that it
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: was in the public interest to know And so then
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: beyond that, there was additional, because if you could see
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: sort of what I was doing here, what had happened,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: what had led us into this pitfall was that the
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: system of checks and balances that's supposed to self-regulate our
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: government had failed. The courts had abdicated their role in
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: policing the executive in the Congress because terrorism was such
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: a hot argument at the time. They were worried about
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: being criticized and blamed if something went wrong and an
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: attack did go through. And they didn't have access to
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: the information that the programs were ineffective. So they were
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: just taking the government's word for it. And they didn't
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: want to wait in. Congress, most of them didn't even know, right?
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: And the ones who did know, it was the same thing.
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: They were getting their pockets stuffed with money by the
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: defense contractors that were getting rich for building these systems
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: that were violating the rights of each of us. So
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: they benefited by just saying nothing. And then the executive themselves,
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: whether we're talking about Bush, whether we're talking about Obama,
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: or whether we're talking about Trump now, all these guys
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: were okay with a constantly growing surveillance state because they're
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: the ones whose hands were on the lever at the time.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: They got to aim it. They got to use it.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: If you had a little search box in front of you,
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: they would give you the email history of everybody in
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: the United States. Anybody you want. If you could pull
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: up their text messages. Anybody you want, if you could
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: see anything they've ever typed into that Google search box, right? Joe,
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: what is the worst thing you've ever typed into that
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: search box? That lasts forever, right? And they have a
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: record of that. They can get that from Google. And
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: so this was the whole thing. How do we correct
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: for that? So when you have somebody who wants to
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: inform the public of something, and we'll get into the
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: proper channels arguments later, But you can't go through the
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: institution to get these corrected because the institution knows it's
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: wrong and is doing it anyway, right? That's the whole
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: origin of the program is they want to do something
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: that they're not allowed to do. What do you do, right?
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: And so I didn't want to say I'm the president
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: of secrets. I didn't want to just put this stuff
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: on the internet. And I could have. I'm a technologist, right?
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: I worked with the journalists. And then to create an
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: adversarial step, right? someone who would argue against what I
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: believed and hopefully what the journalists believed once they consulted
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the documents and basically authenticated them. Can we get the
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: government to play that role? And so before the journalists
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: published any story, and this is a controversial thing, people
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: still criticize me for this actually, they say I was
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: too accommodating to government. They could be right. Is that
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: the journalists would go to the government and give them
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: warnings Say we're about to run this story about this
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: secret program that says you did X, Y, and Z
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: bad thing. One, is that right? And the government will
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: always go, oh, no comment. Two, is this going to
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: cause harm? Is anybody going to get hurt? Is this
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: program effective? Is there something we don't understand? Is there
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: something Snowden doesn't understand? Does this guy just not get it?
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: Are these documents fake? Whatever you want, say we shouldn't
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: run this story. In every case I'm aware of, that
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: process was followed. And that's why, right? Because there's a
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: lot of people out there who don't like me, who
• 17:19
  Speaker 1: criticize me, who go, this was unsafe, this caused harm
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to people or whatever. We're in 2019 now. I came forward,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: and these stories won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service Journalism,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: starting way back in June of 2013. We've had six
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: years of to show bodies. We've had six years to
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: show harm. And you know as well as I do,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: the government's happy to leak things when it's in their interest.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Nobody has been hurt as a result of these disclosures
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: because everyone who was involved in them was so careful.
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: We wanted to maximize the public benefit while mitigating the
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: potential risks. And I think we did a pretty good
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: job of it. But just to get back to the
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: main thing, the original thing that got us off on
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: that trail When I came forward in June of 2013,
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I gave one interview to the people who were in.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: The room.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: With the documents, Laura Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Ewan McCaskill. And
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: I said who I was. I said why I was
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: doing this. I said what this was about, why it matters.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: And that we were constructing a system of turnkey tyranny.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: And even if you trust that to Obama, you never
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: know whose hand is going to be on that key next.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: And all they have to do is turn it. And
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: there's nothing we can do to stop it. The only
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: thing that's restraining these programs really is policy more so
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: than law. And the president at any time can sign
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: a napkin and those policies change. Well, after that, I
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: went six months without giving any interviews because I didn't
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: want people to talk about me. I wanted them to
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: talk about what actually mattered. And the government, of course,
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: was trying very hard to change the conversation, as they
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: always do, to be about who is this guy? What
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: have they done? What's wrong with them? What are their problems?
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: Who is this loony guy? so they can controversialize the
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: source of a story rather than having to confront the
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: story itself. And that's why I said I really kind
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: of appreciate your take on the media and everything like that,
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: because when you don't tell your story, you know, other
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: people will tell it for you. They'll say so many
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: things about you, and they'll have These misimpressions, like I
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: did because of something as stupid as the avatar that
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: you were using on Twitter, right? Where I think it's
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: a certain kind of show with a certain kind of
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: guy and it's this crazy stuff. But when I actually
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: listen to you, when I actually look at the facts, right?
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And when I hear you just speak, I go, actually,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: this is a thoughtful conversation. guy. Actually, this is somebody
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: who does care, who does want to look at these
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: things deeply. And appearances and our first impressions can be
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: very misleading.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: I work hard on that. I try to mislead people.
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: It's good. Works to my advantage.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: You're doing a good job, man.
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: Thank you. I want to bring it back to when
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: you first started with the NSA. You started as a contractor, right?
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: What was your initial impression and when did you know
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: that things were really squirrely with the programs they were implementing?
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: So I'm not saying this to put you on the spot.
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: I know you've been a busy guy. I know you
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: haven't done– I think shows recently. You come back from
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: a break, right? But have you read the book? Because
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: it'll just help me put things in frame. If you
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: haven't got a chance to read it, yeah.
• 20:37
  Speaker 2: No, no, I have not read your book or got
• 20:39
  Speaker 2: a copy of it.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, I will send you a signed copy, brother.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: Beautiful.
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: Thank you. And I hope you'll read it and I
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: hope you'll enjoy it. But all right. So I had
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: a really weird history in the intelligence community. I grew
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: up in a federal family. in the shadow of Fort Meade, right?
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: All these little suburban communities in Maryland where basically the
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: entire industry of the state is the federal government of
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: all these different agencies and then all the subcontractors, all
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: the defense industries that serve that government and really are
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: kind of our war-making machine, our system of control for
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: the country and the world broadly. All that stuff spreads in,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: you know, a couple hundred mile radius out of D.C. Uh,
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: My mother worked for the district courts, or rather the
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: federal courts, and it's kind of funny because she still
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: works there, and those are the courts that are trying
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: to throw me in jail for the rest of my
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: life now. My father worked for the Coast Guard, retired
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: after 30 years. My grandfather was an admiral, and then
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: he worked for the FBI. As far back as it goes,
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: my family, my whole line of family, even generations back,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: was working for the government. So it was pretty ordinary,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: pretty expected for me to go into the same kind
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: of work. Now, I started. I wasn't super successful in
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: school because I felt, and you know this is the
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: most arrogant thing in the world that anybody says, that
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I had more to learn. from computers than I did
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: from biology class. And so I spent more and more
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: time focusing on technology, then I got mono, and I
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: dropped out of high school. And now it's like, all right,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: how do I make this up? I say drop out
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: of high school, but I'm actually going to community college, right?
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: They called it concurrent enrollment, where I'm not taking any
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: classes at high school, I'm going to community college instead.
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: And I'm not doing that great there either. It's fine.
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: I'm enjoying it. But school is school. I can't wait
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: to be grown.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: You're bored.
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have felt that. But
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: I ran into somebody at the community college who ran
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: their own home-based business doing web design. And they could
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: see I was kind of technical. And they went, hey,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: do you want to work for me? And I was like, well,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: that sounds great. And so I started doing web design really,
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: really early on. This is like, gosh, I don't know,
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: probably 1998 vintage. During the big boom and then the
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: collapse that followed. And the funny thing is she worked,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: she was married to an NSA analyst, a linguist, right?
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: And so she lived on Fort Meade and she ran...
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: her business out of their home on Fort Meade. It's
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: right up the street from the NSA. So before I'm
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: even working there, I'm driving past this building all the
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: time and trying to figure out, you know, what the
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: next step is going to be. And I enjoy this.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: It's a good thing for me. And like, it works well.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: And I start getting trained and certified, all these little
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: industry stamps you've got to get as a technologist to say, oh,
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: you know this program or whatever, and just start climbing
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: the ladder. But then 9-11 happens. And I'm on Fort
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: Meade when 9-11 happens. I'm just going into work. And
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: I tell this in the book in some detail. And
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: I think it's very much worth reading for people who
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: don't know this because this is forgotten history.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: How old were you at the time?
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: Gosh, I was born in 83. So I was probably
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: 18 years old.
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: And, yeah.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I had just turned 18 a couple months before.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: And what people forget is who knew what was going
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: on before anybody else on September 11th? The intelligence community, right?
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: And what did they do, right? Did they give out
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: a public warning? Did they tell you guys to evacuate?
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Did they say do this, that, or that? No, no.
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: not for everybody, not for a long time. But at
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: the NSA, then-director Michael Hayden, he was a general, he
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: later became director of the CIA, ordered the entire campus
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: evacuated of thousands, tens of thousands of people, actually, and
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: just said, go home, right? The CIA did the same thing.
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: They were running on skeleton crews, right? At the moment,
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the country needed them more than they ever had, right?
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: And I get a call, well, I hear a call
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: that's from my boss's wife, her husband to her. He's
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: calling from the NSA and saying, hey, you know, I
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: think Ed should leave for the day because I'm the
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: only employee in this business besides her. Because I think
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: they're gonna close the base down. I'm like this is crazy.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: It never closes down. We don't know what's happening Then
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: we start checking the news Which is through websites right
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: because we're doing all this stuff and suddenly it's the
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: big story everywhere And you know nobody understands how big
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: it is yet Most of us are like oh, it's
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: gonna mess with our workday. Oh, it's gonna mess with
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: our commute but when I'm leaving I I hear car
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: horns all over the base. It's the craziest thing because
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: this is a military base, right? It's right outside the NSA.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: And I enter just this absolute state of pandemonium as
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I go past K-9 Road, which is the road that
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: travels right in front of the NSA's headquarters. And it's
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: just a parking lot as far as you can see.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: They have military police out under the stoplights directing traffic.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Because it's this mass evacuation. And I still have no
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: idea what's happening. The story is still developing. But I
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: will never forget that image. Why did these people have
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: so much power. And so much money. And so much authority.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: If at the moments we need them the most. They're
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: the first ones in the country. That are leaving their buildings.
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: And you know later on. They said, and this is
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: covered in a book, I believe, I think it's James Bamford,
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: who interviewed that director of NSA who gave that order
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: about what was happening. He was going, well, you know,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: he called his wife and he was asking where their
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: kids were and everything like that. And then after that,
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: he wanted to think about, well, where could these other
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: planes that they knew were in the air that hadn't
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: struck yet, where could they be headed? And this sort
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: of shows how self-centric the intelligence community is. This is
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: the D.C. metro area, right? They could hit the White House.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: They could hit Congress. They could hit the Supreme Court, right?
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: And they go, oh, they're going to fly their planes
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: into the CIA headquarters. They're going to fly their planes
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: into the NSA headquarters. And, of course, it was never
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: realistic that these would be the targets. But on that basis,
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: they were like, ooh, let's get our bacon out of
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: the pan. Now, I don't say this.
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, but just in the interest of, wasn't it
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: possible that they could have attacked those places? I mean,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: they attacked the Pentagon. They knew that there was attacks.
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: Look, it's absolutely possible they could have attacked your Denny's.
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: But it's a question of risk assessment. If you have
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: planes in the air, if you believe there's an ongoing
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: terrorist attack that's happening in the United States right now,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: and if you have built history's greatest surveillance agencies, the
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: most powerful intelligence forces in the history of the species,
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: you are going to take those off the board, or
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: at least the majority of their personnel off the board then,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: in a chance that you have no sort of grounds
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: for substantiating that they could be targeting you. to begin with,
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: simply because they could? Well, somebody else will get hit
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: with those. As you say, it's going to be the Pentagon, right?
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: It's going to be the World Trade Center. It's going
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: to be someone somewhere. And the more minutes you're in
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: front of that desk, the higher the chances, even if
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: it's a very small chance, even if it's somebody who
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: doesn't work on terrorism, right? Maybe if it's somebody who
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: normally works finance in North Korea, right? But they go, look,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: this is an emergency. Everybody understands. You don't need to
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: explain this. You just go, stop what you're doing. Look
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: at financial transactions related to who purchased these plane tickets.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: Do this. You just go full spectrum and go, anything
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: you can do right now. If the building gets hit,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: we get hit. That's what we signed up for. Nobody
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: wants that, right? That's not the desired outcome. But if
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: they had asked the staff to do that, they all
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: would have agreed. That's what these people signed up to do.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: And yet the director goes, no, you know, we're just no.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: We're not going to take that risk. And this is,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: I think, it says so much about the bureaucratic character
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: of how government works, right? The people who rise to
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: the top of these governments. it's about risk management for them, right?
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: It's about never being criticized for something. And this is,
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: if we want to get really controversial, and this is
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: something that'll haunt me, because people will bring it up
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: again and again and again, people ask about, you know,
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: people still criticize me. In the book, you know, I
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: talk about aliens and chemtrails and things like that, and
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: the fact that there's no evidence for that. I went
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: looking on the network, right? And I know, Joe, I...
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: I know, uh, you want there to be aliens.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Uh, I do.
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: I know Neil deGrasse Tyson badly wants there to be aliens. Uh,
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: and there probably are, right? Uh, but the idea that,
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: that we're hiding them, if we are hiding them, I
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: had ridiculous access to the networks of the NSA, the CIA,
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: the military, all these groups. Um, I couldn't find anything, right?
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: So if it's hidden and it could be hidden, it's
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: hidden really damn well, even from people who are on
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: the inside. Um, But the main thing is conspiracy theories, right?
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Everybody wants to believe in conspiracy theories because it helps
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: life make sense. It helps us believe that somebody is
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: in control, right? That somebody is calling the shots. That
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: these things all happen for a reason, this, that, and
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: the other. There are real conspiracies. But they're not typically,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: you know, they've got tens of thousands of people working
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: on them unless you're talking about the existence of the
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: intelligence community itself, which is basically constructed on the idea
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: that you can get, I think there's 4 million or 1.4
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: million people in the United States who hold security clearances.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: And you can get all of these people to not talk, ever,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: to journalists or this, that, or the other. But When
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: you look back at the 9-11 report, and when you
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: look back at the history of what actually happened, what
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: we can prove, right, not what we can speculate on,
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: but what are at least the commonly agreed facts, it's
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: very clear to me, as someone who worked in the
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: intelligence community, not during this period, of course, I was
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: too young, but very shortly thereafter, that these attacks could
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: have been prevented. And in fact, the government says this, too.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: But the government goes, the reason that these attacks happened,
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: the reason that they weren't prevented, is what they call stovepiping, right?
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: There was not enough sharing. They needed to break down
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: the walls and the restrictions that were chaining these poor
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: patriots at the NSA and the CIA and the FBI
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: from all working on the same team. And to some extent,
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: they're correct. on this, right? There were limits on the
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: way agencies were supposed to play ball with each other,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: but I worked there, and I know how much of
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: this is bullshit and how much of this is not.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Those are procedural and policy limits, in some cases legal limits,
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: on what can be shared without following a process, without
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: doing this, that, or the other, without basically asking for permission,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: without getting a sign-off, or anything like that. If the
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: FBI wanted to send absolutely everything they had to the
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: CIA they could have done so. If the CIA wanted
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: to send everything they had to the FBI, they could
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: have done so. They didn't, and people died as a result. Now,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: government goes, bureaucratic proceduralism was responsible, and it's because we
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: had too many restrictions on the intelligence community. And this
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: is what led to the world post-9-11, where all of
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: our rights sort of evaporated, was they went, well, restrictions
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: on what these agencies can do are costing lives. Therefore, naturally,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: we just have to unchain these guys and everything will
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: be better, right? And if you remember that post-9-11 moment,
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: you can understand how that actually could come off as persuasive,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: how that might be a kind of thing that you go,
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: all right, well, that makes sense, because everybody was terrified.
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: There were people quite quickly who got their heads back
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: on their shoulders the right way. There were some of
• 34:34
  Speaker 1: them who never lost their heads at all and who
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: protested the Iraq War at the same time Maidah himself
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: was signing up to go fight it, volunteering for the army,
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: and we'll get into that in a minute. But everything
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: that has followed in the decades past came from the
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: fact that in a moment of fear, we lost our heads.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: And we abandoned all the traditional constitutional restraints that we
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: put on these agencies. And we abandoned all of the
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: traditional political restraints and just social constraints, ideological constraints, systems
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: of belief about the limitations that the secret police should
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: have in a free and open society. And we went, look,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: you know, terrorists, we created shows like 24 and Jack Bauer,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: where he's like threatening to knife people's eyeballs out if
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: they won't tell him this, that, or the other. And
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: we entered this era of increasingly unlimited government as a result.
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: And now, in hindsight, we go, oh, well, we shouldn't
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: have been surprised. But at the time, everyone panicked, right?
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: But if you go back to, did that help? And
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: we know the answer now is, in fact, no, it
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: did not. It made things worse. I don't think any
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: historian is going to look at the Bush administration and go,
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: this improved the position of the United States.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: In the world.
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: But... If you go back, you know, wind back the
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: tape to that pre-9-11 moment, wind back the tape to
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: those silos and those walls that they said needed to
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: come down because that was restraining government, instead of the
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: rules that said, well, you can share these things, but
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: there's got to be a basis, there's got to be
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: a justification. You've got to go, why are we trading
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: people's information like baseball cards and all of this stuff?
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: It's super easy as an intelligence officer to justify sharing
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: information about a suspected terrorist who you think is planning
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: to kill people or is even just in a country
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: they shouldn't be or a place they shouldn't be or
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: doing something you don't think they should be with another
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: agency because no one's going to question that. A judge
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: isn't going to question that. Any judge in the world
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: will stamp that warrant without even thinking about it and
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: then go to bed that night without a care in
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: the world. Because you're not spying on a journalist. You're
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: not spying on a human rights defender, right? This is
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: not an edge case. This is someone that you believe
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: to be associated with Al-Qaeda or whatever. Now, this is
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: all a lot of preamble to say that essential fact.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Government agrees, everyone agrees, the attacks probably could have been
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: prevented if information had been shared. So, why wasn't the
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: information shared? Government says... Information wasn't shared because of these restrictions,
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: and it's half true, because every important lie has some
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: kernel of truth to it. And there were these barriers.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: But the reality is, why were those barriers respected in
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: the case of a major terrorist plot? Why wasn't the
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: CIA sharing information with the FBI? Why wasn't the FBI
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: sharing information with the NSA? Why wasn't the NSA sharing
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: information with the CIA in the case of a major
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: terrorist plot? And if you've worked in government, if you've
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: worked in the intelligence community, if you've worked in any
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: large institution, if you work at a company that sells batteries,
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: you know that every office is fighting the other office
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: for budget, for clout, for promotions. And this is the
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: sad reality of what actually happened. Every one of those
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: agencies wanted to be the guy who busted the plot.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: They wanted to be the one who got credit for it.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: And they didn't realize how serious it was until it
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: was too late because they were competing with each other
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: rather than cooperating.
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what I was going to ask you if
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: that was the issue, the competition between these agencies, because
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: they are very proud of the CIA accomplishing something or
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: the FBI accomplishing something. And they want to be the
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: one to take credit for that.
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, I think it's important, like, in
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: their defense, because nobody else here is going to provide
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: a defense for them, is that that's actually darkly human. Again,
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: this happens in every industry. This happens in every sort
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: of big corporate thing, because you want to get promoted, and,
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: you know, everybody's putting in their, like, achievements at the
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: end of the year for what they did. And if
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: you're the guy who does that, you're going straight to
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: the top.
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: But their solution instead of.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: So we have a weird delay here for folks that
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: are listening. So their solution, instead of having someone be
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: responsible for bridging the gap and providing that information to
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: each individual agency, their solution was mass surveillance?
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Well, no, they're different things. 9-11 is what woke these
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: guys up, basically. And they went, well, we screwed up.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: and Americans died as a result. We really don't want
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: to take the hit on that. And to be honest,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: the government had no interest in putting the hit on them.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: To be honest, the public had no interest in putting
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: the hit on them at the time. Because everybody understood...
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Terrorism is a real thing. There are bad people in
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: the world, and that's true, right? That will always be true.
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: There's always going to be criminals. There's always going to
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: be terrorists. Whether they're at your church, whether they're across
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: the ocean, there are people out there who are angry,
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: they're disenfranchised, they're violent, and they just want to harm something.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: They want to change something, even in a negative way,
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: because that's what they feel is all they have left.
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: which these are criminals, right? These are people that we
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: don't need to pity. But if we ever want to
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: stop it, we do need to understand it and where
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: those things come from, where those drives come from in
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: the first place. But basically everybody went, all right, how
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: do we stop this? Because nobody wants to feel unsafe.
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: Nobody wants to feel like the building's going to come
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: down the next time you go in it. And so
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: everybody just went, I don't care who does it, stop it.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: And they said this to Dick Cheney, which is a
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: historic mistake. Because Dick Cheney knows how government works. He
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: was the person in that White House who was best
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: placed to know all the levers of government, all the
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: interagency cooperation, where we were strong, where we were weak,
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: what we could do, what we were not allowed to do.
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: And what he did was he took that little dial
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: on what we're not allowed to do, and he changed
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: it all the way until it broke and snapped off,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: and then there was nothing that we couldn't do anymore.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Um, And you were there while this was happening?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: No, I was not. Again, this is 2001. I was
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: 18 years old. I was working on the base. I
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: drove past the building, but that was it. This is
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: all hindsight. This is biography. This is documented history, but
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: this is not the gospel of Edward Snowden. I don't
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: know this. This is public record. This is what we
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: all know. Okay. What we have, though, the reason that
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: I bring this up is this is a teachable moment.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: Because there's so many people right now in the Trump
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: administration who go, look, this guy has too much power.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: He's abusing it against immigrants. He's abusing it against domestic opponents.
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: He's doing whatever. He's trying to hurt political rivals in
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: the next election. All of this stuff. And, you know,
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: we can get into this stuff later if you want
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: in detail. But the bottom line is they're going... This
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: is a guy who's in the White House who's thrown elbows, right?
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: He doesn't really care. He wants to hurt people as
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: long as he can convince the Americans that those are
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: the bad guys, right? That's the enemy. It doesn't matter
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: if they're far away. It doesn't matter if they're close
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: at home. Whoever he's against, he's going to harm. And
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: the dark thing is, this is actually why he was elected.
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: In moments of fear, where the world starts falling apart,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: and this happens in authoritarian country after country. This is
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: why you have Vladimir Putin in Russia who's been there
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: for 20 years, right? President for basically 20 years, think
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: about that. You know, he sort of skipped in the
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: middle there because he had to dodge the fact that
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: presidents can only serve so many consecutive terms, so he
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: dropped down to prime minister and then came back as president.
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: But think about that. How do you get that kind
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: of political longevity? And it's because if you know anything
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: about Russian history, which, you know, even I don't know
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: that much about it, the 90s, after the collapse of
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, were an extraordinarily dark time. If you
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: look at Russian cinema, all they had were gangster movies, right?
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: All they had were the disintegration of society, how things
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: are dark and broken. No one trusts each other. Pensions
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: were no longer being paid. Social security's not there anymore. Like,
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: there's nothing to buy, there's nothing to do, there's no job.
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: No one had a future. And so they went, if
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: there's somebody who can lead us out of this, if
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: there's somebody who will fix this, who will find us
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: an enemy and defeat that enemy to restore prosperity, we'll
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: put them in office. We see it happen in Turkey
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: with Erdogan. We've seen it happen successively with bad governments,
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: even in Western democracies. We see it happening, sadly, in
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: places like Poland and Hungary. You can even argue it's
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: happening in the United Kingdom, right? And now there are
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: a lot of people arguing that's exactly what we're seeing
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: with Donald Trump's White House in the United States. And
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: this is the lesson that we didn't learn from 2001,
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: is when we become fearful, we become vulnerable, right? to
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: anyone who promises they will make things better, even if
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: they have no ability to make things better, even if
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: they will actively make things worse, even if they will
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: make things better for themselves and their buddies by taking
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: from you. But if they tell you that they'll make
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: things better and you believe them in a moment of fear,
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: that typically leads to unfortunate outcomes. So sorry, let me
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: turn this back over to you because we got way
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: off track there.
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: No, that's all right. I want to bring it back
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: to the initial question. So you're working for the NSA.
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: When do you realize there's a huge issue and when
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: do you feel this responsibility to let the American people
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: know about this issue? Like when do you contact these
• 44:58
  Speaker 2: journalists and what was the thought process regarding this? Like
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: what steps did you go through once you realized that
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: this was in violation of the Constitution and that even
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: with the laws of the Patriot Act and the Patriot
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Act II, things had changed so radically that you knew
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: this was wrong and you had to do something about
• 45:16
  Speaker 2: it or you felt a responsibility to speak out. Okay.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: So since we gave so much historical preamble, let me
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: just give the cliff notes version to get us up
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: to that. So after September 11th, I'm a little bit lost.
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: I'm doing my technical stuff, but it doesn't really feel
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: like it matters anymore. Like I'm making more money. I'm
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: becoming more accomplished. But the world's on fire, right? You
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: remember there was a crazy mood of patriotism in the
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: country because we were all trying to come together to
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: get through it. You remember people were sticking Dixie Cups
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: on the top of every chain-link fence on every overpass.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: It was like, stand together, never forget. United we stand.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Flags on every car.
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: Exactly. And I was a young guy who was not
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: especially political. And I come from a military background, federal family,
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: all that stuff. And so that means I'm very vulnerable
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: to this kind of stuff. I see it on the news.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: And Bush and all his sort of cronies are going, look,
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: it's al-Qaeda, it's a terrorist organization, they have all these
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: international connections. There's Iraq, you know, dictators, weapons of mass destruction,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: they're holding the world at ransom. You got Colin Powell
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: at the UN dangling little vials of, like, fake anthrax.
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: And so I felt an obligation to do my part,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: and so I volunteered to join the army. You probably
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: can't tell from looking at me, but I'm not going
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: to be at the top of the MMA circuit anytime soon.
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: So it didn't work out. I joined a special program
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: that was called the 18 X-ray program where they take
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: you in off the street and they actually give you
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: a shot at becoming a special forces soldier. So you
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: train harder in special platoons. You go further. And I
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: ended up breaking my legs, basically. So they put me
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: out under special discharge. Both your legs? Uh, yeah, it
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: was basically what it was when they were shin splints, uh,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: that I was too dumb to get off of. Right. Uh,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: so I kept marching underweight and I'm a pretty light
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: guy to begin with. I had a 24 inch waist, uh,
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: when I, uh, when I joined the army.
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: Girls are jealous.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Um, I would, I think I weighed like 128 pounds. Uh, I,
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: I got, I was in great shape, you know, in
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: bootcamp cause I, I came up really quick because it
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: was a, you know, all I could do was gain. Um,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: But it was just too much on my frame because
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: I wasn't that active. And so when you keep running
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: on a stress injury, right, and you're running under weight with, like,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: rucksacks and things like that, you're running in, like, boots.
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: And then you're doing exercise. And the Army is like
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: a whole chapter in the book. You've got your battle buddy, right,
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: because they never allow you to be alone. You've always
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: got to have somebody watching you. They thought it was
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: funny to put me, the smallest guy in the platoon,
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: the drill sergeants did, with the biggest dude in the platoon,
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: who was like an amateur bodybuilder. He was like, you know,
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: 230 or 260, something like that. He was a big fellow.
• 48:12
  Speaker 1: And so, you know, he would, when we're off in
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: the woods doing these marches and things like that, and
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: we have to practice buddy carries, like the fireman's carry
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: and things like that, he throws me around his neck,
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm like a towel. He's just skipping down
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: like it's nothing. And then I got to put him
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: on me, and I'm just like, oh, God, dying. And
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: it was... It was weirdly fun. I enjoyed it, but
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: it was no good for my body. And so in
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: a land navigation movement, I step off a log because
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: I was on point. And on the other side of
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: the log, because it's the woods in Georgia, I'm at
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: Sand Hill, I see a snake. And so in my memory,
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like time slows down. Because in North Carolina,
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: you know, where I grew up, you think all snakes
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: are poisonous. Okay.
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: Sorry, there's an issue. Do we need to take a break? No,
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: we're good.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: It's completely fine.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: No, we're fine. There was something that happened on the screen.
• 49:05
  Speaker 2: I wanted to make sure it was okay.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's just the FBI joining the chat.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: That's what I was worried about. There's a second image
• 49:12
  Speaker 2: opened up here.
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so anyway, I try to take a much longer
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: step in midair. I land badly. And it's just one
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: leg is like fire. I'm limping, I'm limping, I'm limping. But,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: you know, everybody says don't go to sick call because
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: if you go to sick call, you'll lose your slot.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: You'll end up general infantry or regular infantry. And so
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: I go back. Um, I just tough it out. Uh,
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: I get in my rack and the next morning when
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: I get out of the rack, which is the top
• 49:42
  Speaker 1: bunk bed, right? Um, I jumped out and my legs,
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: they just give out underneath me. Uh, and I try
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: to get up and I just can't get up. And
• 49:50
  Speaker 1: so I go to sick call and I end up
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: going to the hospital and they end up x-raying me.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: And they also x-rayed my battle buddy because I got
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: to go there with somebody else. And he has a
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: broken hip, uh, where they had to bring him to surgery.
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: And it's in the book. Uh, there's a lot more
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: detail about it. It was kind of a dramatic moment. Um,
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: but for me, they just said I had bilateral tibial fractures, right?
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: All the way up my legs. Uh, they said I
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: had a spider webs and the next, uh, phase of
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: the training was jump school, right? Uh, where you got
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: to jump out of a plane and the doctor, you know,
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: I was like, um, son, if you jump on those legs,
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: they're going to turn into powder. And he's like, I
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: can hold you back. you know, we can put you
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: for like six months, you stay off them, then you
• 50:36
  Speaker 1: can go back through the whole cycle, right? Start basic
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: from scratch. But you'll lose your slot in the Special
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Forces pipeline because of the way these things are scheduled
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: and everything like that. And then you'll basically be reassigned
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: to the needs of the Army. Or, which probably meant
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: I was going back to IT, which was what I
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: joined the Army to kind of escape. Or, you can
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: go out on this special kind of discharge that's called
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: an administrative discharge, right? Normally you've got honorable discharge, dishonorable discharge,
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: things like that. This is something for people who have
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: been in for, I think, less than six months, where
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: it's like annulling a marriage. It's as if it never happened.
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: It's as if you never joined. And at the time,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, you know, that's very kind of
• 51:23
  Speaker 1: him to do that. And I took it. You know,
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: they sent me to sick call, or sorry, the sick bay,
• 51:31
  Speaker 1: where you're in the medical platoon and you do nothing for,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: I think, about a month. And then they let you
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: out once the paperwork all finishes. But in hindsight, I
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: realized that if you take an administrative discharge, it exempts
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: the Army for liability. for your injuries. So actually what
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: I thought was a kindness, uh, was just, you know,
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: now if I had future problems with my legs, uh, they,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: they wouldn't have to cover it or health insurance and
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: any of those things. And it was, it was just
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: a funny thing. But anyway, I get out of the
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: army and here, uh, I'm on crutches for a long
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: time and just sort of trying to figure out, all right, well,
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: what's next in life? Um, Because I had gotten a
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: basic security clearance just for going through signing up for
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: the military process, I applied for a security guard position
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: at the University of Maryland because it said you had
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: to get a top secret clearance, which was a higher
• 52:32
  Speaker 1: clearance than I had at the time. And I went, well,
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: that sounds good because I knew if I combine my
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: IT skills, which were now suddenly much more relevant again
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: to my future, with a top secret security clearance because
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: of the way it works, If you have a top-secret
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: security clearance and tech skills, you get paid a ridiculous
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: amount of money for doing very little work. So it
• 52:53
  Speaker 1: was like, all right, well, you know, I can basically
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: make twice what I would be making in the private
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: sector working for government at this level, at this phase.
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Because what we talked about earlier with September 11th and
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: how the intelligence community changed, they no longer cared that
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: I hadn't graduated from college, right? And I had gotten
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: a GED just by going in and taking a test
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: for college. government purposes it was the same as if
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: I was a high school graduate. So now suddenly it
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: was like these doors are open. Now this University of
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: Maryland facility turned out to be an NSA facility. It
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: was called a CASL, the Center for the Advanced Study
• 53:33
  Speaker 1: of Language at the University of Maryland College Park. And
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: all I was was literally a security guy walking around
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: with a walkie-talkie making sure nobody breaks in at night
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: managing the electronic alarm system and things like that. But
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: once I had my foot in the door there, I
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: could start climbing ladders step by step. And I applied for,
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: or I went to a job fair, actually, that was
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: only for people who had security clearances. And I ended
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: up going to the table for one of the technical companies.
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: It was a little tiny subcontractor nobody's ever heard of.
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: And they said... You know, we've got tons of positions
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: for somebody like you. Are you comfortable working nights? And
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, you know, I wake up in
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: the middle of the day anyway. That's fine with me.
• 54:26
  Speaker 1: And suddenly I've gone from working for the NSA through
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: a university in a weird way where it's like the
• 54:34
  Speaker 1: NSA holds the clearance, but I'm formally an employee of
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: the state of Maryland at the college. And this is government, man.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: It's all these weird dodges and boondoggles for how people
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: are employed there. Now, suddenly, I'm working at CIA headquarters, right?
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: The place where all the movies show you swoop over
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: the marble seal and everything like that. I'm the king
• 54:55
  Speaker 1: of the castle, right? I'm there at the middle of
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: the night when no one else is there. The lights
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: are on motion sensors. It's the creepiest thing in the world.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: There's like flags on the wall that are just like
• 55:06
  Speaker 1: gently billowing in the air conditioning like ghosts. The hallway
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: lights up as you walk alongside it because it's like
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: a green building and they disappear behind you. And there's
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: no one there. I can go down to the gym.
• 55:20
  Speaker 1: at like 2 o'clock in the morning at the CIA.
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: And it's like not see a soul on the other
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: side of the building and then go all the way back.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: And this kind of thing was my end because they
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: were like, look, it's the night shift. Nothing that bad
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: is going to happen. But it was on a very
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: senior technical team that was basically handling systems administration for
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: everybody in the Washington metropolitan area, right? So every... basically
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: CIA server. Uh, this is a computer system that like
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: data is stored on. The reporting is stored on that. Uh,
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: traffic has moved on all of this stuff. Uh, suddenly me, uh,
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: this is, uh, circa 2005. I think, um, I'm in
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: charge of, uh, and it's just me and one other
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: guy on the night shift. And if you're interested in
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: the book, there's a lot of detail on this. Uh,
• 56:19
  Speaker 1: But I get sort of scouted from this position because
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: they realize I actually know a lot about technology. They
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: were expecting me just to basically make sure the building
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: doesn't burn down, all these systems don't go down overnight
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: and then never come back up. But they go, well,
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: are you willing to go overseas? And to a young
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: man at that age, that's actually like, hey, that sounds
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: kind of exciting. Who doesn't want to go work overseas
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: for the CIA? Okay. And there's a lot of people
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: listening to the podcast who are like, not me.
• 56:53
  Speaker 2: I'm one of them.
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: Because they're like, wait, the CIA is the bad guys, right?
• 56:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: They're like, what, are you going to go overthrow government somewhere?
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: But you have to understand that I'm still very much
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: a true believer. The government is like the living compressed
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: embodiment of truth and goodness and light, you know, the
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: shining city on the hill. So I want to do
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: my part to spread that to the world. I didn't
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: have skepticism, is really what I'm trying to establish here.
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: And so I sign up and I go through this
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: special training school, like people here in movies about The Farm,
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: which is down at Camp Peary in Virginia. I'm sent
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: to this actually much more secret facility called The Hill,
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: which is in Warrant in Virginia. And this has been
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: covered a few times in open source media. Uh, but I,
• 57:46
  Speaker 1: I think this is one of the few, uh, book length, uh,
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: discussions of what, what happens there in, uh, permanent record. Um, but, uh, yeah,
• 57:56
  Speaker 1: so I go through training and then I get assigned, uh,
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: overseas and I end up in Geneva, Switzerland undercover as
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: a diplomat, right? I think I'm, uh, uh, my, my
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: formal title for the embassy is like something super bland,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: like diplomatic attache. Um, And what I am is I'm
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: a forward-deployed tech guy. They send you through this school
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: to make you into kind of a MacGyver, right? Yes,
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: you can handle all the computers, but you can also
• 58:21
  Speaker 1: handle the connections for the embassy's power systems, right? The
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: actual electrical connections. You can handle the HVAC systems, right?
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: You can handle locks and alarms and security systems. Basically,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: anything that's got an on button on it at the
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: embassy that's secure, now you're responsible for. And I traveled
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: from Geneva to other countries in Europe for sort of assignments.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: And it was like, it was an exciting time. I
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: actually still enjoyed it, but this was where I first,
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: working with intelligence, started to get doubts. And the story's
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: been told many times, so I won't go over it
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: in full detail here. But the CIA does primarily, and
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: it's not the only thing they do, what's called human intelligence. Now,
• 59:17
  Speaker 1: there are many different types of intelligence that the intelligence
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: community is responsible for. The primary ones are human intelligence
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: and signals intelligence. You want to think of Signals intelligence, right,
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: as tapping lines, hacking computers, all of these sort of
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: things that provide electronic information, anything that's a digital or
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: analog signal that can be intercepted and then turned into information.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: Human intelligence is, you know, all that fun stuff we've
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: heard the CIA doing for decades and decades, which is
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: where they try to turn people. Basically, they say, look,
• 59:54
  Speaker 1: we'll give you money if you sell out your country.
• 59:58
  Speaker 1: They don't... It's not even your country a lot of times.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: It's your organization. These guys could be working for a
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: telecommunications provider, and they want to sell customer records, or
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 1: they work at a bank, which was the thing that
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: I saw, and we wanted records on the bank's customers,
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: so we wanted a guy on the inside. But anyway,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 1: that's sort of how it works. And what I saw
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: was they were way more aggressive for... the lowest stakes
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: than was reasonable or responsible. They were totally willing, uh,
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: to destroy somebody's life, uh, just on the off chance
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: they would get some information that wouldn't even be, uh,
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: tremendously valuable. And so, you know, ethically that, that struck me, um,
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: as a bit off, but I, I let it pass, um,
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: because what I, what I've learned over my life, um,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: short though it's, it's been, you know, uh, It's that
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: skepticism is something that needs to build up over time.
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: It's a skill, something that needs to be practiced. Or
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: you can think of it as something that you develop
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: through exposure. Kind of like radiation poisoning, but in a
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: positive way. It's when you start to realize inconsistencies or
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: hypocrisies or lies... And you notice them and you give
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: somebody the benefit of the doubt or you trust them
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: or you think it's all right. But then over time,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: you see it's not an isolated instance. It's a pattern behavior.
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: And over time, that exposure to inconsistency builds and builds
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: and builds until it's something that you can no longer ignore. Now,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: after the CIA, I went to the NSA in Japan
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: where I was working there in Tokyo. And then from there,
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: a couple years later, I went to the CIA again.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: Now I was working as private employee for Dell, but
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: I was the senior technical official on Dell's sales account
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 1: to the CIA. You know, people, these big companies, they
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: have sales accounts to the CIA. And so this means
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: I'm going in and now it's crazy because I'm still
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: a very young man, but I'm sitting across the table
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 1: and from chiefs of these enormous CIA divisions. I'm sitting
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: across from their chief technology officer for the entire agency,
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: or the chief information officer for the entire CIA. And
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: these guys are going, look, here's our problems, here's what
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: we want to do. And it's my job to pitch
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: them a system, right? And I'm paired up with this
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: sales guy. And the whole thing is just go, how
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: much money can we get out of the government? That's
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: the whole goal. And we'll build them what we were
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: pitching was a private cloud system. Everybody knows about cloud
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: computing now. It's like why your Gmail account is available
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 1: wherever you go. It's why Facebook has this massive system
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: of records for everyone everywhere. The government wanted to have
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: these kind of capabilities too. Dell ended up getting beat
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: out by Amazon. Some people aren't familiar with this. Many
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 1: of them are. But Amazon runs a secret cloud system
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: for the government. I forget what they've rebranded it now.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: But there's this massive connection between industry and government in
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 1: the classified space that just goes deeper and deeper and
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 1: deeper and deeper. But at this point, I had misgivings
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: because of what I'd seen in Japan about government, but
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: I was just trying to get by. I was trying
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: to ignore the conflicts. I was trying to ignore the inconsistencies.
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: And I think this is a state that a lot
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: of people in these large institutions, not just in our country,
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: but around the world, struggle with every day. They got
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: a job, they got a family, they got bills. They're
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: just trying to get by. And they know that some
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: of the things they're doing are not good things. They
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: know some of the things they're doing are actively wrong.
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: But they know what happens to people who rock the boat. Eventually,
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: I changed my mind. And when I had gone to Hawaii,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: which was the final position in my career with the
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: intelligence community, I was, because of an accident of history here,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: I wasn't supposed to be in this position at all.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: I was supposed to be at a group called the
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 1: National Threat Operations Center, NTAC. But because of the way
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: contracting works, and again, this is covered in the book,
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: I end up being reassigned to this little rinky-dink office
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: that nobody's ever heard of in Hawaii called the Office
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: of Information Sharing. And I'm replacing... this old-timer who's about
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: to retire, really, really nice guy. But he spent most
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 1: of his days just reading novels and doing nothing and
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: letting people be content to the fact, or letting people
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 1: forget that his office existed because he was the only
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: one in it. There's a manager who's like over him,
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 1: but it's actually over a larger group, and he just
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: looks over him as sort of a favor. So now
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: I come in. And now I'm the sole employee of
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: the Office of Information Sharing. But I'm not close enough
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: to retirement that I'm okay with just doing nothing at all.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: So I get ambitious. And I come up with this
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: idea for a new system called the Heartbeat. And what
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: the Heartbeat is going to do is connect to basically
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 1: every information repository in the intelligence community, both at the NSA...
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: And across network boundaries, which you normally can't cross, but
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: because I'd worked at both the CIA and the NSA,
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: I knew the network well enough, both sides of it,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: sides that normal workers at the NSA would never have
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: seen because you have to be in one or the other.
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: I could actually connect these together. I could build bridges
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: across this kind of network space. And then draw all
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: of these records into a new kind of system called
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: that was supposed to look at your digital ID, basically your.
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 1: Your sort of ID card that says, this is who
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: I am, I work for this agency, I work in
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: this office, these are my assignments, these are my group affiliations,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: and because of that, the system would be able to
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: eventually aggregate records that were relevant to your job, that
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: were related to you, and then it could provide them,
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: and basically you could hit this site, it would be
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 1: an update of what we used to call read boards,
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: which were manually created, and They would go, look, you
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 1: work in network defense, right? These are all the things
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: that are happening on network defense. You work on, I
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: don't know, economic takeovers in Guatemala. You know, this is
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: what's going on for you there. But in my off time,
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 1: I helped the team that sat next to me, which
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: was a systems administration team for Windows networks, because I
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: had been a Microsoft certified systems engineer there. which means
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: basically I knew how to take care of Windows networks.
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: And this was all those guys did, and they always
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: had way too much work, way too much work, and
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: I had basically no work that I needed to do
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: at all because all I was supposed to do was
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: share information, which was not something that was particularly convenient.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: in demand, because most people already knew what they wanted
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: or what they needed. So it was basically my job
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 1: was to sit there and collect a paycheck, unless I
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: wanted to get ambitious. And so I did some side
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: gigs for these other guys, and one of them was
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: running what were called dirty word searches. Now, dirty word
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: searches are, let me dial this back, because I know
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: we're sort of this is hard to track. Everything that
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: the NSA does in large part is classified. Everything the
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: CIA does in large part is classified. If I made
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: lunch plans with other people in my office, it was classified.
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: That was the policy. It's dumb. This over classification problem
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: is one of the central flaws in government right now.
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: This is the reason we don't understand what they're doing.
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: This is why they can get away with breaking the
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: law or violating our rights for so long, you know,
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: 5 years, 10 years, 15, 50 years, before we see
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: what they were doing. And it's because of this routine classification, right? But...
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: every system, computer system, has a limit on what level
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: of classified information is supposed to be stored on it.
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: And we've got all these complicated systems for code words
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: and caveats that a system of what's called compartmentation. And
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: this is the idea. When you work at the CIA,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: when you work at the NSA, you're not supposed to
• 1:09:23
  Speaker 1: know what's happening in the office next to you, right? Um,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: because you don't have need to know, right? Again, that
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: thing from the movies. Um, And the reason they have
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: this is they don't want one person to be able
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 1: to go and know everything, right, and tell everybody everything.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 1: They don't want anybody to know too much, particularly when
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: they're doing lots of bad things, because then there's the
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: risk that you realize they're doing so many bad things
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 1: that it's past the point that we can justify. And
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: they might develop sort of an ideological objection to that. Well,
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: in the Office of Information Sharing, and actually in basically
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: every part of my career before that, I had access
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 1: to everything. I had what was called a special caveat
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: on my accesses called privac, which means privileged access. What
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: this means is you're a kind of super user. You know,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: most people have all of these controls on the kind
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 1: of information they can access. But I'm in charge of
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: the system, right? People who need information, they have to
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: get it from somewhere. They don't know. Even the director
• 1:10:29
  Speaker 1: of the CIA, right? He says, I need to know
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: everything about this. Well, he doesn't know where to get it.
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 1: He's just a manager. Somebody has to be able to
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: actually cross these thresholds and get those things. That guy
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: was me. And so dirty word searches were these kind
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: of automated queries that I would set up to go
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: across the whole network. And look at all of the
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: different levels of classification and compartmentation and exceptionally controlled information.
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: That's kind of, you can think of it as above
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: top secret. In these special compartments, right, where you're not
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: even supposed to know what these compartments are for. You
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: only know the code word unless you work in them,
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: unless you have access to them, unless you read into them.
• 1:11:12
  Speaker 1: One day I get a hit on the dirty word
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: search for a program that I'd never heard of. called
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: Stellar Wind. It came back because the little caveat for it,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: they're called handling caveats, which is like, you know, you
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: can think of like burn after reading or for your
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 1: eyes only. But this one's called STLW, which means Stellar Wind.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: And unless you know what Stellar Wind is, you don't
• 1:11:38
  Speaker 1: know how to handle it. All I knew was it
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: wasn't supposed to be on my system. And this is
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: a little bit unusual. And it turned out This document
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: was placed on the system because one of the employees
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: who had worked on this program years before had come
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 1: to Hawaii. And this person was a lawyer, I believe.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: And they had worked in the Inspector General's office, and
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: they had compiled a report, part of the Inspector General's report,
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 1: which is when the government is investigating itself, into the
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: operations and activities of this program. Well, this was the
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: domestic mass surveillance program that I talked about in the
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: very beginning of our conversation that started under the Bush
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: White House. Stellar Wind was no longer supposed to be
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: really in operation. It had been unveiled in a big
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: scandal in December 2005 in the New York Times by
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: journalist James Risen. And I'm not going to name him
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 1: because I don't want to get it wrong. Another journalist,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: you can look at the byline. if you want to
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: see their involvement. And there's a lot of history here, too.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: But what they had found was, of course, the Bush
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: White House had constructed a warrantless wiretapping program, if you
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: remember the warrantless wiretapping scandal, that was affecting everyone in
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: the United States. Well, the Bush White House was... really
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: put in a difficult position by this scandal. They would
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: have lost the election over this scandal because the New
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: York Times actually had this story in October 2004, which
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: was the election year. They were ready to go with it.
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: But at the specific request of the White House, talking
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: to the publisher of the New York Times, Sulzberger and
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Bill Keller, then the executive editor of the New York Times, said,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: The New York Times said, we won't run the story
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: because the president just said, if you run this story
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: a month before the election, that's a very tight margin
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: if you recall, you'll have blood on your hands. And
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: it was so close to 2001, the New York Times
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: just went, you know what, fine. Americans don't need to
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: know that the Constitution is being violated. They don't need
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: to know. that the Fourth Amendment doesn't mean what they
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 1: think it means. If the government says it's all right
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: and it's a secret and you shouldn't know about it,
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 1: that's fine. Now, December 2005, why did that change? Why
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 1: did the New York Times suddenly run this story? Well,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: it's because James Risen, the reporter who found this story,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: had written a book, and he was about to publish
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: this book, and the New York Times was about to
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: be in a very uncomfortable position of having to explain
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: why they didn't run this story. and how they got
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: scooped by their own journalists. And so they finally did it,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: but it was too late. Bush had been reelected. And
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: now it was sweeping up the broken glass of our
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 1: lost rights. So Congress, the Bush White House was very
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: effective in, as I said before, telling a very few
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: select members of Congress that this program existed. And they
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 1: told them this program existed in ways that they wouldn't
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: object to, but made them culpable. for hiding the existence
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: of the program from the American people. And this is
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 1: why someone like Nancy Pelosi, who you wouldn't exactly think
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: would be buddy-buddy with George Bush, was completely okay in
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: defending this kind of program, in fact. And later she said, oh, well,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: she had objections to the program that she wrote in
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: a letter to the White House, but she never showed
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: us the letter. She went, oh, well, that was classified, right?
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: And this is not to bag on her individually, it's
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 1: just she's a great example in here, a named example
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 1: everyone knows, of how this process works. The White House
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 1: will implicate certain very powerful members of Congress in their
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: own criminal activity. And so then when the White House
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 1: gets in trouble for it, the Congress has to run
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 1: cover for the White House. And so what happened was
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: Congress passed an emergency law in 2007 called the Protect
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: America Act, which should have been our first indication this
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 1: is a very bad thing, because they never name a
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: law something like that unless it's something terrible. And what
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: it did was it retroactively immunized all of the phone
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 1: companies in the United States that had been breaking the
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: law millions of times a day by handing your records
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: over to to the government, which they weren't allowed to do,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: simply on the basis of a letter from the president saying,
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 1: please do this. And these companies went, look, now that
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: we've been uncovered, now that we've been shown that we're breaking,
• 1:16:37
  Speaker 1: or now that these journalists have shown that we've broken
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 1: the law and violated the rights of Americans on a
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: staggering scale that could bankrupt our companies because we can
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: be sued for this, we will no longer cooperate with
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: you Unless you pass a law that says people can't
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: sue us for having done this. And so we get
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: the Protect America Act, which they say is an emergency.
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: This is all public history, too. You can look this
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: up on Wikipedia. And so then they go, it's an
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: emergency law. We have to pass this now. We have
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: to keep this program active. Bush is going to end
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: the warrantless wiretapping program. And continue it under this new
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: authority where it's going to have some special level of
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: oversight and these kind of things eventually. But for now,
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: we just have to make sure people are safe. Again,
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: they go to fear. They say, if we don't have
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 1: this program, terrorist attacks will continue. You know, people will die.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: Blood on your hands, blood on your hands, blood on
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 1: your hands. Think of the children. Protect America Act passes.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: The companies get off the hook. The Bush White House
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: gets off the hook. The Congress that was then sharing
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: in criminal culpability for authorizing, or rather letting these things
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 1: go by without stopping them, then passes in 2008 the
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendments of 2008. This is called
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: the FAA, FISA Amendments Act of 2008. And rather than
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 1: stopping all of the unlawful and sort of unconstitutional activities
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: that the intelligence agency was doing, they continued it in
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: different ways simply by creating a few legal hoops for
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 1: them to jump through. Now, this is not to say
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: these things aren't helpful at all. It's not to say
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: they're not useful at all. But it's important to understand
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: When the government's response to any scandal, and this applies
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: to any country, is not to make the activities of
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: the person who is caught breaking the law. comply with
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: the law, but instead make the activities of the person
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: who is breaking the law legal, right? They make the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: law comply with what the agencies want to do, rather
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: than make the agencies comply with the law. That's a problem,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: and that's what happened here. Now, the intelligence community's powers
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: actually grew in response to this scandal in 2008 because
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: Congress was on the hook and they just wanted to
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 1: move on and get this over with. There were objections.
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: There were people who knew this was a bad idea,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: but it didn't pass on. Now, what the public took
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: away from this, because a part of these laws was
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: a requirement that the inspector general Of all of these
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: different intelligence community elements and the director of national intelligence
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: submit a report saying This is what happened under that
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: warrantless wiretapping program This is how it complied with the
• 1:19:47
  Speaker 1: law or how it didn't comply with the law and
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: basically look back on at how this program was constituted,
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: what it did, what the impacts and effects were, and
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: that was supposed to be sort of the Truth and
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: Reconciliation Council, right? Now, why am I talking about all
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 1: this ancient history? Well, I'm sitting here in 2012 with
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 1: a classified inspector general's report, draft report from the NSA report,
• 1:20:17
  Speaker 1: that names names, that says Dick Cheney, that says David Addington,
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: that says Nancy Pelosi, that says all these people who
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: are involved in the program, the TikTok of how it happens.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: It says the director of the NSA, that guy who
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 1: was evacuating the building at the beginning of our podcast here,
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 1: that guy was asked by the President of the United
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 1: States if he would continue this program after being told
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 1: that by the White House and the Department of Justice,
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: that these programs were not lawful, that they were not constitutional.
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: And the president said, would you continue this program on
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: my say-so alone, knowing that it's risky, knowing that it's unlawful?
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 1: And he said, yes, sir, I will, if you think
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: that's what's necessary to keep the country safe. And at
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: that moment, I realized that These guys don't care about
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: the law. These guys don't care about the Constitution. These
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: guys don't care about the American people. They care about
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 1: the continuity of government. They care about the state, right?
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 1: And this is something that people have lost. We hear
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: this phrase over and over again, national security, national security,
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: national security, and we're meant to interpret that to mean
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 1: public safety. But national security is a very different thing
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 1: from public safety. National security is a thing that in
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: previous generations we referred to as state security. National security
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 1: was a kind of term that came out of the
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: Bush administration to run cover for the fact that we
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: were elevating a new kind of secret police across the country.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: And what does it mean when, again, in a democracy,
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 1: in the United States, the public is not partner to government?
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: The public does not hold the leash of government anymore,
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: but we are subject to government, right? We are subordinate
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 1: to government. And we're not even allowed to know that
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 1: it happened. Now, in the book, I tell the fact
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: that I had access to the unclassified version of this
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: report back in Japan. And what's interesting is the unclassified
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: version of a report, and we've all seen this today
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 1: with things like the Mueller report and all of the
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: intelligence reporting that's happened over the last several years. When
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: the government provides a classified report to the public, It's
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: normally the same document. The unclassified version and the classified
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: version are the same thing. It's just the unclassified version
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: has things blacked out or redacted that they say, oh,
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: you're not allowed to know this sentence or this paragraph
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: or this page or whatever. The document that the public
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: had been given about the warrantless wiretapping program was a
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: completely different document. It was a document tailor-made to deceive
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: and mislead the Congress and the public of the United States.
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: And it was effective in doing that. And in 2012,
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: what I realized was this is what real world conspiracies
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: look like, right? It doesn't have to be smoking men
• 1:23:27
  Speaker 1: behind closed doors, right? It's lawyers and politicians. It's ordinary
• 1:23:32
  Speaker 1: people from the working level to the management level who go,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: if we don't explain this in a certain way, we're
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 1: all gonna lose our jobs. Or the other way, they go,
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: we're gonna get something out of this if we all
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: work together. Civilization is the history of conspiracy, right? What
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: is civilization but a conspiracy for all of us to
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: do better by working together, right? But it's this kind
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: of thing that I think too often we forget because
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: it's boring as hell I want all your listeners to
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: go to the Washington Post because this document that I
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: discovered that really changed me has been published courtesy of
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: the Washington Post. It's called the Inspector General's Report on
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: Stellar Wind. And you can look at the actual document
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: that I saw that was unredacted. I had no blacked
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 1: out pages on mine. And what I believe it shows
• 1:24:35
  Speaker 1: is that some of the most senior officials in the
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: United States... elected and unelected, worked together to actively undermine
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: the rights of the American people to give themselves expanded powers. Now,
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: in their defense, they said they were seeking these powers
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: for a good and just and noble cause. They say
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 1: they were trying to keep us safe. But that's what
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: they always say. That's what every government says. That's no
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: different than what the Chinese government says or the Russian
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 1: government says. And the question is, if they are truly
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: keeping us safe, why wouldn't they simply just tell us that?
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: Why wouldn't they have that debate in Congress? Why wouldn't
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 1: they put that to a vote? Because if they were,
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 1: and they could convince us that they were, they'd win
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 1: the vote. And particularly, we all know, like the Patriot
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: Act passed, one of the worst pieces of legislation in
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: modern history passed. Why didn't we get a vote? And
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: I think if you read the report, the answer will
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 1: be clear. So I'm sorry, Joe, I went on for
• 1:25:46
  Speaker 1: a very long time.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: No, it was amazing. Don't apologize at all. It's just
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: completely fascinating that the continuation of this policy came down
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 2: to one man and the president having this discussion. That
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: is so— Well, it's much more. Much more, but literally
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: the president— At.
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 1: The heart of it, yes. At the heart of it,
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: in every expression of executive power, and by executive we
• 1:26:15
  Speaker 1: mean the White House here, the CIA, the NSA, the FBI,
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: the DOJ, these guys exist— as a part of the
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: executive branch of government. In a real way, they work
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: for the White House. Now, there are laws and regulations
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 1: and policies that are supposed to say they're supposed to
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: do this, and they're supposed to say they're not supposed
• 1:26:34
  Speaker 1: to do that. But when you look at federal regulations,
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: when you look at policies as an employee of government,
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: when you violate these policies, the worst thing that happens
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: to you is you lose your job, because there's no
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: criminal penalty for the violation of these laws. And so
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: it's very easy for people who exist in these structures,
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 1: particularly the very top levels of these structures, to go, look,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 1: we have a given set of lawful authorities. And these
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: are defined very broadly to give us leeway to do
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: whatever it is we think is proper and appropriate and just. Now,
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: take that proper and appropriate and just from the perspective
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: of any given individual, any given president, Now intersect that
• 1:27:25
  Speaker 1: with what's good for them politically. And that's where problems
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 1: begin to arise. Now, the safety measure that's supposed to
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: protect us from this in the U.S. system and any
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 1: democracy broadly is these people are supposed to be what
• 1:27:41
  Speaker 1: are called public officials. That means we know their decisions.
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 1: That means we know their policies. That means we know
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: their programs and prerogatives and powers, like what they are doing.
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: both in our name and what they're doing against us.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: And because they are transparent to us, we, the people,
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 1: can then police their activities. We can go, I disagree
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: with this. We can protest it. We can campaign against it, right?
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 1: We can try to become the president, do whatever. They
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: are public officials and we are private citizens. They're not
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 1: supposed to know anything about us, right? Because we, in
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 1: relative terms, hold no power And they hold all the power,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: so they have to be under the tightest constraints. We
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 1: need to be in the freest circumstances. And yet, the
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: rise of the state secrets doctrine, right, this whole classification
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: system that goes all the way back to last century,
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: about the middle of the last century, I believe, is
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 1: when it really started. getting tested in court. And I
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 1: think you know more about this in many cases than
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: I do when you start talking about what happened in
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: the FBI and the CIA and the NSA's sort of old,
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 1: dirty work in the 20th century. they abused their powers
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: repeatedly and continuously. They did active harm to domestic politics
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: in the United States. The FBI was spying on Martin
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: Luther King and trying to get Martin Luther King to
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: kill himself before the Nobel Prize was going to be awarded.
• 1:29:18
  Speaker 1: In fact, after MLK gave his I Have a Dream speech,
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: two days later, The FBI classified him as the greatest national,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: or I think it was the greatest national security threat
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 1: in the United States. And again, this is the FBI.
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: This is the group that everybody's applauding today, saying, oh,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 1: these wonderful patriots and heroes. Now, I'm not saying everybody
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 1: in the FBI is bad. I'm not saying everybody in
• 1:29:44
  Speaker 1: the CIA and the NSA is bad. I'm saying that
• 1:29:47
  Speaker 1: you don't become a patriot based on where you work.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 1: Patriotism is not about loyalty to government. Patriotism, in fact,
• 1:29:58
  Speaker 1: is not about loyalty to anything. Patriotism is a constant
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 1: effort to do good for the people of your country.
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: It's not about the government. It's not about the state.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: We'll get into loyalty later because I think one of
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: the big criticisms against me that should be talked about
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: is they go, look, this guy is disloyal, he broke
• 1:30:25
  Speaker 1: an oath, he did whatever. Loyalty is a good thing
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 1: when it's in the service of something good. But it
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: is only good when it's in the service of something good.
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 1: If you're loyal to a bad person, if you're loyal
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: to a bad program, if you're loyal to a bad government,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 1: that loyalty is actively harmful. And I think that's overlooked.
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: But yeah, when you get back into this whole thing about...
• 1:30:52
  Speaker 1: sort of where it came from, why it happened, how
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: it could come out of just this small group, and
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: then they could slowly kind of poison by implication, by complicity,
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 1: by bringing them into the conspiracy and then having them
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 1: not say anything about it, a wider and wider broad
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: body of people. And then once you've got enough people
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 1: in on it, it's much easier to convince other people
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 1: that it's legitimate because they can go, look, we've got
• 1:31:21
  Speaker 1: 30 people who know about this and none of them
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 1: have objected to it. Why are you going to object
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 1: to this? All of this derives from the original sin,
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 1: which is in a democracy, creating a system of government
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 1: that is in fact a secret government, a body of
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 1: secret law, a body of secret policy that that is
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 1: far beyond what legitimate government secrets could be. This is
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 1: not to say government can have no secrecy at all.
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 1: If the government wants to investigate someone without having them respond,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 1: we're talking traditional law enforcement, sure, you're not going to
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 1: tell this mobster, hey, we're going to start investigating you. We,
• 1:32:02
  Speaker 1: the public, don't need to know the names of every
• 1:32:04
  Speaker 1: terrorist suspect out in the world, but we do need
• 1:32:09
  Speaker 1: to know Again, the powers and programs, the policies that
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 1: a government is asserting, at least the broad outlines of it,
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: because otherwise, how can we control it? How do we
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 1: know if the government is applying its authorities that are
• 1:32:23
  Speaker 1: supposed to be granted to it by us if we
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 1: don't know what it is that they're doing? And so
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: this is the main thing and really the story behind
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: the title, Permanent Record, is Is, look, Joe, when you
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: were a kid, you know, when I was a kid,
• 1:32:42
  Speaker 1: when you were a teenager, right? Like, what's the worst
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: thing you ever said? Uh, you know, did you say
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: anything you weren't proud of? Did you do anything that
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 1: you weren't proud of? Something that today, uh, in like
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 1: the wokest of Twitter land, uh, you would get in
• 1:32:56
  Speaker 1: trouble for.
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: I'm sure. Um, and that's one of the horrible things
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: about kids growing up today is that they do have
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 2: all this stuff out there on social media forever, and
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: they can be judged horribly by something they did when
• 1:33:09
  Speaker 2: they were 13. It's exactly that.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: Um, Our worst mistakes, our deepest shames, were forgotten, right?
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: They were lost, they were ephemeral. Even the things we
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: did get caught for, they were known for a time.
• 1:33:27
  Speaker 1: Maybe they're still remembered by people who are closest to us,
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: whether we like them or dislike them, but they were
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: people connected to us. Now, we're forced to live in
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: a real way naked before power. Whether we're talking about Facebook,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: whether we're talking about Google, whether we're talking about the
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: government of any country, they know everything about us, or
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 1: much about us, rather. And we know very little about them,
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 1: and we're not allowed to know more. Everything that we
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 1: do now lasts forever, not because we want to remember,
• 1:34:03
  Speaker 1: but because we're not allowed to forget. Just carrying a
• 1:34:07
  Speaker 1: phone in your pocket is enough. for your movements to
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: be memorialized, because every cell phone tower that you pass
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 1: is keeping a record of that. And AT & T
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 1: keeps those records going back to 2008 under a program
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: called Hemisphere. If you search for Hemisphere and AT & T,
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: you'll get a story in the Daily Beast about it.
• 1:34:26
  Speaker 1: AT & T keeps your phone records going back to 1983.
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 1: If any of your listeners were born after 1983, right,
• 1:34:34
  Speaker 1: born after me, or it might be 1987, excuse me, 1987,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: If they were born after 1987, and they're an AT
• 1:34:41
  Speaker 1: & T customer, or their calls cross AT & T' s network,
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: AT & T has every phone call they ever made. Rather,
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 1: the record that it happened, not necessarily the content that's
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: on the phone call. And so, I mean, let me
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: turn this around for you, Joe, because I feel like
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 1: I've just been given a speech. When you look at
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 1: this stuff, right, when you look at what's happening with government,
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 1: when you look at what's happening... With the Trump White House,
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 1: the Obama White House, the Bush White House, you could
• 1:35:10
  Speaker 1: see this trend happening. When you look at what's happening
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 1: with Facebook, when you look at what's happening with Google,
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: when you look at the fact that you go to
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 1: every restaurant today and you see people looking at phones,
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 1: you get on a bus, you get on a subway,
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: you see somebody sitting next to you in traffic, you
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 1: see people looking at phones. These devices are connected all
• 1:35:29
  Speaker 1: the time. Now people are getting Alexa, right? Now people
• 1:35:33
  Speaker 1: have OK Google. They have Siri on their phones. They're
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: in their house. They've always got these connected microphones. Where
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: do you think this leads? And what is it that
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 1: gives you sort of trust in the system, faith in
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 1: the system? Just so we can start a conversation here,
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: what strikes you about this?
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 2: Well, it's completely alien and it's new. This is something
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 2: that's unprecedented. We don't have a long human history of
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: being completely connected via technology. This is something we're navigating
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: right now for the first time. And it's probably the
• 1:36:11
  Speaker 2: most powerful thing that the human race has ever seen
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: in terms of the distribution of information. There's nothing that
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 2: even comes close to it in all of human history.
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 2: And we're figuring it out as we go along. And
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 2: what you exposed is that not only are we figuring
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 2: out as we go along, but that to cover their ass,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: these cell phone companies and cahoots with the government have
• 1:36:35
  Speaker 2: made it legal for them to gather up all of
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 2: your phone calls, all of your text messages, all of
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 2: your e-mails. and store them somewhere so that retroactively, if
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 2: you ever say anything they don't like or do something
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: they don't like, they can go back, find that, and
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: use it against you. And we don't know who they are,
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 2: we don't know why they're doing it, and we didn't
• 1:36:55
  Speaker 2: know they could do it until you exposed it. The
• 1:36:59
  Speaker 2: connection of human beings via technology is both amazing and
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 2: powerful and incredible in terms of our access to knowledge,
• 1:37:08
  Speaker 2: but terrifying in terms of the government's ability to track
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 2: our movements, track your phone calls, track everything, and under
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: the guise of protecting us from terrorists and protecting us
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 2: from sleeper cells, protecting us from attacks. Look, if they
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: really are protecting us from these attacks, that's great. But
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 2: there's no provision in the Constitution that allows any of this.
• 1:37:34
  Speaker 2: And this is where it gets really squirrely because they're
• 1:37:37
  Speaker 2: making up the rules as they go along. And they're
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 2: making up these rules the way you're describing it. This
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: is step by step. This has happened to sort of
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: protect their ass and keep themselves from being implicated in
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: what has been a violation of our rights and our
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: privacies and the Fourth Amendment.
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think I think one of the
• 1:37:57
  Speaker 1: things that that. Everybody needs to understand, um, when you
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 1: look at these things, um, and the reason, you know,
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: we talked about before when I got this information, why
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 1: I didn't just put it on the internet and people
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: criticize me for this. They go, I didn't share enough information, uh,
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: because the journalists are gatekeeping, right? They've got a big
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: archive and they haven't published everything from it. And I
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 1: told them not to publish everything.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: Why, why did you do that? Why did you do that?
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: Because, so, again, it gets back to legitimate secrets and
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: illegitimate secrets. Some spying, from my perspective, you know, career spy,
• 1:38:34
  Speaker 1: is okay, right?
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: Agreed.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: If you have hacked... A terrorist's phone, right? And you're
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 1: getting some information about that. Useful.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: Agreed, yeah.
• 1:38:42
  Speaker 1: If you're spying on a Russian general in charge of
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 1: a rocket division, useful, right? But there are lines and
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 1: degrees in that where it's not useful. Now, the examples
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: that I just gave you, these are targeted examples. This
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 1: is where you're spying on an individual, their known named
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 1: person that is being monitored for a specific reason that
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 1: is related.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: Hopefully from a warrant.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: Right. Well, even for foreign intelligence in some indications, you
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: don't need a warrant strictly. Although I think they should
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 1: have warrants for all of these investigations because they established
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 1: a court for precisely this reason called the Foreign Intelligence
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 1: Surveillance Court, right? And there's not a judge in the world...
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 1: who wouldn't stamp a warrant saying, hey, spy on Abu
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: Jihad over here, right? And if you want to spy
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 1: on another guy, Boris Badenov of the Rocket Division, right?
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 1: That's okay. They're going to go with that. But then
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: you look at these edge cases. In the archive that
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: I provided to journalists, there have been stories that have
• 1:39:52
  Speaker 1: come out where they've spied on journalists, right? They've spied
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: on human rights groups. And these kind of things, I think,
• 1:40:00
  Speaker 1: people miss. I'm going to throw up some slides here,
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: so forgive me if this gets weird and I put
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 1: up the wrong ones. But since I came forward, this
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that the government says authorized these
• 1:40:16
  Speaker 1: programs 15 different times... was overruled by the first open
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 1: courts to look at the program. These are federal courts here, right,
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: that said, no, actually, these programs are unlawful. They're likely unconstitutional.
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: When you start looking at the facts, you see, even
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: within the context of the very loose restrictions and laws
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 1: that apply to the NSA and surveillance, they say they
• 1:40:39
  Speaker 1: broke their own laws, you know, 2,776 times in a
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 1: single year. And then you ask about that thing that
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: motivates me, like why I came forward, we had been
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 1: trying as a country before I came forward to prove
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 1: the existence of these programs legally. Because this is our
• 1:41:03
  Speaker 1: means of last sort of recourse in our system, right?
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: We got the executive, we got the legislature, we got
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: the judiciary, right? So Congress makes the laws, the executive's
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 1: supposed to carry them out, the courts are supposed to
• 1:41:17
  Speaker 1: play referee. The executive had broken the laws. Congress was
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: turning a blind eye to the laws. And the courts were,
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 1: and this is just months before I came forward, going, well,
• 1:41:32
  Speaker 1: it does appear that the ACLU and Amnesty International, like
• 1:41:38
  Speaker 1: all of these human rights groups and non-governmental organizations, had
• 1:41:45
  Speaker 1: established that these people Programs are likely unlawful. They likely exist.
• 1:41:53
  Speaker 1: They're simply classified. But the government responded with this argument
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 1: that you just saw, saying that, well, it's a state
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: secret if they do exist. You, the plaintiffs, don't have hard,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: concrete evidence that they do exist. And the government is saying, legally,
• 1:42:10
  Speaker 1: you have no right to discover evidence from the government,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: write documents, demand documents, or demand an answer from the
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 1: government as to whether these are legal. as to whether
• 1:42:18
  Speaker 1: or not these things exist, because the government's just going
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 1: to give its standard, what they call, Glomar response. We
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 1: can neither confirm nor deny that these things exist. Which
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: leaves you out in the cold. Which leaves the courts
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: out in the cold. The courts go, look, the government
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: could be breaking the law here. Look, they could be
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 1: violating the Constitution here. But because you can't prove it,
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: and because the government doesn't want to play ball, and
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: the government says, if we were Doing this, it would
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 1: be legal and it would be necessary for national security
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: or whatever. The court can't presume to know national security
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: better than the executive because the courts aren't elected. And
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 1: so this leads to this fundamentally broken system where, okay,
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 1: the only way to have the courts review the legality
• 1:43:06
  Speaker 1: of the programs is to establish the programs exist. But
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: the programs are classified, so you can't establish they exist.
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: unless you have evidence. But providing that evidence to courts,
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 1: to journalists, to anyone, is a felony that's punishable by
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: 10 years per count under the Espionage Act. And the
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 1: government has charged every source of public interest journalism who's
• 1:43:32
  Speaker 1: really made a significant difference in these kind of cases,
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: since Daniel Ellsberg, really going back to that, under the
• 1:43:38
  Speaker 1: same Espionage Act. It's always the same law. And there's
• 1:43:41
  Speaker 1: no distinction to government between whether you've sold information to
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: a foreign government for private benefit, or whether you provided
• 1:43:51
  Speaker 1: information only to journalists for the public interest. And that's
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: a fundamentally harmful thing, I think. When you look at
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: things that have come in the wake of this, we're
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 1: talking about the post-2013 pandemic, court rulings that found what
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: the government was doing was unlawful. You see the courts
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: saying actually that leaks, or air quotes leaks, can actually
• 1:44:20
  Speaker 1: be beneficial. Leak is used in the governance, and this
• 1:44:25
  Speaker 1: is from a federal court, these are not exactly my
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 1: biggest Supporters, they're recognizing that although leak implies harm, it
• 1:44:33
  Speaker 1: implies something that's broken, it's actually helpful. It's a leak
• 1:44:36
  Speaker 1: that's letting in daylight in this context. That is the
• 1:44:40
  Speaker 1: only thing that allows the system to operate in a
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: context where one year before I came forward, we had
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 1: the NSA saying this kind of stuff didn't happen. We had,
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 1: hang on, this famous exchange, which more than anything made
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: me realize this was a point of no return. Because
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 1: I've told you this, you've heard this, but if you
• 1:45:04
  Speaker 1: haven't seen it, you might not believe me. Maybe I'm
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: a sketchy guy, whatever. One of those senators I told
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: you that objected to this stuff, that was doing the
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: Lassie barks for all those years, Ron Wyden. was confronting
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: the most senior spy in the United States, General James Clapper,
• 1:45:23
  Speaker 1: who was then the Director of National Intelligence, right? There's
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 1: no guy higher than him. The buck stops with him
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: when it comes to intelligence. He's testifying under oath in
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 1: front of Congress, right? But more broadly, in front of
• 1:45:36
  Speaker 1: the public. This is televised. And Ron Wyden asked him
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 1: a very specific question. about a program, mind you, that
• 1:45:43
  Speaker 1: Ron Wyden knows exists. Because he has security clearance, he
• 1:45:47
  Speaker 1: sits on the Intelligence Committee. And he knows there's domestic
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: mass surveillance. And this is how it goes. This is
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: how the top spy responds under oath.
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 4: So what I wanted to see is if you could
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 4: give me a yes or no answer to the question,
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 4: does the NSA collect any type of data at all
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 4: on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?
• 1:46:12
  Speaker 1: No, sir.
• 1:46:14
  Speaker 2: It does not? Not wittingly.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 4: There are cases where they could inadvertently perhaps collect, but
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 4: not wittingly.
• 1:46:29
  Speaker 1: So that was a lie. Wyden knew it was a lie.
• 1:46:33
  Speaker 1: Clapper knew it was a lie. He actually admitted it
• 1:46:36
  Speaker 1: was a lie after I came forward three months later.
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 1: But he said it was the least untruthful thing he
• 1:46:45
  Speaker 1: could think of to say in the context of being
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 1: in the hot seat there. But what does it mean
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 1: for a democracy when you can lie under oath to Congress,
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 1: and the congressman even knows you're lying to them, but
• 1:46:57
  Speaker 1: they're afraid to correct you? And Wyden, by the way,
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 1: it wasn't a surprise. Wyden gave him those questions 24
• 1:47:03
  Speaker 1: hours in advance. And he wrote a letter afterwards asking
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 1: for Clapper to amend his testimony. Not even at a
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 1: press conference, but just to say this was incorrect, whatever.
• 1:47:14
  Speaker 1: So he could go through the legal process and show
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: his fellow congressmen that there was a problem and that
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 1: they needed to do it. But all of that was
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: refused to us. All of it was denied to us.
• 1:47:24
  Speaker 1: And here I am. sitting at the NSA next to
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: my buddies who I've talked to about these programs. You know,
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: I've gone, look at this, and they're laughing at it.
• 1:47:34
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm laughing at it. And it's not that
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: we go, oh, ha, ha, ha, he's getting away with it.
• 1:47:39
  Speaker 1: It's like, what are you going to do? These guys are,
• 1:47:42
  Speaker 1: you know, they're bullshitters. The system is built on lies
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 1: that even many people, many experts who have studied this
• 1:47:51
  Speaker 1: know are lies. But if you can't prove they are lies,
• 1:47:57
  Speaker 1: how do you move beyond that? And that's really a
• 1:47:59
  Speaker 1: question that has never been more relevant than I think
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 1: it is today under the current White House.
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: So you're in this position where you have this information
• 1:48:08
  Speaker 2: and you know that these surveillance systems are in place
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: and they're unconstitutional. And you feel this deep responsibility to
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 2: let the American people know about this. What makes you
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 2: take the leap?
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: So this is covered extensively in the book because it
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 1: took a long time. I would imagine. People, you know, yeah, right, exactly.
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: People like to think, It's like a cinematic moment where
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: I find this golden document, like this Stellar Wind report.
• 1:48:45
  Speaker 1: And that's the closest thing to a smoking gun, right,
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 1: that exists. But look, if you found that, you can
• 1:48:52
  Speaker 1: read that later. Look at that and like imagine yourself
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 1: being like, oh, I'm going to go outside on the
• 1:48:56
  Speaker 1: courthouse steps and wave this thing and burn my life
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: to the ground, burn my family to the ground. I'm
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 1: never going to be at work again. I'm going to
• 1:49:02
  Speaker 1: jail for the rest of my life. The question is,
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 1: what would it take for you to light a match
• 1:49:09
  Speaker 1: and burn your life to the ground. And for a
• 1:49:15
  Speaker 1: long time, too long, the answer was nothing. And I'm
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 1: ashamed of that. It took me so long to get
• 1:49:30
  Speaker 1: over that hump because I was waiting for somebody else
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 1: to do it. When I saw people like Ron Wyden
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 1: When I saw people like the court case that I
• 1:49:38
  Speaker 1: showed before, where people were actively challenging these programs, right?
• 1:49:42
  Speaker 1: Journalists had the scent of it. And, you know, there
• 1:49:46
  Speaker 1: are a lot of people who are going to be
• 1:49:48
  Speaker 1: in the YouTube comments or whatever and go, oh, I
• 1:49:50
  Speaker 1: knew this was happening. No, you didn't.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: Well, Bill Bimini... You had... Bill Binney. Excuse me, Bill Binney.
• 1:49:57
  Speaker 2: He initially was the one that came out and spoke
• 1:50:00
  Speaker 2: about this issue.
• 1:50:01
  Speaker 1: So... Yeah, Bill Binney is part of, shall we say,
• 1:50:08
  Speaker 1: the group of early NSA whistleblowers who came with Thomas Drake,
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, I believe, and Ed Loomis. And
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 1: these guys all got their doors kicked in. You know,
• 1:50:18
  Speaker 1: they got harassed by the FBI. Tom Drake, who was
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 1: a senior executive at the NSA, this is a guy
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 1: who had a lot to lose, was charged under the
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 1: same law as the Espionage Act. And these guys were
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 1: doing it earlier during the Bush administration. Some of them
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 1: were talking to the journalists that, you know, maybe it's alleged.
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: I don't want to put them on the spot. Maybe
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 1: they deny it. Maybe they don't. Leave that to them.
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 1: But somebody somewhere was informing this reporting, right, that got
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 1: into the New York Times about the Bush-era warrantless wiretapping program.
• 1:50:50
  Speaker 1: And eventually journalists put this out there. People knew these
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: capabilities existed. But yeah, then there's the person in the
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 1: YouTube comments who's like, oh, we knew all about this.
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: It's nothing new. And the thing is, you can know
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 1: about some programs and not know about others. You can
• 1:51:03
  Speaker 1: have a suspicion. You can know with certainty that this
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: stuff is capable or is possible, the capability exists. You
• 1:51:10
  Speaker 1: can know that the government has done this stuff in
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: the past. You can know they are likely to do
• 1:51:13
  Speaker 1: it again. You can have all these indications. You can
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 1: have like the Juul versus NSA case that's run by
• 1:51:20
  Speaker 1: the EFF, which is about the AT & T case.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 1: setting up secret rooms in their telecommunications facilities where they
• 1:51:30
  Speaker 1: basically drag all the fibers for their domestic internet communications
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 1: and phone communications into a room that's purpose-built for the NSA,
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: and then they bring it out. But AT & T
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 1: denies it's the NSA. The NSA denies that these things
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 1: happen or that are done at all, right? And so
• 1:51:50
  Speaker 1: this is the context. You say you know, and you know,
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 1: let's put it the other way. Maybe you do know, right?
• 1:51:56
  Speaker 1: Maybe you are an academic researcher. Maybe you're a technological specialist.
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 1: Maybe you're just somebody who reads all the reporting and
• 1:52:05
  Speaker 1: you actually know. You can't prove it, but you know
• 1:52:08
  Speaker 1: this is going on. But that's the thing in a democracy.
• 1:52:12
  Speaker 1: The distance... between speculation and fact. The distance between what
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: you know and what you can prove to everybody else
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: in the country is everything in our model of government.
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: Because what you know doesn't matter. What matters is what
• 1:52:28
  Speaker 1: we all know. And the only way we can all
• 1:52:31
  Speaker 1: know it is if somebody can prove it. If you
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 1: can prove it. And if you don't have the evidence,
• 1:52:34
  Speaker 1: you can't prove it. And of course, when we talk
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: about the earlier stuff, right, like a more corporatized media,
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: They've got a thousand incentives not to get involved in
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: this stuff. They need access to the White House. They
• 1:52:46
  Speaker 1: need these officials to sit down with them and give interviews, right?
• 1:52:50
  Speaker 1: That's constant content that they need. That's access that they need.
• 1:52:53
  Speaker 1: They need to be taken seriously. They need to be,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: you know, admitted to briefers. It is a codependent relationship.
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: And yet, rather, and so, the only way to make
• 1:53:10
  Speaker 1: sure people understand this broadly is if we all work together.
• 1:53:15
  Speaker 1: If we collectively can establish a corpus of evidence, a
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 1: body of facts that is so large and so persuasive,
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: it overcomes the natural and understandable resistance of these more
• 1:53:31
  Speaker 1: corporatized media groups. It overcomes the political and partisan sort
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: of loyalties that all of these political factions in the
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: country do, where they go, you know, it's my president.
• 1:53:44
  Speaker 1: Even if I don't like this stuff, even if I
• 1:53:45
  Speaker 1: don't agree with this stuff, I don't want to say
• 1:53:48
  Speaker 1: it exists. I want to deny it until it's proved possible.
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: you know, in HD, on video, you know, signing the
• 1:53:55
  Speaker 1: order to do this, that, or the other, because otherwise
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: there's a chance my guy might not get re-elected. And
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: that's the only way this kind of stuff can happen.
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: And the sad fact is, the opportunities that we have
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 1: to prove this, like the moments in history where we
• 1:54:09
  Speaker 1: do prove something, anything, beyond a reasonable doubt, are so
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: few and so rare that they almost always only come
• 1:54:20
  Speaker 1: From whistleblowers. And I think that's one of the problems
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 1: that we have, particularly in the climate movement. Go ahead.
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry. Did you take any comfort from knowing that Obama,
• 1:54:35
  Speaker 2: when he was running for office and in his Hope
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: and Change website, he had provisions to protect whistleblowers and
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 2: provisions to reward people?
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 1: Right?
• 1:54:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, do you remember all that? I mean, it
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: was eventually redacted or eventually deleted it from the website.
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 2: Disappeared it from the website. Yes, but that was a
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: big part of his program or what he was running
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 2: on was that when people were exposing unlawful activity, he
• 1:55:02
  Speaker 2: was going to protect those people. Did you take any
• 1:55:05
  Speaker 2: comfort in that?
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 1: Obama also campaigned. Well, Obama also during his campaign said
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 1: he campaigned actively against the warrantless wiretapping, the Bush administration.
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 1: Because remember... Bush is in the scandal, the height of this,
• 1:55:19
  Speaker 1: in 2007. You know, the election's coming up right after.
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 1: And he's going, Obama's saying, you know, that's not who
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: we are. That's not what we do. And yet, within
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 1: 100 days of him becoming president, now he's sitting in
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 1: that chair. Rather than extinguishing these programs, he embraces them
• 1:55:39
  Speaker 1: and expands.
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 2: Why do you think that is?
• 1:55:43
  Speaker 1: I think it's actually, again, what we talked about earlier.
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: First thing, every time a new president comes into the
• 1:55:50
  Speaker 1: White House, they get their clearances, right? They get read
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 1: into all this stuff. During the campaign, they get clearances
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 1: and they get read into stuff. But when they finally
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 1: become president, right, now they're the only people who can
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 1: sign what these are called the covert action findings and
• 1:56:06
  Speaker 1: things like that, which are basically, you know, the intelligence
• 1:56:10
  Speaker 1: community wants to assassinate somebody. They want to run this
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: illegal program here, there, or everywhere. And they can't do
• 1:56:16
  Speaker 1: it because they're executive agencies, without that top-level executive sign-off.
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 1: And so they've got to open the vest, right? They've
• 1:56:23
  Speaker 1: got to get these guys on side. And.
• 1:56:29
  Speaker 1: Basically, every president since Kennedy, they have been successful in
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: what they call fearing up, where as soon as they
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 1: come in, they read you the litany of horribles. These
• 1:56:42
  Speaker 1: are all the threats that we're facing. And let's be real,
• 1:56:46
  Speaker 1: it is a dangerous world. It's not just all made-up BS.
• 1:56:51
  Speaker 1: Some of it is, right, where it's inflated. It's not
• 1:56:54
  Speaker 1: that it's completely false, but they make it sound more
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: serious than it actually is. But there are real bad
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: people out there who are trying to do real bad things.
• 1:57:03
  Speaker 1: And you have just gone through a hellish election because
• 1:57:07
  Speaker 1: our electoral politics are so diseased. And now, after you've
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: crawled through fire, you're already thinking four years ahead. You know,
• 1:57:18
  Speaker 1: how do I stay in this seat? And these guys
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: are basically saying, if you don't do X, Y, and Z...
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 1: this is going to fall on your lap. And the implication,
• 1:57:28
  Speaker 1: which I don't think they actually say, but every president knows,
• 1:57:32
  Speaker 1: is these guys can undermine you to death. If you've
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: got the IC against you, right, they can stonewall you,
• 1:57:41
  Speaker 1: they can put out stories that are going to be
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 1: problematic for you every day of your presidency. And it's
• 1:57:48
  Speaker 1: not that it's necessarily going to cast you out of
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 1: the White House, but it's a problem that as a
• 1:57:53
  Speaker 1: president you very much don't want. So in the most
• 1:57:56
  Speaker 1: charitable interpretation of this, you've got a new guy coming in.
• 1:58:00
  Speaker 1: In Obama's case, this is a pretty young guy. Doesn't
• 1:58:04
  Speaker 1: focus in this kind of national security foreign policy stuff
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: throughout his earlier career. He's more interested in domestic policy
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: and always has been. That's actually one of the positive
• 1:58:13
  Speaker 1: things to say about Barack Obama. He's just trying to
• 1:58:17
  Speaker 1: make things better at home. And now suddenly they go, look,
• 1:58:20
  Speaker 1: You need to worry about this country. You need to
• 1:58:22
  Speaker 1: worry about this group that you've never heard of. You
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: need to worry about, you know, this technology. You need
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: to do all this stuff. And the only reason we
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: can tell you this stuff, and the only thing dividing
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: America and the abyss are these terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible programs, right?
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: That are in fact wonderful things because they keep back
• 1:58:44
  Speaker 1: the darkness. And so here's the real problem. Every president
• 1:58:51
  Speaker 1: hears that, and every president, you know, first off, they've
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: got so many other things to do. They just kind
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 1: of nod their head, and they'll go, I'll deal with
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 1: this later in my administration. And this is one of
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 1: the ironies. When I came forward in 2013, this is
• 1:59:04
  Speaker 1: now Barack Obama's second-term president. One of the responses that
• 1:59:09
  Speaker 1: they had to the mass surveillance scandal was, yes, we
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: think they went a little too far. This is after
• 1:59:14
  Speaker 1: the initial thing where they went, nobody's listening to your
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 1: phone calls, you know.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 2: Just made a date up.
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 1: Right, nobody can have perfect privacy and also have perfect security,
• 1:59:25
  Speaker 1: so we've got to sort of divide a line here
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: between the Constitution and what the government wants to do.
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: But they said, we were going to get to it.
• 1:59:38
  Speaker 1: We knew these programs were problematic, but if they just
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: gave us more time, we would have fixed them. Maybe
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: it's true, right? Seems awful convenient in hindsight that throughout
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 1: the entirety of the first term.
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 2: Well, it seems like what you would say if you
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: got caught.
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: Right, right, right, right. But look, if we're being the
• 2:00:00
  Speaker 1: most generous that we are here, the president is briefed
• 2:00:04
  Speaker 1: on real and legitimate threats. And they scare the hell
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 1: out of them.
• 2:00:08
  Speaker 2: I'm sure.
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: And we can all imagine being there, right? Those of
• 2:00:12
  Speaker 1: us who remember what the world was like post 9-11,
• 2:00:15
  Speaker 1: fear is a powerful thing. But the guys who are
• 2:00:18
  Speaker 1: doing that briefing, they're no longer scared of it. Because
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 1: they've been dealing with this for years. This is the
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: oldest thing. They've given this briefing times before. You know,
• 2:00:28
  Speaker 1: when we talk about, people talk about the deep state.
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: They talk about it like some conspiracy of lizard people.
• 2:00:34
  Speaker 1: It's not that. It's something much simpler. The deep state
• 2:00:38
  Speaker 1: is simply the career government. It's the people who are
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: in the same offices who outlive and outlast presidencies. They've
• 2:00:45
  Speaker 1: seen Republicans. They've seen Democrats. They don't really care. And
• 2:00:49
  Speaker 1: they give that same briefing again and again, and they
• 2:00:52
  Speaker 1: get good at it. They know what they want. They
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: know what this person's saying. Whereas the president, they don't
• 2:00:58
  Speaker 1: know who these people are. These people have been there
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: before the president. They're going to be there after the president.
• 2:01:04
  Speaker 1: And so they give this very effective, very fear-inducing speech.
• 2:01:09
  Speaker 1: And then they follow it up with their asks, which
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: are really demands, just politely provided. And anyone in that
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: position who is not an expert on this stuff, who
• 2:01:21
  Speaker 1: is not ready for this thing, sort of trade-off and
• 2:01:26
  Speaker 1: who you have to understand as a career politician is
• 2:01:30
  Speaker 1: entirely used to the horse trading game, right? And going,
• 2:01:33
  Speaker 1: I'll deal with this later or not now, or what
• 2:01:36
  Speaker 1: are the, this is the cost benefit here. And the
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: intelligence community goes, if you give us what we want,
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: no one will ever know about it because it's classified.
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 1: It's obviously the easy answer. And maybe Barack Obama honestly
• 2:01:52
  Speaker 1: did want to get to this later because But what
• 2:01:54
  Speaker 1: we can say today is for all the good that
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: may have been done in that White House, this is
• 2:02:01
  Speaker 1: an issue where the president went through two full terms
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: and did not fix the problem, but in fact made
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: it worse.
• 2:02:08
  Speaker 2: Well, it seems like the president has a job that's
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 2: absolutely impossible. And if you come across someone who has
• 2:02:14
  Speaker 2: been in the position like someone who's the head of
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 2: an intelligence agency for a long time, and is very
• 2:02:20
  Speaker 2: persuasive and has some legitimate credentials that show that he's
• 2:02:25
  Speaker 2: very good at his job and he tells you this
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 2: is important for national security. We need to keep these
• 2:02:29
  Speaker 2: things in place. It doesn't seem like any one person
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: can run the country and be aware of every single
• 2:02:36
  Speaker 2: program that every single agency is implementing. It seems completely unrealistic.
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: And the job itself, it doesn't seem like any person
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 2: can do it adequately. And when it comes to something
• 2:02:47
  Speaker 2: like this mass surveillance state, I could see a president
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 2: being persuaded by someone who comes to him and says,
• 2:02:57
  Speaker 2: this is why we need to do this.
• 2:03:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I think
• 2:03:04
  Speaker 1: is the underlying problem in everything that you just described
• 2:03:09
  Speaker 1: is the president has too much power. Right. And because
• 2:03:13
  Speaker 1: they have too much power, that means they have too
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: much responsibility. And I don't think people understand, if they
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: haven't lived outside the United States, if they haven't sort
• 2:03:22
  Speaker 1: of traveled or studied broadly, just how exceptional the American
• 2:03:26
  Speaker 1: presidency is. Most countries don't have a single individual with
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: this level of power. It's really only the super states.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: And that may be by design, perhaps that's why they're
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 1: They're super states. But when we look at sort of
• 2:03:46
  Speaker 1: complex advanced democracies that are more peaceful, they tend to
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 1: have a more multilateral system that has more people involved
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 1: in smaller portfolios. And a lot of this derives from
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: just the size of the government. Like you said, you know,
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 1: the president is responsible for basically everything in the executive branch,
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: and the executive branch is basically every agency that actually
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 1: doesn't work. And so how do you How do you
• 2:04:11
  Speaker 1: correct for that without breaking it up where you have
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: smaller ministers and ministries and things like that that have
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 1: different levels of responsibility, having a smaller government overall? Back
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 1: in 1776, the federal government was pretty much a dream.
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 1: We weren't even interested in having standing armies. The idea
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: of an army that existed from year to year was
• 2:04:36
  Speaker 1: a terrifying, forbidding thing. And then when you move to
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: this idea that we have a president, that they have
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 1: these extraordinary powers, it's okay because the government is very small.
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 1: The federal government especially is seen as sort of this
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: small and toothless and weak thing.
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 2: Can you pause for one second? Pause for one second
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 2: because my AirPods are about to die and I'm going
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 2: to swap over to another pair. These suckers are good
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: for a couple hours, but we're two hours and 15
• 2:05:03
  Speaker 2: minutes here. We'll have a little bit of a weird–
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 2: audio issue with the last half of it but jamie
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: jamie will take care of it um i wanted to
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 2: talk about you like where you are right now in
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: your life and how you're handling this because you've been
• 2:05:18
  Speaker 2: in exile for how many years now.
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: Uh it's been more than six years six six years
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: of 2013 yeah i mean well actually i.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: I left uh may so what is life like Are
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 2: you in constant hiding? I mean, what are the issues like?
• 2:05:38
  Speaker 1: In the beginning, my operational security level, as we would
• 2:05:45
  Speaker 1: call it, was very high. I was concerned about being recognized.
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 1: I was concerned about being followed. I was concerned, really,
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: about very bad things happening to me because the government
• 2:05:57
  Speaker 1: made it very clear that from their position I was
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: the most wanted man in the world. they literally brought
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: down the president of Bolivia, his aircraft, and would not
• 2:06:09
  Speaker 1: let it depart as it tried to cross the airspace
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 1: of Europe, not even the United States. They wouldn't let
• 2:06:15
  Speaker 1: it leave until they confirmed I was not on board. So, yeah,
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: that made me a little bit nervous. But you can't
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 1: live like that forever. And although I was as careful
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 1: as I could be, I still lived pretty happily. because
• 2:06:31
  Speaker 1: I was an indoor cat to begin with, right? I've
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: always been a technologist. I've always been a pretty nerdy. Um,
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: so as long as I have a screen and an
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 1: internet connection, I was pretty happy. Um, but, uh, in
• 2:06:43
  Speaker 1: the years past, my life has become more and more open.
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: You know, now I, I speak openly. I live openly.
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 1: I go out, I ride the Metro. I go to restaurants.
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 2: I go, you know, how often he recognized.
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 1: So this is a funny thing is I'm almost never recognized. Um,
• 2:06:59
  Speaker 1: one of those things is I don't give, uh, Russian interviews, um,
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: because I, I don't want my face all over the news, um,
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 1: which is nice because it just allows people to, to
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 1: sort of forget about my face, um, and I can, uh,
• 2:07:14
  Speaker 1: go about my life. But, uh, I, it's one of
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: the weird things that I'm, I'm recognized a couple times
• 2:07:20
  Speaker 1: a year, uh, even when I'm, I'm, I'm not wearing
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 1: my glasses, uh, In a museum or a grocery store
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: or something like that or out on the street. Just
• 2:07:30
  Speaker 1: by somebody who I swear, like, these people are... You
• 2:07:34
  Speaker 1: might have read a story about them, like, super recognizers.
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: The people who just have a great memory for faces.
• 2:07:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 1: Because I can be, like, wearing a hood and, like,
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: a jacket. I can have a scarf around my face, like,
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: in the winter. And, like, you can barely see my face.
• 2:07:51
  Speaker 1: And they'll come up to me and they're like, are you...
• 2:07:54
  Speaker 1: snowden and i'm like whoa.
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 2: What do you say?
• 2:07:57
  Speaker 1: That's pretty impressive. I'd say, yeah. It's nice to meet you.
• 2:08:03
  Speaker 1: And yeah, I've never had a negative interaction from being recognized.
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 1: But for me, because I'm a privacy advocate, I would
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: much rather go unrecognized. I don't want to be a celebrity.
• 2:08:17
  Speaker 1: But the other thing is I'll get recognized in computer stores.
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 1: And I think there's just like a mental association where
• 2:08:24
  Speaker 1: people are like their brain, when it's cycling through faces
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 1: that it recognizes, it's going through like the subset of
• 2:08:32
  Speaker 1: nerdier people or something like that when you're in a
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: computer store. Because for whatever reason, I'm recognized much more
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: frequently when there's some kind of technological locus.
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: So you're living freely. You had to learn Russian? Did
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: you learn it?
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, my Russian is still pretty crappy, to
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 1: my great shame, because all of my life, all of
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 1: my work is primarily in English.
• 2:08:59
  Speaker 2: Now, you've talked about returning home if you could get
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 2: a fair trial. Is that a feasible thing, a fair
• 2:09:10
  Speaker 2: trial for someone like you? Is that such a— Well, yeah.
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: Is that even possible?
• 2:09:15
  Speaker 1: It's a good question. I mean, look, if we're being frank,
• 2:09:21
  Speaker 1: I think all your audience knows the chance of me
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 1: getting a fair shake in the eastern district of Virginia,
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 1: a couple miles from the headquarters of the CIA, is
• 2:09:31
  Speaker 1: probably pretty slim because that's where they draw the jury
• 2:09:34
  Speaker 1: pool from. But my objection here is on a larger principle.
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 1: What happens to me is less important. If I spend
• 2:09:45
  Speaker 1: the rest of my life in jail, that's less important
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: than what I'm actually requiring the government to agree to,
• 2:09:52
  Speaker 1: which is a single thing. They say, face the music,
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: face the music, and I'm saying, great, let's pick the song.
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 1: The thing is, the law that I've been charged under,
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 1: the one that all these whistleblowers have been charged under,
• 2:10:05
  Speaker 1: Thomas Drake, Daniel Ellsberg, Chelsea Manning, Daniel Hale, the drone
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 1: whistleblower who is in prison, right now going through a
• 2:10:13
  Speaker 1: trial that is precisely similar to what I would be facing,
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: his lawyer is asking the court or telling the court
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 1: that we want to tell the jury why he did
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 1: what he did, that the government is violating laws, the
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 1: government is violating human rights, that these programs are immoral,
• 2:10:34
  Speaker 1: that they're unethical. This is what motivated this guy to
• 2:10:39
  Speaker 1: do it. And the jury should be able to hear
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 1: why he did what he did, and the jury should
• 2:10:44
  Speaker 1: be able to decide whether that was right or wrong.
• 2:10:48
  Speaker 1: And the government has responded to this whistleblower argument, basically, saying,
• 2:10:54
  Speaker 1: we demand the court forbid this guy from breathing the
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: word whistleblower in court. He cannot talk about what motivated him.
• 2:11:02
  Speaker 1: He cannot talk about what was revealed, why it was revealed,
• 2:11:05
  Speaker 1: what the impacts and effects were. He can't talk about
• 2:11:08
  Speaker 1: whether the public benefited from it or was harmed by
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: it because it doesn't matter. Now, this might surprise a
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: lot of people because to a lot of us, we
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 1: think that's what a jury trial is. We think that's
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 1: what a fair trial is. But the Espionage Act that
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: the government uses against whistleblowers, meaning broadly here the sources
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: of journalism... is fairly unique in the legal system in
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 1: that it is what's called a strict liability crime. A
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 1: strict liability crime, uh, is what the government considers to
• 2:11:40
  Speaker 1: be basically a crime worse than murder. Because if you,
• 2:11:43
  Speaker 1: if you murdered somebody, like if you just, I don't know,
• 2:11:46
  Speaker 1: beat Jamie with the You would be able to go
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: to the court and say it was self-defense, right? You
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 1: felt threatened. You were in danger for your life. Even
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 1: if you weren't, right? Even if you obviously weren't. Even
• 2:12:03
  Speaker 1: if you were on tape, you could still argue that.
• 2:12:06
  Speaker 1: And the jury could go, you're full of crap, right?
• 2:12:08
  Speaker 1: And they could convict you. But if you were, in fact,
• 2:12:12
  Speaker 1: acting in self-defense, if the jury did, in fact, believe you,
• 2:12:15
  Speaker 1: they could take that into consideration in establishing their verdict, right?
• 2:12:20
  Speaker 1: Strict liability crimes forbid that. The jury is not allowed
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 1: to consider why you committed a crime. They're only allowed
• 2:12:29
  Speaker 1: to consider if you committed a crime. They're not allowed
• 2:12:33
  Speaker 1: to consider if the murder was justified. They're only allowed
• 2:12:36
  Speaker 1: to consider if the murder took place. And the funny
• 2:12:38
  Speaker 1: thing in this case is that the murder that we're
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 1: talking about is telling the truth. The Espionage Act in
• 2:12:47
  Speaker 1: every case... is a law the government exclusively uses against
• 2:12:52
  Speaker 1: people who told the truth. That's what it's about in
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 1: the context of journalism. They don't bring the Espionage Act
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 1: against people who lied, then they would use fraud or
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 1: some other statute. They say, the government is arguing in
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 1: the context of whistleblowing, that telling an important truth to
• 2:13:12
  Speaker 1: the American people by way of a journalist is a
• 2:13:16
  Speaker 1: crime worse than murder. And I believe, and I think
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 1: most Americans would agree, this is fundamentally, indefensibly wrong. And
• 2:13:24
  Speaker 1: so my whole argument with the United States government since
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 1: the very beginning was been, I'll be back for a
• 2:13:29
  Speaker 1: jury trial tomorrow, but you have to agree to permit
• 2:13:34
  Speaker 1: whistleblowers a public interest offense. It doesn't matter whether they
• 2:13:37
  Speaker 1: are a whistleblower or not. It's just they argued. It's
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 1: the jury that decides whether they are a whistleblower or not.
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 1: They have to be able to consider the motivations of
• 2:13:45
  Speaker 1: why someone did what they did. The government says we
• 2:13:49
  Speaker 1: refuse to allow that because that puts the government on trial.
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 1: And we don't trust the jury to consider those questions. Wow.
• 2:13:57
  Speaker 2: So you have had these conversations then. So this has
• 2:14:00
  Speaker 2: been discussed.
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 1: No, this is from the Obama administration. There's been no
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: contact since the Trump administration because the government basically, when
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 1: they got to this point, they went, we have no
• 2:14:12
  Speaker 1: good argument against this and we will never permit this
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: to happen. And again, I just want to make clear
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 1: this is not speculation. This is not me thinking. This
• 2:14:22
  Speaker 1: is actively happening in the case of Daniel Hale right now.
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 1: I hope you guys can pull up a graphic for
• 2:14:29
  Speaker 1: it because this story just at the papers like two
• 2:14:32
  Speaker 1: or three weeks ago saying the government is forbidding this
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 1: guy from making this argument.
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 2: So you're seemingly in a state of limbo then. They're
• 2:14:43
  Speaker 2: not actively pursuing you. It seems that if you're able
• 2:14:46
  Speaker 2: to move around freely, they haven't discovered where you are.
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 2: You're just free to live your life.
• 2:14:52
  Speaker 1: Well, yeah.
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 2: Sort of?
• 2:14:54
  Speaker 1: It's one of these things where, you know, whether they
• 2:14:58
  Speaker 1: know where I am or whether they don't know where
• 2:15:00
  Speaker 1: I am, where I put my head on the pillow,
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 1: it doesn't matter so much. I'm in Russia, right? And
• 2:15:05
  Speaker 1: we should lean into that because I think people, they
• 2:15:08
  Speaker 1: hear Russia, particularly in the context of today's news. And
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 1: you see like what people are saying about Tulsi Gabbard
• 2:15:13
  Speaker 1: and things like that. uh, any kind of, uh, uh, association, any,
• 2:15:19
  Speaker 1: anytime your name appears in the same sentence, same paragraph,
• 2:15:22
  Speaker 1: same story, uh, as the word Russia, it's considered a
• 2:15:25
  Speaker 1: negative thing now. Um, and don't get me wrong. I've
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 1: been a long time critic of the Russian government. I
• 2:15:31
  Speaker 1: just actually had a major story, uh, written about me
• 2:15:34
  Speaker 1: in a Russian state news, uh, outlet called RIA Novosti. Uh,
• 2:15:40
  Speaker 1: you guys could, could probably pull it. It's only in
• 2:15:42
  Speaker 1: Russian though. Um, that's saying because I spoke favorably about
• 2:15:48
  Speaker 1: a member of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalny, which I
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 1: wasn't even speaking positively about this guy. I was saying, look,
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 1: I think people have a right to express their opposition
• 2:16:03
  Speaker 1: in a country, and they should be able to do
• 2:16:05
  Speaker 1: that without fearing retaliation in the future, because the background
• 2:16:09
  Speaker 1: here is this opposition figure uh, has been a longtime thorn, uh,
• 2:16:14
  Speaker 1: in the Russian administration side. And, uh, they've just suddenly magically, uh,
• 2:16:21
  Speaker 1: been accused of being foreign agents or something like that. Um,
• 2:16:25
  Speaker 1: and so everyone connected to this, which is like a
• 2:16:27
  Speaker 1: big civil society body, uh, had their doors like simultaneously
• 2:16:31
  Speaker 1: kicked in across the country and they're being investigated for
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 1: some kind of corruption or something. It doesn't even matter. Um, And,
• 2:16:38
  Speaker 1: you know, I said I oppose that, just like I
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 1: was tweeting, you know, footage of ballot stuffing in the
• 2:16:44
  Speaker 1: Russian elections, just like I've criticized the Russian president by name.
• 2:16:47
  Speaker 1: I've criticized Russian surveillance laws, so many things again and
• 2:16:52
  Speaker 1: again and again and again and again. But, yeah, so, look,
• 2:16:57
  Speaker 1: it does not make my life easier to be trapped
• 2:17:01
  Speaker 1: in a country that I did not choose. People don't
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 1: remember this. I was actually en route to Latin America.
• 2:17:06
  Speaker 1: when the U.S. government canceled my passport, which trapped me
• 2:17:08
  Speaker 1: in Russia. And for those who are interested, again, I
• 2:17:11
  Speaker 1: wrote an entire book that has a lot of detail
• 2:17:13
  Speaker 1: on this. But, yeah, it's difficult to be basically engaged
• 2:17:22
  Speaker 1: in civil opposition to policies of the United States government
• 2:17:27
  Speaker 1: at the same time as the Russian government. And it's
• 2:17:32
  Speaker 1: a hard thing. You know, it's not a happy thing,
• 2:17:35
  Speaker 1: but I feel like it's a necessary thing. The problem
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 1: is nobody wants to talk about that. Nobody wants to
• 2:17:39
  Speaker 1: engage in that kind of nuance. Nobody wants to consider
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 1: those kind of conversations in the current world. People believe,
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 1: and this is actually one of the worst things that
• 2:17:49
  Speaker 1: Western media does in the context of discussing Russia, is
• 2:17:53
  Speaker 1: they create this aura of invincibility around the Russian president.
• 2:17:56
  Speaker 1: They go, you know, this guy's calling all the shots,
• 2:17:58
  Speaker 1: he's pulling all the strings, you know, this guy's in
• 2:18:00
  Speaker 1: charge of the world. And that's very useful for the
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 1: Russian government broadly. Because they can then take that and
• 2:18:09
  Speaker 1: replay that on their domestic media and they can go,
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 1: look how strong we are. You know, the Americans are
• 2:18:13
  Speaker 1: afraid of us. The Chinese are afraid of us. Everybody's
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 1: afraid of us. The French are afraid of us. We
• 2:18:18
  Speaker 1: are strong, right? There's no question that Russia's going to
• 2:18:24
  Speaker 1: be interfering in elections. There's no question that America's going
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 1: to be interfering in Russian elections, right? Nobody likes to
• 2:18:30
  Speaker 1: talk about this. And again, I need to substantiate that
• 2:18:32
  Speaker 1: now that I've said that. I've got an old note
• 2:18:34
  Speaker 1: that I've signed a billion times. The New York Times
• 2:18:40
  Speaker 1: published a story in the wake of this contested 2016
• 2:18:43
  Speaker 1: election where they looked into the history of electoral interference
• 2:18:49
  Speaker 1: in Russia and the Soviet Union. And they found in
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 1: roughly 50 years, 36 different cases of election interference by
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 1: Russia or the Soviets. This is not a new thing.
• 2:19:00
  Speaker 1: This is something that always happens because that's what intelligence
• 2:19:03
  Speaker 1: services do. That's what they think they're being paid for,
• 2:19:06
  Speaker 1: which is a sad thing, but it's a reality because
• 2:19:10
  Speaker 1: we aren't wise enough to separate covert action from intelligence gathering.
• 2:19:16
  Speaker 1: But in that same study that they found 36 different
• 2:19:19
  Speaker 1: cases by the Russians and the Soviets, they found 81
• 2:19:23
  Speaker 1: different cases by the U.S. And this was published by
• 2:19:27
  Speaker 1: Scott Chain in the New York Times and both the
• 2:19:29
  Speaker 1: Washington Post as well. But this is the thing, like...
• 2:19:34
  Speaker 1: There is a way to criticize the Russian government's policies
• 2:19:39
  Speaker 1: without criticizing the Russian people, who are ordinary people who
• 2:19:45
  Speaker 1: just want to have a happy life. They just want
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 1: to do better. They want the same things that you do, right?
• 2:19:49
  Speaker 1: And every time people go, oh, Russia, Russia, Russia. Every
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 1: time people go, Russia bad. Every time they go, Russia's
• 2:19:54
  Speaker 1: doing this. They go, Russia's doing that. Russian people who
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 1: have nothing to do with the government feel implicated by that. Like,
• 2:20:00
  Speaker 1: do you feel... Uh, like you're in charge of Donald Trump. Like,
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 1: do you want to be, have Donald Trump's legacy around
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 1: your neck? And then people go, oh, well, you know,
• 2:20:10
  Speaker 1: you could overthrow Donald Trump. You know, you could overthrow Putin.
• 2:20:13
  Speaker 1: Can you really? Like, is that how it works? Uh,
• 2:20:16
  Speaker 1: so yeah, I mean, look, I have, uh, no affiliation.
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 1: I have no love for the Russian government. It's not
• 2:20:23
  Speaker 1: my choice to be here. And I've made it very
• 2:20:26
  Speaker 1: clear I would be happy to return home.
• 2:20:27
  Speaker 2: Is there any concern that they would deny you visa?
• 2:20:31
  Speaker 2: I mean, how are you staying there?
• 2:20:35
  Speaker 1: It's a good question. So I have a permanent residence.
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 1: People think I'm under asylum, but I'm no longer under.
• 2:20:39
  Speaker 1: It's like a green card now. It's going to be
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 1: renewed every three years. So, yeah, sure, it's possible they
• 2:20:46
  Speaker 1: could kick me out. And this was what the story
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 1: I was telling you about before in Russian media was.
• 2:20:49
  Speaker 1: They were saying, you know, the Russian government should take
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 1: some action against me. or I shouldn't be welcome here,
• 2:20:54
  Speaker 1: or I should go home, because why is he criticizing
• 2:20:57
  Speaker 1: the Russian government, right, when.
• 2:20:59
  Speaker 2: They're the people who are keeping Americans away? Is that
• 2:21:01
  Speaker 2: like the Russian version of Fox News? Is that what
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 2: they have over there?
• 2:21:04
  Speaker 1: I don't know enough about Russian media to tell you.
• 2:21:07
  Speaker 1: I think it's supposed to be more like a Reuters
• 2:21:09
  Speaker 1: or Associated Press, but the hell if I know. But
• 2:21:16
  Speaker 1: the thing is this. What's the alternative? right? Um, yes,
• 2:21:22
  Speaker 1: the Russian government could screw me, but they could screw
• 2:21:26
  Speaker 1: me even if I didn't say anything. Uh, and so
• 2:21:29
  Speaker 1: should I shut up and be quiet, uh, in the
• 2:21:31
  Speaker 1: face of things that I think are injustices, uh, because
• 2:21:35
  Speaker 1: it makes me safer? Well, a lot of pragmatic people
• 2:21:38
  Speaker 1: will say, yeah, they say you've done enough. They've said
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 1: you've done your part. You know, they say, whatever, uh,
• 2:21:43
  Speaker 1: be safe, live long, be happy. Um, But I didn't
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 1: come forward to be safe. If I wanted to be safe,
• 2:21:49
  Speaker 1: I'd still be sitting in Hawaii, making a hell of
• 2:21:52
  Speaker 1: a lot of money to spy on all of you, right?
• 2:21:55
  Speaker 1: And nobody ever would have known about this. The system
• 2:21:57
  Speaker 1: would have gotten worse. But the system... The world, the
• 2:22:02
  Speaker 1: future gets worse every day that we don't do something
• 2:22:06
  Speaker 1: about it. Every day that we stay silent about all
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 1: the injustices we see, the world gets worse. Things get worse.
• 2:22:11
  Speaker 1: And yeah, it's risky. Yeah, it's uncomfortable. But that's why
• 2:22:16
  Speaker 1: we do it. Because if we don't, no one else will.
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 1: All those years I was sitting, hoping for someone else
• 2:22:22
  Speaker 1: to come forward, and no one did, right? That's because
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 1: I was waiting for a hero. But there are no heroes, right?
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 1: There's only heroic decisions. You are never further than one
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 1: decision away from making a difference. It doesn't matter whether
• 2:22:35
  Speaker 1: it's a big difference. It doesn't matter if it was
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 1: a small difference because you don't have to save the
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 1: world by yourself. And in fact, you can't. All you
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 1: have to do is lay down one brick. All you
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 1: have to do is make things a little bit better
• 2:22:48
  Speaker 1: in a small way so that other people can lay
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 1: their brick on top of that or beside that. And together...
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 1: Step by step, day by day, year by year, we
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 1: build the foundation of something better. But yeah, it's not
• 2:23:01
  Speaker 1: going to be safe. But it doesn't matter. Because individually,
• 2:23:06
  Speaker 1: it's not, you know, me, whoever you are, that's the
• 2:23:12
  Speaker 1: iron man. I don't care if you're the biggest doomsday
• 2:23:15
  Speaker 1: prepper with cans full of beans. If the world ends,
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 1: it's going to affect you. We make things better. We
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 1: become safe together, right? Collectively, that is our strength. That
• 2:23:27
  Speaker 1: is the power of civilization. That is the power that
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 1: shapes the future. Because even if you make life great
• 2:23:32
  Speaker 1: for you, you're going to die someday. You're going to
• 2:23:35
  Speaker 1: be forgotten someday. Your cans of beans are going to
• 2:23:39
  Speaker 1: rot someday. You can make things safer. You can be
• 2:23:45
  Speaker 1: more careful, right? You can be more clever, and there's
• 2:23:48
  Speaker 1: nothing wrong with that. But at the end of the day,
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 1: you have to recognize if you're trying to eliminate all
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 1: risks from your life, what you're actually doing is eliminating
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 1: all possibility from your life. You're trying to collapse the
• 2:24:02
  Speaker 1: universe of outcomes such that what you've lost is freedom.
• 2:24:07
  Speaker 1: You've lost the ability to act because you're afraid.
• 2:24:09
  Speaker 2: That's a beautiful way to put it.
• 2:24:10
  Speaker 1: And that's what got us into this mess.
• 2:24:11
  Speaker 2: That's a beautiful way to put it. Are you aware
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 2: at all of the current state of surveillance and what,
• 2:24:19
  Speaker 2: if anything, has changed since your revelations?
• 2:24:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the big thing that's changed since I
• 2:24:27
  Speaker 1: was in 2013 is now it's mobile first, everything. Mobile
• 2:24:36
  Speaker 1: was still a big deal, right? And the intelligence community
• 2:24:40
  Speaker 1: was very much grappling with uh, to, to get its
• 2:24:43
  Speaker 1: hands around it and to deal with it. Um, but
• 2:24:46
  Speaker 1: now people are much less likely to use a laptop
• 2:24:49
  Speaker 1: than use a desktop than, than use, you know, God,
• 2:24:53
  Speaker 1: any kind of wired phone, um, than they are to
• 2:24:55
  Speaker 1: use a smartphone. Uh, and both, uh, Apple and Android devices, unfortunately, uh,
• 2:25:02
  Speaker 1: are not especially good in, uh, protecting your privacy. Think
• 2:25:06
  Speaker 1: right now, um, You got a smartphone, right? You might
• 2:25:11
  Speaker 1: be listening to this on a train somewhere in traffic
• 2:25:15
  Speaker 1: right now. Or you, Joe, right now. You got a
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 1: phone somewhere in the room, right? The phone is turned off,
• 2:25:23
  Speaker 1: or at least the screen is turned off. It's sitting there.
• 2:25:25
  Speaker 1: It's powered on. And if somebody sends you a message,
• 2:25:30
  Speaker 1: the screen blinks to life. How does that happen, right?
• 2:25:37
  Speaker 1: how is it that if someone from any corner of
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 1: the earth dials a number, your phone rings and nobody
• 2:25:42
  Speaker 1: else's rings? How is it that you can dial anybody
• 2:25:44
  Speaker 1: else's number and only their phone rings, right? Every smartphone,
• 2:25:49
  Speaker 1: every phone at all, is constantly connected to the nearest
• 2:25:53
  Speaker 1: cellular tower. Every phone, even when the screen is off,
• 2:25:57
  Speaker 1: you think it's doing nothing, you can't see it because
• 2:25:59
  Speaker 1: radio frequency emissions are invisible. It's screaming in the air, saying,
• 2:26:04
  Speaker 1: here I am, here I am. Here is my IMEI,
• 2:26:09
  Speaker 1: I think it's Individual Manufacturers Equipment Identity, and IMEI, Individual
• 2:26:17
  Speaker 1: Manufacturers Subscriber Identity. I could be wrong on the break
• 2:26:21
  Speaker 1: out there, but the acronyms are the IMEI and the IMSI,
• 2:26:25
  Speaker 1: and you can search for these things. They're two globally
• 2:26:28
  Speaker 1: unique identifiers that only exist anywhere in the world in
• 2:26:33
  Speaker 1: one place, right? This makes your phone different than all
• 2:26:36
  Speaker 1: the other phones. The IMEI is burned into the handset
• 2:26:40
  Speaker 1: of your phone. No matter what SIM card you change to,
• 2:26:43
  Speaker 1: it's always going to be the same and it's always
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 1: going to be telling the phone network it's this physical handset.
• 2:26:48
  Speaker 1: The IME SI is in your SIM card, right? And
• 2:26:52
  Speaker 1: this is what holds your phone number, right? It's basically
• 2:26:55
  Speaker 1: the key, the right to use that phone number. And
• 2:26:57
  Speaker 1: so your phone is sitting there doing nothing, you think,
• 2:27:01
  Speaker 1: but it's constantly shouting and saying, I'm here. Who is
• 2:27:04
  Speaker 1: closest to me? That's the cell phone tower. And every
• 2:27:08
  Speaker 1: cell phone tower with its big ears is listening for
• 2:27:11
  Speaker 1: these little cries for help. And going, all right, I
• 2:27:15
  Speaker 1: see Joe Rogan's phone. I see Jamie's phone. I see
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 1: all these phones that are here right now. And it
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 1: compares notes with the other network towers. And your smartphone
• 2:27:28
  Speaker 1: compares notes with them to go, who do I hear
• 2:27:31
  Speaker 1: the loudest? And who you hear the loudest is a
• 2:27:35
  Speaker 1: proxy for... proximity, for closeness, distance, right? They go, whoever
• 2:27:41
  Speaker 1: I hear more loudly than anybody else, that's close to me.
• 2:27:44
  Speaker 1: So you're going to be bound to this cell phone tower,
• 2:27:46
  Speaker 1: and that cell phone tower is going to make a note,
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 1: a permanent record, saying this phone handset with this phone
• 2:27:55
  Speaker 1: number at this time was connected to me, right? And
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 1: based on your phone handset and your phone number, they
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 1: can get your identity, right? Because you pay for this
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 1: stuff with your credit card and everything like that. And
• 2:28:10
  Speaker 1: even if you don't, right, it's still active at your
• 2:28:13
  Speaker 1: house overnight. It's still active, you know, on your nightstand
• 2:28:16
  Speaker 1: when you're sleeping. It's still whatever. The movements of your
• 2:28:20
  Speaker 1: phone are the movements of you as a person. And
• 2:28:22
  Speaker 1: those are often quite uniquely identifying. It goes to your home.
• 2:28:26
  Speaker 1: It goes to your workplace. Other people don't have it. Sorry.
• 2:28:30
  Speaker 1: And anyway, it's constantly shouting this out, and then it
• 2:28:34
  Speaker 1: compares notes with the other parts of the network. And
• 2:28:37
  Speaker 1: when somebody is trying to get to a phone, it
• 2:28:40
  Speaker 1: compares notes, the network compares notes to go, where is
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 1: this phone with this phone number in the world right now?
• 2:28:48
  Speaker 1: And to that cell phone tower that is closest to
• 2:28:50
  Speaker 1: that phone, it sends out a signal saying, we have
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 1: a call for you. make your phone start ringing so
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 1: your owner can answer it. And then it connects it
• 2:28:59
  Speaker 1: across this whole path. But what this means is that
• 2:29:02
  Speaker 1: whenever you're carrying a phone, whenever the phone is turned on,
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 1: there is a record of your presence at that place
• 2:29:08
  Speaker 1: that is being made and created by companies. It does
• 2:29:11
  Speaker 1: not need to be kept forever, and in fact, there's
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 1: no good argument for it to be kept forever, but
• 2:29:15
  Speaker 1: these companies see that as valuable information, right? This is
• 2:29:19
  Speaker 1: the whole big data problem that we're running into, and
• 2:29:21
  Speaker 1: all this information that used to be ephemeral, right? Where
• 2:29:25
  Speaker 1: were you when you were eight years old, you know?
• 2:29:28
  Speaker 1: Where did you go after you had a bad breakup?
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 1: Who did you spend the night with? Who did you
• 2:29:32
  Speaker 1: call after? All this information used to be ephemeral, meaning
• 2:29:36
  Speaker 1: it disappeared, right? Like the morning dew, it would be gone.
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 1: No one would remember it. But now these things are stored.
• 2:29:43
  Speaker 1: Now these things are saved. It doesn't matter whether you're
• 2:29:45
  Speaker 1: doing anything wrong. It doesn't matter whether you're the most
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 1: ordinary person on earth because that's how bulk collection, which
• 2:29:53
  Speaker 1: is the government's euphemism for mass surveillance, works. They simply
• 2:29:57
  Speaker 1: collect it all in advance in hopes that one day
• 2:29:59
  Speaker 1: it will become useful. And that was just talking about
• 2:30:04
  Speaker 1: how you connect to the phone network. That's not talking
• 2:30:07
  Speaker 1: about all those apps on your phone that are contacting
• 2:30:10
  Speaker 1: the network even more frequently, right? How do you get
• 2:30:15
  Speaker 1: a text message notification? How do you get an email notification?
• 2:30:18
  Speaker 1: How is it that Facebook knows where you're at? All
• 2:30:21
  Speaker 1: of these things, these analytics things, they are trying to
• 2:30:25
  Speaker 1: keep track through location services on your phone through GPS,
• 2:30:28
  Speaker 1: through even just what wireless access points you're connected to,
• 2:30:31
  Speaker 1: because there's a global constantly updated map. There's actually many
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 1: of them of wireless access points in the world, because
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 1: just like we talked about, every phone has a unique identifier.
• 2:30:40
  Speaker 1: That's globally unique. Uh, every wireless access point in the world, right?
• 2:30:44
  Speaker 1: Your cable modem at home, uh, whether it's in your laptop,
• 2:30:47
  Speaker 1: every device that has a radio modem has a globally
• 2:30:51
  Speaker 1: unique identifier in it. Um, And this is standard term.
• 2:30:56
  Speaker 1: You can look it up. And these things can be
• 2:30:58
  Speaker 1: mapped when they're broadcasting in the air. Because again, like
• 2:31:02
  Speaker 1: your phone says to the cell phone tower, I have
• 2:31:05
  Speaker 1: this identifier. The cell phone tower responds and says, I
• 2:31:08
  Speaker 1: have this identifier. And anybody who's listening... they can write
• 2:31:11
  Speaker 1: these things down. And all those Google Street View cars
• 2:31:14
  Speaker 1: that go back and forth, right, they're keeping notes on
• 2:31:18
  Speaker 1: whose Wi-Fi is active on this block, right? And then
• 2:31:22
  Speaker 1: they build a new giant map. So even if you
• 2:31:24
  Speaker 1: have GPS turned off, right, as long as you're connected
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 1: to Wi-Fi, those apps can go, well, I'm connected to
• 2:31:32
  Speaker 1: Joe's Wi-Fi, but I can also see his neighbor's Wi-Fi
• 2:31:36
  Speaker 1: here and the other one in this apartment over here
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 1: and the other one in the apartment here. And you
• 2:31:40
  Speaker 1: should only be able to hear those four globally unique
• 2:31:45
  Speaker 1: Wi-Fi access points from these points in physical space, right?
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 1: The intersection in between the spreads, the domes of all
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 1: those wireless access points. And it's a proxy for location.
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 1: And it just goes on and on and on. We
• 2:31:59
  Speaker 1: could talk about this for four more hours. We don't
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 1: have that kind of time.
• 2:32:01
  Speaker 2: Can I ask you this? Is there a way to
• 2:32:03
  Speaker 2: mitigate any of this personally? I mean, shutting your phone
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 2: off doesn't even work, right?
• 2:32:10
  Speaker 1: Well, so it does, in a way. It's yes and no.
• 2:32:13
  Speaker 1: The thing with shutting your phone off that is a
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 1: risk is, how do you know your phone's actually turned off?
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 1: It used to be, when I was in Geneva, for example,
• 2:32:22
  Speaker 1: working for the CIA, we would all carry, like, drug
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 1: dealer phones. You know, the old smartphones, or sorry, old
• 2:32:32
  Speaker 1: dumb phones, they're not smartphones. And the reason why was
• 2:32:36
  Speaker 1: just because they had removable backs where you could take
• 2:32:40
  Speaker 1: the battery out, right? And the one beautiful thing about
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 1: technology is if there's no electricity in it, right? If
• 2:32:46
  Speaker 1: there's no go juice available to it, if there's no
• 2:32:49
  Speaker 1: battery connected to it, it's not sending anything because you
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 1: have to get power from somewhere. You have to have
• 2:32:55
  Speaker 1: power in order to do work. But now your phones
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 1: are all sealed, right? You can't take the batteries out. So,
• 2:33:03
  Speaker 1: There are potential ways that you can hack a phone
• 2:33:06
  Speaker 1: where it appears to be off, but it's not actually off.
• 2:33:09
  Speaker 1: It's just pretending to be off. Whereas in fact, it's
• 2:33:11
  Speaker 1: still listening in and doing all this stuff. But for
• 2:33:13
  Speaker 1: the average person, that doesn't apply, right? And I got
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 1: to tell you guys, they've been chasing me all over
• 2:33:19
  Speaker 1: the place. I don't worry about that stuff, right? And
• 2:33:24
  Speaker 1: it's because if they're applying that level of effort to me,
• 2:33:27
  Speaker 1: they'll probably get the same information through other routes, right?
• 2:33:31
  Speaker 1: I am as careful as I can, and I use
• 2:33:34
  Speaker 1: things like Faraday cages, I turn devices off, but if
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 1: they're actually manipulating the way devices display, it's just too
• 2:33:42
  Speaker 1: great a level of effort, even for someone like me,
• 2:33:45
  Speaker 1: to keep that up on a constant basis. Also, if
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 1: they get me, I only trust phones so much, so
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 1: there's only so much they can derive from the compromise,
• 2:33:53
  Speaker 1: and this is how operational security works. You think about
• 2:33:58
  Speaker 1: what are the realistic threats that you're facing, that you're
• 2:34:01
  Speaker 1: trying to mitigate. And the mitigation that you're trying to
• 2:34:05
  Speaker 1: do is what would be the loss? What would be
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 1: the damage done to you if this stuff was exploited?
• 2:34:12
  Speaker 1: Much more realistic than worrying about these things that I
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 1: call voodoo hacks, right? Which are like next level stuff.
• 2:34:18
  Speaker 1: And actually just a shout out for those of your
• 2:34:21
  Speaker 1: readers who are interested in this stuff. I wrote a
• 2:34:24
  Speaker 1: paper on this specific problem. How do you know when
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 1: a phone is actually off? How do you know when
• 2:34:29
  Speaker 1: it's actually not spying on you? with a brilliant, brilliant
• 2:34:33
  Speaker 1: guy named Andrew Bunny Huang. He's an MIT PhD in,
• 2:34:37
  Speaker 1: I think, electrical engineering. Called the Introspection Engine. It was
• 2:34:43
  Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Open Engineering. You can find
• 2:34:46
  Speaker 1: it online. And it'll go as deep down in the weeds,
• 2:34:50
  Speaker 1: I promise you, as you want. We take an iPhone 6.
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 1: This was back when it was fairly new. And we
• 2:34:56
  Speaker 1: modified it so we could actually... not trust the device
• 2:35:00
  Speaker 1: to report its own state, but physically monitor its state
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 1: to see if it's spying on you. But for average people, right,
• 2:35:06
  Speaker 1: this academic, that's not your primary threat. Your primary threats
• 2:35:11
  Speaker 1: are these bulk collection programs. Your primary threat is the
• 2:35:15
  Speaker 1: fact that your phone is constantly squawking to these cell
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 1: phone towers that's doing all of these things because we
• 2:35:21
  Speaker 1: leave our phones in a state that is constantly on.
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 1: You're constantly connected, right? Airplane mode doesn't even turn off
• 2:35:28
  Speaker 1: Wi-Fi really anymore. It just turns off the cellular modem.
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 1: But the whole idea is we need to identify the problem.
• 2:35:38
  Speaker 1: And the central problem with smartphone use today is you
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 1: have no idea what the hell it's doing at any
• 2:35:43
  Speaker 1: given time. Like the phone has the screen off. You
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 1: don't know what it's connected to. You don't know how
• 2:35:47
  Speaker 1: frequently it's doing it. Apple and iOS, unfortunately, makes it
• 2:35:51
  Speaker 1: impossible to see what kind of network connections are constantly
• 2:35:55
  Speaker 1: made on the device. and to intermediate them, going, I
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 1: don't want Facebook to be able to talk right now.
• 2:36:00
  Speaker 1: I don't want Google to be able to talk right now.
• 2:36:02
  Speaker 1: I just want my secure messenger app to be able
• 2:36:05
  Speaker 1: to talk. I just want my weather app to be
• 2:36:08
  Speaker 1: able to talk. But I just checked my weather, and
• 2:36:11
  Speaker 1: now I'm done with it, so I don't want that
• 2:36:12
  Speaker 1: to be able to talk anymore. And we need to
• 2:36:14
  Speaker 1: be able to make these intelligent decisions on not just
• 2:36:18
  Speaker 1: an app-by-app basis, but a connection-by-connection basis, right? You want
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 1: Let's say you use Facebook because, you know, for whatever
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 1: judgment we have, a lot of people might do it.
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 1: You want it to be able to connect to Facebook's
• 2:36:32
  Speaker 1: content servers. You want to be able to message a friend.
• 2:36:36
  Speaker 1: You want to be able to download a photograph or whatever.
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 1: But you don't want it to be able to talk
• 2:36:40
  Speaker 1: to an ad server. You don't want it to talk
• 2:36:42
  Speaker 1: to an analytics server that's monitoring your behavior, right? You
• 2:36:45
  Speaker 1: don't want it to talk to all these third-party things
• 2:36:46
  Speaker 1: because Facebook crams their garbage into almost every app that
• 2:36:50
  Speaker 1: you download. And you don't even know what's happening. Because
• 2:36:53
  Speaker 1: you can't see it, right? And this is the problem
• 2:36:55
  Speaker 1: with the data collection you use today, is there is
• 2:36:59
  Speaker 1: an industry that is built on keeping this invisible. And
• 2:37:03
  Speaker 1: what we need to do is we need to make
• 2:37:05
  Speaker 1: the activities of our devices, whether it's a phone, whether
• 2:37:09
  Speaker 1: it's a computer, whatever, more visible and understandable to the
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 1: average person and then give them control over it. So, like,
• 2:37:16
  Speaker 1: if you could see your phone right now, And at
• 2:37:19
  Speaker 1: the very center of it is a little green icon
• 2:37:21
  Speaker 1: that's your handset or it's a picture of your face, whatever.
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 1: And then you see all these little spokes coming off
• 2:37:28
  Speaker 1: of it. That's every app. that your phone is talking
• 2:37:30
  Speaker 1: to right now, or every app that is active on
• 2:37:34
  Speaker 1: your phone right now, and all the hosts that it's
• 2:37:36
  Speaker 1: connecting to. And you can see right now, once every
• 2:37:39
  Speaker 1: three seconds, your phone is checking into Facebook, and you
• 2:37:43
  Speaker 1: can just poke that app, And then boom, it's not
• 2:37:45
  Speaker 1: talking to Facebook anymore. Facebook's not allowed. Facebook's speaking privileges
• 2:37:49
  Speaker 1: have been revoked, right? You would do that. We would
• 2:37:52
  Speaker 1: all do that. If there was a button on your
• 2:37:54
  Speaker 1: phone that said, do what I want, but not spy
• 2:37:58
  Speaker 1: on me, you would press that button, right? That button
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 1: does not exist right now. And both Google and Apple, unfortunately,
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 1: Apple's a lot better at this than Google. But neither
• 2:38:10
  Speaker 1: of them allow that button to exist. In fact, they
• 2:38:14
  Speaker 1: actively interfere with it because they say it's a security risk.
• 2:38:17
  Speaker 1: And from a particular perspective, they actually aren't wrong there.
• 2:38:21
  Speaker 1: But it's not enough to go, you know, we have
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 1: to lock that capability off from people because we don't
• 2:38:27
  Speaker 1: trust they would make the right decisions. We think it's
• 2:38:29
  Speaker 1: too complicated for people to do this. We think there's
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 1: too many connections being made. Well, that is actually a
• 2:38:36
  Speaker 1: confession of the problem right there. If you think people
• 2:38:39
  Speaker 1: can't understand it, if you think there are too many
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 1: communications happening, if you think there's too much complexity in there,
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 1: it needs to be simplified. Just like the president can't
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 1: control everything like that, if you have to be the
• 2:38:50
  Speaker 1: president of the phone, and the phone is as complex
• 2:38:53
  Speaker 1: as the United States government, we have a problem, guys.
• 2:38:56
  Speaker 1: This should be a much more simple process. It should
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 1: be obvious. And the fact that it's not, and the
• 2:39:01
  Speaker 1: fact that we read story after story, year after year,
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 1: saying all your data's been breached here, this company's spying
• 2:39:07
  Speaker 1: on you here, this company's manipulating your purchases, or your
• 2:39:11
  Speaker 1: search results, or they're hiding these things from your timeline...
• 2:39:16
  Speaker 1: or they're influencing you or manipulating you in all of
• 2:39:18
  Speaker 1: these different ways, that happens as a result of a
• 2:39:23
  Speaker 1: single problem. And that problem is an inequality of available information.
• 2:39:31
  Speaker 1: They can see everything about you, they can see everything
• 2:39:33
  Speaker 1: about what your device is doing, and they can do
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 1: whatever they want with your device. You, on the other hand,
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 1: owned the device. Well, rather, you paid for the device.
• 2:39:43
  Speaker 1: But increasingly, these corporations own it. Increasingly, these governments own it.
• 2:39:47
  Speaker 1: And increasingly, we are living in a world where we
• 2:39:50
  Speaker 1: do all the work, right? We pay all the taxes.
• 2:39:53
  Speaker 1: We pay all the costs. But we own less and less.
• 2:39:58
  Speaker 1: And nobody understands this better than the youngest generation.
• 2:40:01
  Speaker 2: Well, it seems like our data became a commodity before
• 2:40:04
  Speaker 2: we understood what it was. It became this thing that's
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 2: insanely valuable to Google and Facebook and all these social
• 2:40:11
  Speaker 2: media platforms. Before we understood what we were giving up,
• 2:40:15
  Speaker 2: they were making billions of dollars. And then once that
• 2:40:18
  Speaker 2: money is being earned and once everyone's accustomed to the situation,
• 2:40:22
  Speaker 2: it's very difficult to pull the reins back. It's very
• 2:40:25
  Speaker 2: difficult to turn that horse around.
• 2:40:27
  Speaker 1: Precisely because the money then becomes power. The information then
• 2:40:31
  Speaker 1: becomes influence.
• 2:40:32
  Speaker 2: That also seems to be the same sort of situation
• 2:40:34
  Speaker 2: that would happen with these mass surveillance states. Once they
• 2:40:37
  Speaker 2: have the access, it's going to be incredibly difficult for
• 2:40:40
  Speaker 2: them to relinquish that.
• 2:40:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, you're exactly correct. And this is the subject
• 2:40:47
  Speaker 1: of the book. I mean, this is the permanent record,
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 1: and this is where it came from. This is how
• 2:40:51
  Speaker 1: it came to exist. The story of our lifetimes is
• 2:40:56
  Speaker 1: how intentionally, by design, a number of institutions, both governmental
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 1: and corporate, realized it was in their mutual interest to
• 2:41:09
  Speaker 1: conceal their data collection activities. to increase the breadth and
• 2:41:15
  Speaker 1: depth of their sensor networks that were sort of spread
• 2:41:18
  Speaker 1: out through society. Remember, back in the day, intelligence collection
• 2:41:22
  Speaker 1: in the United States, even at SIGINT, used to mean
• 2:41:25
  Speaker 1: sending an FBI agent, right, to put alligator clips on
• 2:41:28
  Speaker 1: an embassy building, or sending in somebody disguised as a workman.
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 1: And they put a bug in a building. Or they
• 2:41:36
  Speaker 1: built a satellite listening site, right? We call these foreign
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 1: satellite collection. Around the desert somewhere, they built a big
• 2:41:46
  Speaker 1: parabolic collector. And it's just listening to satellite emissions, right?
• 2:41:51
  Speaker 1: But these satellite emissions, these satellite links, were owned by militaries.
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 1: They were exclusive to governments, right? It wasn't affecting everybody broadly, right?
• 2:42:02
  Speaker 1: All surveillance was targeted because it had to be. What
• 2:42:06
  Speaker 1: changed with technology is that surveillance could now become indiscriminate,
• 2:42:11
  Speaker 1: it could become dragnet, it could become bulk collection, which
• 2:42:16
  Speaker 1: should become one of the dirtiest phrases in the language
• 2:42:19
  Speaker 1: if we have any kind of decency. But we were intentionally,
• 2:42:25
  Speaker 1: this was intentionally concealed from us, right? The government did it,
• 2:42:28
  Speaker 1: they used classification, Companies did it. They intentionally didn't talk
• 2:42:33
  Speaker 1: about it. They denied these things were going. They said,
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 1: you agreed to this, and you didn't agree to nothing
• 2:42:40
  Speaker 1: like this. I'm sorry, right? They go, we put that
• 2:42:43
  Speaker 1: terms of service page up, and you clicked that. You
• 2:42:46
  Speaker 1: clicked a button that said, I agree, because you were
• 2:42:49
  Speaker 1: trying to open an account so you could talk to
• 2:42:51
  Speaker 1: your friends. You were trying to get driving directions. You
• 2:42:54
  Speaker 1: were trying to get an email account. You weren't trying
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 1: to agree to some 600-page legal form That even if
• 2:43:00
  Speaker 1: you read, you wouldn't understand. And it doesn't matter even
• 2:43:03
  Speaker 1: if you did understand, because one of the very first
• 2:43:05
  Speaker 1: paragraphs in it said, this agreement can be changed at
• 2:43:07
  Speaker 1: any time unilaterally without your consent by the company. They
• 2:43:13
  Speaker 1: have built a legal paradigm that presumes records collected about
• 2:43:19
  Speaker 1: us do not belong to us. This is sort of
• 2:43:24
  Speaker 1: one of the core principles on which mass surveillance, from
• 2:43:27
  Speaker 1: the government's perspective in the United States, is legal. And
• 2:43:30
  Speaker 1: you have to understand that all the stuff we talked
• 2:43:32
  Speaker 1: about today, the government says everything they do is legal, right?
• 2:43:35
  Speaker 1: And they go, so it's fine. Our perspective as a
• 2:43:38
  Speaker 1: public should be, well, that's actually the problem because this
• 2:43:41
  Speaker 1: isn't okay. The scandal isn't how they're breaking the law.
• 2:43:45
  Speaker 1: The scandal is that they don't have to break the law.
• 2:43:49
  Speaker 1: And the way they say they're not breaking the law
• 2:43:51
  Speaker 1: is something called the third party doctrine. A third party
• 2:43:54
  Speaker 1: doctrine is a, um, Legal principle derived from a case,
• 2:44:00
  Speaker 1: and I believe the 1970s, called Smith v. Maryland. And
• 2:44:06
  Speaker 1: Smith was this knucklehead who was harassing this lady, making
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 1: phone calls to her house. And when she would pick up,
• 2:44:14
  Speaker 1: he'd just, I don't know, sit there heavy breathing, whatever,
• 2:44:16
  Speaker 1: like a classic creeper. And, you know, it was terrifying,
• 2:44:20
  Speaker 1: this poor lady. So she calls the cops. and says,
• 2:44:25
  Speaker 1: one day I got one of these phone calls, and
• 2:44:26
  Speaker 1: then I see this car creeping past my house on
• 2:44:29
  Speaker 1: the street, and she got a license plate number. So
• 2:44:32
  Speaker 1: she goes to the cops, and she goes, is this
• 2:44:34
  Speaker 1: the guy? And the cops, again, they're trying to do
• 2:44:38
  Speaker 1: a good thing here. They look up his license plate number,
• 2:44:43
  Speaker 1: and they find out where this guy is, and then
• 2:44:45
  Speaker 1: they go, well, what phone number is registered to that house?
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 1: And they go to the phone company, and they say,
• 2:44:49
  Speaker 1: can you give us this record? And the phone company says, yeah, sure.
• 2:44:52
  Speaker 1: And it's the guy. The cops got their man, right?
• 2:44:56
  Speaker 1: So they go arrest this guy. And then in court,
• 2:44:59
  Speaker 1: his lawyer brings all this stuff up. And they go,
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 1: you did this without a warrant. Sorry, that was the problem.
• 2:45:12
  Speaker 1: They went to the phone company and they got the
• 2:45:14
  Speaker 1: records without a warrant. They just asked for it. They
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 1: subpoenaed it, right? Some lower standard of legal review. And
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 1: the company gave it to him and got the guy.
• 2:45:21
  Speaker 1: They marched him off to jail. Uh, and they could
• 2:45:25
  Speaker 1: have gotten a warrant, right? But it was just expedience.
• 2:45:28
  Speaker 1: They just didn't want to take the time. The small
• 2:45:30
  Speaker 1: town cops, you can understand how it happens. They know
• 2:45:32
  Speaker 1: the guy's a creeper. They just want to get him
• 2:45:33
  Speaker 1: off to jail. Um, and so they made a mistake,
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 1: but the government doesn't want to let it go. They
• 2:45:39
  Speaker 1: fight on this and they go, uh, it wasn't actually,
• 2:45:45
  Speaker 1: they weren't his records. And so because they didn't belong
• 2:45:49
  Speaker 1: to him, he didn't have a fourth amendment right to
• 2:45:53
  Speaker 1: to demand a warrant be issued for them. They were
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 1: the company's records and the company provided them voluntarily and
• 2:45:59
  Speaker 1: hence no warrant was required because you can give whatever
• 2:46:02
  Speaker 1: you want without a warrant as long as it's yours.
• 2:46:05
  Speaker 1: Now here's the problem. The government extrapolated a principle in
• 2:46:09
  Speaker 1: a single case of a single known suspected criminal who
• 2:46:14
  Speaker 1: they had real good reasons to suspect was their guy.
• 2:46:20
  Speaker 1: And used that to go to a company and get
• 2:46:22
  Speaker 1: records from them and establish a precedent that these records
• 2:46:26
  Speaker 1: don't belong to the guy. They belong to the company.
• 2:46:28
  Speaker 1: And then they said, well, if one person doesn't have
• 2:46:31
  Speaker 1: a Fourth Amendment interest in records held by a company,
• 2:46:35
  Speaker 1: no one does. And so the company then has absolute
• 2:46:39
  Speaker 1: proprietary ownership of all of these records about all of
• 2:46:41
  Speaker 1: our lives. And remember, this is back in the 1970s.
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 1: You know, the internet hardly exists in these kind of contexts. Smartphones,
• 2:46:49
  Speaker 1: you know, don't exist. Modern society, modern communications don't exist.
• 2:46:53
  Speaker 1: This is the very beginning of the technological era. Uh,
• 2:46:58
  Speaker 1: and flash forward now 40 years, uh, And they are
• 2:47:06
  Speaker 1: still relying on this precedent about this one, you know,
• 2:47:09
  Speaker 1: pervy creeper to go, nobody has a privacy right for
• 2:47:12
  Speaker 1: anything that's held by a company. And so long as
• 2:47:15
  Speaker 1: they do that, companies are going to be extraordinarily powerful
• 2:47:18
  Speaker 1: and they're going to be extraordinarily profitable. And this is
• 2:47:20
  Speaker 1: something that people don't get. They go, oh, well, it's
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 1: data collection, right? They're exploiting data. This is data about
• 2:47:27
  Speaker 1: human lives. It is data about people. These records are
• 2:47:32
  Speaker 1: about you. It's not data that's being exploited. It's people
• 2:47:37
  Speaker 1: that are being exploited. It's not... data that's being manipulated.
• 2:47:43
  Speaker 1: It's you that's being manipulated. And this is something that
• 2:47:49
  Speaker 1: I think a lot of people are beginning to understand. Now,
• 2:47:53
  Speaker 1: the problem is the companies and the governments are still
• 2:47:55
  Speaker 1: pretending they don't understand or disagreeing with this. And this
• 2:47:58
  Speaker 1: reminds me of something that one of my old friends,
• 2:48:01
  Speaker 1: John Perry Barlow, who served with me at the Freedom
• 2:48:05
  Speaker 1: of the Press Foundation. I'm the president of the board.
• 2:48:10
  Speaker 1: used to say to me, which is, you can't awaken
• 2:48:14
  Speaker 1: someone who's pretending to be asleep. He said it's an
• 2:48:17
  Speaker 1: old Native American saying.
• 2:48:19
  Speaker 2: That's a great expression. I think that's a good way
• 2:48:23
  Speaker 2: to end this. Ed, thank you very much for doing this.
• 2:48:26
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate it. Please tell everybody the title of
• 2:48:29
  Speaker 2: your book, and it's available right now?
• 2:48:32
  Speaker 1: Sure, yes, it is. It's on shelves everywhere, at least
• 2:48:35
  Speaker 1: until the government finds some other way to ban it.
• 2:48:38
  Speaker 1: It is called Permanent Record, and I hope you'll read it.
• 2:48:43
  Speaker 2: I will read it, and I think what you've done
• 2:48:46
  Speaker 2: is incredibly brave, and I think you're a very important
• 2:48:48
  Speaker 2: part of history. I think when all is said and done,
• 2:48:52
  Speaker 2: what you did and what you exposed is going to
• 2:48:55
  Speaker 2: change the way we view mass surveillance, change the way
• 2:48:59
  Speaker 2: we view government oversight, and change the way we view
• 2:49:03
  Speaker 2: the distribution of information. I really think it's very, very important.
• 2:49:07
  Speaker 2: And it was an honor to talk to you, man.
• 2:49:09
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 2:49:10
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was my pleasure. Thank you so much for
• 2:49:12
  Speaker 1: having me on.
• 2:49:12
  Speaker 2: Take care of yourself, man. Stay safe.
• 2:49:13
  Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 2:49:16
  Speaker 2: No, don't stay safe.
• 2:49:17
  Speaker 1: Don't stay safe.
• 2:49:18
  Speaker 2: Stay free. Open to possibilities. Take care.
• 2:49:24
  Speaker 1: Take care.