That debate all day and do nothing and then are overruled be the president. Or could i work to change the fundmental ideology of the country, and wont matter if i got a selected or ted cruz got elected or rand paul or mike pence or any of these folks if the American People dont begin to understand what america is all about. And we have lost that. We have lost that. We think july 4th is about barbecues. And more we think its about food stamp barbecues. We think that we the americans founding is about the idea that government is supposed to provide for me. We have all become infantallizees. Were all adolescents in our approach. Last night, slightly off topic. I was beginning to realize that since my baby was born, she is completely destride my emotional life because dry destroyed my emotional life. I was insensitive and callous and i was fund. Last night i was watching amc because im an old man, and theyre showing carousel. And about halfway through the movie and my wife needs to work and i turn off the tv and i watch the end of the carousel on youtube. And im sitting there crying like a baby, and id seen the musical. And now im sitting there crying. And my wife looked at me and said why are you crying . I said im watching the end of carousel. She said, what happens . Spoiler alert to hose who is in missed it in 1954. Hes given one chance to tell his wife and daughter he loves them to they can move on and the end of me musical is, believe i love you, and then walks off in dethough distance as they sing, youll never walk alone. So i tell my wife this and she starts crying. I say youre not even watching it. The opinions this. For those who are responsible, for those who care about children, have children, care about the future, recognize our own mortality, realize theirs something beyond ourself, this is not a identifying we can afford to lose. There is something beyond us. The left, theyre a bunch of adolescents. They dont care about the next generation, theyre willing to bank the next generation so they can have a good time right now. Theyre willing to rehavent the wealth, destroy the greatest civilization in the history of mankind. Specifically to sashate their own he donnistic needs. That what not were about. The daughter has taken the pizazz out of me but has also changed she has deep ended what believe, and for all of white house live it is a way of life, that way of life is under attack and the only way to destroy the folks who are attempting to attack thus is destroy them and deep key destroying them and theres no youtopia where they goo away. We cant afford to falter. I with do theyll win. But if we fight back strong and smart, and we recognize the situation we face, i do believe that with the grace of god we can win. Thank you so much. [applause] monday night on booktv, books resident frack and energy in america. And then at 8 30, a discussion about fracking from the Annapolis Book festival. At 9 15, decreeing degree suckerman in the fracturers skises the invention of fracking technology. At 11 eastern, russell gold describes how fracks has transformed energy and the world economy, in his book, the boom. Booktv in primetime every night this month on cspan 2. Joinist Glenn Greenwald broke the store of Edward Snowden. This is an hour 15 minutes. Good evening. Im Bradley Graham thinks coowner of moll ticks and prose, along with my wife, and on behalf of the entire p and p staff and all the staff here, id like to welcome you. We at p p are always tee lyinged to partner with six sixth and i and Company Sponsor talks in this truly marvelous building. Ester floor, the executive director or six i and her organization have done a terrific job establishing this place as a vibrant, culture center, now celebrating its 10th anniversary request were looking forward to continuing our Great Partnership with them. As the Book Store Owner im often asked by writers for advice on how to promote a book after its been published. I dont think ive ever suggested going out and winning a pulitzer prize, and making sure its awarded just a few weeks before the release of the book. But that is what Glenn Greenwood did. How is that working out for you, glen . Pretty well. Glen, of course, led the reporting team at the guardian, which along with the Washington Post just won the Public Service pulitzer for reporting on edwards snowdens nasa five. The committee commended glenn and his colleagues for sparking a debate about the relationship between the government and the public over issues of security and privacy. Glenn has been winning awards and recognition for just this sort of provocative coverage ever since he gave up practicing law nine years ago to write columns and books. He started his first blog in 2005 because, as he says in the introduction of his new book, he had become alarm bid the bush administrations post 9 11 theories of executive power. And wanted to make a broader impact than his career as a constitutional and civil rights lawyer had allowed. By 2007 he had become a contributing writer at salon, and in 2012 signed up with the guardian, having established himself as a dogged pursueunder of stories involving government overreach. It was glens aggressive coverage of such controversies as warrantless wire tapping by the nsa, that led snowden to seek him out and enlist him in the release of the classified files documenting the nsas vast Information Collection apparatus. Glenn tells the story in fascinating, revealing and. I passioned detail in his book, no place to ahead. A few months ago glen left the guardian to start an automobile publication, the intercept. Being backed he is far from finished with the snowden archives. He has been saying theres more to come, including even bigger revelations. As he told one interviewer, quote, i like to think of it as a fireworks show. You want to save your best for last. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming, Glenn Greenwald. [applause] thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much for that extremely warm and generous welcome, and thank you so much for coming out tonight, and thank you to sixth and i and politics and prose for inviting me here. I witnessed when i was an adolescent a large number of my friends being bar mitzvahed and i never was, and i got to compensate for that tonight. So i have that surprise happenness about being here. Book tours, which im out in in the middle of, are singularry exhausting and also really exhilarating and the reason is because when you work on an issue or a story like ive been working on the nsa archive easers day for almost a year, yoke fuss on the documents in a very casebycase basis and dont have the opportunity to step back and think about some of the broader implications, and the more profound consequences of the work you have didnt doing, and writing a book, especially going around and talking about your book with people who have read and it been interested in your work for a long time and having that dialogue is a provoc staff provocative and interesting way to think about those issues. And i like events like this as opposed to what i normally do which is i sit in studios answering the same set of very predictable and vapid questions over and over by people who work as journalists, and i really look forward to the question and answer session, which i know will be great, as long as you dont ask me two questions, so, we understand that mr. Snowden arranged to be carrying a rubix crew, and then the National Security agency chief says you this will result in the death of innocent people. And it will be better than almost every Television Interview i do if theyre not asked. So, i want to begin by talking about what i did in the first part of the book, the first two chapters, which is tell the story of how i came to meet and then work with Edward Snowden, along with me longtime friend and journalistic collaborator in hong kong, and the reason that i really wanted to write a book and tell that story is because so much has been said about all of those events, and so much of what has been said has been wildly false. And one of the really interesting things is that if youre something that likes to bash the American Media and im definitely somebody who likes to do that its one of my most favorite pastimes, it doesnt really come as a surprise to learn that much of what the media turns out is misleading in all sorts of ways. But when youre actually at the center of a story like this, and youre reading in the newspaper claims about what it is that happened when you actually know the truth, because you are at those events and were part of them, your appreciation for their capacity to mislead expands wildly. It really is shocking to have seen some things that have been said, given my firsthand knowledge of how false they are. I remember in particular, in hong kong, when we revealed ward snowdens identity at his insistence on june 10th last year, from june 10th until june 23rd, the instant consensus of the american National Security elite here in washington and of large numbers of the American Media was that theres no question but that this is almost certainly a chinese espionage operation. That Edward Snowden is almost certainly a spy of the government in beijing. And then on june 24th, when he left hong kong and flew to moscow on his way to ecuador and got trapped in moscow by the u. S. Government who revoked his passport, the very same people accused him of being a chinese sky inlint tran formed their sneer campaign, obviously an agent of vladimir putin, and i knew tomorrow south korea, those same people would accuse if only being an agent of that government or wherever he would fly. This oped in the wall street journal last week saying we know for certain, either that this is this whole operation is either a chinese spy ring or a russian spy ring or a cyno Russian Joint operation, and then there was the issue of who Edward Snowden was. This actually stunned me. Was vaguely aware of this at the time but i was a little occupied back in june in hong kong and wasnt paying too much finings what attention to what people were saying but i went back to see how the media narrative formed in the wake of our disclosures and our unveiling of our source, and it is really remarkable. I mystified that almost over night, within 24 hours, all of these journalists who never heard of the name Edward Snowden before, had no idea who he was or what he did or what motivated him, were able, instantly to diagnosis him. Medically, psychologically, in a remark abe blue coordinated way. This consensus arose that he was a fameseeking narcissist, and literally within the 48 hours after he was unveiled, that phrase appeared in countless newspaper columns and all sorts of Television Programs and persists to this day. Even though at the very time that those people were smearing and demeaning and me massachusetts lining his character as a means of distracting attention from the revelations, he was telling me, and we were executing his plan, which was, im going to unveil myself one time and come forward and say a. The person who did this because i feel an obligation to stand up in public and complain why i did what i did. I dont want to hide. I dont want other people falsely accused. I want to take responsibility for what did bass im so convicted it was at the right thing to do. And every do that, im going to disappear. I am not going to do media interviews or let them personalize the issue the way they always like to dive whistleblowers, as a means of distracting attention, and literally every day for the next two or three months i had every major American Television permit, the actors who may the role of journalists on television, calling me and pleading with me to arrange for them to have the first Television Interview with Edward Snowden. Were willing to devote primetime to let him pontificate. He could have been the most famous person in the world and he rejected every single one of those offers because he knew that would result in allowing the focus to be on him permanently. Then theres the issue of the results and outcome of the disclosures. Almost instantly there was this script that was read from by the american political establishment which was that these disclosures are going to result in the deaths of innocent people and a compromising lot of american National Security. I think every single art in every of them with every media outlet outlet in the last year has put him as the man that i take it seriously and address it. What is most remarkable to me about it isnt that it is presented without any expectation of specificity or evidence to corroborate the accusation. I think none of us in this room are surprised after what the media did in the runup to the iraq war that they are perfectly willing to amplify mindless claims of the government without ever asking for any evidence whatsoever to corroborate it. That is not what really surprised me the most about. What surprised me the most about it was the eagerness to completely ignore the fact that in every single case, every single whistleblower of every single unauthorized disclosure which means that you are publishing information that the government wants to hide, the same accusations are made, the same kinds of fearmongering is called out over and over and over again going all the way back to the 1971 week of Daniel Ellsberg when he leaked the pentagon papers and informed the american citizenry that the government was systematically lying about the vietnam war. Jamie ellsberg was mike childhood hero and i had the honor of becoming friends with him in college and i served on the board with him. Ive had the opportunity to talk to him because hes become the leading most vocal defender not just of but Chelsea Manning and the reason hes so devoting to do it even though hes now 83 is because he said that every single thing that they say about Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, every single thing was said about me. Nixon officials going to the congress and telling the American People through their elected representatives that Daniel Ellsberg was almost certainly a russian spy. The accusation was continuously made included by the nixon officials before the Supreme Court that these disclosures would severely damage american National Security and risk the lives of men and women in uniform and in general undermine security of United States. Its now essentially a consensus that all of that was fictitious. Disclosures he made were both noble and heroic and certainly in the Public Interest and yet theres no conception at all when these accusations are made that the fact that they have been made over and over again and disproven over and over and over again might mean that we have to have at least as a journalist and i are both skepticism and those claims are made in the latest instance. The reality is the disclosures that we have made have been quite damaging to their reputations and the credibility of american officials who had been lying to the public in building this massive Surveillance System in secret for all of these years. It hasnt in any way harmed any legitimate interest of us as american citizens. Its only strengthen the system of which we are all a part because that requires us knowing rather than inferring about the most consequential acts that our government is doing in the dark. The last point i want to make about why wanted to tell the story and the misperceptions that have persisted is about what Edward Snowden hopes to achieve, what is sexual desire and outcome was. There is this very pervasive criticism that i would call as being from the right which i mean from democrats although you do hear it from republicans as well occasionally but not nearly with the frequency. These disclosures have been incredibly and have been disclosed without regard to american interests and with the intention to harm american interests that this was somehow treasonous. I was on cspan this morning and every time the host said that now we go to the democratic line i knew i was about to be called the traitor and let reliably thats what happened. Theres this idea that theres this recklessness taking place and Edward Snowden wants to harm the systems and so do we. And then theres a much less wellknown strain of criticism that it comes from the left. Its actually much more serious criticism of the journalism that we have done in the way these disclosures are carried out. Even though its much more serious its gotten much less attention. That criticism is why are we holding on to so many doctrines and why do we just publish huge numbers of documents rather than the careful management process that we use. The answer to the both of those questions lies in the truth about what actually happened when Edward Snowden came forward in what his objectives were. Like most sources to come to journals with information he had clear ideas about certain types of information that he believed he needed to get out and then there was other information he had that he was insistent not be published which is common for sources to come and say you can publish this but not this. Then there was this vast gray area of information we believe is a close call and he didnt trust his own judgment unilaterally to make those choices. What he said was im giving you, meaning me, these materials and i want you to make a judgment about which of these documents should be published. Many of the documents i dont want published. He gave his categories of documents he didnt think should be published, things that would repeal the communications of innocent people that the nsa has collected are things that would enable people easily to accuse him of treason by for example disclosing the surveillance methods of the u. S. Government uses on al qaeda or adversaries of the u. S. Government. Agree or disagree that is what the framework was they insisted on. We agree to that framework and there was a good reason i think why they wanted that and why we agreed to it which was he did not come forward in order to harm the United States. If you wanted to do that it would have been the easiest thing in the world for him to do. He could have taken all those documents and passed them to every american adversary. He could have sold those documents for tens of millions of dollars to virtually any Intelligence Agency on the planet. He couldve taken them and uploaded them all to the internet himself and that is what he wanted. The reason he didnt want, the main reason is because he wanted to make sure there were some benefit, pragmatic benefit in the world to the choice he made to unravel his life and bring these documents to the public in a pragmatic benefit would be that the government wouldnt be able to distract everyones attention from his revelations by saying lets focus on how Edward Snowden is an irresponsible traitor. They wouldnt be able to say look, we found in page 5862 of the documents that have been released the name of this innocent person who now is jeopardized and how the media continuously obsesses on that one small case as a means of humanizing exposures. He was acutely aware of the need to have a public debate me on this site. I was important to him. He wanted the public to be focused on the substance and not on all these ancillary tactics that he knew would be used if we did any other sort of course and that meant he wanted us to go one by one by one in each and every document in each and every story and publish it journalistically meeting report it, describe to the public what it actually meant, let it linger so people have time and space to react so that it can grow and once we are ready to do solid reporting on the next one do that and keep doing it until those stories are ready. You can agree or disagree with that method but as a journalist and as a human being who promised i would adhere to that framework i didnt care from that point forward because that was the framework i was going to use. I think his strategic sense has been remarkably vindicated. Here we are a year after the first story on a topic that i have been writing about for eight years, surveillance and privacy in the United States incredibly ethereal and other remote and complicated to people particularly when you pitted against the visceral fear that their children and they are going to be blown up if they dont have these policies. Its very difficult to get people to think about it even let alone care about. After youve interest level is the way in which these policies continue to do the debated in the Reform Movement that continues to strengthen his greater than ever. I think thats a direct byproduct of the very careful and aggressive simultaneously careful and aggressive choice to Edward Snowden made about how he wanted to bring these documents the world and a big part of what i wrote this book was to correct all of the misdirection misperceptions and set forth definitive vents about what actually took place. Thats the part about snowden in terms of correcting the record. I want to talk about what i think is the more important part of the story and by the story i mean the first few chapters when i say heres what actually happened. Because i think theres a really profound lesson to be learned by thinking about what happened here and why it happened. I know its been a profound lesson for me personally. When i went to hong kong as people now know my assumption was i was going to be meet with the source that was 60 or 70 years old. He has demonstrated to me he had access to enormous amounts of topsecret information which made me think he was senior in the u. S. Government. Secondly i spent many weeks talking to him on line and his insight was invariably sophisticated. A little bit cynical but always very smart and thoughtful and avoided cliches and was a very original and deep thinking way of looking at the world. Thirdly from the very first moment that i talked to him he was adamant, adamant about the fact that he was going to be identified as the source very early on in our reporting. He said in the very first conversation i ever had with him that i know that almost certainly means that im going to spend the rest of my life in an american prison. The fact that he was willing to go to those extremes and to incur that risk led me to believe that he was probably near the end of his life but youd have to be extremely disillusioned over time to be willing to make that sacrifice and also that its almost as though to me it seems like its less of a difficult choice than saying i will spend the rest of my life imprisonment if your life is another five, 10 or 15 years. It seems like a much more daunting choice. Like we have all probably experience in making assumptions about someone you are talking to on the Internet Everything you assume is wrong and that was the case here. The first time i met him in hong kong he was 29 years old and probably five years younger and was overwhelmed with dissidents and confusion and it took me almost the entire day to recover. The reason for that and the thought that i just had so central in my brain was it was completely befuddling to me, it was really confounding that somebody who was that anguished and who is clearly very intelligent and well adjusted, something i was able to see over the course of my interaction with him a tampore got there and he clearly had a stable and lucrative career and as i learned later was somebody who had a longtime girlfriend who loves him and he loved in a family that was very supportive. Why would somebody like that give up their entire life, literally subject themselves to almost certain confinement for the rest of your life in a cage. Not in order to enrich himself because sometimes you can understand why someone might steal or kill to gain huge amounts of money or exact vengeance vengeance over someone he hates but simply in defense of a political principle. A political principle but didnt really affect him at all because privacy and the importance of it though very profound and was something he had the skills unlike most people in the world to actually safeguard because he was a highly trained operative. He could safeguard his own privacy. He was worried about everybody elses. It was really almost, i was maybe too cynical i was thinking clearly that i really was suspicious over the storyline that he was telling through his actions which is im not even 30 yet and i want to go to jail for the rest of my life because of this abstract valley value. My first prayer in hong kong was to understand what his true motives were, not the motives he was claiming that to understand the motives behind the motives and the moral reasoning that led to that decision. I wanted it not to be a part of helping somebody unravel their life unless i was completely convinced there was agency and moral autonomy. I spent a long time trying to understand what it is that he did and why he did it. What ultimately got me to the point where it is extremely comfortable that i didnt understand his motives and i could trust the authenticity of the explanation he was given was when he talked about how it has alienated environment the internet was his salvation. And like for people of my generation and the generation before me who didnt have the internet growing up and came to see the internet as this discrete instrument that they use for isolated tasks, people of this generation that didnt grow up in the internet culture see the internet as an integral part of the world. A part of their internal exploration as human beings and that requires the ability to act freely and anonymously and with privacy. He talked about how he didnt want to live in a world in which that was eliminated for her millions of other human beings who are yet to be born and when i said to them understand that but i dont understand what you personally are willing to engage in this risk he talked about this belief system yet develop developed. What was really odd to me was i knew almost in the first hour that he didnt finish high school and after he didnt finish high school when he was 20 years enlisted in the army with the intention of volunteering to fight in the iraq war for the United States. He said he believed that the war at the time was noble and just and it was intended to liberate the iraqi people. He quickly realized that all the people training him spent more time talking about killing arabs than they did liberating anybody but that was the impetus that let him to enlist. When i heard he had enlisted i thought this is a person whos had a profound reversal in their life who has had a fundamental transformation to go from his classical patriotism, im going to fight for my country in this war that i believe this just to being one of the most risk seeking aggressive whistleblowers in American History must admit there were some profound change that took place. What i ultimately realized was that there was great continuity between those actions, that the reason he enlisted in the u. S. Army was because he genuinely believed and it was his obligation as a human being to risk his own interest even as life if it meant liberating the people. That was the same mentality, the same moral framework that led him to do this with supplying into put himself in the position of going to jail for the rest of his life. He said to me im not going to be a person who simply has beliefs and articulates and expresses those beliefs. Those beliefs are worthless unless i am willing to take action in defense of that. What he said was what it discovered not just the Surveillance System itself but the idea that this extraordinarily consequential apparatus can be constructed without an iota of understanding or knowledge by all the people he said knowing that had happened and then knowing he would be spending the rest of his life on his conscience having to realize he did nothing about it even though he could was an eminently worse punishment than anything the United States government could do to him including putting him into a cage for the next six decades. It was almost a selfinterest choice that he would rather have the pain of being in prison than the pain of knowing that he did nothing in the face of what they consider to be this grave injustice. Not only did that persuade me deeply of its authenticity but it really kind of eliminated this lesson for me. I had been writing for long time about these formidable economic forces in the United States and the west that do all sorts of portable things. Theres a tendency to spread a gloominess like i just listened to these horrible things and i actually feel weekend and impotent and despaired and sort of defeated about the prospects for doing something about this. What can i do to stand up to these forces. To me the real lesson of Edward Snowden what he did in the thing i think is so profound that i hope everybody in the world walks away no matter what their ideology is learning and thinking about is that he was this incredibly ordinary, and powerless person who grew up in the lower middle class home. His father spent 30 years in the coast guard. He had no position or prestige or power and yet simply through an act of conscience and courage of his convictions he literally change the world. The revelation revolutionized the people of all the world think about a wide array of profound issues. Even if there is never a law passed for the nsa or anything else. That consequence will endure. That should be a permanent antidote to defeatism in the powerless injustices we confront. We have within ourselves the ability when we summon our will to find a way let alone in concert with with other people to unleash all sorts of profound changes in being able to see them do that is something that will profoundly influenced me incredibly well for the rest of my life. I just want to talk for a couple more minutes and we will start the q a about what the book reveals about that. That ultimately is what motivated him to come forward. I just want to talk about one small part. Obviously the book contains a lot of revelations and puts together older stories in a broader context that does to me is really the nub of everything that has happened which is over the past 10 months there have been all kinds of debates spirited passionate sometimes scornful debates, but the essential conflict of claim has been on the one side the nsa who insisted that we need not worry about what it is we are doing because its an extremely discriminating targeted careful form of surveillance that is only interested in communications of people engaging in terrorist plotting or other forms of threats to american National Security. On the other side you have people like Edward Snowden and other people who have been saying the exact opposite is true that this is a system of indiscriminate limitless ubiquitous surveillance on like anything that has been created in the world. If you listen to a debate in the way somebody like Keith Alexander stands up and says one thing and i say the opposite theres no way for a person to resolve those differences. Except that we happen to have tens of thousands of documents which view it very decisively. One of the documents that ive published is illustrative of countless documents that appear in this archive in which the phrase collective all appears. That is the motto of the nsa. The motto by Keith Alexander when he was a general in baghdad because he wanted to direct that framework and surveillance an enemy population in the middle of the fishs protracted war and detention without trial and drones onto american soil. It became the surveillance philosophy of the u. S. Government and all other populations. Theres all sorts of documents that are firm and collected all of those institutional mandates of the nsa. I did a debate in toronto two weeks ago with the former director of the cia and nsa. When i presented him with that fact after he was assuring the audience that its all directed and limited in discriminating he was basically left to say its a really difficult point but collective doesnt mean he told the audience collected all. Collected all means collected all. Its evidenced by the fact that there are billions with a b every single day of emails and telephone calls collected by the nsa and stored by the nsa from the american indication system and all throughout the world. Theres one document particular that says that the top by the nsa is very generous of them to give a document is clear and helpful. This is how they talk when they think no one knows what they are saying this is our collection, our new collection posture is a circle and each peg at the circle has a different phrase that defines what the nsa sees at this collection posture. Right at the top it says collected all but issued go counterclockwise with the wheel it says things like snippy at all, process it all, exploited fall, know it all. That really is institutional ambition of the nsa and its closest partners. Its not just an aspiration of some science fiction. Its something extremely close to fulfilling and document after document demonstrates that. If nothing else no matter what you think of Edward Snowden and no matter how benevolent you think the u. S. Government is at the very least it is extremely difficult i think to dispute the principle that if the United States government is going to create something that profoundly consequential for privacy for generations for how we communicate and for how people in the world organize themselves or how personalities are formed the individuals explore the world they are going to convert that from what it was which was the greatest instrument for liberation and emancipation and equalizing of forces into what it has become which is the greatest and most menacing means of social surveillance ever known to human history. At the very least even if every detail is unknown to us the fact that our governments are doing that has to be known to the population if it has any meaning at all to say we have any form of democracy. Thats the principle that animated Edward Snowdens choice to come forward and the person personal principle animating every choice that i made to write this book. Thank you very much for listening and now we will have a 30 minute q a. [applause] thanks very much. [applause] thank you. I guess the system is anyone who wants to ask a question lines up at with the two microphones and alleviate me of the burden of having to pick people. We will alternate systematically from one microphone to the next. Many of the msas programs have been based on questionable legal theory. You think there will be any do you have any more smoking guns you think will lead to indictments . If we had a country which slipped under basic precepts of the rule of law than they answer to your question would be really easy. It would be yeah people who order surveillance that violates the rights of millions of americans as a federal court in washington two months ago world that it did or who abuse the system for improper purposes would be held accountable just like other people who arent in power in washington that they break the law for less significant transgressions are put into prison. We are country in which we know that american political officials create a worldwide torture regime and destroyed a country based on aggressive war principles and imprison people without charges. Not a single one of those individuals not a single one has ever been held accountable under the law. [applause] even though we have, we are the country that imprisons more of our citizens than any in the world in raw numbers and proportionally for far less serious transgressions than any in the west. You have the split in how the judicial system functions. My colleague matt baby has a book called the divide about how this judicial system has created an injustice. Let me give you an illustrative example. There are all these really brave american journalist who love to stand up and say Edward Snowden should man up is their phrase. They love this bravado and come back to United States and face trial and should be prosecuted and put into prison that this holds debate began when the National Security official James Clapper went before the United States senate and when asked by ron wyden is the nsa collecting data about hundreds of millions of americans he said what . Mass collection of data about americans . Lied to the people through the senate which is at least as much of a felony and you cannot find a single American Media figure who is interpipe interviewed James Clapper who has advocated or suggested he should. Demonstrates the split at how would we look at the laws for greatest for powerless ordinary people and not for people who yield power. As for smoking guns no matter what i demonstrated anything that would lead to indictments that there definitely are stories left that i think will shape how the story is formed and just to be clear those stories are not your report it because we are purposely saving them. These are the stories that are very difficult to report. They involve credible sensitivities about the privacy of innocent people and add the report while protecting their interest . They involve all kinds of legal questions that will implicate the inches of our source in the journal is working on the story. The minute those stories are ready and we are working on that night and day as fast as again they will be published and i do think they will significantly reshape how people view these revelations. [applause] times excited to ask you this because you hit it on cold air interview. I have a question for you from former congressman Neil Gallagher who fought against hoover fbi when he was the chair of the subcommittee on addition of policy. He had a question for you. He said hes been following your reporting on nsa with great interest since it parallels his experience with the hoover fbi and as a member of congress he saw firsthand how the fbi use methods like the nsa today to develop dossiers on members of congress on key issues. He he opposed huber lost his seat due to a his seat due to a stamping his months as my question to you is what can you tell us about the potential for the executive branch to use the nsa as internal police unit able to control the congress and judiciary by threatening to create personal scandals and oust him from office as huber did in his its day . I get in trouble when my editors and people when i get those previous and i have a momentary loss of control. There are all these headlines in my cold air reports saying the greatest story is coming and they email me and say thank you for that public pressure. Im going to be a little careful about that uncharacteristically but what i will say is we have had stories that speak to that question. There is a story we published in the Huffington Post three apartments ago that they were marketable document that didnt get as much attention. That had the nsa saying they had taken six people they considered radicals but they said specifically theyre not members of a terrorist organization. They simply have but the u. S. Government regards as a message that is radical like in the 60s and 70s j. Edgar hoover regarded john lennon and civil civil rights leaders as having a message that was radical. It talked about how they monitored their intimate on line activities including sexually explicit chats and visits to pornographic web sites and talked about how they could release that information about those individuals so as to discredit them as messengers and prevent them from being listened to in their communities which is peer j. Edgar hoover colintelpro. There have been stories about monitoring the identities or ruining the reputation of socalled hactivist people who use on line activism for political ends some nasty forms of destruction that they not only plotted to use against them. That is exactly the kind of political abuse of surveillance capabilities that are so famous in the 60s and 70s. The problem is that people viewed as latter these cuddly creatures who are peaceful and nonthreatening because they had been vindicated by history. They were viewed as threats just like people who are muslim to stand up and say i think palestinians have the right to defend themselves or u. S. Violence in the muslim world caused terrorism. The Surveillance System is very much about targeting those people. There are stories like that and john cook on my list but there are stories like that coming. [applause] i want to thank you very much for what you have done and when you see Edward Snowden i would like you to thank him for many of us here for doing what he did. [applause] i also want to say that and its okay. [inaudible] so i was one of those people like many people here that grew up in the late 60s early 70s. We have done a lot of demonstrations and we have organized a lot. We have worked for people we believe in. We have tried to make our country and our government a better place. It always seems to me like we are caught in a time warp, we are constantly repeating things that seem to have happened in previous generations, not even generations. If you look at what happened to this country in the 60s and 70s in Southeast Asia and all those kinds of things that had an impact on the direction of our country its not that long ago. Its not as though everyone should have forgotten that stuff although maybe they have. I just wanted to ask you as someone who has been out there in talks with people and has reflected on your own work in this area, why is it that we keep doing the same things over and over again and is there any way that we can prevent this from happening again even though we are going to get very upset about this. Many of us already are although i dont see any demonstrations out there which is something we had quite a lot of. People dont seem to be very angry about it. They dont seem to be upset. They dont seem to understand what the government is doing and is done to them. It doesnt seem to bother them very much. A little bit may be. I was sort of interested in your thoughts on that. Let me disagree a little bit with the premise of the last part of your question which is the idea that people dont seem bothered by this. I think sometimes theres an expectation particularly among those of us who are politically engaged relative to the population politically passionate that political passions are an important part of how we view the world to not just hope but to expect that everybodys going to see the world similarly to the way we see it and to react how we react and therefore when we are angry about something if theres not instantaneous demands for change in a collective way that means other people are generally apathetic. Im not suggesting that is how you are framing it. I think its really important to think about how perceptual change takes place. If you look at polling data for instance in the United States there is a remarkable poll of people that is then taken every year since the 9 11 attacks that asks americans the question. You have consistency and appalling metrics which is which is that you fear more the threat of terrorist attacks or the threat to Civil Liberties from the u. S. Government and every single year since the 9 11 attacks americans overwhelmingly by Something Like 30 have said i fear the threat of foreign terrorist attacks than my Civil Liberties in the American Government except 2013 after the snowden stories began and the results radically reverse. That is a remarkable change. I think one that will have profound implications. You are right people are protesting surveillance and in part thats because people have wars that are more tangible and immediate like how do you pay your bills with rampant unemployment and the like but i also think there is this sense of confusion about how to translate outrage which i do think as they are into meaningful change. People say i went to the polls in this election are that election. I thought the vote thought the vote i was was going to bring about meaningful change and i thought this time is going to happen and i see actually it hasnt. Now i realize this participation that i was told guaranteed i had an influence on how things happened really is illusory than anything else and all these massive forces, we have this occupy wall street move in and it got crushed by a combination of police force and subservient cord so i think theres a real collective sense of helplessness that has been cultivating so the lack of action is not necessarily reflective of the lack of its important to see this story internationally and not domestically. I know from where i am in brazil that this story has resonated greatly and sustained for over the course of the year. I know in germany where i visited the debate continues to swirl because how engaged and active the population is in all of the world people think differently about these issues. That cant help lead to all sorts of changes, which probably cant even anticipate. You are right that none of this is really new but thereve been debates about surveillance and scandals for years. They forget about that because we focus on whats in front of us rather than whats in the distant past. I also think we like to look at things that are distant as being the kind of tyrants that we are lucky enough to be free from because its more comfortable to think about that way. We dont think that those abuses are possible here but thats part of why we speak to our neighbor and people start blogs or write books is to change the people think about it. I really believe this story more than anything ive seen at least in the decade ive been writing about politics has had that kind of effect. I would love it to be more and i think it could continue to be more but i think its been ver very [applause] i was wondering if you see any scenario playing out where we would see the United States becoming a safe place for Edward Snowden to return to or you really think hes going to be a real challenge to return after being locked up in a cage for the rest of his life. I dont see a scenario of him returning and ill tell you why. I wrote an article in 2011 where i investigated and discovered the detention conditions in which Chelsea Manning, Bradley Manning had been contained. I remember at the time being confused initially about why they would do that. Why would they put her in those kinds of conditions . It seemed counterproductive to the nine states of the government. It turned her into a martyr and made them look awful and jeopardize the ability to prosecutor because statements she made could be excluded on the grounds that it was coercion. It seems irrational to me why they would do that. Ultimately what i realized is the reason they subjected her to that treatment is the same reason they have been so even though they use proper channels and have done little harm which in turn is the same reason our government put people in orange jumpsuits and cages on an island thousands of miles away from their home and torture people and go around the world. Its important for the government to send a message that if you are somebody who thinks about undermining what we are doing are challenging our power and specifically if youre someone who thinks about being a whistleblower and revealing to the world what we have been doing in the dark take a look at what it is we did to Chelsea Manning. Take a look at how we destroyed Thomas Drakes life let alone these people who have challenged us to our in prison with. Let Edward Snowden come home to this heros welcome. It would severely undermined that intimidating power. He would incentivize other people to do it. Thats the reason they are desperate to get him and why they are furious hes being protected because he has created template for other people who want to come forward but dont want to spend the rest of their life in prison. That is very alarming to the u. S. Government and very encouraging to me and a lot of other people. [applause] a question about journalism and whistleblowers. Leakers can be looked upon as people with ulterior motives. Whistleblowers usually people acting through conscience to expose wrongdoing. The piazza whistleblowing is an isolating event. If i understand quickly in an interview you gave you mentioned in your new endeavor at the intercept youll be looking to employ a secure drop anonymous technology. Heavy look forward in terms of what impact that has on the relationship of the journalists from the perspective of this is is somehow and some way facilitate the leaker, the person in power who has alter your motive and some way further isolates for the whistleblower in terms of the only avenue of support often is the journalist they are dealing with. That could somehow be undermined in technology. The question you ask raises a problem that gets far too little attention which is if you tell people as we tell them the government is collecting and everyone was calling them and who they are calling in the device they use and collecting their emails there are threats and implications for rights such as the right to privacy which has been debated. There are a lot of other rights that are seriously threatened by it system about surveillance including the freedom of the press. How do you view journalism which relies on people coming to you in confidence that they can give information and remain anonymous in a world where the government knows who everybodys talking to. It becomes almost impossible to do journalism and aware world where metadata is collected in a comprehensive way. I think its the responsibility to think about how to create ways to enable sources to come forward once again the way deep throat famously did to bob woodward and Carl Bernstein with the confidence they can do it without being detected by government. Things like secure drop which is a way of letting people deliver documents to journalists with a good amount of anonymity but also technologies we hope to develop further and we hope to influence and encourage other Media Outlets will once again reestablish the ability to communicate anonymously to one another. Its critical for privacy and critical for human rights workers and critical for attorneys who need to communicate in confidence with their colleagues and scientists and doctors. We establish privacy through Technology Like secure drop is crucial. As far as facilitating whistleblowers who might have ulterior motives im not sure how you can never stop that or why that even matters. I think we all are complicated human beings. We all act with i remember in philosophy does Mother Teresa spent her life feeding the poor because she believes is the moral thing to do or because she enjoys the praise she gets . Is probably to some degree and mixture of motives. There are few purely good or evil people. I think what matters is having the information find its way to the public regardless of the motivations of the people that caused that to happen. Thanks for coming to speak to us and thanks in general for getting you down. It seems unlikely the government will take on any reform of the visa policies give hope to review. Congress has taken a year to start moving forward on legislation that addresses one of the surveillance policies the phone metadata collection program. Legislators which has been so watered down already that if passed it may prove an effecti effective. Will will protection of our privacy and Civil Liberties ultimately be left up to individuals to safeguard themselves for example by using pgp email and if so how can individuals go about these concerns without raising undue scrutiny . Its a good question. Id agree completely that all the different ways change is likely to occur what happens in a big White Building a few blocks from here is probably the least relevant in the least promising. Promising. History of United States especially the recent history is when some sort of revolution takes place that spurs spurs its an outrage that government attempts to tamp it down and when thats unsuccessful they have to engage in ritual of showing symbolic reform. Things that are called reform and look like reform but that usually are designed to ensure the system can continue stronger than ever. There was one decent one passed in the house a few weeks ago that by the time it gets into the nsa protective hands of Dianne Feinstein is going to turn into the opposite. I think there are lots of other ways it can. I think countries banding together to find ways to undermine the ability of the u. S. To observe hegemony over the internet is promising. I think the fear that American Tech Companies legitimately have about the impact of these revelations on future Business Prospects based on the idea that companies can say dont put your emails and your chats on facebook or google. We wont turn it over to the u usa. I think its a really important Pressure Point and ultimately exactly what you said its not just individuals realizing their privacy has been compromised. Its also the choices that we all have especially people your age and younger which is people have career choices. The nsa needs young highly adept people for programming to work in their system or their Corporate Partners like Silicon Valley partners need those people to operate those systems. They waste money mayor faces of the people they want and then theres the other side where their Tech Companies that use privacy tools of the kind that you said were social activism groups. You may not make as much money doing that but thats the kind of choice we all can make to have an ultimate impact. The last point you made i want to underscore which is this remarkable there are tools now bike tour browsers that can protect the internet. The nsa is pulling its hair out over its ability to convey communications in one of the things that is credible is the nsa scours the internet looking for people who are using pgp to protect their emails because they regard anybody who uses pgp email as inherently suspicious on the grounds that if anybody wants to keep their communications away from our prying eyes they are probably bad people doing bad things. The reason that works, the reason you can become a surveillance target if you use pgp is because so few people use it. As millions of people use it instead of tens of thousands or tens of millions and becomes the default of the way we communicate which i think is going to happen it becomes impossible because of the sheer quantity for the nsa to target people. I will severely undermine their ability to invade dedications. Encryption works and if people begin using encryption that will be a major blow against this ubiquitous surveillance. [applause] unfortunately we are running short on time so we can take for brief questions to from each microphone. You have set before that Elizabeth Warren for example or other politicians who would be able to answer would have to conform to a system that forces them to sell out to the influences that would basically their original message and populist message people who would president ial candidates promising reform. Im curious, individuals such as noam chomsky and pero its question the ability of institutions that exist right now to address these problems whatsoever given the level of pervasive the between them and the interconnection and the inability of any single law or politician or even branch of government to effect change on its own. I would also like to say thank you to any fbi agents here for contributing to a great cause. Let me quickly address that. I dont think im quite that graham about the prospect of elected officials to effect some kind of change if they get elected. Do you think the system is if she wants to have other democrats but with her have to make compromises and tradeoffs. Having someone like Russ Feingold in the senate to have hearings on issues and extract pull out information even though any proposal fails by 981 is a real benefit to those of us working outside of the system. Some unlike Elizabeth Warren grilling banking Regulatory Oversight over wall street is extremely beneficial and even though it every other committee is meeting with those people and receiving checks from them. I dont want to overstate the grimness of the dorothy uselessness. Im glad there is Elizabeth Warren talking about that or Russ Feingold talking about that. I dont think any meaningful change will come exclusively or primarily from within this fundamentally corrupt system. It takes all sorts of other things from those who arent in it to take action and not rely on punching a hole every two years next to a name in order for it to happen. [applause] you started a talk by talking about the various attacks on snowden which is the only way they can attack information im curious if you can think of effective attacks they have been doing and what your thinking will be on reasonable offenses to becoming a tax on snowden and information. Do you mean other things that they could deal with effectively that they havent yet thought up that you want me to share . I said earlier actually there is a really interesting debate that is critical in nature of the work that snowden has done and that i have done and warren has done and others of us have done among people with whom i have been long allied that says the disclosures that we have made are too slow, too fragmented, too piecemeal, too incomplete and there should be much more disclosure. Its a really interesting debate to have. I have a lot of respect for those opinions. I dont actually agree with them. I shared some of the reasons im bound by the source but i will give you an example of what i mean. I was doing this pbs newshour today and the interviewer who is quite good a reporter said i want to ask you about a critique from the right in a critique from the left. I thought to myself shes going to ask me about a critique from the left . That never happened. Keith alexander says you are responsible for these dead bodies and no one knows where they are. Then the critique from the last was a column or review from the Washington Post by david cole who is a good critic of Civil Liberties grounds but a nice loyal democrat. That i have engaged in the responsible disclosures that will harm National Security. The critique from the left is one that will grace be great to have in the open is completely excluded as usual. There are critique surrounding the disclosures and how we do the reporting. Thats the reason why treat them with scorn because its what they deserve. [applause] thank you for any everything youre done and im a huge [inaudible] i do have an adversarial question for you though. Critics are saying you have been using documents in this book for your personal gain and how does that blur the lines in traditional journalism and more importantly does that what does that mean in your protection as journalists . What ends up happening is if you are in position possession of topsecret documents the Justice Department believes any publication is a crime come is a felony. The protection that you have is there is this superseding law called the constitution that in the First Amendment guarantees it means you can invoke those protections and potentially block the prosecution by the government even know you are disseminating topsecret documents. Then the question becomes they cant say you are a source or distributor. For example when i worked with foreign Media Outlets around the world to do the reporting in the places where people were who were most affected i wanted to do nsa spying in spain the spanish journalists in spying on sweden i had to enter into contracts with all the organizations before i could get a document saying they were hiring me as a freelance journalist to do their reporting. If i simply gave them the document the Justice Department would say im no longer a journalist and im now a distributor and the source. The proof as journalists get paid and i did it for free. The same thing happen with this book. In this book i wanted to make revelations because its hard to get stories published. You can only get so many stories published at each outlet because they have to go through a long editorial vetting process. Essentially there were two choices. I could publish the documents in the book and sell the book and have everybody say you are charging money for access to classified documents which is selling topsecret material which is espionage for which a lot of people are imprisoned for life or you can do what we did which is on the day of the release we uploaded to the internet every single document in the book so everybody in the world can go and look at them for free. Then you are faced with the criticism and how youre excluding the documents to generate publicity for the book so you essentially have a lose lose proposition. I dont make any apologies at all for having written a book