The Snowden files -- the inside story of the world’s most wanted man | Luke Harding | TEDxAthens

Transcriber: Emma Gon Reviewer: Ciro Gomez (Video) Edward Snowden: The NSA specifically targets everyone's communications. He ingests them by default. Barack Obama: The United States is not spying on ordinary people, it does not threaten our national security. ES: I'm just another guy, who sits in the office every day watching what's going on and says: this is not something for us to decide, the public needs to decide whether these programs and policies are right or wrong. It is entirely appropriate that there be a program to examine foreign data. Alan Rusbridger: What Snowden is trying to draw attention to is the extent to which we are on the path to total surveillance.

Andrew Parker: The work we do directly addresses threats to this country, to our way of life, to this country and to the people who live here. ES: You can't take on the

most

powerful intelligence agencies in the

world

and be completely risk-free, because they are such powerful adversaries that no one can meaningfully oppose them. If they want to catch you, they will do it in time. Newscaster: That it was the Prime Minister who ordered Britain's

most

senior civil servant to tell The Guardian newspaper to destroy a computer containing

files

on whistleblower Edward Snowden. AR: We were effectively faced with an ultimatum from the British government that if we did not return the material or destroy it, they would resort to the law. (Drilling sound) I didn't think we had Snowden's consent to return the material and he didn't want to help the UK authorities know what he had given us. (Reporter) The newspaper, which had other copies of Snowden's

files

abroad, agreed to take an angle grinder to the computer, while intelligence agents watched.

I think the obvious fact is that what has happened has damaged national security and, in many ways, the Guardian itself admitted that when they agreed, when my national security adviser and the cabinet secretary asked them politely to destroy the files that they had, They went ahead and destroyed those files. (Reporter) In the United States, the White House spokesman was asked: "Would Obama ever do such a thing?" Josh Earnest: It's very difficult to imagine a scenario in which that would be appropriate. (Drilling sound) Man: I love this country, do you love this country? How do you answer that question?

AR: We live in a democracy and most of the people working on this

story

are British who have families in this country and who love this country. I'm a little surprised that they asked me the question. But yes, we are patriots and one of the things we are patriotic about is the nature of democracy, the nature of the free press and the fact that in this country you can discuss and report on these things. ES: I think the public is owed an explanation of the motivations behind the people who made these revelations that are outside the democratic model.

When government power is subverted, that is fundamentally dangerous for democracy. BO: In this directive, I have taken the unprecedented step of extending certain protections we have to the American people to people abroad, which will limit the duration we can retain personal information while also restricting the use of this information. EN: I don't want to live in a

world

where everything I say, everything I do, everyone I talk to, every expression of creativity, love or friendship is recorded. (Applause) Luke Harding: Hello, it's great to be here in Athens. I can't believe Theo stole my shirt, but anyway.

It's great to be here, my name is Luke Harding. I am a journalist for The Guardian and one of the reporters who worked on the incredible Edward Snowden

story

. And I think if I were here in front of you two years ago, or I was trying to sell this as a book idea to my literary agent and I said, "There's a 29-year-old American who lives in Hawaii, works for the National Security Agency, the most secret spy organization in the world. Oh, his girlfriend is a pole dancer, and he stole hundreds of thousands of top-secret documents and fled to Hong Kong, where he handed them over to reporters.

I think my literary agent would have said, "Luke, that's it. It's so ridiculous. That would never, ever happen." But in reality that is precisely what happened. In 2012, Edward Snowden, then completely unknown and now, of course, world famous, decided he was going to speak out. He was increasingly disillusioned with spying. American and felt that in the years after 9/11, the enormously powerful American security state had stopped spying on the bad guys, on the terrorists, on Al-Qaeda, and had started spying on everyone, on you. about American citizens, about Europeans, etc. And then he came up with this incredible plan to basically share secret information.

He decided to leak it to journalists. The problem was that he was in Hawaii and he didn't know any journalists. But he liked Glenn Greenwald. , who writes a blog on civil liberties and was a columnist for The Guardian. In the fall of 2012, he sent a very cryptic email to Glenn Greenwald saying, "I'm a senior member of the intelligence community, I might have something of interest." And I interviewed Glenn for my book in Rio de Janeiro and Glenn is one of those people who is constantly busy. He lives in the rainforest, he and his partner have about 12 stray dogs.

You talk to him, he's on the phone, he's got four chat windows open, he's got some sort of stray dogs jumping on his head. And he saw the email. He didn't really do anything about it. And then Snowden tried again a couple of weeks later. He made an encryption video, a kind of tutorial for dummies for Glenn Greenwald to try to communicate with him. I showed him how to download encryption software and told him that you need a really good password whenever you do anything digital. And Snowden came up with a suggestion that he was, and he's not kidding, "Margaret Thatcher is 100% sexy." (Laughter) I don't know if Greece can remember Margaret Thatcher, but I assure you it's not true.

But anyway, Margaret Thatcher is 100% sexy. And incredibly Glenn didn't. So Snowden, who was basically trying to leak more intelligence material than anyone in history, must have been deeply frustrated and tried a different route, which was to contact Laura Poitras, who was a documentary filmmaker based in Berlin, who She trusted him and they had a very reddish correspondence, because Laura was worried that she was being deceived. Showden called himself Citizenfour and they exchanged information. He basically explained that he felt that American espionage was unconstitutional, that it was illegal, and that he

wanted

to get together and do something about it.

Basically, the events of early last year fast forward to the spring of last year, Snowden was ready to make this leak and told Laura that he would meet with her. And Laura flew to the United States with Glenn and a third member, a wonderful colleague of mine called Ewen MacAskill. He is a Scottish reporter for The Guardian. I don't know if you watch Star Trek in Greece, but he sounds like Scotty, the original Scotsman from Star Trek. He says a sort of “yes” instead of “yes.” But he is also a brilliant journalist. And the three of them flew to Hong Kong.

They met with Snowden at the Mira Hotel, initially Glenn and Laura. The surprising thing about this meeting, it's the beginning of my book, is that they had no idea who Snowden was, they only had his name. They hadn't Googled his name because it was too dangerous. They only had one meeting point, which was a kind of plastic crocodile in a kind of shopping area next to the hotel. And then they see this figure holding a Rubik's cube, it was part of some kind of protocol, he comes shuffling towards them and they were expecting some sort of CIA guy in his 60s with a blue jacket, gold glasses, dandruff, like. out. of the Born conspiracy.

Instead, they get this kind of student who, according to Glenn, barely looked old enough to shave. That was Edward Snowden. They went upstairs and started talking. It quickly became clear that Snowden was not just a source, but probably the greatest journalistic source of all time. And Ewen MacAskill also interviewed Snowden. We collaborated together on this book and we, the journalists involved in this story, also did a kind of espionage, but very bad, sub-Hollywood. Then they would have told you that if Snowden was genuine, he should type into his text phone, "Guinness is good," and if he were fake, "Guinness is bad." Then, the biggest leak in history, the switch was flipped when Ewen, on Tuesday night in this extraordinary Hong Kong week, wrote: "Guinness is good." And that was it.

Then we started publishing a series of stories in London and New York about the fact that all Americans' phone records were secretly collected. About the PRISM program, which no one had heard of then. But essentially the NSA was hacking into the servers of Yahoo, Google, and all the digital platforms that we use all the time. And it was kind of a roller coaster. I was part of the team in London dealing with this. And very quickly we came into conflict with the British authorities. You saw David Cameron in the video, who is not a great Prime Minister.

He went to Eaton. For those of you who don't know, it is the most privileged and expensive private school in the United Kingdom. And he's someone who's used to getting his way. He was basically sick of us publishing this stuff. Two weeks later, after we started publishing, he pointed out the most senior official in the British government, a guy called Sir Jeremy Heywood. And I think he sort of said, "Sir Jeremy, deal with these rotten Guardians, deal with them." And then Sir Jeremy came to our London offices in King's Cross and basically threatened us with legal action.

He said that unless we stopped publishing stories, we had to return this material, they would take us before a judge and possibly even shut us down. We explained to him, Alan Rusbriger, my editor, that this was useless because this material already existed in Berlin with Laura Poitras, in Rio, with the New York Times, etc. Sir Jeremy said this is the authentic voice of aristocratic Britain. He basically said that the Prime Minister thinks that "The Guardian is much more important than some American blogger." Some American blogger is Glenn Greenwald, the most famous journalist on the planet. He then added, and this is the key line: "You should be flattered that the Prime Minister thinks you are important." (Laughter) That was the British government's response to this sensational story.

We continued publishing, I was in some kind of secret bunker. What we tried to do was what Snowden had told us to do, which was to publish stories about mass surveillance of civilians, of great public importance. Not about operational issues, terrorism, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. But this led us into deep conflict with the British government. And finally they told us that unless they break their computers, we will shut them down. And two middle-aged spies from GCHQ, the British equivalent of the NSA, came to the Guardian on a quiet Saturday morning and we agreed symbolically to destroy our hard drives, which they saw there.

It was a surreal episode, they told us to buy drills and masks. They produced something that looked like a small microwave oven called a degausser, which destroys magnetic data. We said, "We're not going to use your degausser, we don't trust you." And they said, "Yes, you will. It costs £30,000." And we said, "Okay, we'll use your degausser." So we tore everything apart and that was the end of the Snowden files. I think, I write in my book that I describe it as part Stassi, part pantomime. But I think for people who care about press freedom, it was very chilling.

The extraordinary thing was that the two spies had spent two weeks watching our building and left with gifts from Hamleys, the London toy store for their children, back to the provinces, where the spy agencies were based. I later spoke to one of the spies, Ian, about this. And he said that he wasn't so bothered by the book, but he was bothered by the implication that he was provincial. Provincialism is the worst kind of crime. So what we know thanks to Snowden is a lot. I mean, I think Snowden has done us an enormous service. I think he is an important historical figure.

I think we all owe him a debt. I don't know how many people have one of these. I guess everyone has one of these, right? The genius of Snowden was that he actually handed over documents, he didn't just make claims. We now know that the iPhone is the most superlative spy device. The NSA boasts in its internal document that people who have iPhones are zombies. So you are all zombies. The NSA can turn on your microphone remotely. In fact it happened to me. If they do that, the battery drains very quickly. It goes from full to zero in about 25 minutes.

They collect your web searches, your text messages, your emails and also your geolocation data. In other words, there is a complete record of where you have been. If you go to your privacy settings, you can find out that everything is being collected. So we've had a huge debate over the last year. On the one hand,Politically, not much has changed; there have been some minor reforms by the Obama administration; I would say that the British government still denies it. Germans are furious because Angela Merkel, who we saw earlier dressed as a Nazi, had her phone tapped by the NSA for 10 years.

For very understandable historical reasons, Germans understand perfectly well how important privacy is. But there aren't many concrete policy changes, but I think we as citizens can at least now have a proper and meaningful debate with our governments about the boundaries between privacy and national security. I would be interested to know, for example, whether the NSA spied on the Greek Prime Minister or previous Greek Prime Ministers. The answer is almost certainly yes. I would also be interested to know to what extent the Greek government continues to collaborate with the NSA and share its data with the United States.

But my message to this lovely audience is twofold: I would say, despite all of Snowden's revelations, stay cheerful and love each other. I suggest you don't get too scared. It is also good to take measures to safeguard our data. Snowden's big advice was that if you have an iPhone, keep it in the refrigerator. I also discovered that a cocktail shaker is very good. I don't know if there are shakers here in Athens, but put it in the shaker, it works like a Faraday cage. And I would say use encryption if you can. The encryption works and is fantastic.

And just one final story. One of the reasons I care so much about the idea of ​​privacy is that I spent four years in Russia, working for The Guardian as Moscow bureau chief. And there I was hacked by the KGB. I had unpromising young men in black leather jackets following me. Every time I made a joke about Vladimir Putin on the phone, someone would be listening and the line would say "grgrgr." (Laughs) Like that. There were people who broke into my apartment. Really, it was kind of a poorly written KGB drama. I have had experience in demonstrative Russian espionage, but I have also had experience in American espionage.

After seeing Glenn Greenwald in Rio last year for my book, all kinds of weird things happen to everyone who knew Glenn Greenwald. And I was writing my manuscript in the English countryside. And I wrote something very derogatory about the NSA, very rude about the NSA. And I watched my computer as my paragraph remotely deleted from right to left, something like this. (Laughs) And I thought: "What the hell...!" (Laughter) This was repeated five or six times. Over a two-month period, to the point where I was leaving notes to my mysterious editor saying, "Look, I'm really not very happy that you're doing this.

Please don't delete things." And if it had been Hollywood, I would have gotten a mysterious disembodied response, but I got no response. But, very unusually, all writers expect people to criticize their books after they are published. Being criticized when you're still writing is something very new. So I would say thank you very much. I believe that privacy is a fundamental human right. I think Edward Snowden is a great person. He is in a difficult situation in Moscow and I think we are indebted to him. I think we should thank Edward Snowden. Thank you. (Applause)